The Tragic History of the One Who had Rejected Nazi Greeting

Augustus Landmesser was the rare German who raised his hand to honor Hitler's presence in 1936.

Landmesser had joined the Nazi party in 1931 and began working until the country's only legal political connection.

Two years later Landmesser was in love with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman. He proposed marriage in 1935, reports the Independent”, broadcast Periscopi.

After an engagement with a Jewish woman who had discovered it, the Nazi party expels her from her ranks.

Landmesser and Eckler decided to present a petition for marriage in Hamburg, but their union through a marriage was denied under Nuremberg's new laws.

The couple rejoiced with their first child in October 1935.

In 1937, Landmesser tried to flee Nazi Germany to Denmark with his family. But he was arrested at the border and charged with “honoring the” race, or “for racial treatment”, which had been sealed under Nuremberg laws.

A year later, Landmesser was released for lack of evidence and was instructed to have no relations with Eckler.

Refusing to abandon his wife, Landmesser ignored Nazi desires and was again arrested in 1938, where he was sentenced to almost three years in a concentration camp.

He would never see the woman he loved or his child again.

The state secret police also arrested Eckler, who was pregnant several months with the couple's second daughter.

She gave birth to a girl named Irene in prison and was sent to a concentration camp.

Eckler is believed to have moved to what the Nazis called the euthanasia center” in 1942, where he was killed with 14,000 others.

After his prison sentence, Landmesser worked some jobs before he was part of the war in 1944. A few months later, he was declared missing in Croatia./Periscopi/