August Landmesser

August Landmesser (ˈaʊ̯ɡʊst ˈlantˌmɛsɐ; 24 May 1910 – 17 October 1944) was a worker at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. He became known as the possible identity of a man appearing in a 1936 photograph, conspicuously refusing to perform the Nazi salute with the other workers. Landmesser had run afoul of the Nazi Party over his unlawful relationship with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman. Later he was imprisoned, and eventually drafted into penal military service, where he was killed in action. August Landmesser was born in Moorrege in 1910, the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). In 1931, hoping it would help him get employment, he joined the Nazi Party. In 1935, when he became engaged to Irma Eckler (a Jewish woman), he was expelled from the party. They registered to be married in Hamburg, but the Nuremberg Laws enacted a month later prevented it. On 29 October 1935, Landmesser and Eckler's first daughter, Ingrid, was born. In 1937, Landmesser attempted to flee Nazi Germany to Denmark with his family but he was detained at the border and charged with "dishonoring the race," or "racial infamy," under the Nuremberg Laws. He argued that neither he nor Eckler knew whether she was fully Jewish. He was acquitted on 27 May 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence. The couple publicly continued their relationship, and on 15 July 1938, Landmesser was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the Börgermoor concentration camp. Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to their second daughter, Irene. From there, Eckler was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, then to the Lichtenburg concentration camp for women, and finally to the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. A few letters from Irma Eckler were received until January 1942. It is believed that she was taken to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 murdered.