Richard Berger (engineer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Berger (born July 8, 1885 in Brno , Austria-Hungary ; † November 10, 1938 at Kranebitten ) was an Austrian engineer and victim of the November pogrom in 1938 .

Life

Richard Berger came from Bohemia and settled in Innsbruck , where, as a trained bridge construction engineer, he held a position as a construction officer, most recently as a senior construction officer in the construction department of the Innsbruck Federal Railway Directorate of the Austrian Federal Railway . He, who belonged to the Jewish faith, married Margarethe Weiss in 1915. The two sons Walter and Fritz (Frederic) emerged from this marriage.

Berger took over the function of president in the Zionist local group of Innsbruck and after the annexation of Austria was elected on June 23, 1938 to the board of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde for Tyrol and Vorarlberg .

During the pogrom night on November 9, 1938, members of the 87th SS-Standarte Innsbruck broke into his Innsbruck apartment at Anichstrasse 13, dragged him into a car, which they took him to Kranebitten. On the bank of the Inn, his skull was smashed in and his lifeless body was thrown into the Inn. Berger's body was brought to Munich and cremated in the local crematorium on November 15, 1938.

After the end of the Second World War, the three perpetrators, SS-Studentensturmführer Gerhard Lausegger and SS-Untersturmführer Robert Duy and Walter Hopfgartner, should be brought to justice. Two (Lausenegger and Duy), however, evaded judgment by fleeing the country, Hopfgartner was sentenced to ten years in prison, after almost five years in 1954 conditionally released in the course of the Christmas amnesty and then made a career in the SPÖ.

In 1997 the pogrom memorial was erected on Landhausplatz in Innsbruck, dedicated to Richard Berger and the three other Innsbruck victims of the 1938 November pogroms .

Since a memorial from the Suevia Innsbruck fraternity honors Lausegger as one of its members at Innsbruck's Westfriedhof , the city of Innsbruck erected a memorial stele for Berger not far from the Suevia memorial in November 2015.

Honors

literature

  • Thomas Albrich; Michael Guggenberger: One of these November criminals is rarely on trial. The criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of the so-called “Reichskristallnacht” in Austria , in: Thomas Albrich; Winfried R. Garscha ; Martin F. Polaschek (ed.): Holocaust and war crimes in court: the case of Austria . Innsbruck: Haymon, 2006, ISBN 3-7065-4258-7 . On Innsbruck pp. 34–44
  • Thomas Albrich (ed.): The perpetrators of the Jewish pogrom in Innsbruck in 1938 . Innsbruck: Haymon, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7099-7242-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ General Directorate of the Austrian Federal Railways (ed.): Almanach der Österreichische Eisenbahnen 1931 . Vienna 1931, page 44
  2. ↑ Anichstraße - city center district. In: Places of the November pogrom 1938 in Innsbruck. Retrieved December 9, 2015 .
  3. ↑ group of perpetrators. (No longer available online.) In: Places of the November pogrom 1938 in Innsbruck. Archived from the original on December 11, 2011 ; Retrieved December 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.novemberpogrom1938.at
  4. ↑ The fraternity monument honors fellow murderers. In: Remember.at. Retrieved December 9, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Thomas Albrich, Michael Guggenberger: The criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of the Reichskristallnacht in Austria . In: Martin Polaschek (Ed.): Holocaust and war crimes in court . StudienVerlag, S. 39 ff .
  6. ^ Christa Zöchling: The November pogrom 1938 was the prelude to the Holocaust . In: Profile . Issue 45/2018, November 3, 2018.
  7. ↑ The bloodiest persecution was in Innsbruck . In: mein district.at . May 15, 2015 ( mein district.at [accessed November 6, 2018]).
  8. ↑ "Memory is a form of encounter". In: Innsbruck informs. November 4, 2015, accessed December 9, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Berger, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian engineer and victim of the pogrom night
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1938
Place of death for crane requests