Karl Talazko

Karl Anton Talazko (born July 18, 1897 in Hohnstein , † April 21, 1945 in Pulsnitz ) was a German Protestant pastor and victim of the Nazi dictatorship .

Life

Talazko came from a Protestant pastor's family. After elementary school he attended the Princely School in Grimma , where he passed his Abitur . During the First World War he was drafted into the army , was seriously wounded and lost his right hand. After the end of the war he studied Protestant theology in Leipzig and Tübingen . In 1921 he worked as a vicar in the Bohemian Kaden . In 1925 he was assistant preacher in Neukirchen near Stollberg in the Ore Mountains , then again vicar in Adorf near Stollberg , where he also worked as a pastor from 1926 after the ordination . In 1930 he married in Szczecin . From 1932 on he was in charge of the pastor's office in Gersdorf and, during the Second World War, he also oversaw the neighboring community of Reichenbach and the Kamenz monastery church . He gave his last sermon on April 15, 1945.

At that time the Red Army troops were already close to the place. As in other villages, efforts were made in Gersdorf to give the approaching Soviet army a signal for the peaceful surrender of the village by hoisting white towels. The extent to which Talezko was directly involved in hoisting the white flag on the church tower is unclear. The SS men had noticed the white flag from neighboring Bischheim and then rounded up the population of Gersdorf on a meadow in front of the inn. Talazko and his 14-year-old son were ordered to collect the white towels on site. During the retreat, the SS abducted Talazko and the mayor Haase to Pulsnitz, where they were probably shot in a meadow together with other men. The other villagers who had fled to neighboring Obersteina saw from there that their Gersdorf church had been set on fire by the SS.

On April 28, the Gersdorfer took the bodies of Talazko and the mayor to Gersdorf and buried them next to the fire ruins.

literature

• Werner Oehme : Martyrs of Protestant Christianity 1933–1945. Twenty-nine life pictures . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1979, pp. 231–234.