Glauber, Kurt, Erich, Dr.

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Glauber, Kurt, Erich, Dr, born 23-12-1902, in Vienna, Austria and at the age of 37, banned from working by the Nazis, he escaped his homeland and ended up in Ipswich, United Kingdom. Kurt lived in Norwich Road, in a house that is now a vaping shop called What’s Ya Flava. His remarkable story is generally unknown but thanks to research by Rachel Field, Glauber’s record can now be revealed.

In Vienna, before the rise of the Nazis, Kurt trained as a lawyer but was not able to practise his profession when he came as a Jewish exile in the late 1930s. Glauber found his way to Ipswich and worked as a laundry trainee at the Tower Steam Laundry in Bramford Road. Kurt found a place to lodge with a Mrs Barber in Norwich Road. His mother and sister also managed to get to London after Austria was annexed by Adolf Hitler. In the spring of 1940, Glauber was arrested and interned as an ‘enemy alien’. But by 1941 he had been freed and was able to join the Pioneer Corps. Kurt volunteered to join a fighting unit two years later and officially he served with the Royal Artillery.

The Royal Pioneer Corps  was a British Army corps used for light engineering tasks. It was formed in 1939, and amalgamated into the Royal Logistic Corps in 1993. Pioneer units performed a wide variety of tasks in all theatres of war, including Northern Ireland. They were used for full infantry, mine clearance, guarding bases, laying prefabricated track on beaches, and effecting various logistical operations. Many pioneer companies took part in the Normandy landings and after the Second World War, the corps was given the designation “Royal”.

In reality he was recruited by MI6 to work as a secret agent. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence on foreign nationals in support of its Five Eyes partners. SIS is one of the British intelligence agencies and the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (known as “C”) is directly accountable to the foreign secretary

Glauber was smuggled into Nazi-occupied Vienna to spy on the enemy’s plans for arms development – possibly nuclear. He was hidden in the city by two sisters Daniza and Rada Illitsch, non-Jewish anti Nazis. Tragically, Kurt Glauber was betrayed by a female double agent and sent to Concentration Camp Mauthausen

with commander Franz Xaver Ziereis

, where as a spy and a Jew he was brutally treated. Ziereis fled with his wife on 03-05-1945, but was arrested by American troops on May 20 at his hunting lodge in Pyhrn. During an escape attempt, he was hit by a bullet. In the following nite, Ziereis was interrogated and his statement was recorded. Shortly thereafter, Ziereis died in Gusen, 24-05-1945, age 39, from his injuries. His body was hung on the camp fence by former prisoners.

Death and burial ground of Glauber, Kurt, Erich, Dr.

He died there sometime between the 1e and 30e in April 1945, age 42, just before the Mauthausen camp’s liberation by the US army. After the war, he was posthumously awarded the King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct. Kurt is certainly buried in a Mauthausen mass grave, but Kurt is commemorated at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey in an area set aside for those who lost their lives service as British agents.

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com

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