Berta FEITZINGER was born in Vienna on June 24, 1910 and was baptised in the Catholic Church.
She was the child of an unmarried maid who had moved to Vienna from Gnigl (which is now part of the city of Salzburg), where she still had had local citizenship rights even though she worked and lived in Vienna.
Because her local citizenship rights were in Gnigl her daughter Berta was sent to the St. Anna community hospital in Gnigl when she needed to be hospitalized in July 1923.
Later that year 13 year old Berta was transferred to the St. Josef’s reform school run by the Sisters of the Good Shepard in Salzburg’s Nonntal neighborhood. The Salzburg police registration files indicate that from 1929 to 1934 Berta worked and lived in private households, but then she was back in St. Josef’s for a short stay.
In March 1934 the 23 year old Berta FEITZINGER was admitted as a patient in the Salzburg State Asylum. In 1939, after the Nazis took over Austria, the legally incapacitated young woman spent a few weeks in the Schloss Schernberg nursing home in Schwarzach (in the Salzburg mountain district of Pongau), but she was soon sent back to the State Asylum.
Berta FEITZINGER was one of the 68 patients who were deported from Schernberg to the Hartheim killing center near Linz on April 16, 1941 where they were all murdered.
As with all of the victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«1 murder program the death of this 30 year old woman was not entered in the Salzburg police registration files.
Nothing more is known so far about her mother who lived in Vienna or about any other relatives.
1 It was called the »T4« program because its central headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 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 Memorial Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 25.09.2018 at Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstraße 14
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer
