Josef Bloderer

Josef Bloderer (born December 24, 1914 in Linz , † 1994 ) was an Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

As a child, Bloderer lived with his grandparents in Molln and, after moving to live with his mother, attended the elementary and middle school. He then completed an apprenticeship with a baker in Sierning . From a young age he was active in social democratic organizations: He belonged to the “Free School Child Friends”, was a member of the Socialist Youth Workers and was their chairman in Sierning. After three weeks of imprisonment as a result of the February uprising of the Republican Protection Association in 1934, he lost his job as a baker. After joining the (declared illegal) Communist Youth Association like many of his friends(KJV), he was arrested in October 1934 for his political activities and sentenced to six weeks in police custody. After his dismissal, he continued his education in order to be able to work as a trained locksmith in the Steyr works. At the beginning of 1936 he was arrested again and sentenced to a six-month police sentence, which he was to serve in the Wöllersdorf detention camp . In December 1936 he was released from prison and was again without a job. In 1937 he was active for a while for the KJV in Vienna as an instructor for work among young people and was used within the party in Styria and Carinthia . Bloderer became seriously ill with polio and eventually returned to his hometown of Steyr after secret hospital treatment, although he was wanted there. Here he worked again for the KJV.

On January 11, 1938, he was arrested again, shortly before the annexation of Austria to the German Reich on March 12, 1938, he was amnestied , but was still in “ protective custody ” for three weeks in March - now in that of the National Socialists . In June of that year he was able to start working again at the Steyr works and marry in July, but at the beginning of October 1938 the next three-week “protective custody” followed. In July 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and had to take part in the campaigns in Poland and France as a medic . In 1940 he was given armaments leave at the request of the Steyr works and was finally discharged from the army in 1942 because he had been made “indispensable”. After his return he was active in a leadership position for the KPÖ and, as head of a resistance cell in the Steyr works, helped organize the anti - fascist internal resistance. In September 1942, Bloderer was arrested by the Gestapo at the Steyr plant .

He was tried in 1943, but was not sentenced because of a forced confession. From September 1943 to May 1944, Bloderer and his comrades were on trial again.

During the second hearing on 23/24 In May 1944, Bloderer and five other resistance fighters from the Steyr district were sentenced to death by the 5th Senate of the People's Court because they “prepared for high treason by establishing and participating in a Marxist support campaign like Red Aid” and “at the same time for the enemy favored ”.

From May to November 1944 he was on death row in the Munich-Stadelheim prison , and fellow prisoners were repeatedly executed during this time. After two months in the cell, Bloderer was merged with his comrades Franz Draber and Karl Punzer . On November 30, 1944, while they were doing cleaning work, the three dared to escape through an unlocked door of the prison. Only Karl Punzer was caught by the guards and executed 5 days later. Draber and Bloderer managed to escape - Bloderer was initially able to hide under grave wreaths in a cemetery. He finally got back to Austrian territory on foot and without food - with intermediate stops in various hiding places. On December 8th he came to Leonstein , where he found refuge with a friend.

The Steyr communist Elisabeth Fürschuß brought him to the Steyrtal forged identity papers, from which it emerged that he was war-damaged and UK ( indispensable ), food and a pistol 08 . Until the turn of the year 1944/45 Bloderer was able to hide in a farmer's hayloft and finally with the Wiesenberger family in Kleinreifling until the end of April 1945 . At the beginning of May Bloderer left the Ennstal and participated in the (re) establishment of the Communist Party and a democratic city administration in Steyr-Ost.

From September 1945 he sat in the first Steyr municipal council of the Second Republic .

After the end of the Nazi regime, Bloderer became district chairman of the KPÖ in Steyr and a member of the state management in Upper Austria, from February 1946 to April 1948 he was state secretary of the KPOÖ. He also experienced his eighth arrest - the US occupation forces brought him into connection with an explosives discovery. Bloderer married for the second time after the war and worked for years as a personnel manager in a large company in Lower Austria; until his retirement he worked in the private sector.

In 1979 he was awarded the honorary badge for services to the liberation of Austria from the Federal President . Josef Bloderer died in 1994. Josef-Bloderer-Strasse was named after him in the Gründberg-Föhrenschacherl-Staffelmayrgrund residential area in the west of Steyr. (Not far from there one to Draber and one to Punzer in the east in Steyr-Münichholz.)

Individual evidence

↑ Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 40-44, 55 .
↑ Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 45 .
^ Copy of the judgment of May 26, 1944.
↑ Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 45-52 .
↑ Otto Treml: Elisabeth Fürschuß (1882-1958): A courageous woman resists , ooe.kpoe.at> Biografien, November 2, 2013, accessed February 6, 2017.
↑ Manfred Brandl, New History of Steyr - From Biedermeier to Today , Steyr 1980, p. 167.
↑ Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 42 .

personal data
SURNAME	Bloderer, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH	December 24, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Linz
DATE OF DEATH	1994

[1] Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 40-44, 55 .

[2] Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 45 .

[3] Copy of the judgment of May 26, 1944.

[4] Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 45-52 .

[5] Otto Treml: Elisabeth Fürschuß (1882-1958): A courageous woman resists , ooe.kpoe.at> Biografien, November 2, 2013, accessed February 6, 2017.

[6] Manfred Brandl, New History of Steyr - From Biedermeier to Today , Steyr 1980, p. 167.

[7] Peter Kammerstätter: Escape from the gallows, the guillotine, the bullet: nine images of life from the resistance . Ed .: Concentration Camp Association Upper Austria. Franz Stein Maßl, Grünbach b. Freistadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-902427-28-1 , pp. 42 .