In addition to the records of the Nazi party, records of communists in Pomerania exist in various archives, some accessible to the public as declassified documents. The KPD, or Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands), was a major player in German politics until Hitler came to power and banned communism.
The KPD membership records contain information about the person’s skills, level of educations, rank in the military, residence, and birth date. The document might list other facts, such as different organizations he or she was a part of, the date of leaving the church (Kirchenaustritt), and various ways he or she could help the communist party (propaganda, willingness to be a speaker, etc.).
Die Rote Fahne
Die Rote Fahne was a German communist newspaper that occasionally also covered stories of interest in Pomerania. There is a chance that a communist relative might have made a contribution to or was covered by this paper.
Communist International (Comintern) Archives
The Library of Congress has digitized some of the documents and personal records from the Russian State Archives for Social and Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/comintern/comintern-home.html
View the full article with archive holdings and content descriptions here.
Please note that navigating through the archive’s site can be laborsome. It is recommended to use Google’s Website Translator Toolkit to quickly render text in your preferred language of choice. To make searching easier, the entire listing of ComIntern files can be viewed courtesy of the Library of Congress. Quick links specific to the indexes of personal files from old German territories can be accessed below. Some names may be phonetically spelled or slightly altered from their correct spellings.
Fond 495, opis 205
[Editor’s note: requesting information from the archives in Moscow will take time. It took several emails for me before taking to Pommern-L’s mailing list and asking for help. It was only through the help of someone who could speak and read Russian that I was able to obtain the personal file of my family member from the Comintern Archives.]
