Franz SCHINNERL was born in Salzburg on September 14, 1910. He was a single Catholic hotel clerk who lived and worked in the Nelböck Park Hotel at number 2 Weiserstraße (now the Julius Raab-Platz).1

He was arrested on October 15, 1941 (probably because of a denunciation) and according to the records of the Salzburg Provincial Court he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for homosexuality on January 16, 1942.2

After he served his sentence, Franz SCHINNERL was sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp where he was registered as Prisoner number 40339 on November 23, 1942. When the Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated by US troops on April 29, 1945 its prisoners were in catastrophic conditions.

The entire camp area was kept under quarantine for weeks because of rampant typhus and typhoid epidemics.

One to three hundred of the newly freed prisoners continued to die daily, including the 34 year old Franz SCHINNERL from Salzburg who died on May 9, 1945.

1 In 1973 2 Weiserstraße was renamed 2 Julius Raab-Platz. The site of the demolished Park hotel is now occupied by the Salzburg Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development Institute (WIFI).

2 Under the Nazi regime the Salzburg Provincial Court saw proceedings against 338 people, including six women, under § 129 I b of the still valid Austrian Criminal Code – »fornication against nature with persons of the same sex.« The relevant court records have since been destroyed.

Sources

  • Salzburg City and Provincial Archives
  • Notes from the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site dated June 28 and November 3, 2011
Author: Gert Kerschbaumer
Translation: Stan Nadel

Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.03.2012 at Salzburg, Julius-Raab-Platz 2

All stumbling stones at Julius-Raab-Platz 2