Josef Vallaster

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Josef Vallaster (born February 5, 1910 in Silbertal , Vorarlberg , † October 14, 1943 in the Sobibór extermination camp ) was an Austrian National Socialist and from 1940 involved in the crimes of Nazi "euthanasia" and the Holocaust . He was among others in the Nazi killing center Hartheim used Sobibor and in the extermination camp, where he received a SS - rank led and the uprising in Sobibor was killed by rebellious inmates.

Life

Childhood and mountain farmer in Silbertal

View of the scattered settlement Silbertal in Vorarlberg. (2009)

Josef Vallaster lost his father at the age of six, who died in 1916 as a soldier in the First World War in Russian captivity. After elementary school he worked for a time on his stepfather's mountain farm in Silbertal and also hired himself out as a casual worker, such as woodworkers, herdsmen and servants.

Contemporary witnesses describe him as a worker who “could be used for anything” and who “was inconspicuous and harmless”. He was close to National Socialist ideas and was an illegal National Socialist , but is not listed in the group of people who were identified and punished for Nazi activists in the Montafon in 1933/1934.

After the NSDAP was banned as a party on June 19, 1933, Vallaster left Austria on August 26, 1933 and fled to Germany. There he also wanted to escape his poor financial situation so far.

Austrian Legion, workers in Germany

In Germany, Vallaster was accepted into the Austrian Legion and came from Munich to the Legion's central warehouse in Bad Aibling . On September 28, 1933, he was stripped of his Austrian citizenship by the Bludenz district for “illegally crossing the border to Germany” . The reason for his escape was not associated with prohibited National Socialist activities but was considered “unknown”. After the failed Nazi coup attempt in Austria in July 1934 the so-called July Putsch , the Legion lost its importance, and its members were housed extent possible in civilian jobs. Vallaster became a German citizen on August 25, 1935 .

Since Vallaster had no vocational training, he worked again as a laborer, first in 1937 in the construction of the airfield and in February 1938 in "Lot 45" of the Reichsautobahn in Kinding in Middle Franconia. After the so-called Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, he visited Silbertal several times. Vallaster was admitted to the NSDAP as a party member on May 1, 1938. In 1939 he worked in the Berlin-Friedrichshagen waterworks .

"Brenner" in the Hartheim killing center

Hartheim Castle, in which the Nazi killing center Hartheim was located. On the ground floor is the shed that was recreated by the memorial and in which the disabled were taken from the transport bus during the Nazi era. (2005)

From April 1940, Vallaster was initially employed as a worker for renovation work, such as the installation of an incinerator and the construction of a gasification room, as part of the T4 campaign in the Hartheim Nazi killing center in Upper Austria (then called Reichsgau Oberdonau ). From May 1940 he was involved in the gassing and cremation of disabled and sick people in the killing facility headed by the T4 expert Rudolf Lonauer . One of Vallaster's tasks was to break out gold teeth.

Vallaster was part of a working group known as the "burner" or "heater". According to the “distiller” Vinzenz Nohel later , the workers received an above-average wage: 170 Reichsmarks (RM) net wage each month  , plus 50 RM separation allowance for free accommodation and meals, 35 RM hardship allowance as a “stoker” and 35 RM bonus as a silent bonus . In addition, there was a daily ration of a quarter liter of schnapps.

When some people were still alive in July 1940 after a gassing operation, there was a conflict with Vallaster as the responsible “burner”. In the absence of the “euthanasia” doctor Georg Renno , he had opened the gas tap too briefly and had not checked the deadly effect of the poison gas before opening the gassing room (by means of a peephole). The technical system was changed afterwards, and from then on a counter measured the necessary amount of the poison gas used, carbon monoxide .

Vallaster married Elisabeth Gust, a nurse for the killing staff, in September 1940. According to later reports by their son, this was mainly used to accompany the victims to the killing center and to undress them before they were gassed. The killing center had its own special registry office in order to conceal the large number of deaths in the area and to make it difficult for relatives of the victims to access information. The wedding of Josef and Elisabeth Vallaster took place in the regular registry office of the municipality of Alkoven , but took place to the exclusion of all relatives. The two witnesses were Gertrude Blanke, head nurse in the Niedernhart sanatorium and nursing home in Linz and at the same time head nurse in the Hartheim Nazi euthanasia facility, and Christian Wirth , office manager of the Hartheim Nazi euthanasia facility. Elisabeth Gust came from Brandenburg and had previously worked as a ward nurse in the Wittstock clinic , where she met Blanke, who was born in Wittstock.

When Elisabeth Vallaster became pregnant in 1941, she finished her service at the Hartheim killing center and returned to her home in Brandenburg. In 1942 she gave birth to her son Klaus there.

Overseer and death in the Sobibór extermination camp

From 1942 Vallaster was deployed like other German participants and workers from the “Euthanasia” program as part of “ Aktion Reinhardt ” in the Generalgouvernement (Poland), where he initially received briefing in the first extermination camp in Belzec . From then on, Vallaster wore an SS uniform and had an SS rank, although nothing is known about the date of his entry into the SS , his initial rank and the SS units to which he belonged. In the Berlin Document Center , which was set up after the end of the war and which has since been taken over by the German Federal Archives and which has around 60 percent of the former personnel files of the SS, there are no documents about Vallaster. He was active as SS-Scharführer in “Aktion Reinhardt” , although it cannot be ruled out that Vallaster, like others from the T4 personnel, may wear “some uniform - here in the SS's sphere of activity, of course, an SS uniform - during their deployment in the extermination camps had to ”and“ therefore only had a nominal rank of SS ”.

Sobibór marshalling yard where the prisoner transports arrived. (Photo from 2007)

The training in Belzec included the wearing of the SS uniform, the correct taking and giving of orders, the carrying and use of weapons and, in connection with this, dealing with the Trawniki men .

Vallaster then worked as an overseer in the Sobibór extermination camp and was involved in the mass murder of mainly Jewish people from all over Europe. The commandant of the extermination camp near the village of Sobibór had been SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Reichleitner since September 1942 , who previously worked as deputy office manager at the Hartheim killing center and was therefore already known to Vallaster. Vallaster supervised the gassing of the victims and their cremation in Sobibór in Camp III; the work of incineration was the responsibility of the prisoners. The total number of those murdered in the Sobibór camp is estimated at 150,000 to 250,000 people.

For reasons of secrecy, camp III was strictly separated from the other camp areas and only connected to camp I via a truck . Vallaster operated, among other things, as a "machinist" a narrow-gauge railway locomotive and was responsible for those wagon transports with which the dead as well as the infirm and old were transported to the incinerators immediately after the arrival of the transport trains in the camp.

The SS camp personnel, most of whom came from Aktion T4, viewed the Jews as an inferior race and carried out their “factory-like” murder “as daily work”. The surviving concentration camp inmate Yehuda Lerner (who killed SS man Siegfried Graetschus in the prisoner revolt in 1943 ) reported after the war that the SS men kept geese and scared them off whenever Jews were murdered to scream with the chatter to drown out the geese.

On October 14, 1943, a revolt and mass flight of mainly prisoners of war of Jewish origin from Belarus took place in the extermination camp under the leadership of the Soviet lieutenant Alexander Pechersky and Leon Feldhendler . During this uprising in Sobibór , Vallaster, like other SS men, was killed at a time previously agreed by the revolting prisoners. He was taken away from the Lorenbahn at 4 p.m. on the pretext that he should try on his new boots in the shoemaker's workshop. There he was killed with an ax by the Jewish camp inmates Itzhak Lichtman and the shoemaker Scholem Fleischacker . The killing took place during the fitting and handing over of the boots to Vallaster, whereby the prisoners had to “shout” loudly in his ear because Vallaster was hard of hearing . Vallaster ordered slippers for his wife before he was killed.

Almost all of the remaining prisoners were murdered by the SS. The camp was abandoned by the end of 1943 as a result of the mass exodus. Vallaster was buried with military honors on October 17, 1943 in the military cemetery in Chełm .

Post-war period and work-up

For a long time after the Second World War there was a need “ to see Austria only as the first victim of the world war”. The first coming to terms with one's own National Socialist past and the Nazi crimes took place rather hesitantly in Austria towards the end of the 1970s / beginning of the 1980s. The unsettled way of dealing with the Nazi past, which mainly consisted of repressing , only changed in 1986 in the course of the Waldheim affair , and an examination of the victim and perpetrator roles of Austrians during the Nazi era began .

The former war memorial in Silbertal , which was removed by the municipality in June 2009.

For a long time it remained publicly unknown that Josef Vallaster was a war criminal . In his place of birth, Silbertal, he was named on the local war memorial as a fallen victim in World War II and thus declared a war victim. Since the late 1980s, his Nazi perpetration was initially only known to historians.

The first publications appeared in the early 2000s that dealt critically with the regional history of Silbertal during the Nazi era and the behavior of local soldiers during the war. A public discussion about the Nazi crimes of Josef Vallaster from Silbertal began in 2007 when the media picked up the case. The Silbertal community set up a history workshop under the direction of the Montafon historian Bruno Winkler , which was supported by several institutions and supported by the historian Wolfgang Weber from the Vorarlberg State Archives, among others .

Weber published his book Von Silbertal nach Sobibór in November 2008 . About Josef Vallaster and National Socialism in the Montafon , in which he reports about Vallaster and two other Nazi perpetrators from the region. Vallaster was reported as "fallen" after his burial in his homeland, which explains his inclusion in the list of fallen soldiers at the war memorial. The work of the Silbertaler Geschichtswerkstatt met with supraregional interest and received mostly positive feedback. The "model remembrance project" was reported several times in newspapers and magazines as well as on television, for example in November 2008 as part of the Provikar Lampert Academy 2008 on ORF television.

Finally, in 2009, the Silbertal municipality decided to replace the Silbertaler war memorial with a memorial place. Not only those who died in the two world wars from the town should be commemorated there, but also the refugees, forced laborers and "euthanasia" victims .

Stone tablet for the redesign of the war memorial (2010) with the mention of Josef Vallaster

The controversial memorial was removed by the Silbertal community in June 2009, with threats from neo-Nazis against the community and against individuals contributed to an accelerated decision. The Silbertal history workshop completed its review of this chapter of Nazi history and presented its concept for the new memorial site in November 2009. At the location of the former war memorial, an information board had meanwhile indicated that it would soon be redesigned as a memorial.

The new memorial square was opened in November 2010. The monument area was laid on one level and laid out irregularly with stone slabs. Josef Vallaster mentions his own stone slab as the reason for the redesign. A stone tablet lists the soldiers of the First World War, a second the soldiers of the Second World War. A third stone tablet names other victims of the Second World War, including several forced laborers, a refugee and two "euthanasia" victims.

After Harald Walser, member of the National Council of the Greens, announced in May 2012 that Vallaster's name was also listed in the books of the dead in the crypt of the Heldentor in Vienna, Defense Minister Norbert Darabos arranged for Vallaster to be deleted from the books of the dead. In addition, the order followed an investigation by experts who are to determine whether other war criminals are among the fallen soldiers listed in the death books.

literature

  • Wolfgang Weber: Josef Vallaster: A small bike that kept the bigger one going. In: Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators, helpers, free riders. Volume 5. Nazi victims from the Lake Constance area , Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2016, pp. 272–286. ISBN 978-3-945893-04-3 .
  • Silbertal and Montafon:
  • Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór. About Josef Vallaster and National Socialism in the Montafon . Rheticus-Gesellschaft , Feldkirch 2008 (= issue 48/2008), ISBN 978-3-902601-07-0 .
  • Hans Netzer: Silbertaler soldiers in World War II . Heimatschutzverein im Tale Montafon, Schruns 2003 (= Montafoner Schriftenreihe, No. 8), ISBN 3-902225-06-8 .
  • Vorarlberg:
  • Nazi killing center Hartheim:
  • Walter Kohl : "I don't feel guilty": Georg Renno, euthanasia doctor . 1st edition, Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-552-04973-8 .
  • Tom Matzek : The Murder Castle. On the trail of Nazi crimes in Hartheim Castle . 1st edition, Kremayr & Scheriau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-218-00710-0 . ( Description of contents )
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life" . 11th edition, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004 (= Fischer-Taschenbuch, No. 4326; The time of National Socialism ), ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
  • Sobibór extermination camp
  • Richard Rashke: Escape from Sobibór . 1st edition, Bleicher Verlag, Gerlingen 1998, ISBN 3-88350-740-7 . ( Fiction ; German translation; English original title: Escape from Sobibór )
  • Thomas Toivi Blatt : Only the shadows remain. The uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp . 1st edition, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-351-02504-1 . (German translation; English original title: From the ashes of Sobibór )
  • Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp . Unrast Verlag, Münster 2003 (= series: rat - series of antifascist texts ), ISBN 3-89771-814-6 .
  • Austria:

Movies

Web links

Commons : Josef Vallaster  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór . Feldkirch 2008, pp. 50-56.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór . Feldkirch 2008, pp. 42-43.
  3. ↑ a b Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór . Feldkirch 2008, pp. 56-57.
  4. ↑ Brigitte Kepplinger : The Hartheim Killing Center 1940–1945. (PDF file; 197 kB) In: antifa-info.at. Retrieved February 21, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Tom Matzek: The Murder Castle. On the trail of Nazi crimes in Hartheim Castle . Vienna 2002.
  6. ↑ Documents: "Statement Nohel 1 - 6". (PDF files) Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial (www.mauthausen-memorial.at), accessed on December 1, 2009 (testimony by the “burner” Vinzenz Nohel, born in 1902, from Freindorf, Upper Austria, to the Linz criminal police on December 4 , 2009 . September 1945; available from the online archive → enter search word “Nohel”).
  7. ↑ Walter Kohl: I don't feel guilty. Georg Renno. Euthanasia doctor . Vienna 2000.
  8. ↑ Seff Dünser: So that that never happens again. (PDF; 320 kB) Vorarlberger Nachrichten , available online at: Vereinimmen.at/ BMUKK (www.erinnern.at), June 2007, p. A12 , accessed on December 1, 2009 (interview with son Klaus Vallaster).
  9. ^ Project "Hartheim Memorial Book", II. Sources. (No longer available online.) Learning and memorial site Schloss Hartheim (www.schloss-hartheim.at), 2002, archived from the original on July 25, 2011 ; accessed on December 1, 2009 (cf. information on the registry office). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schloss-hartheim.at
  10. ^ Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór . Feldkirch 2008.
  11. ^ Wolfgang Weber: From Silbertal to Sobibór . Feldkirch 2008, p. 55.
  12. ↑ a b c d Belzec Perpetrators. An overview of the German and Austrian SS and Police Staff >> VALLASTER, Josef. Aktion Reinhard Camps (www.deathcamps.org), September 23, 2006, accessed on December 1, 2009 (English, brief information about Josef Vallaster's missions in Belzec and Sobibór).
  13. ^ Adalbert Rückerl (Ed.): National Socialist Extermination Camps as Reflected in German Criminal Trials: Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Chelmno . 2nd edition, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-02904-X , pp. 123ff.
  14. ↑ Numbers differ for: (1) Jules Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. Münster 2003, p. 11. (2) Barbara Distel: Sobibór . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 375.
  15. ↑ Cf. Georg Bönisch u. a .: The dark continent . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21/2009, May 18, 2009, p. 82ff.
  16. ^ Diedrich Diedrichsen: Claude Lanzmann: The happy hour. (No longer available online.) HaGalil (www.schoah.org), formerly in the original ; Retrieved on December 1, 2009 (description of the content of the documentary Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. by Claude Lanzmann and his interview with the contemporary witness Yehuda Lerner).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.schoah.org  
  17. ↑ Thomas Blatt: Only the shadows remain. The uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp . Berlin 2000.
  18. ^ Jules Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp . Münster 2003, p. 332, note 477.
  19. ↑ Richard Rashke: Escape from Sobibór . Gerlingen 1998, p. 317. (According to testimony, Vallaster being referred to as "SS-Scharführer Fallaster". The name is pronounced in Vorarlberg as with "F".)
  20. ^ Jules Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp . Munster 2003.
  21. ↑ Pościg (German persecution). (No longer available online.) Muzeum Pojezierza Łęczyńsko-Włodawskiego, Włodawa , Poland, archived from the original on May 31, 2009 ; Retrieved on December 1, 2009 (Polish, report on the Sobibór extermination camp and the prisoner uprising, also contains information on the funeral of Josef Vallaster and others). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.muzeum.wlodawa.metronet.pl
  22. ↑ In his article in Die Presse on May 27, 2006, Peter Huemer addresses the “ Austrian victim myth ” ( see online article ).
  23. ↑ Die Presse of May 27, 2006 : Report by Peter Huemer: We were there. Farewell to the so-called victim myth .
  24. ↑ Hans Netzer: Silbertaler soldiers in World War II. 2001 (see literature).
  25. ↑ a b Story of a mass murderer. Silbertaler Geschichtswerkstatt has thoroughly dealt with the life of Nazi perpetrator Josef Vallaster. (No longer available online.) In: News: Press release. Stand Montafon (www.stand-montafon.at), November 2008, formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 1, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stand-montafon.at  
  26. ↑ Karin Bitschnau: Review: Lampert Academy 2008. Katholische Kirche Vorarlberg, July 23, 2009, accessed on December 25, 2009 .
  27. ↑ The war memorial in Silbertal will be removed. ORF (vorarlberg.orf.at), June 15, 2009, accessed on December 1, 2009 .
  28. ^ Jutta Berger: Silbertal in Vorarlberg. Controversial war memorial removed. Der Standard (derstandard.at), June 25, 2009, accessed on November 30, 2009 .
  29. ↑ The threat of neo-Nazis. Liechtensteiner Volksblatt (www.volksblatt.li), June 28, 2009, accessed on November 30, 2009 .
  30. ↑ Successfully dealt with the Nazi past in Silbertal. Meznar Media (www.meznar-media.com), November 12, 2009, accessed November 30, 2009 .
  31. ↑ Crypt: Darabos struck out SS war criminals. ORF (wien.orf.at), June 17, 2012, accessed on June 17, 2012 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 17th, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Vallaster, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian National Socialist and Nazi perpetrator
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Silbertal
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 1943
Place of death Sobibór extermination camp