Carmella Flöck

Carmella Flöck (born October 28, 1898 in Innsbruck ; † December 20, 1982 there ) was an Austrian resistance fighter and survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

Life

Carmella Flöck in the 1920s

Carmella Flöck was born out of wedlock to the tailor Juliane Flöck in Innsbruck. After attending elementary school, the girls' bourgeois school and the Ursuline commercial school in Innsbruck, she worked for a bank from 1915 to 1923. She fell victim to downsizing and got by with odd jobs. During this time her mother took on another illegitimate girl as a foster child. Carmella Flöck now slipped into a kind of mother role for her foster sister, who was 24 years younger. In 1925, Flöck took up a position in the secretariat of the regional association of Catholic workers' associations in Tyrol. These Christian workers' associations were according to the main features of the encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII. was founded. Flöck last worked in a leading position in the association secretariat until the National Socialists occupied it on March 11, 1938 and subsequently dissolved the Catholic workers' associations. Carmella Flöck began working as a secretary for the architect Franz Baumann in 1938 . She remained hostile to the Nazi regime and was therefore accepted by an acquaintance in his resistance group. She recruited new members for this resistance group and worked as a courier. Since the group fell victim to treason, the Gestapo arrested Carmella Flöck on October 10, 1942. After several months in prison in the Innsbruck State Prisoner House, she was sent to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp on February 20, 1943 with the prisoner number 17046 . Carmella Flöck survived the concentration camp despite suffering from typhus . After the liberation, she returned to Innsbruck and worked for the Association of Victims of National Socialist Oppression in Tyrol and from 1949 as Secretary of the Provincial Council and temporarily Deputy Governor Hans Gamper .

Awards

Carmella Flöck was the holder of the Decoration of Honor of the State of Tyrol (1958) as well as the Decoration of Honor for Services to the Liberation of Austria (1977).

plant

After her retirement in 1961, Carmella Flöck wrote down her memories of her imprisonment in the Innsbruck State Prison House and in the Ravensbrück concentration camp between 1965 and 1970 . She kept the manuscript under lock and key until her death. In 2012, her report was published in book form for the first time.

literature

• Peter Eppel (among others), Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (ed.): Resistance and persecution in Tyrol 1934–1945. A documentation. Volume 2. Österreichischer Bundesverlag ( inter alia), Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-215-05368-3 , pp. 384, 442-443.
• Rosi Hirschegger: "They weren't heroines ..." . In: Almud Magis (Ed.): Matters of opinion. 61 reasons to leave Innsbruck or stay there . Michael-Gaismair-Gesellschaft, Innsbruck 1996, ISBN 3-900601-08-9 , pp. 57-63.
• Ruth Frömpter: The story of Carmella Flöck. In: Gabriele Rath, Andrea Sommerauer, Martha Verdorfer (eds.): Bozen-Innsbruck. Historical city tours . Folio-Verlag, Vienna / Bozen 2000, ISBN 3-85256-125-6 , pp. 114–118.
• Carmella Flöck, Friedrich Stepanek (ed.): ... and dreamed that I was free. A Tyrolean woman in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. Memories of resistance and imprisonment 1938–1945. Tyrolia-Verlag, Innsbruck 2012, ISBN 978-3-7022-3217-7 . - Table of contents .

Web links

• The life story of Carmella Flöck on a webpage about Austrian women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
• Five-minute radio broadcast about Carmella Flöck

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Flöck: ... and dreamed that I was free , pp. 180–240.
2. ^ Carmella Flöck: Memories - Ravensbrück Concentration Camp . Manuscript (electronic resource), Innsbruck 1965–1970. (Online at ALO ).