Ottilie Pohl
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Ottilie Pohl (née Levit, 14 November 1867 – 2 December 1943) was a German socialist politician and activist who participated in the German resistance to Nazism. She was born in Schönwald into a Jewish family. She worked as milliner and moved to Berlin. She married Wilhelm Pohl in 1893, they had two children; he died in 1915.[1]
In 1890, upon the end of Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws, she joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany and became their delegate in Berlin-Moabit. Being opposed to the First World War, she distributed the Spartacus Letters and in 1917 changed affiliations to the USPD. In 1920 she was elected city councillor for that party in Berlin-Tiergarten. She was a member of the Konsumgenossenschaft Berlin supervisory board.[2]
After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Pohl worked with a Rote Hilfe group to support victims of Nazi persecution and resistance fighters in prison or in hiding. The group also included Rosa Lindemann and other women.[1]
Pohl was arrested in August 1940 for aiding the German communist and resistance fighter Rudolf Hallmeyer . She was sentenced to 8 months in prison, upon her release in 1941 she continued to engage in underground political activities. On 19 November 1942 she was arrested by the Gestapo, her possessions were seized and she was deported to Theresienstadt, where she died the following year.[2][3]
Today, Ottilie Pohl is remembered with a memorial plaque (Beusselstr. 43). The former Ludendorffstraße in Tiergarten was renamed to Pohlstraße in her honour in 1947.[2]
References
- ^ a b "Ottilie Pohl". Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
- ^ a b c "Zivilcourage in schweren Zeiten". berlingeschichte.de (in German). Berlinische Monatsschrift. May 2000. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
- ^ "Opfer des Holocaust". luckauer-juden.de (in German). Retrieved 3 November 2019.
- 19th-century German women
- 20th-century German women politicians
- Jewish socialists
- Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
- Independent Social Democratic Party politicians
- German resistance to Nazism
- People who died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto
- German Jews who died in the Holocaust
- 1867 births
- 1943 deaths
- Female resistance members of World War II
- Jews in the German resistance
- Social Democratic Party of Germany politician stubs