Else Lorenz

Else Lorenz (1922–1944) came from Trutnov, which had been part of Czechoslovakia since the country's establishment in 1918. She grew up in poverty and, like most of the town’s inhabitants, spoke German. She was sixteen when, under the Munich Agreement of 1938, Czechoslovakia was forced to cede its border territories, including Trutnov, to the German Reich. After leaving elementary school in 1937, she worked first at a flax-spinning mill and later at a munitions factory in Oranienburg. From April 1942, she worked as a postwoman in her home town. Her fiancé was killed on the Eastern Front in early 1944.

After a neighbour denounced her, Else Lorenz was arrested in early May 1944. She admitted to misappropriating dozens of parcels that soldiers had sent from the front to their relatives through the military postal service. According to the judgment delivered by the Sondergericht Leitmeritz (Special Court in Leitmeritz) on 29 August 1944, she had given away some of the stolen items, including to her mother, with whom she lived. The judges accused her of betraying soldiers fighting at the front [1]Judgment of the Sondergericht Leitmeritz against Else Lorenz, 29 August 1944, Bundesarchiv, R 3001/157383. The judges’ original German wording was: „der kämpfenden Front gleichsam in den Rücken gefallen“. and considered it necessary to impose a sentence beyond the normal sentencing range. Applying the Volksschädlingsverordnung (Nazi Decree against Public Enemies), they sentenced her to death. Her mother's efforts to have the sentence reduced were unsuccessful.

For the sentence to be carried out, Lorenz was transferred from the prison in Leitmeritz to Dresden. She was executed there on the evening of 29 September 1944 and buried on 4 October.