Anton Saefkow

Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow (22 July 1903 in Berlin – 18 September 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel, executed) was a German Communist and a resistance fighter against the National Socialist régime.

Anton Saefkow came from a socialist working-class family and in 1920 while still a metalworker's apprentice, joined the Young Communist League of Germany to whose Berlin leadership he rose in 1922.

In 1927, he became secretary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Berlin, then in Dresden. From 1929-1932, he led the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition; RGO) in the KPD Ruhr district and became in 1932 political leader of the KPD's Wasserkante district in Hamburg. In 1932, Saefkow married Theodora Brey who was also active in the underground resistance.

From April 1933 to April 1934, Saefkow was in a concentration camp, followed by two and a half years in a Zuchthaus at hard labour, followed by a spell at the Dachau concentration camp. There, he organized an illegal remembrance service for Edgar André and as a result was given another two years of imprisonment.

Released from detention in July 1939, Saefkow went back to the illegal political work. In Berlin, after the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he built up the biggest KPD resistance group, called the "Operative Leadership of the KPD". In 1944, he, Bernhard Bästlein and Franz Jacob (Resistance fighter) led the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein Organization which agitated against the war in Berlin munitions plants, and called on people to commit sabotage.

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