Lisa Fittko
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Lisa Fittko (born Elizabeth Eckstein, 1909, Uzhgorod - March 12, 2005, Chicago) helped many escape from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. For her bravery and actions during the occupation she is considered an "invisible hero of resistance." The author of two memoirs about wartime Europe, Fittko is also known for her brief meeting with German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, shortly before his death in 1940.
Biography
Lisa Fittko was born into an international Jewish family (Simon, Ekstein. Her large family was active in many spheres of cultural and economic life of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One branch of her family was active in the Czech national movement, others were prominent industrialists and patrons of the arts. Johann Strauss II, the "Waltz King" was an in-law. She grew up in the company of her aunt Malva Schalek.
After her family moved to Berlin, she witnessed the Nazi rise to power, and became involved in anti-fascist politics. She worked as an underground resistance fighter in Berlin, Prague (where she met her husband and comrade Hans Fittko), Zurich, Amsterdam, Paris, Marseilles and finally, in the Pyrenees, where from 1940 to 1941, she escorted refugees to neutral Spain.
Perhaps the best-known refugee she was able to help was Walter Benjamin, who reached Portbou, Spain, in September 1940. Benjamin was found dead in the small hotel in the border town of Port-Bou, where they arrived on the morning after the Spanish police threatened to turn the small group of émigrés he was with back. The rest of Fittko's group was subsequently allowed to proceed. According to Fittko, Benjamin carried with him a heavy briefcase which he claimed to be more important than his life. This story was not confirmed by other accounts, causing some controversy. Authorities such as Chimen Abramsky, who was among the first to hear the story and from Fittko herself, give Fittko's account credibility. A briefcase was mentioned in the Spanish police records, but its contents are not described there. Speculations as to its contents have been the subject of scholarly articles and artistic works inspired by Benjamin's story and Lisa Fittko's account of it in her books.
With her husband Hans, she escaped to Cuba, and from there entered the United States. She came to international recognition over forty years later through her two widely-translated memoirs, in which she describes her actions.
She died in Chicago at the age of 95.
Literature
- Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, Northwestern University Press, ISBN 0-8101-1803-3.
- Lisa Fittko, Solidarity and Treason: Resistance and Exile, 1933-1940, translated by Roselyn Theobald in collaboration with the author Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1993
