Dr. Johann Gruber

After the sudden death of his parents in 1900, Johann Gruber was initially left as an orphan with his guardian Josef Fischer. From 1903, he received his further education at the episcopal boys' seminary Collegium Petrinum in Linz through the mediation of Dean Georg Wagnleithner (1861-1930) from Grieskirchen. After passing his A-levels with distinction in 1910, he entered the Linz seminary and worked as a prefect at the Salesianum school alongside his studies.

After his ordination to the priesthood in 1913, he initially worked in parish pastoral care, but later switched to teaching at the Catholic orphanage in Linz. Bishop Johannes M. Gföllner (1867-1941) enabled Johann Gruber to study philology in Vienna. In 1919, he became a member of the Norica student fraternity and finally obtained his doctorate in 1923. After passing the teaching qualification examination for primary, secondary and middle schools, he returned to Linz and was appointed spiritual director of the private institute for the blind in Linz-Urfahr in 1934.

His hostile attitude towards National Socialism and the new government after the Anschluss proved to be his undoing. On May 9, 1938, Johann Gruber was reported to the Gestapo by his head teacher Josef Baumgartner on the basis of so-called "incriminating material". In addition to alleged political statements such as "The Germans have soiled our nest. The current government has to help itself along with lies. Shit Inquart!"" and others, the accusation of indecent touching of blind girls was the main focus of the alleged offenses. As a result, he was taken into police custody on May 10, 1938. The Anzeiger drew up a "memorandum" with the accusations against Johann Gruber and forwarded it to the Gauleiter. On May 17, one week later, he is interrogated by the Gestapo for the first time, and on May 19, 1938, the chief public prosecutor files charges and has Johann Gruber transferred to the provincial court prison. The preliminary investigation began on May 27, 1938 and on August 2 the first main hearing before the provincial court in Linz, which ended with the sentence on August 3: three years of hard labor, toughened by a fasting day every three months.

The appeal hearing before the Higher Regional Court on January 16, 1939 to January 24, 1939 sentenced Johann Gruber to three years in prison. January 1939, Johann Gruber was sentenced to two years' hard labor in the Garsten prison for making anti-Nazi remarks about the Austrian National Socialist Seyß-Inquart and for "reprehensibility of his character", i.e. for alleged moral misconduct towards his pupils. Various appeals based on the accusations constructed by Baumgartner are rejected by the 6th Senate of the Reich Court in Leipzig on June 6, 1939, although Johann Gruber is innocent. After his conditional release from prison on February 8, 1940, he was transferred to the Gestapo in Linz and on April 4, 1940, he was taken to the Dachau concentration camp as a political prisoner to "fill his sentence". From there, on August 16, 1940, he was sent with other priests as prisoner "DR protection no. 43050" via Mauthausen concentration camp to Gusen concentration camp. From August 20, 1940, he was a nurse in the prisoners' infirmary, where he repeatedly succeeded in illegally procuring medication for sick prisoners. From 1942 to 1944, Johann Gruber was also involved in the storage and transportation of archaeological finds as a "museum capo". During this time, he secretly organized systematic care for imprisoned children and young people of various nationalities and gave school lessons to Polish youths. In the spring of 1943, Johann Gruber, probably via civilians in the field detachments in the quarry and armaments factories, succeeded in recording uncensored correspondence with friends in Linz and Vienna and thus informing the outside world about the conditions in the concentration camp with his so-called White Book. The smuggling of cassava was uncovered by the Vienna Gestapo in March 1944, and Johann Gruber was sent to solitary confinement on April 4, 1944, where he was tortured and forced to commit suicide. The camp commander, SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Seidler (1907-1945), had him locked up naked in a concrete bunker for three days and doused with cold showers.

On April 7, 1944, Good Friday, Johann Gruber was scourged with barbed wire, severely wounded with 17 bayonet stabs and kicked by Seidler with the words: "You shall die like your master, at the third hour", until his intestines spilled out. The corpse was then hung from a tree to give the appearance of a suicide - according to the eyewitness account of a Polish camp doctor. His last words are recorded as: "Thank my God!" and in the direction of his tormentors: "The war is lost for you anyway." It was not until a year later that the Episcopal Ordinariate was informed: Dr. Johann Gruber had "voluntarily departed this life by hanging" and his ashes could be collected. On May 5, 1945, one day after the liberation of the camp, surviving prisoners reported Johann Gruber's martyrdom to the Episcopal Ordinariate. In 1987, a beatification procedure was applied for. Upon application, all political sentences against him are overturned by the Linz Regional Court in 1999. In 2007, a "Papa Gruber Circle" was founded with the aim of bringing his person and work into the public eye; in 2011, "DENK.STATT Johann Gruber" was launched. The aim of these activities is the complete rehabilitation of Johann Gruber. In its ruling of January 7, 2016, the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Vienna also overturned the Higher Regional Court ruling of January 16/24, 1939 on the grounds of an alleged immorality offense, meaning that Johann Gruber was fully rehabilitated.