Erich Niejahr. 14.01.1917 – 05.10.1932
Gau Köln-Aachen
Although the fallen of the NSDAP during the “time of struggle” were honoured in the Third Reich as martyrs, few details of these men and women are remembered today. Horst Wessel, Albert Leo Schlageter and Herbert Norkus are exceptions. The hundreds of others who made the ultimate sacrifice have no markers or plaques.
Erich Niejahr was one of the youngest blood martyrs of the National Socialist movement. He was only 15-years old. Erich was born in Sundweg near Iserlohn. His father, Erich Hans Niejahr, had served in the First World War and was a leader of an SA unit in Köln (Cologne).
The family lived with their five children in the working-class district of Riehl in Köln. Erich Jnr. had early contact with the NSDAP through his father and became a member of the very active Kolner Marine-HJ. In addition to the usual home evenings, his service primarily consisted of nautical training on the Rhine with the cutter ‘Deutschland’.
Like the whole family, Erich played a musical instrument. One picture shows the boy with his violin. Erich Niejahr initially attended the elementary school in Nibelungen Straße in the Mauenheim district of Köln.
He then completed an apprenticeship as a confectioner at Café Kirschbaum on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring in Köln. His father was an employee at the Köln employment office. He was known in the red area as an active SA man and was hated by his political opponents.
The family was often harassed and threatened in front of the entrance to their house at Kevelaer Strasse 16. There had even been several attempts to storm the apartment before the bloody confrontation in the late summer of 1932. The deadly attack was described by the brother of the then fifteen-year-old Marine Hitler Youth.
“Father was an SA-Sturmfuhrer and was to be exterminated with the whole family. On 29.8.1932 at around 8:00pm in the evening, it started. The communists forced their way into the house and beat my mother, who was defending the entrance.
“My father tried to get reinforcements. The attackers dragged my mother out into the street by her hair and hit her with objects. The result was a fractured base of the skull and several broken ribs. Erich Niejahr came home from work and saw it all. He turned around to call the police. He stumbled. A mob of grown men descended on him and beat him until he could no longer move.
“I myself hid in the cellar entrance and still have the image in my mind’s eye of how they abused my mother. It all happened in our apartment, which was in a dead end. You could get in, but it was difficult to get out. We were then taken to the SA house at Eidstrasse 73 and hidden away. However, we only found peace from attacks in 1933.”
The Gebietsfuhrerschule Niederlahnstein near Koblenz, a RAD camp in the Eifel and the cutter of Niejahr’s Marine-HJ-Kameradschaft were named after him.
After the attack, the boy complained almost constantly of headaches until he was finally admitted to the Vinzenz Hospital on September 23, where he lost consciousness and never woke up again. Erich Niejahr was unable to attend the boat christening of his HJ followers as planned. He died on October 5, 1932.
The alleged perpetrators were the communists Weingartz, Hasselweiller and the Schmitz brothers.
The father was also a victim of political violence. He died in a Soviet concentration camp after 1945.
The death certificate of the fifteen-year-old martyr Erich Niejahr can be viewed here>>
“Only The Forgotten Are Dead”
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