ERNESTO alias ERNST – The Long Distance Fighter

Film on Ernesto Koch, born in 1917. First, he fought against the Nazis, then against the dictatorship in Uruguay, and continuously against capitalism. Ernesto Koch died on March 11, 2012, in Frankfurt/Main (Germany).

"As a young man he witnessed the rise of National Socialism in Germany. On January 30, 1943, he joined a resistance group together with his friends from the German-Jewish Jugendbund Kameraden (Youth Federation Comrades). On November 9, 1934, he was arrested and convicted to 18 months in prison for the preparation of high treason. After serving his term he was sent to the concentration camp Lichtenburg. In early 1937 he could leave Germany, and through Yugoslavia he made his way to Uruguay where he arrived in late 1938. He stayed politically active there, too, and got engaged in the "German Antifascist Committee" and later in the union and the communist party. When the military took over power in Uruguay in June 1973, he went underground again and continued his activity. In order to avoid arrest he fled to Germany in 1982. After 1985 he lived in Uruguay again. Ernesto wrote down his own life story in the book "Heimat im Exil" (Home in Exile). (Source: information lateinamerika)