Max Hoelz Drowns (1933)
Fri Sep 15, 1933
On this day in 1933, Max Hoelz, known for his role as a "Communist Bandit" in the Vogtland region during a period of right-wing German rule, died in a boating accident, which at least one historian has claimed was an NKVD assassination.
Max Hoelz (1889 - 1933) became politically radicalized by the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and by contact with Georg Schumann, a member of the socialist Spartakusbund. Schumann was later to be executed by the Nazis in 1945.
In 1920, after the right-wing Kapp Putsch, Hoelz organized workers from Falkenstein and Oelsnitz in a Red Guard, leading armed bands against the police, the army, and the far-right paramilitary Freikorps. In this role, he became Robin Hood-like figure, raising money from employers under threat of reprisals, liberating prisoners, destroying property deeds and police archives, and burning villas of the rich.
Later in life, after the Nazis began to come into power, Hoelz moved to Soviet Russia, however he became a dissident, critical of bad working conditions. On September 15th, 1933, he died in a boating accident, which anarchist historian Nick Heath claimed was actually an NKVD assassination.
- Date: 1933-09-15
- Learn More: libcom.org, en.wikipedia.org.
- Tags: #Assassinations, #Fascism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org