Elise Therese SCHECKENBERGER was born in Salzburg on June 8, 1904. She was unmarried, Catholic, and the third of the six children of Elise and Johann SCHECKENBERGER. Her father was the owner of the building at 38 Linzer Gasse 38 and of the Café Sport.
All of the family members had local citizenship rights in the city of Salzburg in accordance with Austrian law.
Elise Therese had been a patient in the Dear and Dumb asylum in Salzburg since she was 6 years old and she was admitted to the Sisters of Mercy’s Schloss Schernberg asylum at Schwarzach im Pongau when she was 29.
On April 21, 1941 the 36 year old Elise Therese SCHECKENBERGER was one of the 115 patients deported from Schernberg to the killing center at Hartheim outside Linz, where she was murdered.
As with all the victims of the secret Nazi »T-4«1 program her death was not recorded in the City of Salzburg police registration files.
Elise’s father died in 1937 and her mother died in 1952.
1 The »T-4« »euthanasia« program to kill the handicapped was named after its headquarters’ address at 4 Tiergartenstraße 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’s Christian Doppler Clinic).
Sources
- Salzburg city archives
- Schloss Hartheim Learning and Remembrance Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 18.04.2013 at Salzburg, Linzer Gasse 38
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer