Johannes Heinrich Hardeck

Johannes Heinrich Hardeck, the son of a doctor from Bad Vöslau, Lower Austria, was baptized a Catholic and graduated with distinction from the Bundesgymnasium in Biondekgasse in Baden near Vienna in the 1934/35 school year. He then enrolled to study medicine at the University of Vienna and lived with his older brother, Oswald, who was already a doctor. In 1935, he became a member of the student fraternity Amelungia.

After the Anschluss, he was no longer able to continue his studies as, although baptized, he was considered a full Jew under the Nazi racial laws ["Nuremberg Laws"]. In June 1938, he managed to escape to Prague to join his older brother Dr. Oswald Hardeck (1910-1996), who was working as a general practitioner in Prague. Oswald was also sent to various concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, but survived. Johannes Heinrich Hardeck initially began studying the organ in Prague.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia (CSR) on March 15, 1939, he was unable to continue his studies there. He tried to survive as a typewriter mechanic and cashier at a jewelry store. In the summer of 1940, he was also persecuted in the Protectorate of Bohemia and finally interned in a "retraining camp" in Linden near Deutschbrod [Nemeclcy Brod]/Eastern Bohemia. On September 14, 1943, he was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and on September 20, 1944 to the ZZ Auschwitz and on October 3, 1944 to ZZ Dachau. In January 1945, the SS deported him to Kaufering near Augsburg in the subcamp of Dachau concentration camp.

The forced laborers and prisoners deployed in Kaufering, an important armaments factory for the German war economy, mostly died of exhaustion, including Johannes Heinrich Hardeck on February 7, 1945 [date of death DÖW report]. He was buried in a mass grave.