A short biography of Paul Czakon, anarchist active in Upper Silesia who fought in Spain.
Paul Czakon was born on 14th July 1897 in Neider-Heiduk. He worked as a miner and fitter. Czakon was chairman of the FAUD in Beuthen (now Bytom) in Upper Silesia from 1921 and in 1930 he was one of the founders of the the Schwarzen Scharen (Black Crowds) in the region. In a house search in May 1932 the police discovered the weapons and explosives cache of the group. Czakon fled to Spain with two other comrades, Alfons Molina and Bernhard Pacha. In his absence in March 1933 he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for high treason and explosives charges. Czakon, who went under the name Maximo Mas in Spain was in charge of the Sacco and Vanzetti artillery battalion in the anarchist militia column Tierra y Libertad. In September 1936 he fought with the column in Madrid and in the spring of 1937 at Cuenca on the Teruel front.
Fleeing to France with the collapse of the Republic he was imprisoned at the Gurs internment camp where he was one of the spokesmen of the 9th Company that opposed the dominance of the Communist volunteers in the camp. After the German occupation of France Czakon joined a military unit in the Resistance. He returned to Germany where he was re-united with his wife who had been put in a concentration camp at the end of the war. In order to escape an arrest, he fled from the Soviet occupied zone to Salzgitter, where he died in 1952 in extreme poverty.
Sources: Internationalismus im Dreiländereck by Dieter Nelles at http://www.anarchismus.at/txt5/nellesinternationalismus.htm
NICK HEATH
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