Horst Sindermann

Horst Sindermann (; 5 September 1915 – 20 April 1990) was a Communist German politician and one of the leaders of East Germany. He became Chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1973, but in 1976 he became President of the Volkskammer, the only member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to hold the post. Early life Sindermann was born in a traditional family in Dresden as the son of the Saxon Social Democratic politician Karl Sindermann. His older brother, Kurt Sindermann, also entered politics as a member of the Communist Party and sat on the Saxon state parliament from 1929 to 1933. Horst Sindermann joined the Communist Youth Federation (KJVD) in 1929 and in 1932 became a local functionary in Dresden. The group was banned by the Nazi regime and in June 1933, Sindermann was arrested and condemned to eight months of imprisonment for illegal political activities. In September 1934, he became political director of the KJVD's Dresden branch. In March 1935, he again was arrested for attempted high treason, tortured and put in solitary confinement for six years at Waldheim jail. In 1941, he was transferred to "protective custody" to several concentration camps, first at Sachsenhausen, then at Mauthausen in Upper Austria, and finally at Ebensee, until being freed by the arriving U.S. army in 1945.