Justus Delbrck

Passions

Vocation

Family

German administrative lawyer who was involved in the resistance against National Socialism (Nazism). His father was the history professor Hans Delbrück, his siblings included Max Delbrück and Emmi Bonhoeffer (nee Delbrück). He was married to Ellen Delbrück (neé von Wahl-Pajus, 1907-1978) and had three children. He became a member of the German Democratic Party. In 1933 he refused to join the NSDAP (Nazi Party). In 1935 he left the civil service and worked from then on in the private sector. In 1938 he took over a cloth factory in Sommerfeld in order to protect the operation of the brother of a Jewish friend. After the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 Delbrück was arrested on 17 August 1944 by the Gestapo. While his brother-in-law Klaus Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death and shot dead among another group of inmates on 23 April 1945, he was released from the Gestapo prison Lehrter Strasse on 25 April 1945 when Berlin was captured. After the war Delbrück was arrested on 20 May 1945 by the NKVD and was sent on 19 June 1945 first to the Soviet special camp no. 6 in Frankfurt (Oder), and was relocated to Jamlitz in September 1945, where he died on 23 October 1945 from diphtheria and dystrophy. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)