Willi Kreikemeyer
Willi Kreikemeyer was a German labourer and a Communist. From 1941 he and his wife Marthe Kreikemeyer were close assistants of Noel Field who supported German anti-Nazi refugees in France and Switzerland. He died in East German detention as a victim of the Noel Field show trials, which had the function to replace Communist Party officials with others more aligned with Moscow.
Life
Kreikemeyer was a skilled lathe worker. He joined the union in 1910 and 1919 the newly formed Communist Party. Through his work for the Communist Party functionary, he came into close contact with Willi Münzenberg.Kreikemeyer was severely wounded in the Spanish Civil War and then later used as the first Chief Executive of the German department, as Chefadjudant for all senior divisions of the International Brigades. In these activities he had contact with Erich Mielke, who was then under the code name Leistner or Leissner chief of the instruction department and adjutant of the central administration. Among other things, it is known that both efforts Kreikemeyer Mielke knew to settle in the safe in Mexico, as well as to help that Mielke from the Fund Noel Field erhielt.
Post-war period
After the Second World War they settled in East Berlin. In 1949 he became Director General of the East German railway company Deutsche Reichsbahn.When in 1950 the slandering campaign started against Noel Field – he was accused of having built an anti-Communist spy network while pretending to be a Communist sympathizer – he was arrested and never seen again. At least one propaganda article against the alleged spy was published in an East German newspaper and a show trial against him was prepared, but never took place. Mrs Kreikemeyer wrote dozens of letters to the GDR authorities inquiring about her husband's fate. For seven years the authorities pretended that he was alive and well, waiting for his trial. Fearing her own arrest, Mrs Kreikemeyer escaped to her home country France in 1954. She continued writing her letters. In 1957 she was told that Willi Kreikemeyer had died a few days after his imprisonment.
Erich Mielke had been responsible for the detainee. In a confidential document he claimed that he had committed suicide in his prison cell on 31 August 1950. This story has been proven to be a lie. But what really happened to Kreikemeyer can hardly be reconstructed.
Today it is known that Kreikemeyer named Mielke as one of the persons supported by Noel Field. That information threatened Mielke's career: according to a Soviet order, people, who had spent the war in the West had to resign from public office.. What's more, alleged collaboration with an "American spy" could have led to the death penalty.
It is therefore likely that Willi Kreikemeyer was murdered on behalf of Erich Mielke.