Remembrance in Mauthausen by Siegrid Fahrecker

13.05.2024

Dear all,

I have been asked by Maria to say a few words/sentences. Why? I am not a historian, scientist or filmmaker - my name is Siegrid Fahrecker and I am the granddaughter of Anna Burger. She was born in Klosterneuburg in 1913 in poor circumstances. My grandmother had 5 children, my mother was the second-born. Her ever-increasing poverty drove her to steal and beg out of sheer desperation and not even that was enough to live on. She was considered a repeat offender, was even labeled a pest of the people. One darkening night, she stole blankets from a (store) display. So that the children had something to cover themselves with. She was seen, betrayed, arrested and sentenced to a year in prison (1940-1941). After serving her sentence, she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp instead of being freed. From then on, she was just number 6193 with the black square, which was for the so-called "asocials". She had to work in the tailor's shop, but that wasn't enough, as my grandmother was a pretty woman, she was also repeatedly taken to the festivities of the high lords. There is enough room for fantasy and reality. A former fellow prisoner's wife confirmed these statements to me. My grandmother was murdered by lethal injection on December 1943. I have made it my mission to no longer remain silent, to break through this stigma of the "asocial" and to give my grandmother (as well as many other people) back her name, her face and above all her dignity. Can it be right that people are treated like this because of poverty? NO it cannot and must not. For a never again - but right now it is a very close "never again" due to the cruel useless wars. Sometimes I ask myself - have people really learned so little from the wars? It is now our duty to stand here for a reminder and commemoration of a never again-never.

Thank you