resistance - Krems macht Geschichte

Introduction

KremsMachtGeschichte invites you to learn about and engage with the history of National Socialism in Krems. As you move through the city you connect various historical sites with each other. A simple stroll creates a personal narrative that brings the places, themes and histories into the present and enables you to keep the past alive in your critical memory.

What does it mean to “make history”? In 1938 Krems became the capital of the Gau, or Nazi administrative district, of “Lower Danube”. This was a time when Krems was making history, but history of a kind many would like to forget today. Today, when we remember, when we name perpetrators and tell the stories of victims, when we make resistance visible and point out continuities, we’re participating in the writing of history in our society. History isn’t just written in schoolbooks and by historians and at universities; it’s continually being produced by our everyday actions. History happens in the here and now.

24 historical sites, marked by green pennants, form the stations of the KremsMachtGeschichte tours. Every site stands for a different event that has something to tell us about destruction, persecution and crime, as well as about responsibility, solidarity and resistance. Some roads lead to memorials that glorify the past and that today need some historical correction. Prominent positions in the cityscape are taken up by the court and the prison, places where Nazi violence was once inflicted but that today contribute to the functioning of democracy. Many sites of past events are unrecognisable as such today; only through your imagination can they come back to life.

The information about each place can be called up with any smartphone by using the QR codes on the pennants. Texts and images can also be found in the catalogue which is displayed at various places in the city. By taking a walk through the city, you’re already making some history. En route from site to site, the historical picture gradually becomes more intricate. Common themes emerge, each of which groups the sites in a new way and connects them with our contemporary world. The themes include “on Jewish life”, “on resistance”, “on persecution and punishment” and “on remembering”. The short texts under these titles give some initial ideas that you can question and add your own stories to on the empty pages of the catalogue.

One form of memory is the naming of streets and squares. In Krems there are currently three places named after resistance fighters: Franz-Zeller-Platz, Therese-Mahrer-Park and Gerasimos-Garnelis-Weg. As a Communist, Therese Mahrer was arrested several times during the period of the Nazi regime. Franz Zeller was executed with two other Krems resistance fighters in Vienna in 1943 for organising “Red Aid”. A series of workers in the tobacco factory received custodial sentences for collecting donations for imprisoned Socialists and Communists and for distributing magazines. There is still no symbol of memorial in Krems for this resistance group, which consisted of Leopoldine Puhl, Anton Hirnschall, Otto Schöpf, Leopoldine Ankerl, Maria Donabauer and Maria Malat.

There were various forms of resistance against the Nazi regime. They ranged from passive resistance, for example refusing to give the Hitler salute, to desertion, to active and organised resistance by aiding persecuted people, distributing prohibited printed matter or even armed struggle. The Catholic resistance fighter Anton Brunner wrote illegal leaflets as a schoolboy in Krems. The antifascist Gerasimos Garnelis fought in the armed resistance against German troops in Greece before being deported to Krems. Handing out Communist newspapers was punished as “high treason”. “Red Aid”, an organisation of the Communist Party, supported persecuted and imprisoned people. It was active underground from 1933 on. Collecting donations for this organisation was one of the most commonly sanctioned offences in Krems.

Many in the active resistance were Communists and Social Democrats, who had already been particular targets for repression and persecution under the Austrofascist regime after the prohibition of the Communist Party (KPÖ) in 1933 and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in 1934. After the February Uprising in 1934, the main groups of prisoners detained in the newly completed Krems Regional Court were thus Social Democrats and Communists. After the attempted coup of 1934 it was particularly National Socialists who were interned there. During the Nazi period, around half of the prisoners were women. Hedwig Stocker, a guard in what was then the prison of the District Court, supported imprisoned women regardless of their party affiliation, providing them food, supporting escape attempts and hiding one resistance fighter in her garden shed.