Heinz Eschen (3.5.1909 Filehne/Poland – 31.1.1938 Dachau Concentration Camp)

Heinz Eschen, born in Filehne in Pomerania (Wieleń, Poland today), was a medical student in Munich, belonged to the youth association of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and was actively engaged against the NS government as the co-organizer of a demonstration on February 1, 1933. He was arrested on February 18, 1933, and after several months’ imprisonment, transferred in November 1933 to the Dachau Concentration Camp. There, as a Jew and a communist, he was subjected to especially harsh treatment, which he bore with exceptional courage and steadfastness. On the order of the camp director, Eschen became the block director in barracks 6, where Jewish prisoners were isolated. Outwardly, he behaved in a compliant manner and seemed to lead the ‘Jews' block’ with a firm hand; however, he showed solidarity with his fellow prisoners and organized a special levy from prisoners who had money to provide for the needs of those who had nothing.

During his imprisonment, Eschen entered into a ‘love relationship’ with the 17-year-old Jewish prisoner Herbert Hirschfeld, who had fled from National Socialist Germany to the Netherlands, was expelled from there, and brought as a Jewish emigrant to Dachau. As some of their fellow sufferers reported, the two of them were an “inseparable pair”. But for Eschen, it was not just about camp homosexuality, but also about educating his teenage lover.

When his relationship was denounced and he was accused of having established a communist cell in the Jewish barracks, he was sentenced to severe torture, and murdered on January 31, 1938 by the SS man Hans Kantschuster, who was feared for his brutality.