Karoline (Karola) WEINHANDL was born in Salzburg on April 22, 1917. She was the third of the four children of the Catholic couple Maria and Franz WEINHANDL.
Franz WEINHANDL was a master locksmith. He and his family had local citizenship rights in Salzburg and they lived in the Elisabethvorstadt neighborhood.
Karoline’s mother died in 1932 and her father died in Salzburg in 1936.
Karoline WEINHANDL was unable to learn a trade and was placed in care in September 1934. In February 1939, during the Nazi regime, she was put in the Salzburg State Asylum.
She was one of 68 patients who were deported from there to the Hartheim Castle killing center near Linz on April 16, 1941, where they were all murdered. As with all the other victims of the Nazis’ secret »T4«1 program the death of this 23 year old woman was never recorded in the Salzburg police registration files.
Her siblings all left Salzburg and nothing further is known about them here in Salzburg.
1 It was called the »T4« program because its Berlin headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Primarily responsible for the murderous program in Salzburg were: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Governor, Dr. Oskar Hausner as leader of the regional health office, Dr. Leo Wolfer as director of the State Asylum (now called the Christian-Doppler-Clinic), and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary disease section of the State Asylum.
Sources
- Salzburg city archives
- Schloss Hartheim Learning and Remembrance Center
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 14.11.2016 at Salzburg, Elisabethstraße 5a
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer