Anton Marek

Anton Marek was born in Vasas, a district of Budapest, the legitimate son of Josef Marek and his wife Franziska, née Brázda. He attended elementary and secondary school in Budapest and learned bookkeeping. Between 1910 and 1913, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army.

With the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted, but disarmed again in October 1914. He then worked as a forestry trainee and drilling foreman for deep boreholes.

After the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the break-up of the dual monarchy and the expulsion of the House of Habsburg, he married Rosa Bangerl in 1919 and joined the Vienna Federal Police Directorate in 1921. In the same year, he became the father of a son.

As a criminal investigator, he witnessed the demise of a free and independent Austria on March 12, 1938 with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. He was arrested by the Gestapo on the same day as the occupation of Austria and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on April 2, 1938 on the so-called 'Prominent Transport'. When Dachau concentration camp was cleared for the SS after Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 27, 1939. From there, he was transferred back to Dachau concentration camp on March 2, 1940 and released on April 22, 1940. He was dismissed from public service on March 1, 1939.

On his return to Vienna, Anton Marek was ordered to report to the police twice a week and not to leave Vienna. In 1943, he was finally drafted into the Wehrmacht.

As a prisoner of war, he witnessed the liberation of Austria and the re-establishment of the Republic in April and May 1945. On December 22, 1945, he was rehabilitated and reinstated in the criminal police service. He was appointed head of 'Group 5' of the state police in the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) under Interior Minister Oskar Helmer. Among other things, the officers in this group are tasked with investigating attacks by the occupying powers, observing the Soviets and collecting evidence. In addition, he was to investigate the activities of the communist head of the state police Heinrich Dürnmayer and those of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) and its sub-organizations and was entrusted with the interrogation of fugitives in order to obtain state police information.

Anton Marek visited the Soviet city commandant's office in Vienna several times. On June 17, 1948, a Soviet liaison officer asked him to come to the city commandant's office. He was arrested there, deported to Russia and sentenced to death by firing squad on 7 February 1951 for 'espionage against the Soviet Union' and 'participation in a criminal organization'. The death sentence was commuted to 25 years' imprisonment on March 19, 1951.

While he was imprisoned in Russia, his wife died in 1951. With the signing of the Austrian State Treaty on May 15, 1955, the last Austrians still held in Soviet prison camps were pardoned and could return home. On June 25, 1955, Anton Marek arrives at the train station in Wiener Neustadt on the 70th repatriation transport.