Soldbuchs 6
Receipt for the 190 Reichsmarks sent from Lofy to his lawyer, Dr. jur. Emil Gobbert, in Germersheim, 2 February 1945.
Routing slip dated 4 February 1945 showing he arrived as Schutzen Lofy with 3 Company Infantry Ersatz Batl. 500, which was a penal unit.
Wound tag dated 19 April 1945.
He was wounded in both eyes.
Testament from Trier, 8 August 1945, from Hauptmann Matthias Roth who was Batl. Commander of Grenadier Regiment 105. Roth had been awarded the Knight’s Coss, 21 February 1944.
He testified that Lofy as Leutnant and Batl. Adjutant had been promoted to Leutnant as a result of his his bravery in the face of the enemy. He stood against the NSDAP.
25 June 1944, he was before the military court of the 72 Infantry Division, charged with and convicted of undermining military morale and dereliction of supervisory duty. He was first sentenced to death, then to 15 years penitentiary and lastly to 6 years in prison.
Reinhold Lofy’s father died, from wounds he had received in WW1, the year after Lofy was born. His mother moved him to Trier. As a youth, he was a messenger and a German Boy Scout. He refused to join the Hitler Youth. Because he distributed religious flyers at age 13, the Gestapo questioned him. Lofy was in the Reichs Arbeits Dienst in 1941. He then went into the Army and served on the Eastern Front. In Spring 1943, he was sent to officer candidate school. As is seen in the documents, he requested to serve with the 72 Infantry Division on the Eastern Front. April 20, 1944, he was ordered to lead an Einsatzgruppe behind enemy lines and kill Russians by lopping their heads off with shovels. He refused the order on the grounds it was unethical. Following this incident, he spoke out to soldiers about the persecution of Jews and concentration camps and Nazi criminals. He was reported, arrested and sentenced to death by the commander of the 72 Infantry Division during a field court. He was held in a series of military prisons, as is evidenced in the included papers.
In the final prison of Germersheim am Rhein, with a lawyer, his sentence was reduced to 6 years with loss of rank and honor. As part of the sentence, he was sent to Strafbataillon BB 500 in the East, which was under the command of the SS. 19 April 1945, he was severely injured by a Russian Panzer near Brno. His left arm had to be amputated at a field hospital. He had splinters in his back and damage to both eyes. He eventually was aboard a hospital train to Freiburg.
The field court’s conviction was overturned by the Trier District Court in July 1949. He studied in East Germany, where he received his doctorate. He also identified to the East German Government his former division commander who had sentenced him to death. He had been hiding-in-plain-sight as a general in the East German Army. In 1962, he was allowed to leave East Germany. In the West, he was active with other resistance fighters and victims of Nazi persecution.
He died in Trier, September 2010.
Fantastic complete group to a military member of the resistance who survived Nazi persecution. You can also Google him.
$550
