Dr. Otto Schuster
Personalia
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Imprisonment Klagenfurt 09.09.1939 - 09.05.1940,
Imprisonment Garsten prison 09.05.1940 - 13.03.1942,
Imprisonment Linz 13.03.1942 - 17.04.1942,
Dachau concentration camp 17.04.1942 - 12.08.1942,
Hartheim euthanasia institution 12.08.1942 - 25.08.1942,
Murdered on 25.08.1942
KZ Number:
Memberships
Curriculum Vitae
Otto Schuster was born in Klagenfurt and attended the local grammar school after elementary school. After graduating from high school, he entered the Klagenfurt seminary. His studies were supported not only by his parents, but also by the Order of the Elisabethines. He was ordained a priest on July 6, 1924. His attachment to the Elisabethines is expressed, among other things, by the fact that he celebrates his first Mass in the Church of St. Laurentius at the Elisabethines. He then enrolled in theology at the University of Graz.
After this, he worked as a cooperator (chaplain) in Ferlach, Tainach and St. Michael ob Bleiburg, and as parish provost in Mieger, Windisch, Bleiberg and Ferlach. In 1933, Otto Schuster became parish priest of St. Margarethen ob Töllerberg. In this role, he also witnessed the downfall of an independent and free Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht on March 12, 1938. He was strictly opposed to National Socialism, which he openly expressed in masses and church celebrations.
On May 9, 1940, Otto Schuster is sentenced to two and a half years in prison for pulpit abuse and sent to Garsten prison. Taking his pre-trial detention into account, he is imprisoned until March 9, 1942.
On the morning of August 12, 1942, prisoners who were scarred by the unrestricted exploitation of their labor for the SS and the daily horrors of concentration camp life had to make their last journey [note: from Dachau] to Hartheim near Linz on a so-called 'invalid transport'. Among the 83 prisoners was Nimmer 29782, Dr. Otto Schuster. They were suffocated to death in the gas chamber of the Nazi killing center in Hartheim.
[Otto Schuster], like me, pulled the road roller for weeks, a monster, together with about 20 fellow prisoners, got severe pneumonia, pleurisy during this hard labor in road construction, with complete malnutrition, in wind and weather, cold and heat, he was operated on (rib resection), recovered; was abused by Univ.Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schilling (Munich) [...] for the notorious Marlaria experiments.
Later, Dr. Schuster was abused as a guinea pig in the phlegmone infections, after which he was sent to the air pressure test barracks at Dachau. The doctors studied the prisoners to see how they reacted to the different levels of air pressure, as if they were at an altitude of a thousand or six thousand meters, etc., like airmen who then crashed. Because German planes were also shot down in Finland, Norway, on the Arctic Ocean, etc. and fell into the Arctic Ocean, the above-mentioned guinea pigs (cobblers) were thrown into ice-cooled water basins (after the air pressure tests), where they had to remain until they solidified at the resulting low temperature.
Citations
- Krause, Peter/Reinelt, Herbert/Schmitt, Helmut (2020): Farbe tragen, Farbe bekennen. Katholische Korporierte in Widerstand und Verfolgung. Teil 2. Kuhl, Manfred (ÖVfStG, Wien), p. 315–316.
- Mikrut, Jan (2000): Blutzeugen des Glaubens. Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts. Band 3 (Wien), p. 185–188.
Gitschtaler, Bernhard (2015): Ausgelöschte Namen. Die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus im und aus dem Gailtal (Salzburg, Wien), S. 181-184.
