Karl Pankow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl Pankow after April 11, 1945 as a potential witness with an identification number for a later testimony against the former camp management of the Buchenwald concentration camp

Karl Pankow (* 1905 in Stettin ; † 1973 in Schöneiche near Berlin ) was a German communist and former political prisoner in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps , a ministerial employee of the Thuringian state government and chairman of the council of the Sternberg district .

Life dates

After attending elementary school, Pankow completed an apprenticeship as a car maker (wheelwright). As a teenager he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) and the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and was a member of their Pomeranian district leadership from 1923 to 1928 . In 1928 he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He was arrested in 1933 for illegal resistance activity and interned in the Dachau concentration camp. From 1936 to 1937 he was imprisoned in Ichtershausen prison and from 1938 to 1945 in Buchenwald concentration camp. Here he was employed in the carpentry team . He organized the prisoners from Pomerania and East Prussia in a political conspiratorial manner . From 1942 he was the liaison to the party activists for the Wasserkante district and was one of the controllers within the prison camp management alongside Hein Hauptmann . After he was denounced and arrested in 1944, he was still allowed to return to the camp and became the third camp elder .

After the liberation from Nazi rule , Karl Pankow worked in the social security department and various ministries of the Thuringian state government. In 1948 he was one of the founding members of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD) in Schwerin on behalf of the SED . From 1952 to 1959 he was the chairman of the District Council Sternberg and 1959-1961 Mayor in Boizenburg / Elbe .

Web links

Commons : Karl Pankow  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Koch / Udo Wohlfeld: The German beech forest committee. The period from 1945 to 1958 , Weimar 2010, p. 187, ISBN 3-935275-14-5
personal data
SURNAME Pankow, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political concentration camp inmate
DATE OF BIRTH 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH 1973
Place of death Schöneiche near Berlin