Germany / Biography
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Leo von Poblotzki (10 April 1921 - 14 June 1944) was born in in Altengrabow, near Magdeburg, to a family that was critical of National Socialism. He therefore tried to avoid joining the Hitler Youth, and instead joined the German Red Cross. In 1941 he was called up to the Luftwaffe as a medic. He died following a bombing raid near Caen.
Leo von Poblotzki was the sixth child of Anton Franz von Poblotzki and Rosalia Barbara Budnik. His family belonged to the Kashubian ethnic group. After Western Poland was divided into three parts as a result of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, his family moved to Wesel in the Rhineland. There he attended a Catholic elementary school until 1935, and then completed an apprenticeship as a baker. In one of his last jobs, he worked for the bakery R. ten Hompel in Wesel.
Through his membership in the German Red Cross and training as a paramedic, he tried to avoid membership in the Hitler Youth. In early February 1941, von Poblotzki was called up for military service as a medic in the Luftwaffe. After medical training in Bonn, he was assigned to an air force hospital in Amsterdam. A year and a half later, he was promoted to sergeant.
In the winter of 1943/44, von Poblotzki was finally transferred to the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division in Normandy. During an allied bombing raid on Caen, he was buried under the rubble of a collapsing building. His comrades managed to recover him, but he was severely wounded and died shortly after on 14 June 1944, in the military hospital. His family received no information about his death or his burial place in the Caen municipal cemetery. Von Poblotzki was considered missing in action, and inquiries by the family during the war remained without results.
It was not until 1956 that Leo von Poblotzki was recovered and identified by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. during reburial work. His mother received the news of his reburial in La Cambe cemetery in 1958. Here he rests in block 26, grave 299.