August was born on the 24th May 1910, in Moorrege (near Harnburg).

It was not until 1991 that the man was identified as August Landmesser, a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, by one of his children, after she saw the photo in a German newspaper.

Rudolf Landmesser, who knew him weIl, wrote:

"For all the faults he may have had, your father had the character of a decent man. Intelligent, but as an onIy child coddled by his unassuming mother, he sailed through the elementary school in Moorrege. I' d describe him as a country lad who, had he been given more opportunities at home, could certainly have made more of himself. I can teIl you that the Landmessers also had Jewish ancestors. The oldest female ancestor I've been able to track down is Susanna Rernus, nee Abraham, widowed Witt. She came frorn the TucheIer Heide (West Prussia)."
However, according to the Landgericht's (District Court) ruling of 26th October 1938,

"The names (Landmesser, Schmidtpott, Remus and Bester) are German. Foreign blood is not apparent. The accused also has an Aryan appearance. " (Public-record office Hamburg 213 -I )
Together with his maternal relatives, August joined the NSDAP in 1931. He hoped this would enable him to get a job. He was a member of the party until 1935. His later behaviour proved that he was not a supporter by conviction. His personal experience clearly showed him the error of his ways.

This week, the photo resurfaced once again after a blog that was launched to facilitate relief efforts after the March 11, 2011, Japanese earthquake and tsunami shared it on its Facebook page. As of this writing, the photo has nearly 25,000 shares.

Landmesser apparently had a very personal reason not to make the salute.

While he is believed to have been a member of the Nazi Party from 1931 to 1935, he was later expelled from the party for marrying a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler, according to Fasena, an educational site on the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

After Landmesser fathered two daughters with Irma, he was sent to jail for “dishonoring the race.” Irma is believed to have been detained by the Gestapo in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison in Hamburg. Their children were separated.

Landmesser was discharged from prison in 1941 but was soon drafted to serve in the war. He was later declared missing in action and believed dead.

In 1996, one of Landmesser’s daughters, Irene, wrote a family history in German, saying she hoped to share the story of how her family had been torn apart.

Sixteen years later, that story is spreading across Facebook, thanks to the Internet’s habit of rediscovering historical treasures. Much like last week’s renewed interest in an ex-slave’s 1865 letter to his master, the response to Landmesser’s photographic lesson speaks to an Internet audience hungry for stories of moral heroism.
WASHPOST