Josef THALHAMMER was born in Mattsee (Salzburg state) on July 28, 1902. He was a married porter and had a son who was born in Salzburg in 1931. The family lived at 7 Kreuzstraße in the Itzling neighborhood.
Josef THALHAMMER was a member of the Social-Democratic Labor Party and its trade union until they were banned in February 1934. After Nazi Germany took over Austria in 1938 he was joined the Communist resistance movement organized by Franz Ofner and Anton Reindl. Thalhammer was a cell leader in the Itzling local organization. At the beginning of 1942 the Gestapo was able to infiltrate, roll up and smash the socialist Communist resistance groups in Salzburg led by Anton Reindl.
In order to stifle forever any organized resistance movement, over the course of 1942 the Gestapo deported seven of the wives of members of the Gnigl and Itzling Communist organization to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Only one of the seven survived. At least 32 Communist resistance members from the city of Salzburg were killed in the Nazis’ prisons and concentration camps – and more than 20 of them were from the Gnigl & Itzling neighborhoods.
Josef THALHAMMER was arrested by the Gestapo on April 8, 1942. On March 3, 1943 he and his comrades Rudolf Hartl, Leopold Hock and Josef Wartinger were sentenced to death by the »People’s Court« for conspiracy to commit treason. The 40 year old was executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison on July 30, 1943.
It is worth noting that Johann Hofer, the Nazi Party’s Itzling local group leader, participated in the Salzburg “People’s Court” trial of the members of the Itzling Comunists on March 2-3, 1943 and that he called for a death sentence for all of the accused.1
Josef THALHAMMER´s widow Theresia was eligible for victims’ compensation in liberated Austria and died in Salzburg at age 81. On the initiative of the Salzburg State Association of Politically Persecuted Austrians, Concentration Camp and Prison Survivors, the bodies of their comrades murdered in Munich-Stadelheim – Franz Aschenberger, Josef Haidinger, Rudolf Hartl, Leopold Hock, Franz Pöttinger, Josef Thalhammer and Josef Wartinger – were exhumed from the forest cemetery in Munich-Perlach. On November 1, 1950 they were ceremonially reburied in the Salzburg City Cemetery with the participation of the Gnigl pastor Franz Dürnberger.
1 Johann Hofer took part in the »People’s Court« trial of 4 resisters on March 3, 1943 as the Party’s Itzling local group leader. He testified that the defendants were incorrigible Communists and so deserved nothing less than a death sentence. We also know that Nazi local group leader Johann Hofer instigated the Gestapo’s arrest of the shoemaker Rudolf Beer who lived in Itzling. Beer was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp where he was murdered. Several other residents of Itzling were denounced to the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps. One such was Frau Elise Kaindl, who according to a police report survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp and returned to find that her home had been totally emptied at the instigation of Nazi local group leader Johann Hofer. After the liberation of Salzburg Johann Hofer was interned in the American’s Camp Marcus W. Orr (»Glasenbach«) and he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment under the Austrian war crimes law in December 1948. But he was soon pardoned (at the beginning of the 1950s) and he was employed on the staff of the Salzburg Electric Power Corporation (SAFE) after he was freed. He died in Salzburg in 1979.
Sources
- Salzburg city and state archives
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 13.05.2013 at Salzburg, Kreuzstraße 7
Josef ThalhammerPhoto: archive of the autrian communist party
