Fechenbach, Felix.

Fechenbach, Felix, born 28-01-1894 in Bad Mergentheim as the son of a baker and joined the Jewish primary school. He took vocational education in Würzburg until 1910. Later, he worked in a shoe store. In 1911 he worked in Frankfurt but got fired because of a strike he led against unpaid work. From 1912 until 1914 he was a party secretary of the SPD in Munich, he served in World War I was wounded, became a pacifist, later becoming state secretary (1918–1919). During World War I he was a pacifist and served as Private Secretary for Kurt Eisner  , the prime minister of Bavaria, shortly after the war. “Kurt Eisner, who proclaimed the Bavarian republic on 08-11-1918 – later Prime Minister of the Republic of Bavaria – was murdered, age 51, here on 21-02-1919.” He was jailed in 1922 for publishing an alleged secret diplomatic telegram while Staats Secretary under Eisner, before the Münchner Räterepublik.  The decision was a scandal because the court at that time had no standing under the Weimar Constitution. He was pardoned in 1924. He thereafter traveled to Berlin and worked for Kinderfreunde (Friends of Children) and criticized the SPD in his children’s stories while still a member of the party.  Felix Fechenbach was friends with Bertolt Brecht , Albert Einstein  and Kurt Tucholsky .Under the pseudonym “Nazi-Jüsken” he provoketed a lot of Nazi hostilities.  In 1929, he became the editor in chief of the SPD newspaper Volksblatt in Detmold. After the elections on 15-01-1933 the Nazi’s forbid Fechenbach to speak in public and on 11-03-1933 he was jailed by the new Nazi government for his anti-fascist activities  On 07-08-1933 August Fechenbach was reportedly “shot on the run” on the transport from Detmold to the Dachau concentration camp in the Kleinenberger Wald between Paderborn and Warburg, on this spot. A few hours later, he died, without having regained consciousness, in the evening at the hospital in Scherfede. The command to transport had been appointed by the National Socialists to head of government in Lippe, SS Gruppenführer Hans-Joachim Ernst Riecke , who had personally pursued Fechenbach. Four SA and SS men from Detmold were suspected of the crime: Friedrich Grüttemeyer ,  sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for murder in 1969, Paul Wiese , convicted in 1948 of “deliberate manslaughter” for a five-year prison sentence, Karl Segler, who could not be shown any involvement, and Josef Focke, who was never caught. The role of Rieckes could never be completely cleared up. He could not prove the order to murder, a criminal case against him was set in 1970. The fact was that Riecke had hired the murderer Paul Wiese as his personal driver a few months later He was  while being transported to the Dachau concentration camp, “shot while take flight”. on this spot  The truth is that Reinhard Heydrich  himself had ordered to torture and kill.

Death and burial ground of Fechenbach, Felix.

     Felix was married with Irma Epstein and they had tree children  and survived the Nazi periode by fleeing.  Felix Fechenbach is buried on the Jewish cemetery of Rimbach. Leif Stjena made the grave photo and kindly sent them to me..

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