Thanks to Facebook users, a snapshot from the Second World War once again caught the attention of the media. It captures a crowd meeting Hitler, one person in which does not extend his hand in a Nazi salute. The name of the man who decided on such a bold act became known only half a century later, according to the Washington Post.
The picture was taken in Germany in 1936, when the residents of Hamburg gathered to watch the launching ceremony of a new warship. Hitler himself was present at the ceremony. The photograph taken in the city port shows several dozen people greeting the Fuhrer with a Nazi greeting. And only one person stands with his arms folded on his chest and, squinting, looks into the distance. In those days, expressing disapproval to the authorities in front of everyone was a very courageous act.
The identity of the man was established only in 1991, when the relatives of the daredevil saw a historical photograph in one of the German newspapers. The heroic anti-fascist was called August Landmesser, he worked at the Hamburg shipyard Blohm + Voss. As one of the German’s daughters said, her father had good reasons to hate the Hitler regime. Despite the fact that from 1931 to 1935 Landmesser was a member of the Nazi party, this did not prevent him from marrying a Jewess Irma Eclair, after which the German was expelled from the organization.
Eclair gave birth to two daughters to Augustus, for which the German was imprisoned as a man who “betrayed his race.” His wife, historians believe, was arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into the Fuhlsbuettel prison in Hamburg. Their children were assigned to different orphanages. In 1941 August Landmesser was released from prison and sent to the front. He was later declared missing and presumed dead.
In 1996, one of Landmesser’s daughters Irene wrote a book about how her family was destroyed by the Nazi regime. The photograph from the port of Hamburg has once again attracted the attention of thousands of people. This happened after one of the blogs dedicated to helping the victims of the tsunami in Japan posted a picture on its Facebook page. The photo was reposted by over 25,000 users of this social network.