Massacre by German riflemen

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In the massacre of German riflemen in Burgenland on March 29, 1945, at least 57 Hungarian Jews were murdered by soldiers of the Waffen SS . The victims had previously been used as slave labor in the construction of the southeast wall . The HJ -Bannführer Alfred Weber, responsible for the construction phase at Deutsch Schützen , gave the order for the massacre . It was carried out by three dispersed SS soldiers, at least two of whom belonged to the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" . In the post-war period, the Austrian and West German judiciary designated such crimes at the end of World War II as so-called end - phase crimes . This was ultimately done to protect the perpetrators from criminal prosecution or to justify mild sentences.

Members of the Hitler Youth carried out organizational and security tasks in the course of this crime. After the massacre was stopped , the 400 or so surviving Jews had to march to Hartberg , from where they had to take part in the multi-day death marches to Mauthausen concentration camp . It is not known how many of them were murdered.

While the three SS men and the initiator Alfred Weber were able to evade their responsibility by fleeing, most of the Hitler Youth involved were sentenced to prison terms of between 15 and 36 months in a trial before the Vienna People's Court .

In 1956, Hitler Youth leader Alfred Weber also came to court. After the abolition of the people's courts, this was the first jury trial against Nazi perpetrators in Austria. It took place in a public climate in which the majority of the population wanted to draw a line under the Austrian Nazi past. As some witnesses revoked or weakened earlier statements, the jury eventually acquitted Weber.

One of the SS men involved, Adolf Storms, was located in Duisburg in 2008 by a student through a simple telephone search . The political scientist Walter Manoschek managed to get in touch with Storms and to process the material obtained in the documentary "Then I'm a murderer!" The public prosecutor's office in Duisburg prepared a trial against Storms, but before it could begin, the defendant died at the age of 90 in 2010.

In interviews with Walter Manoschek, the former Hitler Youth leader Johann Kaincz confessed that he and his fellow Hitler Youth who were also accused had invented the presence of five SS gendarmes during their trial in 1946 to support their defense strategy . If this confession, made more than 65 years after the events, corresponds to the historical truth, the description of the crime in the few publications that exist and that are based on the original trial files is incorrect.

The mass grave of the murdered Jews was located in 1995. Today a tombstone and a plaque on the nearby Martinskirche remind of the massacre at the crime scene .

Historical background

The village of Deutsch Schützen had become part of the Gau Styria as a result of the "annexation" of Austria to the German Empire , since southern Burgenland was added to it. The rest of the federal state belonged to the Niederdonau district .

On September 1, 1944, was Reich Defense Commissioner per leaders adopt responsible for planning and construction of fortifications along the frontiers. In the area of Styria , the line of defense called the south-east wall or Reichsschutzstellung by German propaganda should be created for this purpose . Gauleiter Sigfried Uiberreither was responsible for its establishment .

In parallel to the efforts on the political side, the Wehrmacht also prepared the construction of the position. For this purpose, the “Southeast Fortress Area” was installed, whose task it was to coordinate the work in the Lower Danube and Styria areas . In the area of ​​Styria, Lieutenant General Richard Zimmer was a senior pioneer commander z. b. V. of the responsible military district XVIII . In addition, a lower staff was set up in Graz to explore and mark the planned course of the position along the imperial border.

While the entire south-east wall in Styria was divided into six areas (I to VI), the northernmost area VI comprised the border between the districts of Oberwart and Fürstenfeld and Hungary. The district leader of Oberwart Eduard Nicka was responsible for this section, in which the area of ​​Deutsch Schützen was also located . In the Oberwart district there were also six subsections, so the location of the massacre was in Section VI / 6 - Deutsch Schützen , each with a subsection officer. Nicka also moved in an organizational intermediate level, so Oberfeldmeister Klemensits was responsible for subsections VI / 4 to VI / 6.

The HJ -Bannführer Alfred Weber, a war disabled former member of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 4 "Der Führer" , which belonged to the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" , acted as subsection manager for Section VI / 6 - German Rifle .

The digging began in October 1944. In addition to the local population, members of the Hitler Youth and the Todt Organization , foreign workers and Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers were also used. In the area of ​​Section VI, around 4,000 of the 15,000 employed workers are said to have been Hungarian Jews.

prehistory

The entrenchment work in Deutsch Schützen was initially only carried out by members of the Hitler Youth, who regularly worked on the southeast wall for a few weeks. For the supervision of these Hitler Youth members, sub-section leader Weber had been assigned some 16-year-old Hitler Youth leaders: Franz Aldrian, Franz Dobersberger, Alfred Ehrlich, Johann Kaincz, Walter Feigl, Fritz Hagenauer as well as Karl and Wilhelm Bundschuh. The Hitler Youth were fed by a kitchen that had been set up in the parsonage.

This barn served as accommodation for the Hungarian Jews in 1945

The first Jewish forced laborers came to Deutsch Schützen towards the end of 1944. Their number rose steadily over the next few weeks and reached its final level of 500 to 600 in February. The Hungarian slave workers were housed in two barns, and the food in the parsonage was provided by the Hitler Youth kitchen.

After the end of the war, survivors of the massacre and the subsequent death marches reported that they were surprised by the good treatment in Deutsch Schützen, given the circumstances. So they had had very bad experiences with their own compatriots on the march through Hungary. The Hungarian gendarmerie and the Arrow Cross members had previously treated them brutally and robbed them. The guard in Deutsch Schützen, on the other hand, consisted of only four Styrian SA members, and apart from a few exceptions, there was no contact with the Hitler Youth entrenched in other areas of the defense section. While the historian Walter Manoschek put forward the thesis that there was a “situational arrangement” due to the numerical disproportion between four guards and several hundreds to be guarded, Eleonore Lappin-Eppel reported in her work on the southeast wall of occasional abuse by the SA team. These SA men who were not known by name finally deserted “a few days” before March 29, 1945, thus leaving the Hungarian slave laborers unattended.

The bad experiences with their own Hungarian compatriots, the insecure military situation, the relatively tolerable local conditions in Deutsch Schützen and the security of the group were cited by survivors as the main reasons why there were no attempts to escape, although this was possible at any time due to the inadequate security measures would. In fact, compared to other construction sections of the east wall in Deutsch Schützen, there had been no case of typhus or typhoid fever or murders by the guards until March 29, 1945 , as was often the case in other parts of the south-east wall.

It is unclear why this massacre came about anyway. Eleonore Lappin-Eppel argued in her work that the massacre in Deutsch Schützen was the result of a planned action. She based her argument on the statements of the court case against the Hitler Youth leaders in 1946, in which three SS men and five SS field gendarmes were mentioned who had come to Deutsch Schützen by car. Walter Manoschek, on the other hand, came to different conclusions based on interviews with Adolf Storms and Johann Kaincz in 2008. For example, the former Hitler Youth leader Kaincz testified in an interview with Manoschek that he and the other accused members of the Hitler Youth had deliberately told the untruth in their 1946 trial regarding the presence of SS field gendarmes. They wanted to strengthen their defense strategy so that they would not have dared to run away for fear of the SS field gendarmerie.

The statements of SS-Unterscharführer Adolf Storms , one of the main perpetrators, to Walter Manoschek support his theory insofar as Storms claimed to have been dispersed in Veszprém by his unit (a company of the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" ) after it was overrun by the Red Army around March 22nd or 23rd . He then made his way on foot as a scattered man in the direction of the Reich border and came across SS comrades again for the first time in the parsonage of Deutsch Schützen. These two SS men were also dispersed, an SS-Hauptscharführer from the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" who was not known by name and another SS man named Max with a Tyrolean dialect. The reason why the Hitler Youth leaders remembered the name of Storms was that after the handover of the Hungarian slave laborers in Hartberg, they stayed together with him as the HJ tank destruction brigade as part of the Volkssturm until the end of the war, while the two of them SS men other than guards would have continued to accompany the Jews' death marches.

The decision to shoot the Jews on March 29, according to statements made by Johann Kaincz and Fritz Hagenauer to Manoschek, but also according to statements made by all Hitler Youth leaders at their trial in 1946, was made on the night of March 28-29 an agreement between subsection leader Alfred Weber and the three SS men in the parsonage. The chance appearance of the three Waffen-SS soldiers on March 28th opened up an opportunity for Alfred Weber to get rid of the Hungarian Jews by murdering them after - according to a statement by Kaincz in 2008 - after the desertion of the SA- Guards had worried for days about "what to do with the Jewish forced laborers." With this decision, Weber also violated an order from district leader Eduard Nicka, whose staff can be shown to have issued detailed instructions to the sub-section leaders on March 22, 1945 for the "return of Jews from the position in the event of an alarm".

March 29, 1945 - The massacre

The Martinskirche in the west of Deutsch Schützen, which served as a transfer point

On the morning of that day, Maundy Thursday in 1945, the village of Deutsch Schützen was in an emotional state of emergency. The thunder of cannons announced the approach of the Red Army. In fact, further east there were three Soviet guards armies (4th and 9th Guards Army and the 6th Guards Armored Army ) with around 200,000 men as part of the so-called Vienna Operation on the advance of Vienna , the second largest city in the German Empire. At noon that day a Red Army soldier from the IX. Guards Mechanized Corps be the first soldier to set foot on Austrian soil near Klostermarienberg ( Oberpullendorf district ). On the evening of that day, units of the Soviet 9th Guards Army (XXXVII Guards Rifle Corps) were supposed to occupy Rechnitz, 20 kilometers to the north, as the first village in the Oberwart district while covering the left flank of the breakthrough area.

In Deutsch Schützen, the daily issue of orders took place at 8 a.m. in front of Subsection Leader Alfred Weber's office. In addition to the three SS men, Hitler Youth leaders Franz Aldrian, Franz Dobersberger, Alfred Ehrlich, Johann Kaincz, Walter Feigl and Fritz Hagenauer were also present. The two Riedlingsdorfer Karl and Wilhelm Bundschuh were not in Deutsch Schützen at the time and only joined the group in the morning after the end of the massacre.

Weber began issuing his orders with the words "The Jews will be shot!" Next he divided the roles. Walter Feigl and Fritz Hagenauer had the task of guarding the Hungarian forced laborers and putting together groups of 20 to 30 people. Alfred Ehrlich and Johann Kaincz had to take over these groups and escort them to the Martinskirche to the west of the village , where they were taken over by an SS man. In addition to the three SS men, only Franz Aldrian and Franz Dobersberger were deployed by the Hitler Youth at the immediate crime scene, a trench in the south-east wall.

Another group of around 30 people was later brought to the church by Walter Feigl and Fritz Hagenauer, a third group of the same size was later brought to the church by Alfred Ehrlich. Over the further course of the massacre, the sources diverge again. While Walter Manoschek wrote that the shootings were stopped after the second group, Eleonore Lappin-Eppel reported that Fritz Hagenauer and Walter Feigl had brought a fourth group of around 150 people to Martinskirche. Feigl then went back to the village and 15 minutes later brought the order that the shootings should be stopped immediately. His efforts to prevent the murder squad from killing the third group, however, came too late. For the historian Eva Holpfer, too, only two groups of forced laborers were shot by the SS men, while the massacre was stopped immediately before the third group, which according to Holpfer consisted of 150 people. This different way of counting the groups is probably also the reason why the number of victims is given between around 60 and 80, depending on the source.

Who actually carried out the murders on site could not be clearly clarified in the post-war trials, as both the three SS men and Hitler Youth leader Franz Aldrian evaded their responsibility by fleeing and thus could never be interrogated by government agencies. Only Franz Dobersberger, described as a show-off by the other Hitler Youths at the 1946 trial, boasted in front of his comrades immediately after the crime that he had also shot. During his trial, he characterized these statements as showing off; the court could not prove the opposite due to the lack of witnesses.

There were also contradicting statements about the circumstances surrounding the termination of the shootings. In 1956, Josef Wiesler, the provisional local group leader of Deutsch Schützen at the time of the massacre, claimed during the preliminary investigations on the occasion of the trial of Alfred Weber that he had already telephoned the district leader Eduard Nicka on March 29, 1945 before 8 o'clock and that he had expressly given orders not to shoot the Jews, but to evacuate them. 14 days later he revoked this statement in full during the trial. Another witness, Walter Fasching, claimed that Nicka prohibited the shootings between 8 and 9 a.m. Eduard Nicka himself denied in interrogations after the war that he knew about the killings in German shooters, but then changed his statement to the effect that he had heard about the shootings but could not find out where they took place.

After the order had reached the murder squad, the three SS men immediately ended the massacre and went back to the village to prepare for the departure of the 400 to 450 surviving forced laborers.

The group of Hitler Youth had grown to nine men in the meantime because Franz Landauer, Karl Bundschuh and Wilhelm Bundschuh had come to Deutsch Schützen shortly before the survivors left. When the column of forced laborers reached the entrance to the village, Alfred Weber ordered the Hitler Youth leaders to fill up the trench in which the victims were lying. To carry out the job, they had to shovel around 50 meters of the positioning system. It turned out that at least one of the victims was still alive. Franz Aldrian then shot the Hungarian slave laborer, who also survived this recent attempted murder. When the survivor, Sandor Künzstler, was found two days later by three customs officers, he told the officers in Hungarian that children had shot him. The pastor of Deutsch Schützen, Johann Farkas, was in correspondence with Sandor Künzstler after the war, where he reported that the two Hitler Youths present (Franz Aldrian and Franz Dobersberger) had also participated in the massacre.

Attempts to escape

Until the day of the massacre, not a single attempt to escape by a Jewish slave laborer had taken place in Deutsch Schützen. As an explanation for this behavior after the war, survivors stated that, on the one hand, the bad experiences with their own Hungarian compatriots and the unsafe military situation and, on the other hand, the relatively tolerable local conditions in Deutsch Schützen and the security of the group were decisive in preventing such attempts .

When Pastor Johann Farkas, who had been informed of Weber's plans by a Hitler Youth, warned the Hungarian forced laborers during the morning meal that they would be shot, 40 people spontaneously decided to flee. Fritz Hagenauer also claimed after the war that when he was accompanying the fourth group of around 150 people, he had warned a Jewish Hundred leader, whereupon 40 people also fled. There is no evidence that these actions actually took place.

On the other hand, the escapes of some Jewish forced laborers can be proven based on their statements, which have been preserved in archives such as the Shoah Foundation . Chaijim Elijahu Messinger reported that he and two or three friends fled after the Hitler Youth had led the first group of forced laborers out of the village towards Martinskirche. Their escape led them to Szombathely , where they were temporarily arrested by soldiers of the Red Army.

Ladislaus Blum reported that they had been warned by a Hungarian Jew who had left the first group that had been brought to the place of execution and had thus become an eyewitness to the massacre. Alarmed by this news, around 20 men mingled with the civilians who had left German riflemen due to the approach of the Red Army. After they got out of the village in this way, the Jewish forced laborers fled towards Hungary and were then also taken prisoner by Soviet soldiers.

Moshe Zairi and his friend Yitzak Klein, who had neither heard of the massacre, took advantage of an order from Alfred Weber to break away. He had ordered them to fetch six forced laborers who had been posted to a nearby farm that morning for work. Zairi and Klein decided to hide and wait for the survivors to leave. In the evening they returned to Deutsch Schützen and looked for Pastor Johann Farkas, who hid them for three days and had his housekeeper Maria Blaskovics take care of them. When the Red Army finally occupied the village, Yitzak Klein, who spoke Russian, negotiated with the Soviet soldiers.

Another survivor was Ferenc Kovacs, who worked for a blacksmith in Deutsch Schützen and was able to develop a good relationship of trust with him. On the day of the massacre, villagers helped him and his friend Mede Gyuri to hide in the attic of a butcher's shop, where they too were well looked after until the Red Army reached German riflemen. In a letter to a survivor, Pastor Johann Farkas wrote after the war that around 20 forced laborers had been hidden by locals in various attics and could thus be saved.

The march to Hartberg

After the order to stop the massacre had been given, it did not take long before the march to the west was formed. The destination was the town of Hartberg , which was the assembly point for all evacuation routes on the south-east wall sections of the Oberwart district. The forced laborers had to line up in rows of three and marched off under the guard of the three SS men after they had returned from the site of the massacre. Johann Kaincz estimated the number of remaining forced laborers at around 430 people. After the train had started moving, sub-section leader Alfred Weber ordered some Hitler Youth leaders to fill in the trench in which the bodies were lying. He himself followed the marching group on a tractor because he was severely handicapped due to his war injuries.

After filling in the trench, the Hitler Youth hurried after the marching column. This marched during the day via St. Kathrein in Burgenland , Kirchfidisch , Mischendorf to Jabing . The Hitler Youth reached the column just before Jabing, where they spent the night after walking more than 20 kilometers in the open field.

The next day, the marching column faced a more than 30 kilometer stretch that led via Rotenturm an der Pinka , Oberdorf , Litzelsdorf and Wolfau to Hartberg. Shortly after Jabing, a Jewish forced laborer could no longer follow the pace of the column. Adolf Storms then murdered the Jew, as Karl Bundschuh, who emigrated to Canada after the war, described in detail during an interrogation in 2009. Karl Bundschuh as well as Fritz Hagenauer and Wilhelm Bundschuh, who were nearby at the time of the crime, buried the murdered person makeshift.

There was at least a second victim near Oberdorf , with Franz Dobersberger claiming to the other Hitler Youth during the march that two executions had taken place and that he had carried out one himself. At the People's Court trial in 1945, he got entangled in contradictions and finally withdrew to the point of view that he had only bragged about the others.

In the late afternoon of March 30, 1945, the marching column reached the Hartberg sports field, where around 2,000 Jewish forced laborers were soon gathered. The Hitler Youth were actually intended to guard the further march, but their previous superior, Alfred Weber, advised them to avoid this duty. They followed this advice and were taken over to the Volkssturm the next day, where they were involved in various actions until the end of the war. Under the command of Adolf Storms, the Hitler Youth marched through Styria as the HJ tank destruction brigade and saw the end of the war in Liezen . There they hid in an alpine hut before returning to their hometowns in Burgenland at the end of May.

The further fate of the Hungarian-Jewish slave laborers

Memorial for the victims of the Präbichl massacre

The trail of the Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers from Deutsch Schützen is lost on the marches through Styria and Upper Austria over the next few days and weeks. They no longer stayed together as a closed group, but were divided into different marching groups and driven on different routes towards Mauthausen concentration camp . Graz, the Präbichl and Eisenerz were stops on this path of suffering. It is not known how many of them were shot en route or how many did not survive the Mauthausen concentration camp and its Gunskirchen satellite camp .

Some of them were probably killed on the Präbichl when the Eisenerzer Volkssturm, instigated by its commander Otto Christandl , shot into the passing columns, killing over 250. As survivor Ernö Lazarovits recalled, it was precisely one of the three German Rifle SS men who put an end to this recent massacre by, as the transport manager responsible, brought the Eisenerzer Volkssturm to stop the fire. At least for this massacre, the guilty parties were indicted in the so-called iron ore trials , ten of them were sentenced to death and also executed on June 21, 1946.

Prosecution

The trial of the Hitler Youth leaders in 1946

The Hitler Youth leaders who returned home at the end of May 1945 were questioned by Soviet and Austrian authorities in August and then arrested and transferred to the Vienna Regional Court. Franz Dobersberger, Alfred Ehrlich, Johann Kaincz, Walter Feigl, Fritz Hagenauer and Karl and Wilhelm Bundschuh were indicted out of the nine Hitler Youths present in Deutsch Schützen on March 29, 1945. Franz Aldrian went into hiding and could never be held responsible. Franz Landauer was not prosecuted. On October 4, 1946, the trial began before the Vienna People's Court ; It was the only such process in which only members of the Hitler Youth were tried. The accusation was murder and ordered or common murder. All seven defendants pleaded not guilty.

The charges against Karl and Wilhelm Bundschuh were withdrawn by the public prosecutor on the first day of the trial, because it can be proven that both of them only arrived in Deutsch Schützen after the end of the massacre.

The court found that on March 29, 1945, the defendants had shown no will to evade the tasks assigned to them. Their innocence, their good repute, the slavish obedience that the Hitler Youth had trained them, their youthful age and the difficult situation in which they had found themselves were seen as mitigating punishment.

After a two-day trial, Franz Dobersberger was finally sentenced to three years of strict arrest, Alfred Ehrlich and Johann Kaincz were each given two years, Walter Feigl 18 months and Fritz Hagenauer 15 months.

While Fritz Hagenauer was still bitter about the judgment in an interview with Walter Manoschek more than 60 years later, Johann Kaincz saw this in a more differentiated way. From his point of view, both the trial was fair and the judgment objectively justified, even if at the time they were not aware of the criminal consequences of their actions due to their socialization in the Hitler Youth and their youthful naivete.

The trial of Alfred Weber in 1955

Alfred Weber was extradited from Germany to Austria on July 13, 1955 after he was picked up there with his brother's passport. On June 18, 1956, the five-day trial against Weber began, which was the first jury trial against a Nazi perpetrator after the people's courts had been abolished in December 1955. This first trial after the withdrawal of the Allies took place in a public climate that neither politically nor socially wanted Nazi trials to be carried out. The founding of the Association of Independents and the admission of more than half a million former National Socialists to the National Council election in 1949 , as well as the courtship of the major SPÖ and ÖVP parties for former Nazis contributed to this climate change .

The prosecution largely relied on the indictment from the 1946 trial against the Hitler Youth leaders. The defendant Weber's defense strategy was designed in such a way that he denied having been present at the shootings and was therefore unable to give any order. The five Hitler Youth leaders convicted in 1946, who at that time had still unanimously stated that Weber had given the order for the murder, partially collapsed in this new trial. While Johann Kaincz and Walter Feigl stuck to their statements ten years earlier, Fritz Hagenauer could not remember exactly which superior had ordered the massacre. Alfred Ehrlich could no longer remember any orders issued, Franz Dobersberger could no longer remember "nothing of the kind". The trial also revealed that Ehrlich had been contacted and influenced by Weber's brother prior to his testimony. Josef Wiesler, the provisional local group leader of Deutsch Schützen at the time, also fell over as a further witness, when he spoke 14 days earlier that he had spoken to Alfred Weber on the morning of March 29, 1945 about his decision to have the forced laborers shot had withdrawn in full. Since the former district leader Eduard Nicka also testified in the interests of Weber, he was acquitted of the charges raised by all eight jurors on the fourth day of the hearing.

The indictment against Adolf Storms in 2009

After the end of the war, Adolf Storms lived completely undisturbed under his real name in Germany. In 2008 the student Andreas Forstner dealt with the topic of the massacre of Deutsch Schützen as part of a political science research internship at the University of Vienna . Forstner had done service as a soldier in the Austrian Armed Forces as part of an assistance mission in the area and came across this topic. During this work he also came across the name of Adolf Storms, which he was able to locate in Duisburg through a simple telephone search.

Together with his professor Walter Manoschek, a statement of the facts was submitted to the Duisburg public prosecutor. Manoschek contacted Storms directly in July 2008, who surprisingly agreed to speak to the historian. The result of this work was a book and a documentary titled "Then I'm a murderer!" . Walter Manoschek was also able to get in touch with the two former Hitler Youth members Fritz Hagenauer and Johann Kaincz.

The prosecution's investigation into Storms met with great international media interest. Karl Bundschuh, who had emigrated to Canada, was questioned and he described in detail the murder of the Hungarian slave laborer near Jabing by Adolf Storms.

At the end of October 2009, the Duisburg public prosecutor finally brought charges against Adolf Storms. The start of the trial was delayed by the defense, who had expert opinions drawn up regarding the negotiating ability of the now 90-year-old defendant. Storms finally died before the negotiations began in June 2010.

Grave site

The first partial exhumation of the mass grave took place on May 20, 1945 . A Hungarian military command within the Red Army visited the site of the massacre and identified 47 bodies. Historians have not yet been able to find a record of this exhumation.

The next grave was opened on December 21, 1945. The purpose of this exhumation was to determine the cause of death of the murdered on the occasion of the trial of the Hitler Youth leaders before the Vienna People's Court. When the grave was opened, doctors involved found gunshot wounds to the head and upper body of the victims.

In 1961 the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge was interested in the mass grave; permission of a reburial of the bodies was unknown reasons from the Ministry of the Interior denied.

The grave site today (March 2018)
The gravestone that commemorates the massacre

The grave was then forgotten. From 1985 the survivor Moshe Zairi, whom Pastor Josef Farkas had hidden in the attic of the rectory, visited German riflemen several times. In 1993, with the help of a contemporary witness, he was able to roughly determine the location of the grave. Zairi then tried from Israel to stir the matter by contacting the Austrian embassy in Tel Aviv . Finally, at the instigation of the Federal Chancellery and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, the chairman of the Shalom Association took on himself . Association for the Restoration and Preservation of the Jewish Cemeteries in Vienna , Walter Pagler, on the matter. With the help of video recordings made by Moshe Zairi in 1993 and the graduates Harald Strassl and Wolfgang Vosko, Pagler was able to locate the grave in May 1995.

The grave was opened on August 23, 1995 in the presence of Walter Pagler, a representative of the IKG Vienna and the parish priest of Deutsch Schützen at the time. A reburial was not planned because, in the opinion of a rabbi questioned before the grave was opened, it could not be guaranteed that all parts of the body would be recovered. After some discussions in the next weeks and months it was finally decided to declare the area a burial place. The tomb was officially dedicated on June 25, 1996. It bears the following inscription in German, Hungarian and Hebrew :

“Fifty-seven Jewish martyrs from Hungary, who were murdered by National Socialist barbarians on March 29, 1945 and buried here in the forest, rest here. May their memories be blessed! In December 1995 "

- Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 152

A request of the relatives to engrave the names of the known victims on the back of the tombstone and to add them if necessary based on new research findings was not met. After eight murdered people were known by name in 1995, this number has now increased to twelve: Janos Földösi, Ferenc Haiman, György Klein, Laszlo Komlos, György Sarkany, Andor Sebestyen, Jozsef Sebestyen, György Schwimmer, Peter Szanto, Imre Wallerstein, Jozsef Weinberger and Jozsef Weisz.

Memorial plaque on the Martinskirche

Before the grave was opened , the Austrian authorities classified it as a war grave . This not only meant that a possible forensic investigation was not carried out , it also ruled out criminal prosecution of the perpetrators. As Andreas Forstner pointed out in 2008, it would have been easy to find Adolf Storms in Duisburg.

In September 1995, a commemorative plaque donated by the Austrian ambassador to Israel was attached to the Martinskirche, which on March 29, 1945 served as the transfer point for the Jewish forced laborers to the murder squad. In addition to the founder Herbert Kröll, relatives of the victims and the survivor Moshe Zairi were also present at this ceremony.

literature

  • Andreas Forster: The German Rifle Complex. In: Walter Manoschek (ed.): The case of Rechnitz. The massacre of Jews in March 1945. Braumüller Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-7003-1714-2 , pp. 57–78.
  • Eva Holpfer: How post-war society in Burgenland dealt with Nazi crimes up to 1955: using the example of the people's court trials due to the massacres of Deutschschützen and Rechnitz. Dipl.-Arb., Vienna 1998.
  • Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Adolf Storms and the massacre of Jews in German Schützen. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1650-8 .
  • Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45: Labor deployment - death marches - consequences. LIT, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50195-0 .
  • Ulrich Sander: Murderous finale. Nazi crimes at the end of the war. Papyrossa Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-89438-388-6 .
  • Harald Strassl, Wolfgang Vosko: The fate of Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers using the example of the south-east wall construction in 1944/45 in the Oberwart district: with special consideration of the mass crimes at Rechnitz and Deutsch Schützen. Dipl.-Arb., Vienna 1999.
  • Szabolcs Szita: Forced Labor - Death Marches - Survival Through Help. Velcsov, Budapest 2004, ISBN 963-86698-1-0 .

Web links

documentation

The documentary “Then I'm a murderer!” By Walter Manoschek was presented at the Viennale 2012 and received an honorable mention. A book with the same title followed in 2015, which, like the film, received consistently good reviews and is viewed as a valuable contribution to the coming to terms with Nazi history in Austria.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Walter Manoschek: "Then I am a murderer!" - Adolf Storms and the massacre of Jews in German Schützen. Wallstein, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1650-8 , pp. 60 .
  2. ↑ a b c Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 135 and 137.
  3. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 145.
  4. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 143.
  5. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 156.
  6. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 186ff
  7. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 136.
  8. ↑ a b c d Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 318.
  9. ↑ a b Eva Holpfer: The massacre of Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers at the end of the war in Deutsch-Schützen (Burgenland) and its punishment by the Austrian people's jurisdiction. Website www.nachkriegsjustiz.at, accessed on February 18, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 149.
  11. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The War in Austria 1945 . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984, p. 80 .
  12. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The War in Austria 1945 . Vienna 1984, p. 82.
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  19. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 46.
  20. ↑ a b c Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 49.
  21. ↑ a b c Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 36ff
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  23. ↑ Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 315.
  24. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 22.
  25. ↑ a b c d e Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 131.
  26. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 52ff
  27. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 53.
  28. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 60ff, 83ff
  29. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The War in Austria 1945. Vienna 1984, p. 126.
  30. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner: The war in Austria 1945. Vienna 1984, p. 245.
  31. ↑ a b c d e f Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 316.
  32. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 68.
  33. ↑ Szabolcs Szita: Forced Labor - Death Marches - Survival through Help . Velcsov, Budapest 2004, ISBN 963-86698-1-0 , p. 112 .
  34. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 66.
  35. ↑ Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 317.
  36. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 91ff
  37. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 91.
  38. ↑ a b Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 94.
  39. ↑ a b Szabolcs Szita: Forced Labor - Death Marches - Survival through Help. Budapest 2004, p. 110.
  40. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 89.
  41. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 83 f.
  42. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 84 and 85.
  43. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 85 and 88.
  44. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 88 and 89.
  45. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 90 and 91.
  46. ↑ a b Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 320.
  47. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 95.
  48. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 188 to 190.
  49. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 95 and 96.
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  51. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 100 to 102.
  52. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 104ff
  53. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 131.
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  57. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, pp. 141 and 142.
  58. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 158ff
  59. ↑ Eleonore Lappin-Eppel: Hungarian-Jewish forced laborers in Austria 1944/45. Vienna 2010, p. 319.
  60. ↑ a b c Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 148.
  61. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 153.
  62. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 149ff
  63. ↑ Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" Göttingen 2015, p. 152.
  64. ^ Awards Viennale 2012 , website www.viennale.AT, accessed on February 19, 2018.
  65. ↑ Hans Schafranek : Walter Manoschek: "Then I'm a murderer!" - book review, website www.sehepunkte.de, accessed on February 19, 2018.
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on April 23, 2018 in this version .