The site of this war crime is close to the Salzburg Festival concert halls. It was in the Franciscan monastery confiscated by the Nazis and which served as the local Gestapo headquarters headed by Dr. Hubert Hueber until the end of the war. Its official address at the time was 5 Hofstallgasse (Topography of The Terror).1
On April 25. 1945, in the last days of the Second World War and shortly before the liberation of the city of Salzburg by the U.S. Army, a robbery and murder took place in the bunker of the local Gestapo headquarters. The victims were a Belgian couple called RAMAKERS or RAMACKERS.2
In order to keep the Salzburg Gestapo’s crime secret, no death certificates nor death records with the names and dates of birth of the two murder victims were issued.
Despite that precaution, the Gestapo failed to maintain complete secrecy.
Two years after the liberation, in July 1947, the Federal Police Directorate in Salzburg filed charges against some Gestapo officers under the Austrian War Crimes Act.
The criminal complaint identified the perpetrators and their accomplices: Johann (Hans) Gross and Georg König, Max Kaiser and Alexander Rißling (also called Riesling), Gabriele Forsterpointner and Anna Schwaiger.
The criminal complaint said that Gross and König, both high-ranking Gestapo officers, gave their two subordinates Kaiser and Rißling orders to commit robbery and murder in order to enrich themselves with the property of their victims before fleeing from the allies.
The course of events described in the criminal complaint was based on the testimony of a witness: the 19 years old Anna Schwaiger, had been the lover of murder instigator Georg König and had been an accomplice to the crime. She was able to describe the events because she had been tasked with monitoring the subordinate Gestapo men Kaiser and Rißling during their nighttime robbery and murder in the Gestapo bunker. She was able to testify that around midnight two corpses – »lumps« wrapped in blankets – were transported to the river Salzach in the Gestapo’s official car and thrown into the water.
According to Schwaiger, the Gestapo secretary Gabriele Forsterpointner was also involved: so there were four people who had to watch each other and not let their stolen goods, the valuables of the murder victims, out of their sight. Then the four of them drove with the loot in their official car to Georg König’s apartment in Salzburg’s Parsch district, where the contemptuous words were spoken (recorded in the official German of the criminal complaint), »that Mrs. Ramacker’s bottom, after she had been thrown into the Salzach, was still shimmering in the moonlight on the surface of the water as she drifted down the river«.
The bodies disappeared without a trace in the Salzach. The stolen goods, however, were in the Gestapo car that the perpetrators then used on the night of the murder to get to the Salzburg state district of Pinzgau (which often served as a retreat and escape area for members of the Nazi regime in its final phase).
The murderers and those involved were awaited in Zell am See by Gestapo Detective Inspector Johann Gross who, according to the criminal complaint, had given the senior detective Georg König the order to murder and rob the Belgian couple. The loot was then divided up under his supervision.
The police found Georg König’s share when it was discovered in a metal box in Radstadt: jewelry and banknotes (around 5,000 Reichsmarks), but no information about the other shares was ever discovered.
Georg König was arrested in Radstadt on June 18, 1945 and was interned in the prison Camp Marcus W. Orr (Glasenbach) before being transferred to the US Interrogation Center in Gmunden. He managed to escape in July 1947 and disappeared.
The other perpetrators, Johann Gross, Max Kaiser and Alexander Rißling, were able to escape responsibility along with their loot before the American forces arrived in May 1945. According to the criminal complaint dated July 22, 1947, the other two participants in the crime, Gabriele Forsterpointner and Anna Schwaiger, were still »at large.«
Recent research indicates that no Austrian courts followed up on these reported war crimes because the fugitives could not be found.
The murder victims didn’t leave any record about the reasons for their persecution (or anything else). The Belgian couple was suspected of having been collaborators who had worked for the German occupying forces in Belgium, though there are no records on this to be found in Belgium. In Salzburg, on the other hand, the criminal complaint indicated that there was such a connection based in the testimony of witness Anna Schwaiger who said: the Gestapo murdered two »informants«, liaisons or confidants, because they »could provide incriminating information about members of the Gestapo at the impending end of the war«.
But this reported claim by an accomplice to the robbery-murder that accused the Belgian couple of complicity was not backed up by any evidence. Nor was any more data found about the two murder victims.
It took eight decades before the identity of the Belgian couple could be clarified: Georges RAMAKERS, born on 16 July 1920 in Liège, and his wife Charin RAMAKERS née LECLERCQ, born on 18 April 1919 in Gembloux near Namur. The two young people were 25 and 26 when they were murdered in the Gestapo bunker.
This was only one of countless war crimes that remained unpunished in liberated Salzburg – where the priority was often to protect the perpetrators rather than punish them.3
2 Married couple “Ramackers” with no first names or personal information in the Criminal complaint by the Federal Police Directorate Salzburg dated July 22,1947.
3 See Jozef KOSCIOLEK and traces of the perpetrators.
Sources
- Salzburg State Archives (Sicherheitsdirektion 14719/47, Bundespolizeidirektion Salzburg 22. 7. 1947, Anzeige gegen ehemalige Gestapobeamte)
- Archives de L’État en Belgique, à Liège, à Namur (inquiries)
- Widerstand und Verfolgung in Salzburg 1934-1945, volume 2, pp. 532-538
- Gernod Fuchs: Polizei/Gestapo und SS-Sicherheitsdienst. Organisation und Führungspersonal, in: Die Stadt Salzburg im Nationalsozialismus. Machtstrukturen der NS-Herrschaft, volume 5, Salzburg 2014, pp. 304-361
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid at Salzburg, Franziskanergasse 5
13 October 1938: Forced eviction of the Franciscan monastery on the orders of Gestapo chief Karl-Heinz Rux and protest action by the monksPhoto: Salzburg City Archive (Photo Archive Franz Krieger)
Franciscan monastery in Salzburg: Gestapo headquarters with SS flagPhoto: private
Franciscan monastery in Salzburg: Gestapo headquarters with SS and swastika flagPhoto: private
Franciscan monastery in Salzburg: Gestapo headquarters with SS and swastika flagPhoto: private