Karl Olbrysch

Location 
Goltzstr. 13
District
Schöneberg
Stone was laid
05 July 2008
Born
24 November 1902 in Essen-Katernberg
Occupation
Bergmann
Dead
02 July 1940 in der "Arandora Star" (Überfahrt nach Kanada)
Many boards and benches were thrown into the water, [...] and people who had not go onto a rescue boat jumped over board and held onto them as fast as they could. [...] Many people, especially [...] those who were in the lower part of the ship, didn't make it to the deck in time. [...] The Arandora Star sank at 7.40 am. [...] The destroyer St. Laurent arrived at 14.30 and started taking any survivors on board.

Survivor's report, 10th July 1940



Karl Olbrysch was born on 24 November 1902 in Essen-Katernberg to devoutly religious parents. He became a miner like his father. As soon as he attained his majority, in 1921, he joined the KPD. Politically gifted, he soon became one of the party hopefuls. In 1925 he became the full-time secretary of the Red Front League’s youth organization “Rote Jungfront” in Berlin. A year later, he was made the organization’s chairman.

In 1927, he became a member of the regional KPD leadership for Berlin-Brandenburg and in 1928 he was elected secretary of the Reich leadership. In this capacity, he was involved in trying to set up a subsidiary organization of the Red Front Fighters’ League (RFB) in Austria but the project failed and he was expelled from the country.

In summer 1928 Olbrysch attended the Comintern’s 6th World Congress in Moscow, where he also took a six-month leadership course. Following this training, he returned to Berlin in 1929, where he resumed leadership of the “Rote Jungfront”, which had since been banned. Around this time he was also voted into the Berlin city council for the KPD in constituency 5 (Friedrichshain) and was re-elected secretary of the RFB. Together with Hans Jendretzky he called for an inquiry into RFB leader Willy Leow, whom they suspected of embezzling funds. As a consequence, Olbrysch was transferred from the RFB to the KPD and sent to be secretary in Hamburg. In 1931 he spent three months in prison.

In June 1932 he was elected to the Reichstag representing a Berlin constituency and assumed leadership of the Berlin-Brandenburg branch of the KPD. In the Reichstag elections on 5 March 1933, he was re-elected and in local elections on 12 March 1933, he was voted into the Berlin city council representing Friedrichshain. But like all communists, he was unseated before the first session as the Nazis took over all the KPD’s seats.

But Karl Olbrysch had already gone underground in January 1933. In June 1933 he attended a meeting of KPD functionaries, after the party had been banned. He was arrested during this meeting. His trial at the People’s Court did not take place until November 1934. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for “planning high treason in coincidence with serious attempts to falsify documents”. When the Gestapo offered to release him after his prison term instead of transferring him to a concentration camp in return for his ‘internal cooperation’, Olbrysch agreed. He was sent to Prague, then to Brünn (Brno), near the German border. But his cooperation was only pretence and he failed to send any further messages. The Gestapo sent his brother to visit him, who reported that Karl was not keeping to the agreement. Although Olbrysch had immediately informed the KPD leadership of his arrangement after his release, he was expelled from the party for cooperating with the Gestapo.

After the Munich Agreement and Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, in October 1938, Karl Olbrsych fled to Britain. When World War II broke out, he was classified as an “enemy alien” and interned. In summer 1940, he and several hundred others were to be taken to an internment camp in Canada on board the troop carrier “Arandora Star”. But during the crossing, the “Arandora Star” was torpedoed by a German submarine. It sank on 2 July 1940 at 7.40 am. At about 2.30 pm, the destroyer “St. Laurent” arrived on the scene but was only able to bring about half of the passengers out of the water alive. Karl Olbrysch was not among them.