Hugo Paterno

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Hugo Paterno ( 19th December 1896 in Bludenz - 7. July 1944 in Munich Stadelheim ) was an Austrian customs police officer , who in the Third Reich was denounced, arrested, tried and executed because he disparagingly of Hitler and the Nazi regime have expressed should.

Life

Hugo Paterno was the seventh of eight children of Italian immigrants. After serving in World War I , he became a customs officer. He was a staunch Catholic, was described as "servile" and quickly made a career. He lived in Lustenau with his wife Marie and four children. Because of his religiosity, he was opposed to the Nazi ideology. After Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich , he was deployed on the border between Austria and Switzerland , at the Gaissau-Rheineck border crossing. He was first denounced by a subordinate who complained that Paterno was in the church while on duty. He was denounced a second and third time and he was noticed because of his blunt language.

As head of the Lustenau-Oberfahr customs office, he is said to have doubted the success of the Wehrmacht in the war with another subordinate . Official criminal proceedings were initiated. He was sentenced to a pay cut for criticizing the leadership of the German Empire and transferred to the main customs office in Innsbruck . There he was entrusted with inspection work, mainly in the field. In the summer of 1943, following an official act in a tobacco shop in Scharnitz , a place in Ausserfern, he criticized the church policy of the NSDAP and the establishment of concentration camps . He is said to have imagined the “brown glory” standing before the collapse and dubbed the SS hordes as “barbarians”. He is said to have declared that the days of the Third Reich were numbered. Superiors were informed and reported the alleged statements through official channels. The Gestapo intervened, arrested Hugo Paterno on September 17, 1943 and transferred him to Innsbruck. As a result, he was transferred to the Berlin-Plötzensee prison and examined for his mental health. He was classified as sane. He was then tried in Munich. The People's Court sentenced him to death on May 11, 1944 for undermining military strength . The procedure was completed very quickly. The verdict was handwritten, only seven to eight lines long. Marie Paterno went to Berlin to submit a petition for clemency, also on behalf of the four children. It was refused and a visit to the detention center in Munich-Stadelheim was denied.

" God willing, if I'm still alive "

- Hugo Paterno : Letter to the family, June 1944

With these words he announced another letter to his family in July. This letter was never written, because on July 7, 1944 Hugo Paterno was beheaded in the Munich-Stadelheim prison .

In 1947, tobacco shop operator Rosa Rainer was charged with the crime of denunciation under Section 7 (3) of the War Crimes Act. During this trial, the files of which have been preserved, numerous details of the matter came to light. A work colleague described Paterno as an extremely conscientious and generally popular official: “Nobody could understand that this man had no support from his authority.” Rainer was sentenced to three years in prison.

On the gravestone in the cemetery of the Church of the Redeemer is engraved: "died July 7th, 1944 as a victim of his Christian beliefs"

At the family grave site in Lustenau, which was built in 1968, the death sentence and execution are kept secret. The gravestone reads: "Died as a victim of his Christian convictions". At that time, according to his grandson, it was not yet opportune to name the murder as such.

Even after the end of the Nazi regime, his family was speechless for a long time. The trauma, his daughters were eleven and twelve years old at the time of the execution, could not be dealt with.

Commemoration

Hugo Paterno was posthumously awarded the Decoration of Honor for Services to the Liberation of Austria in 1979 .

His name is engraved on the east side of the Liberation Monument in Innsbruck.

His grandson Wolfgang Paterno, editor of the news magazine profil , researched his history and wrote a book about his grandfather. Finding the source was difficult, but he also managed to describe the ideological delusion, hatred and envy that destroyed the family. The book was published in 2020.

literature

Web links

  • Hugo Paterno on the Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz website in Innsbruck

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ VOL.at : The Victims of National Socialism: Customs Commander Hugo Paterno , November 7, 2013.
  2. ^ ORF Vorarlberg: The fate of the Nazi victim Hugo Paterno , accessed on April 9, 2020
  3. ^ Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz in Innsbruck: Hugo Paterno , accessed on April 9, 2020
  4. ↑ Johann Holzner : Witnesses of the Resistance , a documentation about the victims of National Socialism in North, East u. South Tyrol from 1938 to 1945, Tyrolia-Verlag 1977, p. 71.
  5. ↑ Gisela Hormayr : "If I could at least say goodbye to you" , last letters and records of Tyrolean Nazi victims from prison, StudienVerlag 2017.
  6. ↑ Gisela Hormayr: The future will shed a different light on our dying , victim of the Catholic-conservative resistance in Tyrol 1938–1945, StudienVerlag 2015, pp. 185–187.
  7. ^ Tiroler Landesarchiv : Landesgericht Innsbruck, 10 Vr 3701/47.
  8. ^ Decoration of honor for resistance fighters. In: Der Neue Mahnruf, 33rd volume, No. 2, February 1980, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).
  9. ^ ORF (Vorarlberg): The fate of the Nazi victim Hugo Paterno , February 19, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Paterno, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian customs officer and resistance fighter in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Bludenz
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1944
Place of death Munich-Stadelheim