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Heinrich Klafack * 1878

Störtebekerweg 81 (Harburg, Neugraben-Fischbek)

HIER WOHNTE
HEINRICH KLAFACK
JG. 1878
IM WIDERSTAND
VERHAFTET 1934
ZUCHTHAUS RENDSBURG
ERMORDET 20.5.1936

Heinrich Klafack, born 2 Mar 1878 in Niestedt near Dannenberg, died 20 May 1936 at Rendsburg prison,

Neugraben quarter, Störtebekerweg 81

The laborer Heinrich Klafack came to Harburg (then a city of its own) in 1900 and married Hansine Petersen, born 6 Aug 1878 in Hadersleben. They had two sons, Hans Klafack, born May 3rd, 1903 in Harburg, who was to become a carpenter, and Walter Klafack, born July 12th, 1909 in Harburg, who was to become a mason. Hans Klafack emigrated to North America in March, 1928. Walter Klafack lived in Fleestedt for a short time in 1930, but then moved back to Maretstrasse.

The family lived at Mittelstrasse 68 (1914, now Beckerberg), later in the house on the corner of Hohe Strasse and Maretstrasse (address: Maretstrasse 68) in a ground floor apartment facing Hohe Strasse. The 1934 address book identifies Heinrich Klafack as the owner of the property.

Heinrich Klafack was a communist. When the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship was in the offing, some very few Communists joined the German National People’s Party (DNVP) or even the Nazi SA in order to reconnoiter the adversaries’ intentions. Heinrich Klafack became a member of the DNVP, probably in late 1932. As a real estate owner he was not suspected of being a leftist.
In 1933, the Klafacks provided their home in Maretstrasse for illegal meetings of the Communist party (KPD) and also as a location for a printing press. Otto Dennstedt, a Social Democrat and owner of a printing shop in the street called Lämmertwiete in Harburg, supplied the press and the type sets to produce illegal newspapers such as the "Norddeutsche Zeitung”, leaflets and pamphlets.

In 1934, the Klafacks bought a house at today’s Störtebekerweg 81, then in the community of Fischbeck-Neugraben, house no. 152 (there were no street names in Neugraben at the time); they moved in on March 14th. The printing press stood in the basement. The illegal publications were now produced here, including 3,000 copies of the "Hamburger Volkszeitung” for the district leadership of the Communist Party (KPD).

In the course of the crackdown on the KPD sub district Harburg-Wilhelmsburg the Harburg Gestapo discovered the printing shop and arrested Hansine and Heinrich Klafack. In their "special report” about the strike against the illegal KPD, the Gestapo on August 17th, 1934 wrote: "The energy and circumspection the party deployed in its work becomes especially evident by the fact that, deploying members’ dues, the proceeds from the sale of the papers plus donations, that it succeeded in buying a house in Neugraben (Harburg District) that was to be equipped as a complete printing plant for the party, where three sets of type were confiscated.”

In the spring of 1935, Heinrich Klafack was sentenced to a long term a hard labor for "preparations for high treason” and sent to the Walchum camp in the Emsland. Even though this camp had been put under the administration of the Justice Department, the conditions there were similar to a concentration camp. Klafack died on May 20th, 1936 in the Prison at Rendsburg. Details of the circumstances of his death are unknown.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hans-Joachim Meyer

Quellen: VVN-BdA Harburg (Hrsg.), Die anderen, s. Personenverzeichnis; VVN-BdA Harburg (Hrsg.), Stumme Zeugen, s. Personenverzeichnis; StaH, 332-8 Meldewesen, A46; StaH, Adressbücher Harburg-Wilhelmsburg und Hamburg; SAPMO BA, Kop. Gedenkstätte Ernst Thälmann in Hamburg; Internationaler Suchdienst Arolsen; Abschlussbericht; Totenliste VAN.