European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

who did neither have these experiences, nor these preparation times.

Therefore the efficiency of our fight was higher.

There were no party obligations to take part in the resistance.

It was a voluntary decision whether or not you put up a fight,

whether you would take the risk to stand with one foot in the grave.

This decision had to be made by everyone alone.

Presentation, Introduction

My name is Lorenz Knorr;

born in 1921 and grown up in Eger, now Cheb, in the German populated areas of Czechoslovakia.

I am a trained typesetter and typographer.

After 1945 I was active in the socialistic youth as a state and federation secretary.

For 25 years I was the head of the German Union of Peace

and then federation spokesman for the Association of the victims of persecution by the Nazi regime.

If you grew up in a family of a labour union official, in the German populated areas of Czechoslovakia

during the twenties and thirties, of the last century,

you encountered the political problems and the political fights from early childhood.

In Eger my father was the most popular strike-leader before the First World War

and afterwards he was, although not fit for work,

still speaker at demonstrations and meetings of the union.

As his son, I obviously experienced this first hand, because my parents often took me with them to political activities;