Rudolf Kroyer

Rudolf Kroyer visits the Catholic parish school in Zemendorf, where some are still taught Hungarian. He becomes a member of the “Reichsbund der katholisch-deutsche Jugend Österreichs”. In 1925/26 he moved to the Humanistic Gymnasium in Eisenstadt. During his middle school period, he will be active in 1929 at the Saxo-Teutonia intermediate school in Vienna (now Merkenstein Berndorf) and later at the Neuland youth association. In 1932 he maturates and becomes a school teacher.

As a teacher and organist at the Catholic parish school in Rust, he founded a local association of the fatherland front together with other interested parties. From 1934 to 1938, he works at the Catholic parish school in Neutal in the middle Burgenland and as a member of the VF in the Cultural Work “New Life”.

“Whoever really knew me in Neutal between 1934 and 1938, knew about my very convincing Austrian consciousness. ‘

Rudolf Kroyer describes the following:

When Chancellor Schuschnigg’s ‘Gott schütz Austria was listening on the radio, I knew that my time as a Neutal teacher was over. The same night, 11th on the 12th. March 1938, some illegal National Socialists took me to the extra room of a Neutaler inn to make me aware of the fact that a new time had begun in front of a large cross-hatch flag. ... On March 25th, I went back to Neutal to learn how to continue with me as a teacher.”

At night from 25 to 26.3. In 1938, the “black” is arrested by SA men: (“Take some for the prison!”) and sent to Oberpullendorf. “In the district court of Oberpullendorf, young boys in SA-Uniform, my former students, took me up with the respect that at that time still a village teacher was of course responsible.” They also protect him from the punishment of the road with the sentence: “Our teacher does not return the road, rather we jump for him.”

“One day the veterinarian of Draßmarkt, who was a well-known Nazi, drove to the district court in Oberpullendorf and asked the croyer to wash his car. He wanted to humiliate me and show me: now we, the browns, the gentlemen, and you as a black vassal of the state of the state, you are now through. Here's what happened. The guard team there, SA people from Neutal, that is from my school community, have said to the veterinarian: “Don’t be questioned. Our teacher will not wash your car!”

After 14 days, Rudolf Kroyer is released from custody and from the district school inspector without notice. In order to avoid further persecution, he goes to Bremen in October 1938 as a commercial employee in a forwarding company. Because of a “defaitistic statement against the NS regime” at the hairdresser – observed by a Gestapomann – he is once again detained for 14 days on 26.2.1940, from which he has his “head, a rich, respected Bremer freight forwarder by bribe “purchased”. Since Rudolf Kroyer is presented with a reverse to the signature during the release of detention, which threatens immediate delivery to a concentration camp in the event of repetition of such relapsed political remarks without prior trial, he prefers to report to the Wehrmacht and thus submerge.

“I, the Austrian and one-man resistance fighter, voluntarily went to the “presences”, just from political and other wisdom. ‘

He is deployed in France and is in prison in 1944. On 17.5.1946 he can return home in a cattle car and as a primary school teacher to Vienna. He earns his doctorate in 1956 as Dr. phil. and became head school director in 1959–1971. He is committed to ÖVP-Cameraditure of Politically Persecuted and Bekenner for Austria and will later be the Federal Office Representative.

From the homepage of the Austrian Resistance Documentation Archive (DÖW):

“In the break-up days, in March 1938, I was released from school and came to Oberpullendorf for 14 days. There must have been Nazis in the district who have followed my doing and my attitude, my basic attitude. I was known in the Nazi circles as a fatherlander [...] And the school inspector has said to me after the protection, if I convert and become a Nazi, I could continue to be a teacher. But I answered: “I am not a national socialist, and I do not regret this worldview.” He said, “Well, then we cannot need you.” [...]’

“In the prison house of Oberpullendorf many Jews from Kobersdorf were with me. The Jews have been locked up. With me there were also Catholic priests, who were also conscious anti-Nazis, and some officials of the fatherland front. ‘