Karl Bublitz

Location 
Dortmunder Str. 2
District
Moabit
Stone was laid
July 2008
Born
19 January 1882 in Posen / Poznań
Occupation
Kaufmann / Stadtverordneter
Verhaftet
22 August 1944 in Berlin
Verhaftet
August 1944 to January 1945 in Sachsenhausen
Murdered
January 1945 im KZ Sachsenhausen
[Karl Bublitz] was arrested by two detectives on 22.8.1944 and taken to the police station on Alexanderplatz in the 44 tram. I went with him as far as the entrance on Kaiserstraße, where I saw him for the last time. Unfortunately, I cannot give you the names of the detectives or the arrest warrant number. He later wrote from Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The last letter was dated February 1945. His prison number was 93040, Block 34. He is said to have been sent by train to Bergen-Belsen in February 1945.

Felix Bublitz, 1958



The office worker Karl Bublitz married Klara Jacob, who was Jewish, in 1907. Klara was the sister of Mathilde Jacob, Rosa Luxemburg's secretary. Bublitz became the managing director of the trade union ‘Central Association of Employees’in 1910. He joined the SPD before the First World War but went over to the USPD in 1917, then back to the SPD in 1922. In 1929, he began working for the North Berlin employment office. He was re-elected city councillor in 1933 but after the SPD was banned in June 1933 and the Decree for Safety of the Leadership of State was passed in July, he was barred from acting as a local or city councillor. Bublitz was also ousted from the board of the Berlin AOK health insurance company and dismissed as director of the employment office. He became self-employed and opened a timber business on Gotzkowsky Bridge, which he was forced to give up in 1937. He subsequently worked as an insurance agent. He was arrested during Aktion Gewitter on 22.8.1944 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His wife and their son Felix, who was made to perform forced labour from 1944 because he was classified as a “crossbreed”, received their last letter from Karl Bublitz in Sachsenhausen in early February 1945. After that, the only news of him they received was a note which was signed by an SS Hauptscharführer in Sachsenhausen. This parcel for Karl Bublitz cannot be delivered and should be picked up at the sub-post office by 17.2.1945. Otherwise the contents will be distributed in the camp. Felix Bublitz emigrated to Australia in 1950 after his mother’s death. He successfully sued for compensation for his family's loss of income.

Karl Bublitz was a city councillor; 1921 nominated for election (USPD); 1922 nominated for election (USPD/SPD); 1923 – 1924 nominated for election (SPD); 1925 nominated for election (SPD)/Constituency 2 Tiergarten (SPD); 1926 – 1933 Constituency 2 Tiergarten (SPD)