Anna STEINWENDER, née Baum, was a Catholic woman born in Niederlindewiese bei Bad Lindewiese (then in Austrian Silesia, later Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic) on May 8, 1858.
Her parents, Vincenz and Maria-Anna Baum, were cottagers, rural laborers who worked for farmers with more substantial holdings.
After her parents died the unmarried and propertyless young woman moved to Hallein, just south of Salzburg, where found work in a cigar and tobacco factory (and where she was allowed to sleep when not working).
The living and working conditions of these »cig women« from Hallein are now well known thanks to the publications of the Communist and anti-fascist resistance activist Agnes Primocic.
In 1896 the 38 year old factory worker Anna Baum married the widowed Leopold Steinwender who worked as a porter in the factory. Both of them worked there until they retired and her husband died at age 69 in Hallein-Burgfried.
The widowed Anna STEINWENDER was over 70 years old when she moved to Salzburg in the early 1930s and took up residence as a sub-tenant of Mrs. Antonie Sommer at 23 Lasserstraße. The building belonged to a Jewish couple.1
On February 20, 1934 Anna STEINWENDER was admitted to the State Asylum and on April 18, 1941 she was one of 29 patients shipped off to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz where she was murdered just a few weeks before her 83rd birthday.
Her death, like those of the other victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4« program2 to murder all the »useless« handicapped people in the Third Reich, was not recorded in the Salzburg police registration files.
She had no surviving relatives.
We should also remember her former co-worker at the Hallein Tobacco factory, Josefine Lindorfer, who was arrested on political grounds and murdered in Auschwitz.
1 The property at 23 Lasserstraße belonged to David Rosenfeld from 1919 to 1932 and then to Gisela Jellinek until 1939. In 1939 it was seized by the Nazis and »aryanized« by being turned over to Maria Scheuba, a doctor’s wife.
After 1945 the property was not restored to the former owner’s heirs and no compensation was ever paid. The couple David and Stefanie Rosenfeld escaped the Holocaust at first because they fled to Trieste, but they were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
Gisela Jellinek and her husband Dr. Johann Jellinek were expelled from Salzburg in 1938 and were murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943 (see the entry for 1 Dreifaltigkeitsgasse). The ballet master Otto Schneider who was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1939 and murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1941 also lived at 23 Lasserstraße 23 before his arrest.
2 It was called the »T4« program because its Berlin headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Primarily responsible for the murderous program in Salzburg were: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Governor, Dr. Oskar Hausner as leader of the regional health office, Dr. Leo Wolfer as director of the State Asylum (now called the Christian-Doppler-Clinic), and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary disease section of the State Asylum.
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 23.03.2012 at Salzburg, Lasserstraße 23
From 1870 to 1940 cigar- and tabac production in Hallein-Burgfried, until 1945 armaments factory
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer