Oskar Sander

Oskar Friedrich Wilhelm Sander (born April 12, 1885 in Berlin , died April 8, 1944 in Falkensee ) was a worker athlete and a victim of National Socialism.

Life

Sander attended elementary school and then learned to be an electronics fitter. He later qualified as a master for high and low voltage systems and worked in the Siemens factory in Berlin . In 1912 Sander became a member of the SPD . At the same time, after his apprenticeship, he was a member of the free trade union German Metalworkers Association (DMV). During the First World War, Sander joined the USPD , with whose left wing he switched to the KPD at the end of 1920 . For this party he was elected to the municipal council in his place of residence in Falkensee in 1926, where he was particularly committed to youth work and workers' sports. For example, by buying a former Reichswehr barracks, he succeeded in providing the Berlin workers' sports club “Fichte” with its own sports home in Falkensee.

In 1926, Sander took over the management of the electrical fitters branch of the Berlin DMV, in which around 1,100 of the 58,000 Berlin DMV members were organized. Because of his political commitment, Oskar Sander was dismissed from Siemens-Schuckert AG at the end of the Weimar Republic . He then worked as a self-employed electrician in Falkensee. In 1929 Sander married Marie Adena. The two remained childless.

After coming to power of the Nazis , the Falkenseer Sportlerheim, for the structure of which Sander had hired was, from the February 25, 1933 SA burned down, the workers' sports movement smashed in Falkensee. Sander was arrested in March 1933 for "communist activities" and mistreated in the Falkensee town hall cellar. Later the Nazi persecutors kept him in " protective custody " in the Börnicke concentration camp . In July 1933 he was transferred to the early Oranienburg concentration camp . On September 9, 1933, the Gestapo deported him to the Sonneburg concentration camp . There he was mistreated several times, according to eyewitness reports. On February 6, 1934, however, Sander was released after signing a declaration that he would not turn against "the new state or its institutions". In the period after his release from prison, Sander was under police supervision. He had to report to the police on a regular basis and endure several house searches. He was arrested and interrogated several times. No other details are known about his life in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Oskar Sander died on April 8, 1944, the cause of death probably being the long-term effects of abuse in the concentration camp .

Commemoration

From 1954 to 1991 the present Gartenstrasse in Falkensee was named after Oskar Sander, and since 1982 the FDJ basic organization of an adjoining nationally owned estate (VEG) also bore his name. After the estate and the FDJ group no longer existed and the street was renamed, there was no commemorative sign to remind Sander for several years until a stumbling block was laid in front of his former home at Gartenstrasse 54 in Falkensee in 2008 due to local initiatives .

literature

• Tobias Bank: Oskar Sander, trade unionist, worker athlete and communist. In: Work - Movement - History , I / 2017, pp. 126–136.
• Susanne Blohm: Oskar Sander (1885-1944). In: Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Trade unionists in the Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Biographical Handbook, Volume 4 (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 6). Metropol, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-148-3 , pp. 611-615.