Friedrich Zawrel

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Friedrich Zawrel 2013
Photo: Christine Kainz

Friedrich Zawrel (born November 17, 1929 in Lyon as Friedrich Pumperla ; † February 20, 2015 in Vienna ) was an Austrian survivor of the child euthanasia program during the National Socialist era .

Friedrich Zawrel's childhood is one of the best-documented résumés of children in Austria between 1938 and 1945 . At the age of eleven, Zawrel had already spent five years in three reforming homes and with foster parents before he was admitted to the Am Spiegelgrund hospital in January 1941 . Around 7,500 patients - including around 800 children - were murdered there. Under Heinrich Gross and Ernst Illing , he was exposed to drug trials and sadistic methods and was used as an object of study for nursing students.

Without a school leaving certificate or vocational training, Zawrel was convicted of property crimes several times and then examined in 1975 by Gross, who was now a busy court appraiser. Zawrel expressed allegations to him about his Nazi past. Gross prepared a negative report for Zawrel, in which he referred to passages from Illings in 1943 under National Socialism reports, and recommended permanent placement in an institution for dangerous recidivists. With the support of the journalist Wolfgang Höllrigl , the doctor Werner Vogt and the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kritische Medizin”, Zawrel was able to make Gross' entanglements known; he himself was dismissed in 1981 after a new and this time impartial appraisal.

As a contemporary witness , Zawrel later made a significant contribution to coming to terms with the crimes of Nazi medicine on Spiegelgrund and was honored with the Golden Medal of Merit of the City of Vienna and the Golden Medal of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Life

childhood

When Friedrich Zawrel was born, his mother (Leopoldine Pumperla, born 1910), who had not found a job because of the high unemployment in Vienna, worked in a silk mill in Lyon. At the same time she wanted - not yet suspecting of her pregnancy - to get away from Friedrich's father, who was a trained locksmith but had been an alcoholic since he was 18 and his mother died. Friedrich's parents were not married, which is why he was initially called Pumperla after his mother. Only when his parents got married in 1939 did he get the family name Zawrel. The doctors and nurses in Lyon tried in vain to persuade Leopoldine to give Friedrich up for adoption. However, since she did not earn enough money to care for Friedrich during her working hours, she lost her job.

Back in Vienna, they lived at Schiffmühlenstrasse 49 in Kaisermühlen , a part of Vienna's 22nd district . They lived together with Leopoldine's sisters (Grete and Frieda, born 1922 and 1924) and brothers (Anton and Karl, born 1915 and 1919) as well as Friedrich's siblings, who were born in 1931 (Erika) and 1933 (Kurt), in one of the molds infested apartment. Friedrich had his sleeping place at the foot of the bed in which his aunts slept. Leopoldine Pumperla left the house very early every day to do cleaning work in mansions in Salmannsdorf and in the city ​​center ; she walked, there wasn't enough money for the tram. Friedrich's aunts and uncles, who “took care” of him, were unemployed, like the rest of the house parties. Occasionally, Friedrich and other children begged something to eat in a nearby Salvatorian convent . When he fainted from hunger at home one day, he was nursed for a few days in the monastery. When Friedrich's father came to visit, he was always drunk and he often beat Leopoldine, Anton and Karl because he wanted the two brothers to move out. He had schnitzel and beer fetched from the landlord and ate it all by himself while Friedrich stood by and watched him.

Finally Leopoldine could no longer raise the money for the rent. When Friedrich and Kurt were evicted on July 20, 1935, they were transferred to the city of Vienna's child transfer center ; Grete, Frieda and Erika came to live with foster parents, Karl went to the Lindenhof reformatory in Eggenburg . Friedrich's psychological behavior was described as lively in the health journal. On October 20, 1935, Zawrel's brother Kurt was chosen as a foster child by Mrs. Maria Heilinger. When a sister told her that she had to take her brother, Friedrich, she said, "No, I won't take him, he's much too shitty [ugly]", before she reluctantly took him to Kaiserebersdorf at Dreherstrasse 69. On the way she bought chocolate for Kurt, Friedrich got nothing. Maria Heilinger and her husband Alois as well as their parents lived in the one-storey two-family house, and her brother and his family lived on the other side, whereby the two families lived in constant conflict. There was a well in front of the house, but there was no electricity, gas or sewerage. The foster father was initially unemployed, but due to his membership in the Fatherland Front, he soon got a job as an unskilled worker in the Slavonia wood factory. Kurt was pampered by the foster parents and taken to visit relatives, Friedrich was called in to work and had to kneel on logs. He had to look after the goats, rabbits, chickens and sometimes pigs kept in a sty behind the house that the family fed, and he had to fetch the water from the well to water the vegetables growing in the garden. When his mother came to visit him, he didn't know what to talk to her because the Heilingers were always there. When he said goodbye to his mother, he cried, which Frau Heilinger didn't like. Rather, the boy should call her “mother” and her husband “father”, but Friedrich continued to call her Mrs. and Mr. Heilinger. When he started elementary school in September 1936, he could only do his homework in the evening when it was dark and he had finished the work assigned to him. At school he and three or four orphans living in the monastery were excluded; their classmates were children of the surrounding landlords or nurseries, who brought fruit and vegetables for the teachers and had money when donations were collected “for the poor children in Africa”.

In March 1938, the foster parents drove to Heldenplatz with Friedrich to cheer for Hitler's invasion . The foster father Friedrich took the hand for the first time. The school principal has been changed. Zawrel was only criticized by his teacher and subjected to the mockery of the class. When they were supposed to be drawing an avenue, left and right with swastika flags , the teacher presented Zawrel's drawing as a mockery of the swastika flag. Because he did not emphasize a poem about the same flag as intended by the teacher, it was written to the foster parents. The sons of the gardeners and landlords came to school in brown shirts and were already pimps .

In October 1939 Friedrich wanted to look for his mother and ran away. Straying around haphazardly, he was picked up by a police officer and brought back again. He was accused of stealing thirty Reichsmarks from his mother's brother and was returned to the child care center a month later and then to the central children's home in Vienna. There, the Völkischer Beobachter was read in class and, depending on the report, the appropriate party, Hitler Youth or Wehrmacht song was sung. After class, the boys were kept busy “building” their beds again and again: If someone didn't do it properly, everyone had to start over; there was always some flaw. The sister then asked to thank the person for having "spoiled" their free time, whereupon they spanked him and the sister tore up all the beds again. They didn't see through the tactics. The children were only allowed to use the toilet every hour. Had someone outside of time, the sister left the others line up in front of their beds and they had with the front of it Stockerl squats do. She then ordered them to “teach” that child to behave in a disciplined manner and not have to go to the bathroom outside of the hour.

On March 27, 1940, the central children's home reported to the child care center that Friedrich Zawrel had changed to his advantage, that he was integrating well into the community and that he was hard-working, willing and easy to use for work. In June 1940 he was transferred to the Mödling educational institution , from where he was released home a month later. The parents, now married, had been asked to take their children with them. With the meanwhile born sisters Helga (* 1938) and Traude (* 1940) there were now five children with their parents in the apartment at Erdbergstrasse 3, which consisted of two small rooms, a kitchen and a small anteroom. Friedrich often had to pick up his drunken father from the inn, who was only able to show fatherly feelings when he was drunk. Halfway sober he was aloof and Friedrich had the feeling that he didn't even exist for him. On one of those ways home, after two Wehrmacht officers had passed them, he leaned down to Friedrich and said: “If you go to the club, I'll kill you. But when Stalin comes, you can join the Red Army. ”A little later, his father was engaged in the locomotive factory in Floridsdorf and he was summoned to be a Reich Labor Trustee. The latter handed him a primer with instructions on how to behave in the future and threatened: "If there is the slightest deviation from this, we have a place in Esterwegen ." Friedrich learned from his mother that the father was afraid wanted to take life before the future. In the years that followed, the father was never intoxicated, showed up for work on time and, according to the primer, gave the mother the unopened wage bag . Since his father was found unworthy of defense, Friedrich received a letter stating that he was excluded from all organizations affiliated with the NSDAP . This fact in itself did not offend him, but the resulting exclusion from the class community of the secondary school, since other children wore uniforms or at least had a Hitler Youth badge. They asked him why he didn't come to the home evenings, and Friedrich had no answer. The classmates made assumptions: “Well maybe he is not allowed to, because he is a half Jew or a 32nd Jew.” “Well, if he were a Jew, then he would be in the concentration camp .” - Friedrich Zawrel made these statements in his later Living out as proof that people did not “know nothing” because his classmates already knew that there were concentration camps. - Friedrich Zawrel no longer wanted to go to school and hung around the markets or in the Vienna Woods . Even when his mother tried to accompany him, he ran away from her. In the report of the class teacher, which was later quoted in a report by Erwin Jekelius , one could read:

“Zawrel Friedrich does not take part in the lessons. The boy often said that he wasn't happy about school. He was often absent, even though his mother sent him to school. The boy loved to hang around in marketplaces. In class, Zawrel was calm, made friends with no one, and dozed off. Practicing and learning was a superfluous activity for him. "

When Zawrel's siblings Kurt and Erika skipped school and were caught stealing fountain pens, erasers and Christmas tree decorations on Mariahilfer Strasse , the officials discovered that the two were sleeping in one bed - as a result of their poverty, but it was rated as incestuous behavior and the children - including Friedrich Zawrel - subject to "social deprivation". The incident served as the reason for the renewed transfer of Zawrel and the two older siblings to the child transfer center in January 1941 and was then found in reports and assessments of Zawrel for thirty-four years. After a short stay in another home, Friedrich Zawrel was transferred to the Am Spiegelgrund welfare institution on January 21, 1941 .

Youth in the Nazi welfare institutions

Anthropological measuring and photography chair in the Steinhof memorial

Friedrich Zawrel, like his brother Kurt, was initially housed in pavilion 7, but because of the age difference they were placed in different groups. Zawrel was examined and measured by Heinrich Gross. Zawrel heard how the mentally ill disappeared from neighboring pavilions and the sisters employed there were then transferred to the educational institution, but at that time he was not yet able to classify the events . Soon it was moved to the closed pavilion 9. There were no friendships among the boys, everyone's own survival was important and the sisters and teachers encouraged them to fight each other. The teacher, who was responsible for two groups and constantly ran back and forth between them, saw his job less in teaching and more in passing the time until lunch. One of the sisters had the children march in rows of three in front of pavilions 4, 6 and 8, which were used as hospitals, and sing for the wounded soldiers.

After being moved to a special children's home in Pressbaum for three weeks , Friedrich Zawrel came to a home on Dreherstrasse for a month, the same street where he had lived with his former foster parents for four years. All children of serious alcoholics or serious criminals were brought together in the home. On September 24, 1941, he and thirty other boys were transferred to Ybbs on the Danube , to a branch of the Am Spiegelgrund institution, while his brother Kurt was transferred to the Hohe Warte educational institution and his sister Erika to the Klosterneuburg educational institution.

The home in Ybbs, which was housed in the right wing of the psychiatric institution , was separated from the psychiatric institution on the upper floor by a chain blocking the connecting corridor, on which a sign read "Crossing the chain is strictly prohibited". On the side of the psychiatry there was a floor-to-ceiling grille with a hall behind it. Friedrich Zawrel, standing by the cordon, saw this room, which was crammed with sick people. Eye contact was made with a young man, who then gesticulated without a word and begged for food. Zawrel went to look for the remains of bread, then climbed the chain and brought the bread to the sick man. It triggered a terrible cry from the hungry sick, as each of them wanted some of the bread. Zawrel was beaten up by two educators and locked in a punishment cell made of concrete. When he was allowed out again after a few days, he was supposed to see a doctor and met Heinrich Gross again, who no longer recognized him. Gross only spoke to the educator and said that Zawrel could go back to the group. However, Friedrich Zawrel asked for an ointment for his buttocks, which were sore from the blows, to which his underpants always stuck and the wound tore open again. Gross denied and said that something had to hurt and hurt for a long time, so that he could remember that something like the one he had done was forbidden. When Zawrel passed the hall again , the hall was empty . He remembered how the nursing staff at Spiegelgrund had talked about the fact that the Nazis were going to kill all fools. Now he understood and the empty room was even closer to him than the full one. In his later life, he described Ybbs as one of the saddest memories of his youth under National Socialism.

On September 3, 1942, Zawrel was sent to the Mödling educational institution. There an educator took him to his home at night. Zawrel accepted the abuse for a while because he got more freedom for it, but in the end it bothered him that he didn't get a night's rest. When he fell asleep at school, he told everything to his teacher, who in horror reported it to the management. All boys were questioned and it was found that several children were affected by the abuse. The educator was arrested, Zawrel was placed in the punishment group. After a conversation with the psychiatrist Winkelmeier, Zawrel heard how he then said to his home mother: "If the boy has put up with this for so long, over such a long period of time, then he is either like this or he is not normal."

Spiegelgrund, pavilion 17

Entrance to pavilion 17

On January 17, 1943, Zawrel was transferred to Pavilion 17 on Spiegelgrund. He met Heinrich Gross again, who made the "access visit". After a few days he was examined, measured, photographed and tested by Ernst Illing and experienced almost all the atrocities that were common in Illing's pavilion 17. A Pneumoenzephalographie is pressed in for an x-ray of backbone of air into the brain chambers was also made, such as a "cold-water" in which he of two nurses who kept him on a hand and a foot, several times in a bathtub was immersed in cold water until the last air bubbles rose, whereby it only came into the air for a brief moment in between. They then left him on the ground and he vomited the water. Zawrel was also given a "wrapping regimen" in which he was wrapped in wet sheets like a mummy and tied to an ambulance bed until the sheets had dried from body heat. He questioned the meaning of the pills he had to take every day that made him tired and apathetic. Once when he did not want to take it, the nurses forced him to do so by force; As a result, he had to ask the nurse every day to be allowed to take his pills so that he would get well again quickly - even though he wasn't sick at all.

When Zawrel was in his cell, all he could do was pace back and forth. There were no classes in pavilion 17 and nothing with which to pass the time. It was forbidden to speak to the doctor during the rounds, but Zawrel managed to ask Illing during one of his rounds whether he could go to school or at least have a book or some other activity. Illing yelled at him: “You creature, you have no requests to make, you have to obey. A fool doesn't need books. ”After Zawrel replied that he didn't even know the day of the week, and Illing hit him, Zawrel yelled at him:

"One thing I know for sure, when the Russians come and if nobody's hanging it up, hang you up."

Zawrel was punished for this with a oral injection with the active ingredient apomorphine administered by Gross . In addition, his mother was summoned to Illing and asked where he had heard about the Russians, since he could not have heard it in the other homes. Illing threatened her with the concentration camp.

Memorial to the victims on Spiegelgrund

Through a scratched pane of frosted glass, Zawrel saw a man in a gray work coat taking children's corpses away from Pavilion 15. He realized that patients were being killed there one after the other. He also noticed that it was very quiet in pavilion 17 at 2 p.m., and he assumed that the children were brought to pavilion 15 at this time. So he was scared to death one day at 2 pm a nurse appeared and said to him, "Get dressed!" But Zawrel was not intended for the killing, but had to serve Illing as a study object for the nurses' school. He stood naked on a pedestal in front of around thirty young student nurses and had to endure how Illing demonstrated the characteristics of his “genetic and sociological inferiority” with a pointer. Head, ears and upper body are too big, the legs too short. Finally Illing hit his buttocks with the pointer and he jumped off the podium. The sisters laughed like it was a circus performance.

Escape after Illing's report

Between 1940 and December 1943, Zawrel fled a total of ten times from the homes in Mödling and Ybbs and from Spiegelgrund. He never managed to go into hiding for more than a week or two before the police picked him up and brought him back. Then he received regular "sulfur cure" injections from Gross, which gave him such pain in his legs that he could only move with difficulty. When he fled on December 2, 1943, he tried to earn some money by delivering coal when an acquaintance of the coal merchant claimed that Zawrel had tried to cheat him. After a report to the police, he was brought back to Spiegelgrund and fled again on January 31st. When he was caught and brought back on January 6, 1944, Illing made an entry in the medical record in which he stated that Zawrel blamed everything on the welfare, the homes and the educators. He, Illing, would find it disgusting how Zawrel portrayed himself as a victim of the circumstances. He made no move to change, and he would probably like his life so far. When the Chief Public Prosecutor requested a youth psychiatric report from the Vienna Youth Court about the complaint, Illing wrote the document on January 12, 1944, to which Heinrich Gross was referring in 1975.

“He comes from a hereditary and sociologically inferior family. [...] Friedrich Zawrel, who was mentally gifted according to his age, did not have the slightest evidence of psychosis or a state of twilight. He comes from a criminal, anti-social clan. [...] Due to the longitudinal profile of his life and the observations made here, environmental influences are of secondary importance for him. Rather, the young person's disposition is grossly abnormal in several directions. In the foreground is his monstrous temperament, to which his reckless approach, his rudeness, the repeated property offenses, frauds, self-assured lies [...] can be traced back. He has no attachment to people, cannot be influenced by praise and censure, his behavior, which is occasionally shown as if he was impressed by censure and punishment, is largely hypocritical and controlled by the mind. Time and again he has shown himself incapable of repentance. [...] He doesn't shy away from threats. According to the nurses' reports, when the war reports are unfavorable, he shows glee at the misfortunes of the empire. He says quite openly: 'When the Bolsheviks come, I'll go to the partisans.' [...]

This inherently given character image is predestined for active, anti-social and criminal behaviors, as Zawrel has proven in the property offenses and frauds that he is accused of. Because of these gross mental (character) irregularities, despite his good intellectual talents, according to youth psychiatric experience, he can be described as not educable in the sense of welfare education. This does not in the least prevent him from being judged as fully criminally responsible within the meaning of the RJGG. [...]

Going beyond the scope of the report, the youth psychiatric side, if the requirements are met, advocates the imposition of youth prison for an indefinite period. [...] With the actively antisocial, criminally inclined young person, the possibility must be reckoned with that he will relapse and, if necessary, the application of § 60 of the RJGG [the transfer to a youth protection camp ] will have to be considered later . "

When Zawrel was supposed to be picked up by the police on March 21, 1944, Sister Rosa helped him to escape. She told him there was a robe in the bathroom and the doors were open, and: "Make sure you never come back here." After he had made it over the wall, he was hit by a cyclist in Rosentalgasse, whom he initially distrusted. taken to his apartment in Hütteldorf and clothed and fed by his wife. Zawrel got a few more marks and was bid farewell with the words "Forget the house". Zawrel slept in sand boxes, in telephone boxes and in an abandoned riding school. He got in touch with his brother Kurt and let his mother know that he would be waiting for her at eight in the morning at Rochusmarkt . She came and brought him food, but also reproached him for being afraid for the family and for the police stopping by because she suspected she was helping him. So after a few meetings, Zawrel stopped coming. He slept buried in bales of straw in Stammersdorf or Gerasdorf and tried to find something to eat in Vienna during the day.

When he tried to steal a package at the Nordbahnhof in which he suspected food, he was immediately arrested and after a few days brought to the juvenile court . There Zawrel was first shown to the director on April 14, 1944, and he greeted - as he had learned to do in Mödling and a sign on the door requested it - with an outstretched arm and the words " Heil Hitler ". The director dealt him a blow, and Zawrel only came to again in a solitary cell. There was no furniture in it, unplastered walls, a stinking bin as a toilet and a cellar window high up. Zawrel spent a total of eight days in correctional detention in this cell. After that time he had to go to the director again. An official warned him not to greet him again with "Heil Hitler", which Zawrel did not understand because of the request at the door, but nevertheless heeded the advice and did not greet him when he entered. When the director asked if Zawrel knew why he was in the correction cell, he had no answer. The director yelled at him:

“You are not worthy to take the name of the Führer in your filthy mouth. Remember that for the future. "

At the hearing on September 9, 1944, the verdict was 18 months. A month later he was transferred to the Kaiserebersdorf juvenile prison on foot and by tram, tied up with a heavy iron chain . On the advice of colleagues, he was assigned to work in the laundry. Worked twelve hours on weekdays. Before and after that, the inmates had to line up in the parade yard and were divided up in a long procedure and counted over and over again. They were only thinly dressed and wore wooden slippers, even in winter. If the inmates showed that they were cold, they had to march right around in a circle and sing "It's so nice to be a soldier" or sing other soldier songs. Except in the officers' office, the house was only heated on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., the cells were cold and had ice flowers on the windows. Showered in the cold bathroom with ice-cold water. Zawrel worked as a stoker in the laundry, but the fire had to be extinguished in the event of an air raid, and it was an air raid almost every day. Since the laundry was needed, however, work was finally carried out at night. Mr Stefan, an officer in charge of the laundry, managed to get better food for Zawrel and his colleagues due to the night shift - instead of the poor prison food, they got the leftovers from the barracks from now on, so Zawrel no longer had to starve and could also give something to his cellmates . He also found things in uniform skirts, which he had to check before washing, that he could exchange for jam at Mr. Stefan's and one day even for a detector . Despite good opportunities, Zawrel did not flee in order not to cause trouble for Mr. Stefan.

End of war

As the Red Army drew nearer, work in the laundry stopped; prisoners were transferred from Münchendorf , where Kaiserebersdorf's agricultural branch was located. They also brought pigs and other animals with them, which were immediately slaughtered and eaten. However, many inmates could not tolerate the fatty food after a long period of only receiving prison food. Thanks to the better food in the laundry, Zawrel kept everything in his stomach. In mid-March 1945 prisoners were retired from the Wehrmacht - Zawrel was lucky and was not among them, but now suffered again from the meager prison food. The director was patronizing when he announced that the prisoners would be evacuated as the Russians would not spare anyone. On April 5, 1945 they marched to the Reichsbrücke , two of them tied together and guarded by soldiers and the SS . Locked in the hold, they were taken up the Danube in barges. Two blankets were thrown in the hold for each, but because the law of the stronger counted, some had only one, others three. First they moored in Stein on the Danube , where the senior teacher Samer, who was in charge of the action, bought bread and margarine for the prisoners from the Stein prison. When he returned, he threatened the prisoners:

"The slightest perk and you feel like those in Stein are now ."

After a night in Ybbs on the Danube and three boiled potatoes , they drove on to Linz . The air raid alarm, followed by a hail of bombs and rocking of the boat caused many of the weakened youths to vomit or piss them in fear; one perished, one killed himself. The dead were kicked through the railing into the water. There was only water from the Danube to drink. When the nurses and doctors from the Red Cross came and saw the young people, they declared them unfit for transport, they belonged in a hospital. But Samer said that it was not their concern; wherever the fellows came was his job. The Red Cross provided the young people with rice soup and a piece of bread before the boat went on to Passau . Those who could still walk got potato soup at the district court . On the way back, some boys were able to escape with the help of passers-by, but Zawrel continued with the boat that was heading for Straubing next . Samer again got bread before they drove on. Boys repeatedly died from the contaminated Danube water. They reached Regensburg , where everyone had to go ashore. Some were too weak; soldiers dragged them out of the hold. Samer announced: "This is the end of the journey, but we are very fortunate that we no longer fall into the hands of the Soviets, at most the Americans."

Everyone had to go to the prison in Regensburg , they were given soup and bread. A freight station next door was constantly bombed, and a section of the prison building was hit at night. Zawrel and his cellmates could only breathe through wet towels because there was so much dust in the air. The next day, April 26, 1945, the prisoners were released by the American military and the cells were unlocked. The young people were given cocoa and warm donuts , as well as discharge cards with which they were supposed to see how they would get home. While many of them gave false names, Zawrel thought that because of the one package he stole under Hitler, he didn't need to. The release card authorized Zawrel to participate in the feedings that the Americans had set up for forced laborers and people from concentration camps. After leaving with two friends, he got dysentery and ended up in the hospital, where he was nursed for four weeks and received good food.

Homecoming

Zawrel stole a bicycle to be able to ride from Regensburg back to Vienna. Since the post office did not work, he became a substitute postman on the way to Passau. People asked him where he was going and gave him their mail. If he gave them to the addressee, he usually got something to eat. As the Americans did anyone happen in Passau, Zawrel exchanged a few kilometers upstream of the bicycle against the crossing over the river Inn with a Zille . He made his way on foot to Enns , but the Americans didn't let anyone pass there. He heard rumors that corpses were piled up in Vienna and that epidemics had already broken out. When the mayor's office asked how he could get home, he was assigned to the "Meier in der Wies" farm in Grünbrunn , where he was allowed to sleep in a room next to the horse stable and was given something to eat. In addition to Zawrel, soldiers who had returned from captivity and former Polish forced laborers were also on the farm, so that around thirty people sat together while eating and spooned from a common soup bowl. The farmer, Johann Winkler, told Zawrel that he had been with the Nazi farmers' union and that that is why so many people were now being assigned to him as a punishment. Zawrel made friends with the twelve-year-old son and asked Winkler if he could help with the work. When he was introduced to farming, he felt he belonged.

Zawrel was able to find the new address of his parents at Geologengasse 4 through the daughter of the sugar manufacturer supplied by Winkler; the house they used to live in was bombed. They let Zawrel tell that he shouldn't come home alone, that his father would pick him up. This came and smelled of alcohol again; he had started drinking again when he saw the first Russian. He condemned Winkler for his membership in the NSDAP; Zawrel found this unjust, as he had not, after all, committed any war crimes. He would rather stay at Winkler's farm; but since he was still a minor he had no choice but to go with his father. Winkler filled their rucksacks with food, bacon and a bottle of schnapps. In Enns they met Russians. The father bought a bottle of schnapps and they could go on. From St. Valentin they took the train. During the journey, the father started a fight with another passenger and the fellow travelers threatened to go to the police at the Westbahnhof .

The father beat his mother, brother and Zawrel, and he decided that Zawrel should be a waiter at a friend of his, which he was reluctant to do. Since he could not show a certificate in the vocational school, he had to finish the apprenticeship. If the father didn't come home in the evening, Zawrel went to look for him so that he wouldn't spend all the money. Zawrel told his mother that he couldn't take it any longer and wanted to go back to Upper Austria. After she had accompanied him to Hütteldorf-Hacking , he set out on foot and came to Amstetten . There he was checked by a gendarme and arrested for vagrancy because he had no money. He was sentenced to eight days of strict youth detention. After serving this, he was sent home. At a company in Amstetten, he was allowed to ride in a truck to Vienna in exchange for help with loading.

When he got home, he experienced the same hell from which he had fled. He only slept at home when his father was away; when he came, Zawrel stayed with friends. Since he had no job, he kept himself afloat with more or less criminal acts and was arrested again in September 1946. Although the juvenile court would have been responsible for him, he was brought to the Vienna Regional Court . As a newcomer, he was supposed to take a shower, but a prison guard stopped him in front of the bathroom and said: "Go on, there's still a head in there." That was what those sentenced to death were called. Zawrel saw that it was Ernst Illing, who was executed a little later. At his trial on November 28, 1946, Zawrel was sentenced to a juvenile court sentence for several minor property offenses, which he had to serve in full in the Graz-Karlau prison before he was released in early May 1948. Even though he wrote to his mother that he would not be coming home, she picked him up on the day he was released, and so he came with me.

Failure to attempt to lead a normal life

Zawrel was looking for work and was accepted as a tap boy at Hietzinger Platz in an officers' mess of the English. He worked for six weeks, did not get into debt, but the English had obtained information about him, and so the manager said to him: “You Fritz, I'm sorry, but I have to fire you. Why didn't you tell me that you have a criminal record? "

Zawrel immediately found work again as a tap boy, this time in a wine house with many branches, where he began to work on September 1, 1948. There he met his first girlfriend and future wife, Elfi, who lived with her parents across from his place of work and was doing an apprenticeship at Globus-Verlag. Because he always had to work to the last tram and only had Wednesdays off, he gladly accepted the offer to ride in a truck as an unskilled worker and have a weekend off. Zawrel was also responsible for collecting the delivery and often had 50,000 schillings in his pocket in the evening . His boss trusted him, he knew nothing about Zawrel's criminal record. A brother of his boss who ran a spice wholesaler wanted to poach Zawrel as a driver. Zawrel would not have had to carry heavy bags anymore and a second brother of the boss wanted to pay him the driver's license. But Zawrel turned down the offer because he suspected that he would not get a driver's license because of his criminal record. The latter was confirmed when he asked the police in Juchgasse - in a way that reminded him of Illing.

Since his boss kept asking him when he was getting his driver's license, Zawrel confessed his criminal record to him in early February 1950. The boss stuck to him and said that if Zawrel had told him about it earlier, he would not have been so scared about the driver's license. However, from then on, Zawrel felt he was being watched and could no longer bear the situation. When he went on sick leave, the boss spoke to his mother: “Friedrich should come back. He's only on sick leave because he doesn't want to come any more. ”Zawrel stopped coming.

He moved in with his girlfriend Elfi, and when she became pregnant the two married. Both were not of legal age and needed parental consent. Son Friedrich was born on April 27, 1950. Zawrel initially worked again as a tap boy, later as a shunter for the Soviet mineral oil administration in Lobau . After he was wedged between a locomotive and the loading ramp in February 1952, he was sick for months. Because of the persistent pain even after that, he asked for easier work and was transferred to a USIA branch on Karlsplatz, where he had to fill flour, semolina and sugar from large sacks into small ones. The small room reminded him of a dungeon and he found the work a punishment.

The marriage in the cabinet with the in-laws went well at first, but there were always arguments with the in-laws, for example because Zawrel refused to come to the traditional costume association "Oberlandler". The mother-in-law drank and so did the relatives who kept populating the apartment. Zawrel couldn't stand alcohol. There was also friction between Zawrel, his wife and the in-laws over the son. Because the father-in-law had had tuberculosis since World War I , the pulmonary care team recommended that Zawrel and his wife move out with the child. Zawrel was offered a row house in the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung from the housing department . The mother-in-law didn't want her daughter to move from the 15th to the 10th district, so Elfi, whose parents still had custody, didn't even look at the house. Instead, the mother-in-law found a two-room apartment nearby, over a coal shop. They could barely open the windows because of the coal dust. As a result of the never-ending quarrels, Zawrel moved back in with his mother. Elfi filed for divorce, stating that Zawrel had no time for the child and that he also drinks. Her lawyer found out about Zawrel's criminal record, which he had kept from her. After the divorce, he wanted to contact him more often to see his son, but shied away from the conflicts. Years later, when Zawrel tried to talk to his son, he accused him of killing his mother. After being married a second time by 1970, she moved in with her brother, who one day found her dead at the age of 39.

Zawrel's father, who had only worked during the war and belonged to the Honner police in 1945 , was on early retirement because of pulmonary asthma, and his mother worked in the kitchen of the Ottakringer brewery . Because of the father's drunkenness, there was a risk of eviction, which Zawrel and his sisters averted by renting an apartment for the father. The mother went there twice a week to clean and cook until he died in 1970. After the death of his father, Zawrel gave up his work at the USIA and now got to know his friends and their milieu: “gentlemen crooks” who carried out their raids without violence.

When Zawrel received a summons to the Vienna Regional Court in 1972, he knew that it was about a supermarket break-in several months ago that he had committed with two accomplices. One was already in custody and everything was exposed when his car was stolen. Zawrel, who meanwhile worked for a used car dealer, resigned his job and instead of complying with the court summons, he and the third in the league went into hiding in Italy and France, where they kept themselves afloat with casual thefts. He was advised to go to Lourdes to get some money, but when he saw the misery of the sick, he fled Lourdes and returned home in the late autumn of 1974. A week later, he was remanded in custody for the 1972 supermarket break-in.

Trapped and delivered to the psychiatrists

After a year of pre-trial detention, Zawrel was brought before the now busiest forensic psychiatrist in Austria, Heinrich Gross, on December 27, 1975. Zawrel had followed Gross' activity as a forensic psychiatrist through the newspapers over the years and could not understand “how it was possible that a man with such a past could have such an important position in the judicial apparatus, especially since his past through the trial before the People's Court was known ”. Sitting across from him, Zawrel said:

"Believe me, I know people who have committed hundreds of thousands of times more crime than I have, but they are respected people again today, in high positions and such."

Gross did not understand and did not recognize Zawrel. When asked if he had ever been psychiatricized, Zawrel replied:

“Doctor, you have a very bad memory for an academic. [...] Doctor, can you sleep well at all? Have you already forgotten the many dead children from pavilion 15, have you already forgotten the tortured and abused children from pavilion 17? "

Gross asked Zawrel if he knew anyone from back then and if he had told anyone about it. After Zawrel had answered in the negative to the questions - he had promised his mother because of the younger siblings he would never talk about Spiegelgrund again - Gross said that this would change the situation and promised Zawrel in a friendly manner all expert help. With the report he prepared, however, he spoke out in favor of keeping Zawrel behind bars in an institution for dangerous recidivists forever, and supported this among other things. a. with the Illings report from 1943.

On May 3, 1976, Zawrel wrote a letter to Justice Minister Christian Broda , in which he described the situation to him and expressed his dismay that thirty years after the death of Illing Gross, who was executed for 250 assassinations, he was still allowed to act as an expert. There was no answer, not even to another letter that Zawrel sent on May 15th. On May 25, Zawrel was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and then sent to an institution for dangerous relapse offenders. When he said to Gross on his way out that this was his last rip-off, Gross warned him to be careful, “it's not so nice in psychiatry”.

A letter to the Chief Public Prosecutor Otto F. Müller also went unanswered. On July 21, 1976, Zawrel was transferred to the Stein prison and received a visit there on February 23, 1977 by the neurologist and psychiatrist Otto Schiller, who was a friend of Gross and was also a court expert. Schiller was supposed to prepare an expert opinion on the question of the prerequisites for admission to an institution for dangerous recidivist offenders and to address Zawrel's allegations against Gross's opinion. This report, completed six months later, was also devastating for Zawrel. Schiller presented everything as if Zawrel had only imagined his experiences at Spiegelgrund. Among other things, he wrote about Zawrel:

"Friedrich Zawrel is a psychopathic syndrome that has been proven by the facts of the criminal record to lead to serious difficulties in classifying life."

As proof of Gross' innocence, he cited that during the election campaign in the spring of 1971 he was part of the support committee for Federal President Franz Jonas and that the Federal President was ultimately concerned about cleanliness. Werner Vogt wrote about this report in 1989:

"When Schiller said that, there was no judge who would have put the report where it belongs: first around the author's ears, then on the dung."

Support for Zawrel

After Zawrel was initially completely desperate, he got the idea to contact the courier in autumn 1978 . He did this by means of a cash register that an inmate who was about to be released smuggled out for him. Two weeks later the journalist Wolfgang Höllrigl came to him and the very progressive prison director Schreiner said to Zawrel: “You didn't do that stupid.” Höllrigl listened to Zawrel's story for an hour and a half in the presence of the director. On December 17, 1978, the full-page article appeared in the Kurier with the title: “A prisoner recognized Austria's busiest forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Gross a Nazi doctor again. A doctor from the Nazi murder clinic. ”It not only shed light on Gross’s past, but also some of the judgments made on the basis of his expert reports from large-scale trials were critically examined.

The Colonel from the Justice Guard, who censored the daily newspapers the prisoners subscribed to on that day (for example, articles about convictions were painted black), asked Zawrel whether he should leave Höllrigl's article uncensored. Zawrel wanted everyone to be able to read it, and received widespread approval from fellow prisoners, who were also examined by Gross. In addition, he was now given a single cell in which he felt more comfortable than in the communal cell. He was also able to continue his education in Stein and thanked the social worker Karl Rottenschlager by name .

The Critical Medicine Working Group, to which Michael Hubenstorf , who had previously become aware of Gross, and Werner Vogt belonged, got involved in the matter. Gross sued Vogt for defamation - in January 1979, Vogt had alleged that Gross was involved in the killing of hundreds of mentally ill children on a leaflet. In the proceedings that led to a guilty verdict for Vogt on February 22, 1980, Zawrel was supposed to testify, but when he wanted to report from Spiegelgrund, Judge Bruno Weis snapped at him that it didn't belong here.

The critical physician and Vogt's lawyer, Johannes Patzak, collected more and more evidence, although some of their paths were blocked; z. B. Although he had a power of attorney from Zawrel, Patzak was unable to see his medical records. On March 30, 1981, Vogt was acquitted before the Vienna Higher Regional Court under Judge Peter Hoffmann. It was not a conviction of Gross, but an conviction. The public prosecutor's office did not charge him with aiding and abetting murder, but found that it was just manslaughter and that it was time barred.

After his own acquittal, Vogt campaigned for Zawrel's release. In June 1981 he published a cover article in his profile with the headline "Zawrel's judicial scandal - Who protects us from court reports?" And stated:

“I have read his 'medical history', his court files, judgments, reports and am convinced that Friedrich Zawrel must be freed. [...] What he did bears no relation to what was done to him. "

Zawrel was released from prison on July 27, 1981, at the age of 52, after a new report, this time carried out by Gerhard Kaiser and sounding completely different.

In freedom

Zawrel moved back in with his mother, who was now retired, and worked in a screen printing company. In 1983 he got his driver's license and found a job as a delivery driver for Jugend am Werk . As a result of his work, he had to go to the Steinhof (the former Spiegelgrund) several times a week to supply the Jugend am Werk workshop there with work. Gross's official apartment was in the same house as the workshop, and so he met him several times. The two did not greet each other. In the hope that he would no longer have to supply the Steinhof, Zawrel told his boss about it, but there was no change.

After a heart attack, Zawrel was retired in 1996 and received a minimum pension with a compensatory allowance of around 8,000 schillings .

After his imprisonment, Zawrel initially only made sparse contact with Werner Vogt, because he had inhibitions due to his criminal past and did not want to harm him. When another Spiegelgrund victim, Johann Gross, contacted him about a joint meeting, he turned down the offer. As he said in his 2001 biography, Zawrel was glad that he could be home and that it was all over.

“And that I'm alive. I've had the experience that everything is pointless. I ran into a wall, Gross is still the respected appraiser and earns millions. "

Finally, at the end of 1997, Gross was charged with murder after meticulous research by the historian Mathias Dahl and the profile editor Marianne Enigl , the complaint by Wolfgang Neugebauer and - the public prosecutor again suggested that the proceedings be closed - by approving the prosecution in a parliamentary debate after Elisabeth Pittermann and Erwin Rasinger had spoken out in favor. In nine cases, Gross' direct involvement in the child murders was proven, but he was able to evade the trial and thus his conviction until his death because of alleged dementia.

In January 1998 Zawrel took part in a symposium on euthanasia for the first time and from then until his death he attended countless schools and events to report as a witness . He was also available for documentaries, and films and plays were made (see the section on artistic debate ).

Wolfgang Neugebauer helped Zawrel to apply for a victim's pension in 2000. Together they filled out the application, and Zawrel also needed a medical certificate. The medical officer leafed through his file, didn't say a word to Zawrel, then dictated his findings:

"According to the adolescent psychiatric report of January 12, 1944, it is a hereditary, heavily burdened adolescent who is grossly abnormal in character in several directions, with a monstrous low temper to be observed in the foreground [...]"

Zawrel fled the practice. In the end, however, he received a pension under the Victims Welfare Act and was now able to live with a total of 14,000 schillings (around 1,000 euros).

Zawrel also received compensation from the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism (5,087.10 euros). In 2008 he was awarded the Golden Medal of Merit of the City of Vienna . In 2013 he was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria , and Werner Vogt gave the laudatory speech.

death

Nikolaus Habjan during his funeral speech with the hand puppet F. Zawrel

Zawrel died on February 20, 2015. City Councilor Sonja Wehsely praised his work in a press release:

“Friedrich Zawrel was prepared to relive his own martyrdom over and over again through his eyewitness accounts throughout his life. He took this upon himself in an admirable way in order to make an extraordinary contribution to ensuring that future generations face their responsibility. [...] Friedrich Zawrel has always made it clear to us that we have to take this responsibility seriously. His demise must not be an end to the crimes of Spiegelgrund. We must keep the thoughts and memories of these atrocities alive and face the confrontation with the past, in the spirit of 'never forget!' We all owe that to Friedrich Zawrel. "

The farewell to Zawrel took place on March 16 in the Simmering fire hall . The speakers were Werner Vogt , Sonja Wehsely , Wolfgang Brandstetter and Nikolaus Habjan .

Friedrich Zawrel was buried on April 20, 2015 in the Vienna Central Cemetery in a grave of honor (group 40, row 6, number 21).

Awards

Honorary grave of Friedrich Zawrel at the Vienna Central Cemetery

Artistic exploration

drama

Movie

  • Angelika Schuster, Tristan Sindelgruber: Child and Youth Welfare (Part 7 of the film series Forgotten Victims ), 2002/2012, oral history interview with Friedrich Zawrel
  • Elisabeth Scharang : Mein Mörder , 2005 (with a brief appearance by Zawrel as a trial spectator), Wega Film Vienna.
  • Elisabeth Scharang: Meine liebe Republik , 2006, documentary with Friedrich Zawrel and Florian Klenk , Wega Film Vienna.

literature

  • Steve Sem-Sandberg : The Chosen (Klett-Cotta 2015, Swedish first edition under the title De utvalda , 2014); The documentary novel deals with the story of the fictional Adrian Ziegler, based on the biography of Friedrich Zawrel, with euthanasia in Spiegelgrund.

literature

  • Oliver Lehmann, Traudl Schmidt: In the clutches of Dr. Gross: the abused life of Friedrich Zawrel . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7076-0115-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastian Pumberger: Spiegelgrund survivor Friedrich Zawrel died . In: Der Standard , February 20, 2015
  2. ↑ Former Spiegelgrund victim honored in Vienna. derStandard, May 15, 2013, accessed on March 14, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oliver Lehmann, Traudl Schmidt: In the Fangs of Dr. Large. The abused life of Friedrich Zawrel . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7076-0115-3 (The article is mainly based on this book. Information on the quotations: Vogt in profile: p. 10; class teacher: p. 40; Zawrel an Illing (Russians): P. 67; Illings report: p. 72–73; director juvenile court: p. 79; senior teacher Samer: p. 90 (1st) and p. 91 (2nd); Zawrel on Gross: p. 140; dictation of the medical officer: P. 180. Information regarding divorce, son and his allegation: P. 113–116).
  4. ↑ a b c d Interview Friedrich Zawrel on the website of the Steinhof Memorial: Video , transcription
  5. ^ Elisabeth Scharang: My dear republic (excerpt). 2007, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  6. ^ Herbert Exenberger: Prison instead of education. Kaiser-Ebersdorf youth prison 1940–1945 . Ed .: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance . S. 13 ( doew.at [PDF]).
  7. ^ Herbert Exenberger: Prison instead of education. Kaiser-Ebersdorf youth prison 1940–1945 . Ed .: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance . S. 13 ( doew.at [PDF]).
  8. ↑ With hammer and sickle in the state police. Die Presse, July 13, 2012, accessed March 5, 2015 .
  9. ↑ a b c d Birgit Koller: The media processing of the victim-perpetrator role in the Second Republic depicted on the basis of the feature film Mein Mörder . 2009, p. 95-98 ( othes.univie.ac.at [PDF]).
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Höllrigl: A prisoner recognized Austria's busiest forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gross a Nazi doctor again. A doctor from the Nazi murder clinic. Ed .: Courier. December 17, 1978, p. 13 . , shown in Birgit Koller: The media processing of the victim-perpetrator role in the Second Republic depicted on the basis of the feature film Mein Mörder . 2009, p. 251 ( othes.univie.ac.at [PDF]).
  11. ^ Speech by Friedrich Zawrel, Pensionerswohnhaus Rossau, Vienna November 6, 2008.
  12. ↑ Supreme Court: Major involved in killings . In: Arbeiterzeitung . March 31, 1981, p. 7 ( online [accessed March 8, 2015]).
  13. ^ Copy of the title page in Birgit Koller: The media processing of the victim-perpetrator role in the Second Republic depicted using the feature film Mein Mörder . 2009, p. 257 ( othes.univie.ac.at [PDF]).
  14. ↑ Sebastian Pumberger: Spiegelgrund survivor Friedrich Zawrel died. derStandard, February 20, 2015, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Overview of individual payments from the National Fund. National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, accessed on March 10, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Former Spiegelgrund victim honored in Vienna. derStandard, May 15, 2013, accessed on March 14, 2015 .
  17. ↑ City Councilor Sonja Wehsely deeply concerned about the death of Friedrich Zawrel ed = APA. February 20, 2015, accessed March 14, 2015 .
  18. ^ City of Vienna Golden Merit Sign for Spiegelgrund Victims Zawrel, RK December 12, 2008.
  19. ↑ Der Standard: Former Spiegelgrund victim honored in Vienna. May 15, 2013. Retrieved May 15, 2013 .
  20. ↑ School Hörnesgasse: 130-year celebration with wording in "Friedrich Zawrel school" Rathauskorrespondenz from 16 June 2016
  21. ^ FPÖ against Friedrich-Zawrel-Schule ; derStandard, June 15, 2016, accessed June 15, 2016.
  22. ↑ Vienna Online World Premiere It's not so nice in psychiatry ... on the new rehearsal stage of the Josefstadt Theater, December 11, 2008.
  23. ↑ F. Zawrel - Hereditary biological and socially inferior ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , at schuberttheater.at (accessed on March 26, 2012) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / schuberttheater.at
  24. ^ Film series Forgotten victims , still image - Association for the Promotion of Audiovisual Media Culture, Vienna
  25. ↑ My dear republic . Wega Film Vienna
  26. ↑ Wolfgang Paterno: "The Chosen": The Nazi murder clinic "Am Spiegelgrund" as a novel. In: Profile. September 22, 2015, accessed November 7, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Zawrel, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian survivor of Nazi euthanasia
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 2015
Place of death Vienna