On this day, 6 November 1903, Hilde Radusch was born. She was a German anti-fascist, feminist, lesbian, postal worker and communist activist. She was jailed by the Nazis in 1933, then released under the supervision of the Gestapo. They tried to arrest her again in the 1940s but she went underground and evaded capture until the end of the war.
Following the war, Radusch worked for the Department for the Victims of Fascism, and began to question some of the practices of the Communist Party, for example asking if “the goal of socialism be achieved via a bad, totalitarian path?” These concerns eventually led her to decide to resign from the party, but before she could they expelled her for being a lesbian, while other CP officials denounced her to her employer, leading to her dismissal. She later recalled that this incident “It was really the end of all my illusions… A piece of my life’s dream was destroyed.”
However, Radusch remained politically active, later setting up Germany’s first lesbian newspaper and a group of lesbian elders in West Berlin called L74, living to the age of 90. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1847653935419748/?type=3