Josef SCHÖFEGGER, born on August 4, 1906 in Feldkirchen near Mattighofen, was a Jehovah’s Witness, master shoemaker and married to Theresia, who had a child on April 11, 1937 in Salzburg: Daughter Josefine. The family lived in the Äußeres Nonntal district of Salzburg.
The 33-year-old father of the family was arrested on November 24, 1939, for refusing military service on religious grounds, deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on January 4, 1940, and murdered there on April 15, 1940. His wife Maria had received a short note from her husband as late as March 1940:
Am alive and well, have received the money from Hans that you sent.
With the warmest greetings in love and loyalty your Papa, greetings to all acquaintances.
On this last card of »Schutzhäftling No. 6300« is the note of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp:
The protective prisoner is still a persistent Bible scholar and refuses to desist from the heresy of the Bible scholars. For this reason, he has merely been deprived of the relief of maintaining the otherwise permissible correspondence.
The widow and her daughter survived the persecutions. Her daughter, as a survivor in liberated Austria, was entitled to victim welfare.
Translation: DeepL
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.07.2010 at Salzburg, Nonntaler Hauptstraße 120
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer