Alois Schrott SJ

Born in South Tyrol, Alois Schrott joined the Jesuit order after graduating from high school in 1925. After the novitiate, he began studying philosophy and theology, which he completed with a doctorate in theology. After ordination to the priesthood in 1935, he worked as a student chaplain in Innsbruck, where he also served as president of the Marian Congregation [MC].

After the Anschluss, his house was searched. He succeeded in reversing the confiscation of the MC's home shortly afterwards. However, his resistance on October 12, 1939 against the dissolution and confiscation of the Jesuit College in Innsbruck by the Gestapo was less successful. As a result, he is interrogated several times. The MC was able to continue working underground, and contacts were also made with the "Young Order" resistance group.

In January 1942, Alois Schrott received a tip-off that he was under police investigation. On February 3, 1942, he was arrested because he had passed on the letter from the Luftwaffe fighter pilot Colonel Wemer Mölders (1913-1941), who had crashed on November 22, 1941 - he came from the Catholic youth movement - to a supposed Provost Johst in Stettin, in which Mölders, as an avowed Catholic, expressed his dissociation from National Socialism. [The Gestapo thought it was a forgery, but 20 years later this letter could be clearly identified as a forgery by the British Foreign Intelligence Service (SIS)]. After a week, Alois Schrott is released.

On July 4, 1942, he is arrested again for a youth party in St. Jakob in Innsbruck; a letter from a participant to Reinhold Stecher (later Bishop of Innsbruck) had been intercepted. After his arrest on July 27, 1942, he was expelled from the Gau and then went to Vienna, where he was able to avoid being transferred to a concentration camp.