Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt –biographie

Carl Blach was born in Stralsund in 1887. After completing an apprenticeship, he took over his father’s leather goods store in 1915. His sons from his first marriage, Hans and Gerd, also worked there. Carl Blach returned from serving on the front in the First World War almost entirely deaf. He married the Catholic Lisbeth Krohn in 1935.
When Carl Blach was forced to give up his company in 1938, as a Jew, the family moved from Stralsund to Berlin. The couple’s daughter Ingeborg was born there in October, followed six years later by a son, Peter. Carl Blach and his two adult sons were deployed as forced laborers. Carl Blach worked as a brush-maker in the workshop for the blind from April 1943 until March 1944. In February 1943, he was arrested during “Operation Factory” and held in the Rosenstraße assembly camp for eight days.
Hans and Gerd Blach lived in hiding with friends from 1942 onwards. Both were detected later in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and have been considered "missing".
After his liberation, Carl Blach suffered a breakdown and died on May 16, 1946.