One of my favorite medals is the Fighter against Fascism, Kämpfer gegen den Fascismus. I try to get the documents when ever they are priced right. Because the medal has no connection to an individual, like most Soviet awards have, the person can only be found with the paper work. In my search I have found a couple of individuals that stand out. One German that fled across the frontline to the Soviet Union and later fought the Wehrmacht. That will be a thread another day. Another interesting document is that to Gerhard Grünberg.
Gerhard Grünberg was born in 1920 and like many other his age he was taken to the Wehrmacht in 1940. Here he was a "Luftbildauswerter", someone who looks at pictures of enemy territory and tries to understand what is going on. He does that until 1943 when he's thrown in jail. Exactly what he does wrong I don't know, it just says suspected of helping partisans. He does time in jail for three and a half months. After his time in jail he's re-trained and shipped to Italy. In Italy he quits the German army and joins the Italian partisans, guess he wasn't all that innocent when he got his punishment. This active fight against fascism is what qualifies him for the medal Fighter against fascism in 1958.
In 1945 he goes back to eastern Germany and becomes a teacher, while being active in the SED and FDJ. Maybe it's his work that lands him the job at MfS in 1951. Working for stasi the rest of his career he gets to the rank of oberst when he retires in 1985. Much later some of his award documents end up in Sweden.
The group was sadly broken up and I have just a few documents of many awarded. But the document for fighting fascism is a rare one. I have never seen the name of the awardee printed on another document, usually they are done by hand. Even later awarded documents have the hand printed text. Why? I have no idea.
/Kim
