Julius Puschek

Julius Puschek ( May 7, 1890 in Wiener Neustadt - November 10, 1942 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was an Austrian toolmaker , KPÖ functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was imprisoned and murdered for political reasons.

Life

Puschek came from a working class family and was a staunch communist . He married Agnes, a factory worker. The couple had two children: Julius jun. (born on February 2, 1913 in Lichtenwörth ) and Anna (born on May 26, 1914 there). Julius Puschek served on the Italian front in World War I and was sentenced to death for desertion shortly before the end of the war . However, due to the collapse of the monarchy , the sentence was no longer carried out. In the post-war period the family lived in poor conditions and moved from Lichtenwörth to Wiener Neustadt. The parents were often unemployed, the son completed an apprenticeship as a car painter at the Austrian Daimler-Motoren-AG .

“Unemployed and driven out”, Julius senior, Agnes and Anna Puschek decided to emigrate to the Soviet Union in April 1931 , where they first found work in a Leningrad company and later in Penza . The son followed in February 1932 after he had also lost his job after completing his apprenticeship. At the beginning of 1933 Julius Puschek senior fell ill. and returned to Austria with his wife - "disappointed with the implementation of the communism he idealized in Stalinist Russia." Puschek's daughter and son stayed in the Soviet Union.

Puschek remained a free thinker , according to his grandson Nik Puschek, openly criticized Austrofascism and the Nazi regime and worked on the Wiener Neustädter Nachrichten . His wife's warnings were unsuccessful. He is said to have climbed the entrance gate of the Raxwerke and called down from there: “Don't eat Hitler's soup!” So ​​he got into the so-called A-card index , which was secretly created before the annexation of Austria to the German Reich - by Employees of the political police who belonged to the NSDAP , which was still banned in Austria at the time . A few days before the start of the war in 1939, an instruction was issued from Berlin to all Gestapo control centers to release the A file. As part of this wave of arrests, Julius Puschek sen. captured and transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was killed on November 10, 1942. The Gestapo in Wiener Neustadt informed Agnes Puschek of her husband's death, expressed their condolences and demanded one thousand Reichsmarks for the ashes to be sent. The woman could not raise this amount, so there is no grave for Julius Puschek.

Another fate of the closest family members

Agnes Puschek, now a widow, was obliged to work in the Rax works by the Nazi regime and secretly helped the concentration camp inmates who were also employed there with little things. When she was discovered with a shirt belonging to a concentration camp prisoner, which she wanted to wash for him, arrest, interrogation, immediate release and two months in prison followed. Then she was drafted into the Tritol factory until the end of the war .

Both of Agnes and Julius Puschek's children were victims of Stalinism in the Soviet Union : they were arrested in 1937 and early 1938 and spent many years in camp detention and forced labor. Julius Puschek jun. was sentenced to five years in a camp on March 31, 1940 and deported to a camp on the Kolyma . The sentence was extended indefinitely, but he was able to return to Austria in October 1947 on a prisoner of war transport. In 1958 the Soviet embassy in Vienna informed him by letter of his rehabilitation . After years of effort, he received compensation for property confiscated, but not for detention.

Anna Puschek, who married Robert Schneider, also an emigrant from Austria, in 1933, lost her husband in 1937 through arrest and execution. The charge was espionage . She was sentenced to three years in a camp for complicity, arrested again after her release, lived in exile until 1953 and was only able to return to Austria in 1955 with her young son (born in 1951). She found out about her rehabilitation in August 1959.

Commemoration

In 1948, a memorial with a metal wreath and the inscription "Never forget" and a concentration camp corner with a prisoner number were opened to the public on the premises of the Raxwerke . The memorial was financed by donations from workers and employees of the Rax works, produced by them on a voluntary basis for the killed colleagues and placed on the industrial site. In 1973 it was moved to its current location in Pottendorfer Strasse at the intersection with Stadionstrasse. The memorial was dedicated to those workers of the Rax-Werke who fell victim to National Socialism: Ludwig Haiden , Alfred Höchstätter , Julius Puschek, Franz Winkelmann and Josef Postl . The inscription on a metal plaque above the wreath reads:

Stumbling block for Julius Puschek

OUR FRIENDS MURDERED BY GERMAN
FASCISM WHO
DIED FOR A FREE
AUSTRIA,

HAIDEN LUDWIG HOCHSTÖTTER ALFRED
PUSCHEK JULIUS WINKELMANN FRANZ
POSTL JOSEF

IN MEMORY
OF THE RAXWERK
UNION

On July 4, 2011, the German artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block in front of the house at Pottendorfer Strasse 121 in memory of Julius Puschek. This memorial stone has already been destroyed twice by chiseling away the brass plate.

swell

• Anton Blaha: Julius Puschek , in: Brigitte Haberstroh, Maximilian Huber, Michael Rosecker (eds.): City guide of remembering. Stumbling blocks Wiener Neustadt. Everyday Association Verlag , Wiener Neustadt November 2011, ISBN 978-3-902282-35-4 , pp. 231-234.
• Karl Flanner : Struggle for freedom. Resistance in the Wiener Neustadt area 1938-1945. Association Daily Publishing, Wiener Neustadt 2003, ISBN 3-902282-01-0 .
• Werner Sulzgruber and others: Mauthausen in Wiener Neustadt. A project on the occasion of the liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Wiener Neustadt 2009 Project page at Remember.at (full text online: Part 1 PDF, free of charge, 18 pages, 4 MB, Part 2 PDF, free of charge, 13 pages, 2, 8 MB).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blaha, 231
2. ↑ inode.at: Puschek Julius , accessed on January 11, 2016
3. ↑ Blaha, 233
4. ↑ inode.at: Puschek Anna , accessed on January 11, 2016