Busse, Ernst

Busse grew up in a poor family of a knife and scissors grinder. In his early youth he became interested in politics, participated in the work of the Union of Socialist Workers' Youth, then the Union of German Metalworkers. I did not go to the front in World War I because of tuberculosis , a typical occupational disease of the Solingen grinders. He worked as a seasonal worker. He joined the KKE immediately after the founding of the party, joined the district board and was a working correspondent and volunteer assistant to the publication Bergische Arbeiterstimme .

In 1925, Busse was a liberated trade union worker in Monchengladbach , and in 1931 in Cologne . He headed the district unit of the revolutionary trade union opposition . He was elected from the KKE to the city assembly of Viersen and in 1932 to the Reichstag .

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Busse switched to illegal union work in Erfurt and was arrested. On November 12, 1934, Busse was sentenced to three years in prison for "preparing for high treason" (distributing leaflets) and "establishing new parties." After serving his sentence in Kassel and Cologne, Ernst Busse ended up in a concentration camp in Lichtenburg , and after he was disbanded in 1937, he went to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he was appointed a barrack senior from the very beginning. Since 1942, Busse served as a capo in a camp hospital. He was one of the leaders of the underground camp committee. After the concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, the U.S. military appointed Busse the head of the Thuringian labor exchange in Erfurt .

The first investigation into Busse began at the SED in October 1946: one of the former prisoners wrote a denunciation on Busse, accusing him of mistreating prisoners. This was followed by new party checks, as Busse allegedly worked too closely with the SS and did not show himself sufficiently to save Soviet prisoners of war in Buchenwald. Busse was probably the victim of a power struggle between members of the KKE who emigrated to the USSR and remained in Germany. The interrogation records indicate that the investigators did not try to enter the “red capo” position. Subsequently, Busse was entrusted with increasingly less important tasks. In May 1947, he resigned as Minister, was appointed 4th Deputy Chairman of the German Agriculture and Forestry Administration, headed the Land Reform Office, and since August 1948 served as a member of the supervisory board of the Union of German Consumer Partnerships.

On April 18, 1950, Ernst Busse was invited to a meeting with Soviet leaders in Karlshorst , from where he had never returned. On February 27, 1951, Ernst Busse was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes by a military tribunal of the garrison of the Soviet sector of the city of Berlin . He died in a special camp number 6 "River" in Vorkuta. On March 31, 1990, Ernst Busse was rehabilitated by the Central Comradely Court of the PDS and recognized as a victim of the Stalinist regime. Rehabilitation in the USSR was not carried out.

• Lutz Niethammer (Hg.) Der "gesäuberte" Antifaschismus. Die SED und die roten Kapos von Buchenwald. Dokumente. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-05-002647-2 .
• Harry Stein, Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (Hrsg.): Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937-1945 , Begleitband zur ständigen historischen Ausstellung. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .
• Hermann Weber und Andreas Herbst: Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 bis 1945. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2004, S. 134-135, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 .

• Biography (German)