Marianne Joachim
Marianne Joachim was a Jewish German resistance activist during the Nazi years. She was executed at Plötzensee on 4 March 1943 following an arson attack the previous summer on the party propaganda department's "Soviet Paradise" exhibition in Berlin's "Lustgarten" pleasure park.
Life
Marianne Prager grew up in Berlin. Georg Prager, her father, was a building worker. After successfully completing her schooling she trained as a child carer at the Jewish orphanage in the city centre. In Summer 1940 she was forced to give up this profession, however, when she was required by the authorities to relocate to Rathenow where she became a forced labourer in the agriculture sector.Marianne Prager married Heinz Joachim on 22 August 1941. Both Marianne's parents had been classified by the authorities as Jewish. Her newly acquired father in law was also identified as Jewish although her new mother in law was not. Nevertheless, at the time of their marriage Heinz was also a forced labourer, in his case in the "Jews department" at a Siemens plant in Berlin-Spandau. Marianne Joachim's own forced labour regime had by this time brought her back to Berlin where she was working in Berlin-Wittenau at the Alfred Teves plant which, before the war, had produced car parts.
One of Heinz Joachim's co-workers in the "Jews department" at Siemens was the electrician Herbert Baum. At around the time of their marriage Heinz and Marianne Joachim became members of what came to be known as the Baum group, a circle of forced labourers living in Berlin. Sources comment on how young most of the group members were. Most were Jewish and politically inclined towards leftwing politics. Some members were living "underground" – unregistered with any town hall – in order to make it harder for the authorities to track them. The Joachims shared a small apartment beside the Rykestraße in the Prenzlauer Berg quarter, which was frequently used for meetings by the "Prenzlauer Berg Antifascist Group" – a name by which Baum's group identified itself. Although discussion topics ranged widely, one of the things that the friends discussed with increasing intensity was how they might undermine the Nazi government.
The Baum group's best known "political action" was an arson attack carried out on 18 May 1942 against the "Soviet Paradise" exhibition in Berlin's "Lustgarten" pleasure park. The objective of the exhibition was to demonstrate to the people the "poverty, misery, depravity and need" that were features of life in the "Jewish Bolshevist Soviet Union". The arson attack inflicted relatively little physical damage on the exhibition, which re-opened the next day, but news of it had a more lasting impact.
Herbert Baum and Heinz Joachim were arrested at work on 22 May 1942. Further arrests followed. Just over two weeks later Marianne Joachim was arrested at home on 9 June 1942.