Karl Straub (resistance fighter)

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Karl Straub (born December 7, 1898 in Weilbach / Lower Franconia ; † 1966 ) was a German communist , resistance fighter against the Nazi regime , former political prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp , after 1945 head of the Department of Victims of Fascism (OdF) at the State Labor Office and social welfare of the state of Thuringia , trustee of the German Buchenwald Committee for the establishment of a memorial and most recently full-time public guide in the National Buchenwald memorial (NMG).

Live and act

Straub completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith after completing primary school . In 1915 he joined the German Metalworkers' Association . In 1917 he worked in the railway workshops in Frankfurt am Main . In 1918 he had to do six weeks of military service in the First World War . In the 1920s he turned to the parties of the labor movement , in 1927 he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). From 1930 to 1933 he was unemployed . After the transfer of power to the NSDAP , he was arrested several times for continuing to work illegally and finally sentenced by a court to two years in prison for high treason . From 1938 to 1945 he was interned in Buchenwald concentration camp. Here he was active in the KPD, which continued to work underground.

After the liberation from Nazi rule in April 1945, he was responsible for securing the water and steam supply until September. From December 1945 he became the head of the department for victims of fascism at the State Office for Labor and Social Welfare of the State of Thuringia in Weimar . In 1953 he was deputy chairman of the district commission of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN).

Since 1946 he was the administrator of the Buchenwald Committee of the VVN in the design of an "Ehrenhain Buchenwald" and later the "KL Buchenwald Memorial". He looked after foreign delegations and guided them through the former camp. Straub protested sharply - but without success - against the demolition of most of the buildings on the site of the former camp. From 1953 to 1961 he was employed as a full-time tour guide at NMG Buchenwald.

literature

  • Detlef Hoffmann : The memory of things: concentration camp relics and concentration camp memorials 1945–1995. , Scientific series of the Fritz Bauer Institute Volume 4, Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1998, ISBN 3-593-35445-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz Koch, Udo Wohlfeld: The German beech forest committee. The period from 1945 to 1958 . Weimar 2010, ISBN 3-935275-14-5 , p. 192.
personal data
SURNAME Straub, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political concentration camp prisoner, resistance fighter against the Nazi regime and head of the VVN
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Weilbach / Lower Franconia
DATE OF DEATH 1966