Why Did the Gestapo Arrest Erika von Falkenhayn in World War II?
She was the daughter of Eric von Falkenhayn, the German general who saved the Jews of Palestine in World War I. Was something in her DNA?
Chapter 7 of Lenny Ben-David’s serialized book,
“Secrets of World War I in the Holy Land.”
General Falkenhayn, the commander of Turkish, German, and Austrian forces in Palestine in World War I, had no particular love for Jews, according to his biographer, Prof. Holger Afflerbach. “He was in many aspects a typical Wilhelmine officer and not even free from some prejudices against Jews, but what counts is that he saved thousands of Jewish lives.”
Why Has No One Heard about Falkenhayn and His Role in Protecting the Jews of Palestine?
Afflerbach responded, “The action was forgotten because Falkenhayn prevented Ottoman actions which could have resulted in genocide… As a result, the incident was not discussed for decades. It restarted only in the 1960s when scholars started to remember it.”
Perhaps Falkenhayn was also erased from German history for many years precisely because he saved Jews and because of his son-in-law’s Valkyrie conspiracy against Hitler, a conspiracy that also led to the arrest of his wife, Erika.
Erika (von Falkenhayn) von Tresckow
Erika married Henning von Tresckow in 1926. He was a career German Wehrmacht officer; in 1943, he was promoted to Chief of Staff of the German 2nd Army on the Eastern (Polish) Front.
General von Falkenhayn died several years before Erika’s marriage. Did her new husband know about his father-in-law’s efforts to save the Jews of Palestine?
Erika von Falkenhayn and Henning von Tresckow
Despite his physical distance from Adolf Hitler’s immediate coterie, von Tresckow recruited disgruntled senior officers to the anti-Hitler cause. Writer Ruth Hoffman was given access to von Tresckow’s personal mail to his wife, Erika, by their daughter, Uta, then 88 years old. Hoffman claimed that some “200 people were involved in the coup attempt, by no means just a ‘very small clique’ of officers as Hitler claimed that night.” Von Tresckow “was the head and heart of the conspiracy and [the] driving force,” Hoffman wrote.
Tresckow (4th from right) gathered Hitler opponents around him in Army Headquarters (Stern)
“Tresckow and his wife, Erika, were in Babelsberg in 1943 and on home leave. At that time, she was already privy to the conspiracy; now, men like him were needed. They were already working to overthrow the government. Hitler's obvious war course offered the ideal occasion.”
Von Falkenhayn’s son-in-law learned of the massacres of thousands of Jews in Belarus and complained to a colleague of 16,000 people being murdered daily.
What motivated von Tresckow? According to Hoffman, “his faith…. A convinced Christian can only be a convinced opponent of Hitler,” he once said. In 1943, Erika “had been initiated … and was now also taking action herself: together with her husband’s secretary, she typed the ‘Valkyrie’ marching orders and deployment plans for Day X, which her husband had drawn up.” She also conveyed messages between military and civilian resistance groups.
On the day of the attempted assassination, Tresckow wrote to Erika: "Today is a beautiful summer day. Even the oriole is still calling, and I want to use the day for a longer ride at the front." July 20, 1944.
He had known for a few hours that Hitler survived the assassination attempt and that the coup attempt had failed. “Sooner or later,” Hoffman continued, “the Gestapo would find out that he was significantly involved, arrest him, and torture him to reveal names. Tresckow, who had been promoted to major general only a few months earlier, drove far into the no-man's land between the lines. He wanted to create the appearance that he had died in a partisan attack. He went into a forest near the front lines, shot a few shots, and then detonated a grenade near his temple.”
The official army report claimed he was killed in action. His body was transferred back home and buried in the family grave on July 27. When the Gestapo realized afterwards that Tresckow had played a central role in the conspiracy, Himmler had him exhumed and burned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Uta, who was 13 years old at the time, and her four-year-old sister, Adelheid, were sent to a home, and Erika, their mother, went to prison. Her son, Rüdiger, 16, remained in the navy, and 17-year-old Mark was killed in Poland in January 1945.
The von Tresckow family in 1942, including two daughters and two sons.
Erika survived the war and died in 1971.
Tresckow left behind a letter in which he wrote, "The whole world will vilify us now, but I'm still totally convinced that we did the right thing."
"Hitler is the archenemy, not only of Germany, but of the world. When, in a few hours, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler," he wrote.
View the video by the German Resistance Memorial Center.
