26. From Being a Nazi, to Getting Kicked Out of the Nazi Party for Falling in Love With a Jewish Woman
Born in 1910, Landmesser joined the Nazi Party when he was twenty-one years old. However, he was kicked out four years later when he fell in love with and got engaged to a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. The couple were prevented from marrying by the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which forbade marriage and intercourse between Aryans and Jews.
They had a daughter out of wedlock later that year. Thus, when the photo that made Landmesser famous was taken, he did not bother hiding his disdain for the Nazis. Unfortunately, the love story of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler did not end with them living happily ever after. It ended instead in tragedy, a more typical outcome of efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust than the moving stories in which such attempts succeeded.