Johann Gruber 1889 - 1944

Born 20.10.1889 in Tegernbach
Died 7.4.1944 in Gusen

Biography

THE NIGHT IN WHICH WE LIVE

Life and death of the secular priest Johann Gruber

 

He has been called a saint; Papa Gruber, the angel who gives hope to the prisoners. While the majority look away, cower, accept injustice and crimes against humanity, he is one who will not be bowed or broken by the murderous regime seizing power in Austria.

Johann Gruber is born in the small town of Tegernbach in Upper Austria into great poverty. His mother dies when he is eleven while giving birth to her fifth child; his father dies a few days later. Johann and his siblings grow up in the orphanage. He studies history, becomes a curate, a teacher and, finally, the respected director of the Institute for the Blind in Linz. He vehemently rejects the Nazis, rails against ‘Shite-Inquart’,[1] refuses to tolerate pictures of Hitler in the school and, in return, reaps a charge of anti-Nazi sympathies. Teachers at his school denounce him, saying he has touched blind girls inappropriately. Johann Gruber is sentenced to three years’ imprisonment under harsh conditions, he appeals and the sentence is commuted to two years. In 1940, having served his sentence, he is sent to Dachau concentration camp and then to Gusen, the infamous subcamp of Mauthausen, as prisoner number 43050. His work in the prisoner infirmary gives him access to medicines, with which he cares for the seriously ill and saves many lives. The French poet and resistance fighter Jean Cayrol,[2] who was deported to Gusen as a forced labourer, remembers the ‘Gruber-soup’ that ‘Papa Gruber’ poured into him in the washroom of Block 12 when he could no longer endure the hard labour in the quarry and wished only to die. Gruber organises a less strenuous work detail for him in the camp factory. There he is gradually able to recover. In the breaks he works on his poems, tucked away under the workshop table.

In 1942, while laying railway tracks from the camp to the station, forced labourers come across important archaeological finds from the late Bronze Age. Supervision of the labourers in the excavations is given to a prisoner functionary, the trained historian Gruber, a position that helps provide him with contacts outside the camp. He builds up a resistance network in Gusen, organises school classes, religious services, brings food and medicine into the camp. His letter to the Bishop of Linz, in which he condemns the atrocious conditions in Gusen, falls into the hands of the camp administration. In March 1944 he is sent to the camp prison and suffers weeks of horrific torture. On Good Friday, 7 April 1944, the camp commandant, Seidler, appears. ‘Die like your master at the third hour,’ he yells, while taking swing after swing at his victim. A rope is brought; Johann Gruber is supposed to use it to commit suicide. He doesn’t do it. Finally, Seidler strangles him with his leather belt and hangs him up by his feet.

 

La nuit que nous vivons n’est pas nôtre                             

Cette nuit dérobée dans un ciel sans défense,

douce rumeur du désastre, murmure sans fins

de la peur.

Minuit sonne sur le monde.

 

The night in which we live is not ours

This stolen night under a defenceless sky,

Gentle rumblings of catastrophe,

a murmur, without cease, of fear.

Midnight chimes on the world.[3]

 

Not until one year later, when the war is nearly over, does the archbishop’s office receive notification of the priest’s suicide. The ashes are ready for collection from the camp. After the liberation on 5 May 1945, prisoners give a report of his brutal end.

In 1994, fifty years after Johann Gruber’s death, the painter and sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka and his students visit the former Gusen camp, on which a new town was built after the war complete with neat houses and gardens, which release the remains of human bones when the soil is turned.

40,000 people were murdered in Gusen and the ‘Bergkristall’ tunnel complex – a chapter in Austria’s contemporary history that has not been fully worked though even today. ‘I don’t come up with things, things come to me’, runs Alfred Hrdlicka’s credo. He creates a cycle of fourteen etchings on the death of the unfaltering Johann Gruber.

In 1998 the regional court in Linz overturns the verdict against Johann Gruber for anti-Nazi sentiments and viciousness of character. The charge of sex crimes is not affected by this; it can be neither proven nor dismissed. Not until 7 January 2016 is the verdict overturned by Vienna’s regional criminal court.

Susanne Ayoub

 

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

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