Bequest Peter Gingold

Peter Gingold was born in Aschaffenburg on March 8, 1919. His family was Polish and Jewish and he grew up in Frankfurt (Main). There, he completed a commercial apprenticeship at a big music retail business in 1930. He joined the union Zentralverband Deutscher Angestellter (ZDA) (Central Association of German Employees) and in 1931, the Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands (KJVD) (Communist Youth League Germany). In 1933, Gingold was arrested in a SA raid. With the help of friends, he fled via the Saarland to Paris where his family had already emigrated some months before. He proceeded to be active in politics in France and co-founded the antifascist group "Freie Deutsche Jugend" (Free German Youth). In 1937, Gingold joined the KPD and in 1938 he began working for the German-language antifascist daily newspaper "Pariser Tageblatt". He married Ettie Stein-Haller in 1940. Shortly afterward, he was interned as a stateless person of German descent. After the Wehrmacht's invasion, he actively participated in the German resistance movement in Paris and the French Résistance in Dijon. In 1942, two of his siblings were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated and tortured in prison for several weeks. He was able to flee from prison and participated in the uprising related to the liberation of Paris in 1944. Eventually, he became the frontline agent for the Bewegung Freies Deutschland für den Westen (CALPO) (Movement Free Germany for the West). He then experienced the end of the war with partisans in northern Italy. In August 1945, he returned to Frankfurt. Together with his wife, he took part in the reorganization of the KPD. In 1968, he became a member of the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) (German Communist Party). He was active in various associations for many years, for example, the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes — Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten (VVN/BdA), the Verband Deutscher in der Résistance, the Streitkräfte der Antihitlerkoalition and the Bewegung "Freies Deutschland" e. V. (DRAFD), the Aktionsbündnis gegen die I.G. Farben and the Auschwitz Committee. Because of these political activities and his Polish ancestry, he was denied German citizenship for a long time. Until his death on October 29, 2006, he participated in protests and spoke as a contemporary witness all over Germany. The Fritz Bauer Institute acquired the bequest Peter Gingold from his daughter in April 2008. The bequest covers after description, demetallization, and filing 22 archival units with a total extent of 0.5 running meters. Since the record group did not have an inner structure upon the acquisition the processor Inga Steinhauser completely reorganized the holding during indexing in August 2022. It follows the "rules for the description of personal papers and autographs" (RNA, Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autographen). The archives group is now structured in two sections: "personal documents" ("Lebensdokumente") and "collections" ("Sammlungen"). The section "personal documents" ("Lebensdokumente") covers documents concerning Gingold's protest against the I.G. Farben i. L. including correspondence, press releases, leaflets, and newspaper clippings. The section "collections" ("Sammlungen") consists of various publications regarding I.G. Farben's history and the crimes committed in Auschwitz III-Monowitz concentration camp as well as further leaflets and newspaper clippings. Furthermore, it contains several business reports of the I.G. Farben i. L.