Berta HEGER was born in St. Johann in Pongau (about 70 km south of Salzburg) on July 20, 1897 and was baptized as a Roman Catholic. She was the second of the four children of Rosa and Johann Heger. Her father Johann Heger was a forest manager, but starting in 1903 on the family lived in the city of Salzburg.
From 1918 on they lived at 7 Griesgasse, which belonged to the retired Oberforstrat [Senior Forest Councilor], and Johann Heger died there in 1922.
Berta HEGER remained unmarried and worked in offices until she became ill in the 1930s. A year after the Nazis had annexed Austria in 1938 she was admitted to the Salzburg State Asylum in early March 1939.
She was one of the 85 patients from the asylum who were deported from there to the killing center for the handicapped at Hartheim Castle outside Linz on May 21, 1941 and she was murdered there.
As with all the other victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«1 extermination campaign the death of the 43 year old Berta HEGER wasn’t recorded in the police registration files.
Berta’s mother Rosa died in Salzburg in 1943. Her brothers Johann and Otto lived elsewhere and survived the terror years.
Berta’s younger sister Hilde HEGER (who had been born in St. Johann in Pongau on February 26, 1899), was an artist who continued to live in Salzburg – where she diead at age 99 in 1998.
1 It was called operation »T4« because it had its headquarters in Berlin at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Those mainly responsible for the murders of the handicapped from Salzburg were Reichsstatthalter [Governor] Dr. Friedrich Rainer, the director of the Regional Health Office Dr. Oskar Hausner, the director of the State Asylum (now called the Christian-Doppler-Clinic) Dr. Leo Wolfer, and the head of the asylum’s heredity disease section Dr. Heinrich Wolfer.
Quellen
- War Crimes Records of the U.S. Judge Advocate Division Headquarters (The National Archives Washington DC)
- Parish registers of the Salzburg Archdiocese
- Police Registration Files of the City of Salzburg
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 25.09.2019 at Salzburg, Griesgasse 7