Hilde Radusch (1903 - 1994)

Fri Nov 06, 1903

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Hilde Radusch, born on this day in 1903, was a German communist, anti-fascist, and queer feminist author. Imprisoned by the Nazis, Radusch survived World War II and became a prominent lesbian writer and activist.

In 1924, Radusch became a member of the Communist Party, and from 1929 until 1932 Radusch served as a Communist Party city councilor in Berlin.

Radusch was arrested by the Nazi government on April 6th, 1933, less than a month after returning from a political trip to the Soviet Union. After refusing to sign a contrived confession, she ended up in the Barnim Street women’s prison, along with around two hundred other “politicals”, those identified by the Nazi government as political prisoners (distinct from “criminals”).

Released in September 1933, she went on to run a restaurant with her partner Else “Eddy” Klopsch, which served as a refuge for people wanted by the Nazi regime. After the war, she became the head of the Schöneberg office dedicated to “Victims of Fascism”, however she lost the job after being denounced as “lesbian”.

Radusch was the editor of “Our Little Newspaper” (“Unserer Kleinen Zeitung”), described by historian Ilona Scheidle as the first lesbian newspaper after World War II. In the 1970s, Radusch co-founded “L74”, a Berlin group of older lesbians.