The related BERMOSER and SCHALLMOSER families, who had been members of the Social-Democratic Labor Party and the Free Labor Union until the two organizations were banned in February 1934, lived in the Itzling Workers’ Home. 1
Rosa BERMOSER, née SCHALLMOSER, was born in Kirchberg bei Mattighofen (in the Innviertel district of Upper Austria) on January 17, 1900, and her husband Johann BERMOSER was born nearby in Eggelsberg bei Mattighofen on August 18, 1903. They had a daughter named Elfriede who was born in Salzburg in 1927. During the Nazi dictatorship they were members of the illegal Communist Party of Austria. In the spring of 1942 they were both arrested by the Gestapo.
The BERMOSERs had different fates however. Rosa had belonged to the Communist Women’s Organization and without any judicial process she was deported to Auschwitz – where she was murdered on October 14, 1942 at age 42. 2 Johann was charged with »conspiracy to commit treason« but was never convicted. He was released from imprisonment while severely ill and died in Salzburg on November 20, 1944 from the consequences of his ill treatment while under arrest – he was 41 years old.
Their orphaned daughter Elfriede was later given a victims’ pension in liberated Salzburg.
Rosa BERMOSER’s younger brother Karl SCHALLMOSER was born in Kirchberg bei Mattighofen on October 8, 1906. He was a master mason and family father who had been an active trade unionist until the banning of the Social Democrats in February 1934. He then moved to the left and played a leading role in the Communist resistance under the Nazi regime. He was arrested on January 27, 1942 and was sentenced to death by the People’s Court for »conspiracy to commit treason« on April 6, 1943. On July 22, 1943 the 36 year old was beheaded in the Munich-Stadelheim prison.
His son Karl junior, a 13-year old boy in 1943, became a railroader and died in Salzburg in 1986.
On the initiative of the Salzburg section of the Austrian Association of Concentration Camp Survivors, ex-Prisoners, and Political Persecuted Individuals the bodies of all the Salzburg resistance fighters executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison [Heinrich Auer, Karl Schallmoser, Anton Schubert and Rudolf Smolik] were exhumed from the forest cemetery in Munich-Perlach and ceremonially reinterred in the Salzburg city cemetery by the Gnigl pastor Franz Dürnberger on December 14, 1952.
A 1998 proposal by the Anti-fascist Personnel Committee that a public street in Salzburg should be named after Karl SCHALLMOSER was never acted upon.
1 The former Itzling Workers’ Home (originally at 27 Ischlerbahnstraße, then at 1 Pfarrweg and finally at 18-20 Schopperstraße), was confiscated after the banning of the Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1934, returned in 1950 and sold in 1964 (Itzling Property Register EZ 311).
2 Six women from the Gnigl, Itzling and Schallmoos districts of Salzburg were deported to Auschwitz without any judicial process in 1942 and murdered there: Rosa Bermoser, Maria Bumberger, Anna Frauneder, Marianne Innerberger, Anna Prähauser and Anna Reindl. The Communist Josefine Lindorfer from Hallein was similarly deported to Auschwitz from the police jail in Salzburg and murdered.
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.03.2012 at Salzburg, Schopperstraße 20
Karl SchallmoserPhoto: Archive of the Austrian Communist Party
Karl Schallmoser with Karl jun. & wifePhoto: Archive of the Austrian Communist Party
Collective grave of the Salzburg Concentration Camp Association »They died for Austria 1943« at the Salzburg Communal Cemetery
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer