The advertising agent Karl Deibel was born in 1897. From 1938 to 1945 he moved in circles of politically like-minded people who carried out activities such as distributing anti-war flyers in public places. Otto Weidt and Karl Deibel met in 1943, if not before, and became close confidants. In 1943 and 1944, Deibel worked in the workshop’s dispatch department.
In 1942 he began taking Jews in hiding and victims of political persecution into his home. So as to offer refuge to more people, Otto Weidt sublet his former workshop premises in the basement of Großbeerenstraße 92 to Deibel. Over time, he hid more than ten people there. The basement apartment was betrayed in the spring of 1944, resulting in numerous arrests. Karl Deibel, having gone underground himself, was arrested in July 1944. The Gestapo tried but failed to extract information from him about people in hiding and their helpers. Deibel was released in October 1944. He was honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 2014.
