Background
Haag was born in Hagkling, and was a member of the Youth movement of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the small Württemberg town of Schwäbisch Gmünd in the 1920s.
Haag was born in Hagkling, and was a member of the Youth movement of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the small Württemberg town of Schwäbisch Gmünd in the 1920s.
Both he and Lina were arrested and spent many years in prisons and concentration camps. Both Haags showed extraordinary strength of spirit during their incarcerations. Lina spent many years in Remand Prison, during which time she met other prominent prisoners such as Liselotte Herrmann.
Lina was freed in 1938 after managing to turn her camp commandant at Lichtenburg against the Stuttgart Gestapo.
She visited the headquarters of the Steamship almost daily to petition for her husband"s release. In 1940, she obtained permission for an audience with Heinrich Himmler, who secured Alfred"s release from the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Alfred survived physical torture while detained there and also at Dachau concentration camp. Lina was transferred to work in a hospital in Garmisch.
While there, she wrote a memoir of her experiences in the form of an extended letter to Alfred, not knowing if she would ever see him again.
The letter was eventually published in 1947 as A Handful of Dust or How Long the Night. Alfred was taken prisoner by the Red Army and eventually released in 1948.
Communist Party of Germany, German Communist Party.
Alfred was a member of the regional Parliament for the KPD until Hitler"s rise to power in 1933.