Stumbling block for Lina Hertsch

Lina Hertsch, née Kuhn, was born in Frankfurt on January 15, 1892. She lived alone in Offenbach at Senefelderstraße 66. There is no further information about her family.

She belonged to a group about whose resistance to the Nazis is unfortunately still far too little known. These were the Jehovah's Witnesses, also known at the time as the "Serious Bible Students".

In Hesse, Bible Students were banned from operating on April 19, 1933. The Nazis were suspicious of them because they rejected all state authority and refused to do any military service. The Bible Students continued to work underground in various ways after the ban. Among other things, they secretly distributed leaflets and newspapers. Spying and arrests were not long in coming.

The Bible Students' resistance to the Nazi regime was based on their faith. They did not want to swear allegiance to anyone other than their God and were consistently opposed to the war. They refused to become members of Nazi organizations and did not go to the polls. They also refused to work in military production.

In the concentration camp, the Bible Students wore a purple triangle on their prisoner clothing. Even in the camp, the women did not want to mend soldiers' uniforms, for example, and the men did not want to take the required oath to Hitler. They were therefore subjected to special harassment.

It is estimated that around 2,000 Bible scholars were killed by the Nazis, most of them in concentration camps.

Lina Hertsch was arrested on March 11, 1937. A special court in Darmstadt then sentenced her to 7 months in prison. The specific reasons for the sentence are not known. However, similar cases usually involved advertising for the banned Bible Students.

From November 1937 to February 1938, Lina Hertsch was held in the Moringen women's and youth concentration camp in Lower Saxony before being sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp. Later, the Nazis took her to the large Ravensbrück concentration camp for women near Fürstenberg an der Havel.

The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built in the fall of 1938 by prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg. It was the largest women's concentration camp in Germany, in which a total of around 92,000 women and children died. From 1941/42, all women suffered corporal punishment, which was intensified after a visit by the Reichsführer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
According to reports and the estimate of a fellow prisoner of Lina Hertsch, Wilhelmine Hoffmann from Offenbach, there were 300-350 members of the Bible Students among the women imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The sponsor of the Stumbling Stone for Lina Hertsch is Mr. Bahr, Offenbach.
Laid on October 21, 2006