(Wikipedia/Amanda Macias/Business Insider)
Thu, Nov 5, 2015, 9:05AM
The tragically powerful story behind the lone German who refused to give Hitler the Nazi salute
By Amanda Macias
August Landmesser, the lone German refusing to raise a stiff right arm amid Hitler's presence at a 1936 rally, had been a loyal Nazi.
Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and began to work his way up the ranks of what would become the only legal political affiliation in the country.
Irma Eckler |
Two years later, Landmesser fell madly in love with Irma
Eckler, a Jewish woman, and proposed marriage to her in 1935.
After his engagement to a Jewish woman was discovered, Landmesser was expelled from the Nazi Party.
Landmesser and Eckler decided to file a marriage application in
The couple welcomed their first daughter, Ingrid, in October 1935.
And then on June 13, 1936, Landmesser gave a crossed-arm stance during Hitler's christening of a new German navy vessel.
In 1937,
fed up, Landmesser attempted to flee Nazi Germany to Denmark with his family. But he was
detained at the border and charged with "dishonoring the race," or
"racial infamy," under the Nuremberg Laws.
A year later, Landmesser was acquitted for a lack of evidence and was
instructed to not have a relationship with Eckler.
Refusing to abandon his wife, Landmesser ignored Nazi wishes and was arrested again in 1938 and sentenced to nearly three years in a concentration camp.
He would never see the woman he loved or his child again.
The secret state police also arrested Eckler, who was several months pregnant with the couple's second daughter.
She gave birth to Irene in prison and was sent to an all-women's concentration camp soon after her delivery.
Eckler is believed to have been transferred to what the Nazi's called a "euthanasia center" in 1942, where she was murdered with 14,000 others.
After his prison sentence, Landmesser worked a few jobs before he was drafted into war in 1944.
A few months later, he was declared missing in action in
.
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