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Helene Heyckendorf
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Helene Heyckendorf (irrt. Heykendorf) * 1893

Vereinsstraße 59 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
HELENE HEYKENDORF
JG. 1893
KZ NEUENGAMME
GEHENKT 1945

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Helene Heyckendorf, née Bendixen, born 15 Nov. 1893 in Hamburg, murdered on 21 or 23 Apr. 1945 in the Neuengamme concentration camp

Vereinsstraße 59

Helene Heyckendorf was born in Hamburg on 15 Nov. 1893. On 28 Aug. 1920, she married Max Heyckendorf (born 11 July 1896 in Hamburg), who was a machinist by trade. He worked as a motor mechanic and, from 1925 to 1932, as a driver for the firm of Otto F. Wildgruber. After a lengthy period of unemployment and temporary jobs, he found regular employment as a machinist in 1938 with the Gall & Seitz Engineering Works (Kl. Grasbrook, Vogelreth 2/4). In the meantime he had probably worked for the regional insurance office as an administrative employee. Helene and Max Heyckendorf lived for a number of years at Susannenstraße 8. Later they moved to Vereinsstraße 59 II. Both were members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). She was a seamstress by trade. In the memorial books, she is included in the list of victims from the resistance group that developed around Bernhard Bästlein and others. Very little information is available about her arrest, however. It was connected with the arrest of her husband, who was taken into custody on 18 Nov. 1942 with members of the Bästlein organization.

Henry Helms, then a Gestapo official, is regarded as the initiator of these arrests. Helms, even though only the deputy of SS Captain (Hauptsturmführer) and Detective Inspector (Kriminalkommissar) Adolf Bockelmann, acted as the "actual” head of Dept. II a (Suppression of Communism/Marxism). Max Heyckendorf, like the others who were arrested, was placed in police custody. When the public prosecutor’s office initiated criminal proceedings, the detainees were transferred to the Holstenglacis Remand Prison.

The greatest importance was attached to the Bästlein organization as a resistance group that opposed the National Socialist regime. As a result, a commission consisting of Berlin Gestapo officials, high-ranking SS general officers, and state leaders in Hamburg (Reich Governor Kaufmann) was formed in Dec. 1942 expressly to join in the investigations conducted by the Gestapo.

Before proceedings could be opened in Hamburg against the imprisoned members of the resistance group, the city was bombed from 23 July to 3 Aug. 1943 by Allied air forces, in day and night attacks, and large areas were destroyed. The remand prison, too, was affected during these air raids, which crippled, among other things, the water supply and sewer system in the center of the city. The attorney general’s office in Hamburg decided to release remand prisoners from the Holstenglacis Prison "on furlough” for six to eight weeks, so that they could assist their family members in time of need. Among those who were released was Max Heyckendorf. He and other men on leave came to an understanding that, after the furlough period, they would not report back to the remand prison – so, once the deadline had passed (Oct. 1943), the Gestapo began searching for him and others who had gone into hiding.

The public prosecutor’s offices in Hamburg – in cooperation with the People’s Court in Berlin – not only maintained but also expanded their charges against the members of the Bästlein organization. In Apr. 1944, they presented an interim report to the Supreme Reich Prosecutor (Oberreichsanwalt) in Berlin. Now, after the incorporation of additional proceedings, charges were to be brought against more than one hundred members of the Bästlein group and, in connection with it, other Hamburg resistance groups as well. The main trials were held in the spring of 1944. The verdicts resulted in death sentences and long sentences of penal servitude.

Max Heyckendorf was accused of having organized accommodations for persons engaged in illegal political activities. Nonetheless, after he went into hiding, he managed to successfully evade arrest by the Gestapo until the end of the war. The Gestapo concentrated on surveillance of his wife, Helene, hoping to find through her a clue that would lead to Max Heyckendorf.

Max Heyckendorf, later:
"[...] As it was to be assumed with certainty that I would also be sentenced to death, I refused to appear in court again. Since then I have stayed in hiding, waiting for the entry of the British.

During this time, Helms had Mrs. Thürey, owner of the soap shop on Emilienstrasse, placed under arrest; her husband from the resistance movement at the time [sic] was executed. In this shop, Helms placed a female Gestapo agent named Polze. This was done so that members of our movement who dropped in there would be spied upon by her and arrested.

Through her, Hornberger, the head of the resistance group of Blohm & Voss, was arrested. In addition, this female agent was sent to my wife, who was a seamstress, on the pretext that she was a good friend of Mr. and Mrs. Thürey and was running the shop on their behalf. For this reason, she asked my wife to sew for her. From now on, my wife made several dresses for her, and the ration coupons for these dress fabrics were provided by the Gestapo. During fittings, P[olze] tried hard to pump my wife for information about my whereabouts. However, my wife was always mistrustful of her, and she was given no solid information.

Because all the efforts at spying made by this agent were unsuccessful, my wife was arrested by Helms on 22 Dec. 1944. According to the statements of the women who were imprisoned with my wife, she never provided any information when interrogated about my possible whereabouts. Likewise, any contact with me was (denied. (disclaimed. [sic]

The result of this unwillingness to talk was that, on 19 Apr. 1945, at Helms’s instigation, she was transported with 13 other women to Neuengamme, and there, three days later, hanged along with these women.

To complete my story, I must also add that after the arrest of my wife, Helms ordered the police spy Lübbers to be quartered in my apartment. He was assigned to pump my son for information about where I was hiding. Because my son knew my whereabouts, he fled in order to avoid arrest and torture.

Because this attempt also failed, my lodger, Miss Frida Gutschmidt, was also arrested. After that, the female Gestapo agent Reimers was housed in my apartment.

Shortly before the surrender, Helms ordered my apartment to be completely looted. Of these belongings, according to the testimony of Reimers, he received 1 bicycle and 5 men’s shirts. [...]”

The son of Max and Helene Heyckendorf, Günther (born in Hamburg on 31 May 1921), enjoyed an education in the "basic concepts of the working class in its social struggle against the oppressors.” As an 8-year-old, he was already taking part "in hiking trips of proletarian gymnastics and hiking clubs," and at the age of 10 he joined the Spruce Sports Club for Workers – and in 1934 had to witness the first arrest of his father by the Gestapo. He had attended the well-known school on Telemannstraße, known as a progressive school, ended his school years in 1936, and then begun an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic; after that, he worked in this trade. During this time, he took part in meetings of like-minded youth in the Arnim Gymnastics Federation of 1893 (Hamburg). A participant named Arnold wrote an account of a cycling trip that Günther Heyckendorf undertook on 12 Sep. 1943 with more than 20 friends from the club, only a few weeks after the catastrophic aerial bombing raids on Hamburg. He reminded his friends of singing campfire songs together and characterized the experience of nature as the reason why this group of young people had sought out and found each other in the Armin Federation. A few months later, he wrote (many of the club members had been evacuated from Hamburg in the meantime): "We are young, the world is wide open... Even today, in these difficult times, we can find pleasure in the natural surroundings of the area in which we have landed. If we always keep in sight only the few good things in daily life, we will surely overcome the dark hours. In north and south, in east and west, the same song. [...]”

But even among the members of the Armin group, there were some who made declarations of faith in the National Socialist state ("We believe in the Führer, who will seize the right moment to really knuckle down to it,” one read, for example, in 1944, in a morale-boosting piece in the club newspaper). Günther Heyckendorf had already decided in favor of actions of resistance against the National Socialist regime. He described the arrest of his father in 1942 and the subsequent events in this way:
"In November 1942 my father was arrested for the third time. In 1943, during the big attack, I succeeded in ensuring that my father was among the first political prisoners to be furloughed from the Holstenglacis Remand Prison. From this time until the surrender in 1945 my father lived in hiding from the law. During his years underground, my mother and I collected food and took it to my father, and at these times we always had to beware of the Gestapo’s efforts to spy on us.

On 22 Dec. 1944, my mother was arrested as a hostage for my father. I was given eight days to betray my father’s whereabouts. The Gestapo delayed my arrest and set a spy on my heels, a man who was quartered in our apartment.

By his intrusive behavior, the lodger betrayed his intentions. With the help of friends of my father, I was able to identify him, and they then urged me to flee.

Because I belonged to a group of active antifascists at my workplace, German Measuring Instruments (Deutsche Messapparate), these people helped me in my escape and provided me with an illegal place to live and food. [...]

My mother was murdered in Neuengamme as a hostage on 24 Apr. 1945, along with 12 other women. Our apartment was used by the Gestapo as a place to stay and also was looted.”

Günther Heyckendorf, who had gone underground, was captured on 15 Feb. 1945. He was released in early May 1945 after the occupation of Hamburg by British troops.

Beginning on 22 Dec. 1944 (according to other information, 12 Dec. 1944), Helene Heyckendorf was held in Fuhlsbüttel Prison. The charge was preparation for high treason – an accusation that could carry the death penalty. In Apr. 1945, the Gestapo decided to deny to the approaching British troops a group of prisoners whose trial preparations were so far advanced that proceedings could be expected to open in Berlin. These prisoners were transferred to the Kiel-Hassee Prison. Others had already been taken to the Hamburg City Remand Prison and were under the authority of the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office. Remaining behind in custody in Fuhlsbüttel was a group of 71 political prisoners (13 women and 58 men). The Gestapo remained in charge of them. Because the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police, Himmler, had ordered political prisoners to be liquidated in the event of the approach of Allied forces, the remaining 71 prisoners, at the order of Higher SS and Police Leader Georg Henning, Count von Bassewitz-Behr, were taken on 18 Apr. 1945 – according to other sources, on 20 Apr. 1945 – to the Neuengamme concentration camp. They were murdered there on 21 or 23 Apr. 1945.

Michael Müller, as a member of the KPD, was sentenced on 7 Jan. 1937 for preparation of high treason to six years of penal servitude, followed by permanent police supervision. He was confined in the Neuengamme concentration camp until the end of the war. He passed on Helene Heyckendorf’s last words to her family members:
"On 19 Apr. 1945, 721 civilians, including 13 women, were taken to Neuengamme. The women were immediately placed in the execution bunker. Because I had, from before, the key for the steel panels of the bunker, I bribed the guard, who at the time was an older Navy man, with cigarettes and chocolate from CARE packages, and used the key to open the steel panels. I now made contact with the women and asked whether there were any from Hamburg among them. A woman I had not known until then, the actress Hanne Mertens from the Thalia Theater, answered me and explained in response to my inquiry how they had come here; they all had been in Fuhlsbüttel, she said, and had been grouped in 3 different sections there. As she described it, one section was for Kiel-Hassee, the second for the remand prison, and the third section was assigned for Operation Valerian (Baldrian). The 71 persons were part of Operation Valerian. In reply to my further inquiry as to whether there were any more Hamburg women among them, a woman I knew from before spoke up, Lene Heikendorf [sic], a half-Jew, who lived in the building next door to us. She confirmed what Hanne Mertens told me and asked me what probably lay in store for them. I replied by saying that no one had ever come out of this bunker alive thus far. In reply, she asked me to give her regards to her husband and her son, in the event that I could leave Neuengamme alive.”

Both the killing of the women from this group as well as the desperate revolt of the men and their subsequent execution were observed and recorded in the testimony of witnesses. The "Committee of Former Political Prisoners” (Hamburg) compiled a report on it on 12 Aug. 1945, documenting the brutal actions of the hangmen in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Among the dead was Helene Heyckendorf.

Translator: Kathleen Luft

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Peter Offenborn

Quellen: StAH 213-9 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht OJs 1016/43g, Band 1-5; Informationen der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; FZH 11/O 1 (Geert Otto): Gemeinschaftsbriefe der Turnerschaft Armin von 1893 e.V.; FZH 12 A/Ahrens (Personalakten); FZH 12 K/Kaufmann (Personalakten), Bl 243, 248 und 257; FZH 12 D/Drescher (Personalakten); FZH 12 H/Helms (Personalakten): Aussagen von Hildegard Lembke und Ursula Prüssmann; Anzeige Max Heyckendorf; FZH 12 M/Mertens (Personalakten); FZH 13-3-1-2 (Gestapo in Hamburg); FZH 13-3-3-2 (Frauen im Widerstand 1933–1945); Ab; Sammlung VVN-BdA (Hamburg); Ursula Puls, Die Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe, S. 135; Ursel Hochmuth/Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter aus dem Hamburger Widerstand, S. 351/369 f.; Herbert Diercks, Gedenkbuch Kolafu; Klaus Bästlein, "Hitlers Niederlage…", S. 44ff.; http://dielinke.Heyckendorf.de (Durchblick von links: ‚Helene Heyckendorf – am 20. April 1945 im KZ-HH-Neuengamme ermordet’) vom 15.8.2010.