Hans Maršálek - Austria
“For a long time I didn’t notice that I had become a part of this death machinery.”
1914 born in Vienna (Austria) by parents of Czech descent; grows up in a modest social democratic milieu, attends the Czech school in Vienna, afterwards apprenticeship as type setter, member of the “Socialist Workers Youth”
1936-1938 joins the resistance movement of the “Rote Hilfe” against the authoritarian corporative “Ständestaat“
1938 after his conscription to the “Wehrmacht” escape to Prague, where he is actively working for the social democratic organisation of emigrants
from 1940 joins the communist-Czech resistance movement in Prague and Vienna
October 1941 arrested in Prague, imprisonment in several prisons in Vienna
September 1942 transferred to KZ Mauthausen; after a few weeks in several working commandos he becomes “Schreiber” (office clerk) in the “Lagerschreibstube”
from May 1944 “Lagerschreiber II” of the main camp Mauthausen
May 1945 after the liberation return to Vienna where he joins the police force (until 1963), entrusted primarily with the investigation concerning neo-Nazi activities
from 1946 takes an essential part in the founding and preservation of the Mauthausen Memorial; marries Anni Vavak (died 1959), a survivor of KZ Ravensbrück
from 1952 founding member of the International Mauthausen Committee
1964-1976 head of the memorial and museum Mauthausen within the ministry of the Interior married with Hilda Zinsler, they live in Vienna (Austria)
Maršálek dies on December 9, 2011 in Vienna