German political activist (KPD, SPD) who became involved in anti-fascist resistance. As the twentieth century progressed she also became increasingly prominent as a Feminist and Lesbian activist. Throughout her life Radusch kept a diary. Accessed by researchers after she died, her own writings have provided an insightful, and at times engagingly laconic, commentary on her eventful life.
In 1939 she met Else “Eddy” Klopsch who subsequently became her life partner. One of Eddy’s many achievements was winning the confidence of Radusch’s mother, who approved of her daughter “settling down”. From 1941 Hilde and Eddy ran a little restaurant.
Their restaurant later became a refuge for “illegals” when the underground Communist Party leadership resumed contact with Radusch and started sending her women released from detention to be hidden and looked after. Radusch and Klopsch did not always succeed in these difficult tasks: they were unable to save Henny Lemberg, a Jewish Communist entrusted to their care and whom they befriended, from being deported to an extermination camp.
In 1944 Radusch and Klopsch escaped in time to avoid capture by the Gestapo. They spent the rest of the war hiding in a large allotment shed in Prieros, a hamlet set in marshy countryside between Berlin and Cottbus, that was for most purposes far from the beaten track, and where they had purchased a piece of land when first they got together, back in 1940. They had to survive in it themselves, without any ration coupons. By the time Berlin was destructively liberated by the Red army in April/May 1945 they were starving.
The end of the war found the entire central portion of what had been Germany administered as the Soviet occupation zone. Radusch threw herself into the vast reconstruction effort that now began. Between June 1945 and February 1946 she was employed in the district “Victims of Fascism” department for the district government of Schöneberg, processing claims for emergency food and clothing.
In February 1946 she lost her job due to homophobia. Wartime deprivation had also taken its toll, and by now she was suffering from Rheumatoid arthritis. A few years later she was forced to take early retirement, supported by a very meagre pension.
Her partner Eddy, six years younger than she, had been physically handicapped since before they met, her condition sufficient to justify a (very small) disability pension. Eddy now bought a Bric-à-brac shop. Despite the poor health from which they both suffered, the shop supported the two of them till 1960 when Eddy died of cancer.
The 1970s brought a new wave of feminism, and Radusch joined in. She co-founded L74, a Berlin group of older lesbians. She became an editor on “Our Little Newspaper” (“Unserer Kleinen Zeitung” /UKZ), described by one source as the first lesbian newspaper after the Second World War.
She died on 2 August 1994 in Berlin, aged 90. In 2012 a memorial was set up by the authorities in Berlin-Schöneberg at the corner of Eisenacher Straße (Eisenach Street) and Winterfeldtstraße (Winterfeld Street), consisting of three tablets dedicated to her. It is the first public memorial in Berlin commemorating a lesbian victim of Nazi persecution.
Link to Wikipedia biography