European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

A commercial traveller, an anti-fascist who commuted between the borders,

associated me with the anti-fascist group there.

For them I was a stranger, they wanted proof:

How reliable is this man and what can he do?

They said: “We need ammunition. Can you provide us with a box of hand grenades?

We have explosives - but not enough - everything else is available!”

It was a tough job,

but during a transport I put aside a box of hand grenades at the risk of loosing my life and let them know.

Three days later the district recruiting office in Bayreuth was blown up with the entire file.

In the ammunition factory the most important machine was blown up and the most difficult:

on the air field we blew up two out of three machines.

It wasn’t me, that were the anti-fascists from Bayreuth, but I helped.

The question was what you were able do as a soldier in an unfamiliar environment.

We always tried to build anti-fascist cells and if it was one man or two.

It was not easy to find out where somebody was, thinking the same as you.

You had to proceed carefully with questions.

Sometimes somebody told a joke and you could tell by the kind of reaction:

is he an opponent of fascism or not.

Wherever I went, within short time I always had an anti-fascist cell in my unit.

It was a lot easier later, after I was badly wounded