Imprisoned at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, the seventeen-year-old Klaus Reichmuth survives with the help of Communist prisoners and a Polish inmate orderly.
Born in 1924 in Lower Lusatia, Klaus Reichmuth was the son of the Protestant pastor Martin Reichmuth. In 1942, he and another pastor’s son, Klaus Rendtorff, distributed copies of a sermon by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen. In his sermon, von Galen denounced the systematic killing of patients by the Nazi regime. The Gestapo took the two youths into “protective custody” and sent them to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It was only with the help of Communist prisoners and the Polish inmate orderly Witold Zegarski that Klaus Reichmuth survived his six-month sentence there. After his release, he voluntarily signed up for the Wehrmacht. He later became a pastor after the war, first in Hamburg and then in Göttingen. Klaus Reichmuth died in Hamburg on 16 August 2021.