Alois Lechner 1893 - 1940

Born 2.8.1893 in Innsbruck
Died 19.2.1940 in Mauthausen

Biography

Alois Lechner was born on 2 August 1893 in Innsbruck. His father Josef Lechner was a master cobbler, his mother Christiane’s maiden name was Baldauf.

The young Alois Lechner began an apprenticeship as a cobbler on 28 July 1914 – the day Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. He went to war with the 2nd regiment of the Tiroler Kaiserjäger (Imperial Tyrolean Rifle Regiment) and received a bronze medal for his bravery in combat. He was wounded by a shot through his right foot in May 1915 and was then assigned work in accordance with the War Services Act. In this capacity, he worked from September 1915 to May 1917as a mechanic at, the munitions factory “Poldihütte” in Kladno by Prague, amongst other things. He re-joined the army in May 1916 and became an Italian prisoner of war in November 1918, after the war had ended.

Alois Lechner was released from his imprisonment on 17 June 1919 and returned to Innsbruck, where he was also officially discharged from the army. He joined the Austrian Finanzwache (a type of customs and excise authority) in autumn of that year. He married Anna Thaler in 1920. They had three sons in 1921, 1922 and 1924.

Alois Lechner joined the security authorities of the City of Innsbruck in February 1921 and there began his police career. He was awarded the Silver Service Medal in 1935. He was promoted from local to district inspector in 1937 and there held the position of post commandant in the Innsbruck district Inner City/City Hall. One of his main tasks in this position was fighting terrorism. He interrogated terrorists who were supporters of the NSDAP, which was illegal in Austria at this time.

On 12 March 1938, the day on which German troops entered Austria, Alois Lechner was arrested at his place of work and brought to the Innsbruck police jail “Die Sonne” (The Sun) and from there was taken into “protective custody”. On 31 May 1938 he was transported to Germany and interned in the concentration camp Dachau. Various appeals for clemency were refused.

On 28 September 1939 he was moved to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was beaten to death on 19 February 1940. Records show that he died as a result of serious mistreatment, but the exact circumstances were at first unknown. According to the verbal reports made by his family, his body, which lay in state at the fire brigade hall in the city of Steyr, was bruised all over. In the trial after the war, the exact course of events was established: Alois Lechner was strapped to a stretcher and beaten to death with rifle butts. This apparently was a re-enactment of an interrogation method used by the Innsbruck police before the “Anschluss”.

Alois Lechner had the prisoner number 14342 in Dachau and 14352 in Mauthausen.

For Alois Lechner’s relatives, his deportation and murder had dramatic consequences. His wife Anna lost all financial benefits after the “Anschluss”. One of her sons was arrested by the Gestapo in summer 1938. He had spoken disrespectfully about the “Hitler youth” to his employer. His mother barely saw him again apart from a few short spells of leave from the front.

Anna Lechner’s position became even more difficult after the war had begun. She had a fourth, illegitimate son in 1941. Anna then left Innsbruck and worked in the surrounding countryside as a travelling tailor for various farming families. Due to the number of hours she worked, she was accused of neglecting her children. This led to the NSDAP district committee for Innsbruck filing charges against her at the youth welfare office, who then threatened to take her children away from her.

In 1943, NS troops marched into Italy. This also threatened her twin sister, who suffered from severe epilepsy and lived in a home in South Tyrol. Anna found a place for her in a religious institution in Vorarlberg and thus saved her from potential euthanasia.

But the worst consequence of the Anschluss for Anna Lechner was the hostility she faced from acquaintances and neighbours living near her flat in Innsbruck. This unpolitical housewife was called an “enemy of the people” and a “concentration camp whore”. Out of the eight grocer’s shops in the district, in the end only one would serve her. The oppressive atmosphere is described in the book “Quest for Life – Ave Pax” by Lorraine Justman-Wisnick. Lorraine, who was Jewish, escaped death using false papers which declared her to be a Polish guest worker.

“Lotte” lived together with her father as a sub-tenant in Anna Lechner’s flat in Innsbruck. Anna helped her establish important contacts who would subsequently save her life in 1945 after she escaped from prison.

After liberation, Anna Lechner received support from the “Association of victims of national-socialist oppression in Tyrol”, as provided for by the Victim Welfare Law. But her family were still in a precarious financial situation. The seven long years of the NS regime had used up their financial reserves. The extended family’s weekend house, which had served as a place of refuge, had to be sold. She received back payments in the 1950s for the pension she should have received during the Nazi occupation, but died shortly afterwards.

Thomas Thaler, Anna Lechner’s grandson

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