Rudolf GRUBER was a plumber’s assistant and Catholic who had been born in Salzburg on April 9, 1913. He was deaf and was a pupil at the school for the deaf and dumb in Salzburg.
The youngster was incapable of learning a skilled trade and he worked for a while in a plumber’s yard. He lived with his widowed mother Franziska Gruber on the second floor of 1 Brodgasse in the Salzburg Altstadt [Old Town].
A Nazi court ruling declared Rudolf GRUBER »completely incapacitated« and he was admitted to the State Asylum on January 16, 1940. He was one of the 85 patients who were deported to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz and murdered on 21 May 1941.
The death of the 28-year-old man is not noted in the police files of the city of Salzburg – as was the case with all the victims of the Nazi’s so-called T4 »euthanasia« campaign.1
Rudolf’s mother Franziska Gruber was his guardian and she survived the terror years, but died in Salzburg in early 1946.
1 It was called »T4« because its headquarters were located at Tiergarten 4 in Berlin.
Those mainly responsible for the murders of the sick in Salzburg: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Reichsstatthalter, Dr. Oskar Hausner as head of the Gaufürsorgeamt, Dr. Leo Wolfer as head of the Landesheilanstalt, and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary biology department of the Landesheilanstalt (today the Christian Doppler Clinic).
Sources
- Salzburg city archives
- Schloss Hartheim Learning and Remembrance Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.03.2012 at Salzburg, Brodgasse 1
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer