Laabs Karl

Laabs, Karl In the 1920s and early 1930s, Karl Laabs (b. 1896), a qualified architect, held various public offices in the municipal building and planning inspection departments of his native town Hann, Münden and in Kassel. In 1935, he was dismissed from his post without further notice because of his pre-Nazi record as a trade unionist and a member of the SPD. He continued to work as an independent architect until 1939. As an enthusiastic pursuer of the sport of air gliding, he was claimed after the outbreak of World War II by the German air force. He worked at first as a civilian district building inspector in eastern Upper Silesia and, during the last years of the war, as a flying instructor in a Luftwaffe school for glider-pilots. In his capacity as district building inspector, Laabs and his family lived in a small Galician town called Chrzanow, only some 16 miles away from the Auschwitz camp. He observed the inhuman treatment of the indigenous Jewish population and was especially outraged that people who, in their linguistic and cultural orientation, stood so close to German culture, were being terrorized and exterminated by Germans. He resolved to save as many Jews as he could from the clutches of the Gestapo. Through the local Jewish councils, he employed several Jews as workers. He was able to protect them in some measure by issuing them work certificates. During the last Aktion, in February 1943, he extricated many Jews who were slated for deportation to Auschwitz and allowed them to escape. He sheltered some of them in his own home, feeding them and transporting them in trucks to a safe hiding place. Among those assisted in this way were: Marcus Buchbinder, Frieda Weichman, Ruth Weichman, Abraham and Helen Merlinger, and others. On November 30, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Karl Laabs as Righteous Among the Nations.