Go back

Helmut Kind

Helmut Kind originally received commercial training. In 1945, he was among the initiators of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Halle, and in September of that same year, he was appointed regional LDP manager for Saxony. His resistance to the communist "coordination" policy led to several interrogations and ultimately his arrest by the Soviet secret police in November 1945.

In May 1946, he was imprisoned in the Hohenschönhausen detention camp. He later described the catastrophic conditions in the unheated rooms of the former factory. Kind reported the amount of internees that died of oedema, water retention caused by the prisoners drinking vast quantities of water to try and overcome constant hunger. The winter of 1946/47 was also extremely fierce and, since they had no warm clothes, quite a number of internees died from the cold. In February 1947, Helmut Kind was taken to the Sachsenhausen camp where he was detained for three years before being released. Kind spent a total of five years in prison without ever being brought before a court or formally sentenced.