Dr. Alfred Schneiderbaur

After graduating from the Benedictine monastery grammar school in Seitenstetten, Alfred Schneiderbaur began studying medicine at the University of Vienna in 1923. Here he joined the student fraternity Austria Wien in 1923. After gaining his doctorate in 1929, he completed his specialist training in internal medicine at the 11th Medical Clinic in Vienna. In 1936, he was appointed primary physician at Baden Hospital, from 1937 to 1939 he worked as primary physician at the Lainz nursing home of the City of Vienna and was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the outbreak of war.

After basic training in the Rossau barracks, he was promoted to junior doctor and had to accept a reduction in pay because he refused to join the Nazi Doctors' Association.

In the spring of 1941, he was transferred to East Prussia and then shortly afterwards to Poland and Russia, where he worked in various Wehrmacht hospitals in the area of Army Group Center, such as War Hospital 509 and the replacement hospital in Tapova, as well as in Mogilev, 200 km east of Minsk. It was here that he first saw Jews being deported by the SS. An SS man suffering from dysentery reported to Alfred Schneiderbaur that he had to shoot around 80 Jews a day. It can be assumed that this happened under the supreme command of the Higher SS and Police Leader Central, Gruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who had set up his headquarters in Mogilev in November 1941. From November 28, 1941 to October 1942, over 10,000 Austrian Jews were deported in eleven transports.

On the recommendation of a Wehrmacht chaplain, Alfred Schneiderbaur was transferred back to Vienna at the beginning of 1944 and assigned to the XXVI reserve hospital in Lainz. Here he was active in the Dr. Lerch resistance group. After the other resistance groups such as Roman Scholz and Kastelic had been broken up, individual activities were now primarily planned, with each doctor active in his own area. Alfred Schneiderbaur and Dr. Rheingruber were the focal points of the activities. In his spare time, Alfred Schneiderbaur practiced in Kirchengasse in Vienna VII, where he provided many patients with medical certificates attesting to their "unfitness", for example Julius Raab or Felix Hurdes.