Heinrich Weber was born in St. Gilgen (30 kilometers east of Salzburg on the St. Wolfgangsee) on September 10, 1889. He was an unmarried Catholic entertainer and comic.
He had lived in the city of Salzburg since 1924 and resided at 24 Linzer Gasse, a houst that belonged to a Jewish woman named Olga SACHSEL.1
Heinrich Weber had a record of a criminal conviction as a homosexual under § 129 of the Austrian Criminal Code I b. He and his partner, a Salzburg musician with no criminal record, were arrested in the fall of 1939, presumably on the basis of a denunciation. According to the records of the Salzburg State Court they were prosecuted for their sexual orientation.2
The penalties and prison sentences from these prosecutions are however unknown because these court records were destroyed in the 1990s as not worth archiving.
What is known is that Heinrich Weber was deported to the Dachau concentration camp on August 28, 1941, where he was registered as PSV-Prisoner Nr. 27056 (PSV = »protective police custody«, prisoners whose clothing was marked with a green triangle). He was one of the 100 Dachau prisoners considered too sick to work who were transported to the Hartheim killing center near Linz under the euphemisms »invalid transport« and »special treatment 14f13«3 on March 2, 1942.
They were gassed to death on their arrival there.
His 12 year younger partner survived his mistreatment by the Nazi regime and returned to Salzburg, where he died in 1987.
1 Olga Sachsel, the owner of 24 Linzer Gasse, was murdered in the Treblinka death camp on April 23, 1943.
2 Under the Nazi regime charges were brought in the Salzburg State Court against 338 individuals, including six women, for violating § 129 I b which criminalized »unnatural fornication with a person of the same sex« – a section of the old Austrian criminal code that remained in force under the Nazis.
3 »Special treatment 14f13«: »14« = Concentration Camp Inspector, »f« = Cause of Death, »13« = Gassed in Killing Institution of the »T-4« Organisation [the »euthanasia« organization was called that because its headquarters were located at number 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin].
Sources
- Salzburg City and State archives
- Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 18.04.2013 at Salzburg, Linzer Gasse 24
