Norbert DEININGER was born in the town of Baden just south of Vienna on August 7, 1923. He was the first child of Margarete and Wunibald Deininger. Norbert‘s father was an architect1 and he taught at what was then called the Salzburg State Trade School (it is now an HTL – a technical training secondary school).
From 1931 to 1946 he was a professor at the Graz Technical College which granted doctoral degrees (it is now the Graz University of Technology). The Deininger family lived in the Äußerer Stein neighborhood of Salzburg.
At first their son Norbert was a patient at the Eugendorf Konradinum, an institution of the state of Salzburg that was operated by the Sisters of Mercy. In November 1938, after the Nazis had taken over Austria, Norbert was moved to the Schloss Schernberg nursing home in Schwarzach (in the Salzburg mountain district of Pongau) that was also run by the Sisters of Mercy.
We now know that the regional head of the Sisters of Mercy protested strongly and with great courage against the Nazis’ »Euthanasia« program that was murdering tens of thousands of handicapped patients across the Third Reich. When she was arrested by the Gestapo on April 16, 1941 the Sisters of Mercy patients lost their main defender. Thanks to the efforts of some of her co-workers 17 patients were spirited away and hidden, thereby saving their lives.
The 17 year old Norbert DEININGER was one of the 115 patients who were deported from Schernberg to the Hartheim killing center near Linz on April 21, 1941 where they were all murdered.
As with all of the victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«2 murder program his death was not entered in the police registration files. Norbert’s family was never politically endangered by the Nazi regime.
1 Wunibald Deininger’s buildings in Salzburg include: the Kiesel Publishing Center (now a small mall and office building), the Roittner Gymnastic Center, the Wehrle Clinic, the Police Headquarters, a residential building at 29a Arbenbergstraße (belonging to Margarete Deininger) and others.
2 It was called the »T4« program because its central headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin.
Sources
- Salzburg City Archives
- Schloss Hartheim Learning and Memorial Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 26.09.2018 at Salzburg, Arenbergstraße 29a
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer