Communists in the German Resistance

Rudolf (Rudi) Schwarz (3 March 1904 – 1 February 1934) was a German Communist Party activist who after 1933 became an anti-government activist. He was arrested, detained and then, a few weeks short of his thirtieth birthday, handed over to the Gestapo who shot him at the beginning of February 1934.
In the German Democratic Republic he came to wider public attention when the popular author Stephan Hermlin included his story in a 1951 book about resistance to Nazism. After this Schwarz became something of an iconic figure, featured in cinema and television productions.

Günther Krupkat (5 July 1905, Berlin – 14 April 1990, Berlin) was a German fiction writer, known as one of the leading science fiction writers of East Germany.

Alice Wosikowski (born Alice Ludwig: 18 October 1886 – 4 July 1949) was a German politician (SPD, KPD) who became a member of the Hamburg Parliament between 1927 and 1933. After 1933 she became a resistance activist: much of her life during the twelve Nazi years was spent in government detention institutions.

Käthe Latzke (8 May 1899 - 31 March 1945) was a German political activist (KPD) who resisted Nazism and spent most of her final twelve years in state detention. Her health having been broken, she died in Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Cläre Jung (2 February 1892 – 25 March 1981) was a German journalist, writer and political activist.

Heinrich Max Willi Sänger (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪli ˈzɛŋɐ] ; 21 May 1894 in Berlin, Germany – 27 November 1944 in Brandenburg, Germany) was a German Communist and resistance fighter against the Nazis.

Frieda Rosenthal (born Frieda Schrinner: 9 June 1891 – 15 October 1936) was a Berlin local politician and, after 1933, active in resisting the Nazi régime. Concerned that, under interrogation, she had inadvertently implicated a fellow activist, she died by hanging herself, using a radiator, in her prison cell.

Hilde Radusch (6 November 1903 – 2 August 1994) was a German political activist (KPD, SPD) who became involved in anti-fascist resistance. As the 20th century progressed, she became increasingly prominent as a feminist and lesbian activist.Throughout her life Radusch kept a diary. Accessed by researchers after she died, her own writings have provided an insightful, and at times engagingly laconic, commentary on her eventful life.

Herta Geffke (married name, Herta Kaasch: 19 August 1893 – 29 December 1974) was a German activist and politician (KPD, SED) who resisted Nazism. After 1945 she became a member of the Party Central Control Commission (Zentrale Parteikontrollkommission / ZPKK) in the Soviet occupation zone (from 1949 the German Democratic Republic), identified as a "true Stalinist" and feared on account of her interrogation methods.

Karl Grönsfelder (18 January 1882 – 20 February 1964) was a Bavarian political activist and politician (KPD).When the Communist party was briefly banned in 1923/24, his activism earned him a period in "protective custody" in June 1924. A longer period of detention followed the Nazi take-over in 1933. After 1945 Grönsfelder returned to political activism, despite being marginalised and expelled (not for the first time) from the Communist Party in 1949.