August Kraft 1886 - 1940

Born 13.10.1886 in Kiöwen / Kijewo
Died 1.2.1940 in Mauthausen

Biography

August Kraft (or Krafzig) was born on 13 October 1886 in Kiöwen (today’s Kijewo). When exactly or why he came to Vienna is not known. What is certain is that he was already in Vienna by the end of the 1920s and that he had close contacts to a group of Bible Students. Kraft lived in Vienna’s 7th district at Neubaugasse 45 and was single. He was already active in the very early days of the Bible Student movement in Austria and served as the secretary of the Vienna office. He was a founder member of the Austrian branch of the Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society and an active participant in the struggle against repressions carried out by the Ständestaat authorities against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1930s.

Just before the ‘Anschluss’ (‘Annexation’) of Austria, the Watch Tower Society’s building in Vienna was sold and Walter Voigt, who had been national president until that point, fled to Switzerland. In March 1938 August Kraft took over as head of the Austrian branch. The ‘Concluding remarks of the Gestapo Vienna on the leader of the association of Bible Students in the Ostmark’, dated 17 December 1941, stated that:

‘After the reunification of Austria with the German Reich, the previous leader of the illegal organisation of Bible Students in the Ostmark fled to Switzerland then to England. The leadership was now taken over by the deputy, August Kraft […]. The Bible Students, i.e. ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’, now became more cautious in their activities. They now only met in smaller groups, sometimes in private apartments, sometimes in public parks, in order to ‘interpret’ the bible and to read Bible Student tracts together. To this end, August Kraft had documents produced using a duplicating process delivered to the majority of the faithful through an intermediary, which usually contained the lead articles from Bible Student writings banned in the German Reich.’[1]

Kraft was always on the move, taking on courier duties himself and supervising groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and other parts of the country. At first, Kraft also went to Vorarlberg to pick up copies of the Watchtower smuggled in from Switzerland and then redistributed them.

In Vienna, Kraft organised the duplication of the literature and was himself involved here, as is clear from the protocol of Ernst Bojanowski’s interrogation: ‘On 1 June 1938, WT-copies were made in Vienna. Before this originals had been distributed. Their production was organised by Kraft. During Kraft’s time, Kraft wrote the stencils himself, while Resi Schreiber (in Vienna in prison) produced the copies.’[2]

Until 1939, the copying machine and the typewriter were buried in the 19th district in a camouflaged hiding place.

On 25 May 1939, August Kraft was arrested by the Gestapo in his apartment. On 14 July 1939 he was sent to Dachau concentration camp on a ‘protective custody’ order. He became number 34625.

After 6 months, in September 1939, Kraft was transferred to Mauthausen along with 144 other Jehovah’s Witnesses on a large prisoner transport. He arrived in Mauthausen on 29 September 1939. His fellow believer and fellow inmate Alois Moser remembered:

‘One day August Kraft pointed out to the KZ commandant that he had bloodstains on his jacket. He was given solitary confinement by the commandant. The following morning Josef Buchner and I had to pile up the naked corpses on a sledge. The wretches all had a label with their name on it that was attached to their big toe. In amongst the pile of corpses was August Kraft.’[3]

Josef Buchner also gave an account of him:

‘Brother Kraft, who always brought us the Watchtower during the period it was banned, died in this terrible place. I was able to speak to him a few hours before his death, I couldn’t stop the tears running down my cheeks and I said to him that he would soon now be with the heavenly Father and his Son. He said to me in a weak voice, smiling, that he was happy he could die. On the next day his body was among those we piled on the sledge.’[4]

August Kraft died in Mauthausen concentration camp on 1 February 1940.

Heidi Gsell

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

Sources:

Archiv Verein Lila Winkel.

Archive of the Mauthausen Memorial (AMM).

 

References:

Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society (ed.): Jahrbuch der Zeugen Jehovas 1989, p.100 ff.

Wolfgang Neugebauer: ‘Ernste Bibelforscher’ (Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung) [‘Serious Bible Studens’ (Interational Bible Student Association). In: Widerstand und Verfolgung in Wien 1934–1945. Eine Dokumentation [Resistance and Persecution in Vienna 1934–1945. A documentation]. Ed. DÖW (Vienna 1984), p. 166.

 

Location In room