Gereon (Josef) Ausserlechner OPraem

Josef Ausserlechner was born the third of seven siblings in Kartitsch in East Tyrol, the son of a farmer. His father died of war injuries in Prague in 1916. Due to the early death of his father, all the children had to work on the farm at home in order to keep the family financially afloat. Between 1910 and 1918, he attended the two-grade elementary school in Kartitsch before completing a one-year course at the Rotholz Agricultural College. He then worked as a farmer.

After the death of his mother in 1927, Josef Ausserlechner's older brother took over his parents' farm and Josef Ausserlechner worked there for a short time, but joined the Premonstratensian order at Wilten Abbey in the same year. On May 19, 1928, he was ordained and given the name Gereon. He made his temporary profession on May 22, 1929 and finally his perpetual profession on May 22, 1932. He was a simple lay brother and worked as a gardener's assistant and in the refectory.

Gereon Ausserlechner experienced the occupation of Austria by the Third Reich. After the abbey was abolished by the National Socialists, he returned to his home in Kartitsch, where he finally lived in house no. 39 in Anna Scherzer's Neuwirt inn and worked as a house servant. He is insulted as a "work-shy beggar" who does not serve at the front like other men. He therefore has to be hidden by his brother, but his hiding place is betrayed. All biographies and official files conceal the exact reason why Gereon Ausserlechner was arrested on March 3, 1943 and sent to Dachau concentration camp a day later. His confrere and then prior Heinrich Pregenzer, O.Praem. suspects that the reason for his arrest after several fearless warnings was his resistance to the job he had been assigned. The fact is that everyone in Kartitsch knows that Gereon Ausserlechner is an uncompromising opponent of National Socialism and that the fanatical local group leader Innerkofler, the Lienz district leader Erwin Goltschnigg, the Gestapo chief Zellhofer and the mayor Andrä Ausserlechner were involved in his arrest.

Gereon Ausserlechner was given the prisoner number 44.970. On June 13, 1944, he died at 11:20 a.m. in the Dachau concentration camp as a result of an injury sustained in an air raid. The death certificate No. II 119/1944 dated June 16, 1944, issued by the Dachau II registry office, however, does not state the cause of death. A surviving fellow prisoner from Birnbaum in Carinthia testified how an SS man dragged him down a staircase in the camp on his back and set guard dogs on him.