Werner Scharff (August 16, 1912 – March 16, 1945) was a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

resistance activist against the Nazi regime. He was executed in

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

because of his activities in the "Community for Peace and Development" ''(German: "Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau")'', which he founded together with

Hans Winkler Hans Karl Albert Winkler (23 April 1877 – 22 November 1945) was a German botanist. He was Professor of Botany at the University of Hamburg, and a director of that university's Institute of Botany. Winkler coined the term 'heteroploidy' in 191 ...

Luckenwalde Luckenwalde (; Upper and dsb, Łukowc) is the capital of the Teltow-Fläming district in the German state of Brandenburg. It is situated on the Nuthe river north of the Fläming Heath, at the eastern rim of the Nuthe-Nieplitz Nature Park, abou ...

.Chronic of Luckenwalde
(German)

Life

Werner Scharff was born into a Jewish family in Posen in 1912.Johannes Tuchel (ed.): ''Der vergessene Widerstand. Zu Realgeschichte und Wahrnehmung des Kampfes gegen die NS-Diktatur.'' Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2001, pp. 97-107 (German) The family moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

in 1918. After the early death of his father in 1929, Scharff took up an apprenticeship as an electritician to be able to take care of his mother and his two younger siblings. In 1938, he married Gertrud Weissman. A planned emigration of the Jewish couple failed. In 1941, Scharff started to work as an electrician in the

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

Levetzowstraße in

Berlin-Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood is ...

, which was misused as a deportation site from 1942 by the SS. This provided Scharff with a deep insight into the cruelty of the Nazis and the bitter fate of their victims. As the electrician, Scharff was allowed to move freely within the deportation site and to leave it at any time. He used this to smuggle messages, food and clothes from the relatives of the detained into the deportation site on a large scale.Edith Hirschfeldt: Werner Scharff, In: Die Unvergessenen, Heidelberg 1952(German) Thanks to the occupation of his new girlfriend Fancia Grün, who worked as a secretary in the registration office of the Jewish Community and who was responsible for writing deportation lists, he was also able to warn many of his friends and acquaintances from imminent deportations.

Deportation and escape

When the other community members where deported in the summer of 1943, Scharff fled to the underground on June 10, 1943.Werner Scharff and the Community for Peace and Reconstruction
/ref> Four weeks later, on July 14, the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

found him and deported him to the

Theresienstadt Ghetto Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination cam ...

. He did not stay long however and escaped on September 7 together with Fancia Grün. His destination was the address of resistance member Hans Winkler, which had been recommended to him in Theresienstadt as a possible hideout in

Active resistance and execution

Werner Scharff was full of ideas how to actively encourage other citizens to passive resistance against the Nazis, but he needed people to help him. When Winkler heard of Scharff's plans, he was instantly willing to participate. Together with Günter Samuel and Erich Schwarz, Winkler had already been operating a loose resistance group since before the outbreak of the war to help saving Jews from deportation. The resistance group became later known as the "Community for Peace and Development" ''(German: "Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau")''. His occupation at the district court gave Winkler the opportunity to organise passports and to issue death certificates of Jews who had been hidden at his and his friends' places. He also had many friends and acquaintances who were willing to provide food stamps and accommodation. Scharff gradually became the head of the organisation which mainly consisted of friends and acquaintances of Scharff and Winkler, of opponents of the Nazi regime, and other like-minded citizens of

Berlin-Wedding Wedding (german: der Wedding; ) is a locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany and was a separate borough in the north-western inner city until it was fused with Tiergarten and Mitte in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform. At the same tim ...

Berlin-Mitte Mitte () (German for "middle" or "center") is a central locality () of Berlin in the eponymous district () of Mitte. Until 2001, it was itself an autonomous district. Mitte proper comprises the historic center of Alt-Berlin centered on the chu ...

, and

Berlin-Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it has ...

. Scharff developed new ideas how to distribute chain mails and opposition leaflets and how to recruit new supporters. Together with Winkler he organised the large-scale distribution of their leaflets, in which they appealed to independent thinking, to resistance and to putting an end to the war. Furthermore, they provided shelter to 6–10 persecuted Jews at any time. Scharff and Winkler even contacted inhabitants of the prisoner of war camp

Stalag III-A Stalag III-A was a German World War II prisoner-of-war camp at Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, south of Berlin. Camp history Planning for the camp commenced before the invasion of Poland. It was designed to hold 10,000 men, was the largest in the 3rd ...

in Luckenwalde, most likely with the goal to ultimately gain access to military arsenal. It was Scharff's dream to free the last Jews that were imprisoned in the prison and detention camp at the Jewish hospital in Berlin. Many, most of all the wife of Hans Winkler, thought that the organisation was acting too reckless. A member of the group, Hilde Bromberg, was indeed arrested in April 1944 after a denunciation by the widow of the executed bookseller August Bonneß, Jr. (1890-1944). Although Bromberg did not reveal the other group members and even managed to lead the Gestapo astray, they eventually tracked down the group and arrested Werner Scharff on October 14, 1944. Scharff was brought to the prison at

Alexanderplatz () ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the nort ...

and brutally interrogated. Shortly thereafter, Winkler and many other members of the organisation were arrested as well. By the end of 1944, Scharff was transferred to

. The SS executed him on March 16, 1945. Fancia Grün was executed in the concentration camp as well. Many other members of the community only survived thanks to the end of the war—otherwise they would have faced certain death.

Life

Deportation and escape

Active resistance and execution

References

Further reading