Max Eckert (30.5.1896 Mailling near Ingolstadt – 21.2.1940 Mauthausen Concentration Camp)

Together with his wife Fanny,Max Eckert, a laborer, left the Catholic Church in 1933 and declared himself a Jehovah's Witness. In 1935, the Munich District Court fined the couple, the parents of an eight-year-old son, for recruiting for the Bible Students (which had been renamed the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931). In May 1936, Max Eckert lost his job. He had refused to wear a swastika flag. Four months later, he was doing gardening work for his new Munich employer at a newly built school in Grünwald. A tradesman was disturbed by the behavior and statements of Max Eckert, who - apparently in response to negative remarks about Jews - had said: “We must not forget what the Jews have already achieved” (StAM StAnW 8509). Furthermore, he had openly identified himself as a Bible Student and refused to give the “Hitler salute”. The tradesman reported Max Eckert, who was subsequently arrested. During his interrogation by the Munich Gestapo, he stated that, based on his knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, he rejected all military and war service and also the Hitler salute. At the subsequent trial before the Munich Special Court, he stated that even a prison sentence would not persuade him to change his position. Max Eckert was sentenced to six months in prison on January 14, 1937 and, after serving this sentence, was imprisoned in the Dachau Concentration Camp from June 1937 and in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp from September 1939. On February 21, 1940, Fanny Eckert received a telegram stating: “Husband died in the camp today. Further details from the police.” The concentration camp doctor stated that the 43-year-old died of heart and circulatory failure. In fact, he had starved to death.
On May 7, 2018, a memorial plaque for Max Eckert was unveiled in the memorial room of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.