Erwin Jöris

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Erwin Jöris
Born	(1912-10-05)5 October 1912 Lichtenberg, Kreis Niederbarnim, German Empire
💀Died	17 November 2013(2013-11-17) (aged 101) Cologne, Germany17 November 2013(2013-11-17) (aged 101)
🏳️ Nationality	German
💼 Occupation	Carpenter, political activist
Known for	Resistance against Nazi Germany and victim of Stalinist repressions
🏅 Awards	Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2002)

Erwin Jöris (5 October 1912 – 17 November 2013) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and a victim of Stalinist terror. His life was marked by persecution under both the Nazi regime and the Soviet regime under Stalin.

Early life

Erwin Jöris was born in 1912 in a working-class neighborhood in Lichtenberg on the eastern edge of Berlin. His father, a coal merchant, participated in the Spartacist uprising in 1918. After completing his schooling, where wrestler Werner Seelenbinder was among his classmates, Jöris completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter. At the age of 16, he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) in 1928.

Political activities before 1933

In 1931, Jöris served as "Sub-District Leader East" of the KJVD in Berlin. In 1932, he protested against the KPD's support of a referendum initiated by the National Socialists to dissolve the Prussian state parliament. At great personal risk, he distributed leaflets with the inscription: "Hitler – that means war".

Persecution under National Socialism

After the Nazi seizure of power, Jöris was arrested in March 1933. Fellow prisoners during his detention included Erich Mühsam, Manès Sperber, and Hermann Duncker. After being sentenced to protective custody, he was transferred to the Sonnenburg concentration camp, where he met Ludwig Renn and Carl von Ossietzky. He was released in March 1934 after promising never again to engage in "activities hostile to the state."

Exile in the Soviet Union

Two months after his release, Jöris emigrated to the Soviet Union on behalf of the now-illegal KPD. There he lived in Moscow at the Hotel Lux and attended Comintern training sessions. In light of the Stalinist show trials, he gradually distanced himself from the Stalinist-influenced communist worldview. After openly expressing criticism, he was sent by the Communist Youth International in January 1935 to serve probation in an industrial plant in Sverdlovsk. Nevertheless, his career as a functionary was essentially over: referring to his "promise" upon release from the concentration camp, Herbert Wehner and others accused him of not having offered sufficient resistance to the National Socialists.

Arrest by the NKVD

When he refused in August 1937 to give a whitewashing lecture at the Comintern school about the supposedly strong communist resistance in Germany, the NKVD arrested him and delivered him to the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow on charges of being a Trotskyist spy.

Deportation and second imprisonment

In April 1938, the Soviet Union deported Jöris to Nazi Germany, handing him over to the Gestapo, which imprisoned him again until February 1939. In March 1940, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht. From 1941, Jöris was deployed on the Eastern Front. Shortly before the end of the war, he was captured by Soviet forces during the Battle of Berlin. There he concealed his knowledge of the country and language, and was thus released in September 1945.

Return to East Berlin and third arrest

Jöris returned to East Berlin, where on 19 December 1949 he was arrested again by the Soviet secret police. The arrest was preceded by denunciation from comrades from his time in Moscow exile. After a year of investigative detention in the "U-Boot" in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him in 1950 to 25 years of forced labor. Before the verdict was announced, the investigating judge had threatened Jöris: "Your mouth will freeze shut in Siberia," to which he replied: "Yours too."

Imprisonment in the Gulag

Jöris served his sentence as a political prisoner in the labor camps of Rechlag/Vorkuta labor camp (from 1948 to 1954, the MVD Special Camp No. 6, the Rechlag [River Camp], belonged to the Vorkuta camp complex). As part of the repatriation of prisoners, he was released to East Berlin in 1955. From there he immediately fled with his wife to Cologne, where he lived until his death. He was not rehabilitated by Russian authorities until 1995. In 2002, Jöris was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Later life and legacy

His fate is documented in the 2002 Swiss film Erwin Jöris – Zwischen Hitler und Stalin (Erwin Jöris – Between Hitler and Stalin) as well as his 2004 autobiography Mein Leben als Verfolgter unter Hitler und Stalin (My Life as a Persecuted Person Under Stalin and Hitler). For Erwin Jöris's 100th birthday, Swiss historian Andreas Petersen (born in Cologne) published a comprehensive biography based on 26 in-depth interviews with Jöris and research in Berlin, Moscow, and Sverdlovsk archives. In 2013, Theater 89 in Berlin staged three theatrical productions of Erwin Jöris's life based on this text.

Jöris died on 17 November 2013 and was buried on 9 December 2013 at the Cologne-Holweide cemetery (section 1, no. u292).

Publications

• Jöris, Erwin (2004). Ein Leben als Verfolgter unter Hitler und Stalin: Erinnerungen gegen das Vergessen [A Life as a Persecuted Person Under Hitler and Stalin: Memories Against Forgetting] (in Deutsch). Cologne: Self-published. ISBN 3-00-014841-8. Search this book on
• Petersen, Andreas (2012). Deine Schnauze wird dir in Sibirien zufrieren. Ein Jahrhundertdiktat. Erwin Jöris [Your Mouth Will Freeze Shut in Siberia. A Century's Dictation. Erwin Jöris] (in Deutsch). Wiesbaden: Marixverlag. ISBN 978-3-86539-284-8. Search this book on

External links

• Erwin Jöris on the GULAG Internet portal of Memorial Deutschland e.V. (with short excerpt from Jöris's autobiography)
• Gefangener unter Hitler und Stalin Swiss Radio SRF "Context" broadcast about Jöris from 3 January 2008

References

This article "Erwin Jöris" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Erwin Jöris. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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