Harry Naujoks

Harry Naujoks (September 18, 1901 – October 20, 1983) was a German anti-fascist and communist and survivor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Naujoks was born in Harburg on the Elbe, today part of Hamburg. He learned the trade of boilermaker in Hamburg and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919. He and his wife Martha were married in 1926 and had one son, Rainer.

After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Naujoks was arrested. For over two years, he was sent to various prisons and concentration camps, including KoLaFu and by 1936, one of the Emslandlager, before finally being sent to Sachsenhausen.

Beginning in November 1936, Naujoks worked as a prisoner in the camp administration and in 1939, was named Lagerältester (camp supervisor) "because of his unflappable calm and his organisational talent". In May 1942, he was ordered by Lagerführer Fritz Suhren to execute a fellow prisoner by hanging, but refused, a dangerous act of insubordination. He was able to survive the insubordination and to avoid executing the prisoner himself, but he was forced to stand next to the gallows during the hanging, which was made to be particularly slow and painful. In November 1942, he and 17 other prisoner functionaries in the clandestine camp resistance group were arrested, tortured and deported to Flossenbürg concentration camp for extermination. It was only through the solidarity with the prisoners there that he was able to survive the maltreatment from the guards.

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