Overview
- Interview Summary
- Josef Kneissl, born in 1927 in St. Leonard, South Tyrol, discusses his arrest following his brother’s desertion from the German Army in 1944; his time as a prisoner in St. Leonard and then in the internment camp in Bozen; being placed in a separate barrack as his brother; the composition of the SS guard which included Germans and local Italians; seeing SS soldiers frequently beating Italian prisoners at the camp; the death of many Italian prisoners in the camp hospital; hearing about a Jewish prisoner from Switzerland who was transported out of camp; witnessing the hanging of an Italian prisoner in January 1945; deaths in the camp as a result of starvation and exhaustion; his release from the camp in April 1945 and return home; and the prosecution of SS guards after the war.
- Interviewee
- Josef Kneissl
- Date
-
interview:
2009 December 06
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Physical Details
- Language
- German
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (DVCAM) : sound, color ; 1/4 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Italian. Hanging. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Italy. Prisoners of war--Italy. Starvation--Italy. War and crime--Italy--History. World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities--Italy. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Italy. World War, 1939-1945--Desertions--Italy. World War, 1939-1945--Destruction and pillage--Italy. World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, Italian. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Bolzano (Italy : Province) Germany--Armed Forces. Italy--History--1914-1945. Italy--History--German occupation, 1943-1945. San Leonardo (Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy) Trentino-Alto Adige (Italy)
- Personal Name
- Kneissl, Josef.
- Corporate Name
- Bolzano (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- This is a witness interview of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, a multi-year project to record the testimonies of non-Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust. The interview was directed and supervised by Nathan Beyrak.
- Funding Note
- The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. - Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:21:32
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn45400
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Also in Oral history interviews of the Italy (South Tyrol) Documentation Project
In Dec. 2009, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch produced its first set of interviews in Northern Italy for the Italy (South Tyrol) Documentation Project. Nathan Beyrak served as the Project Director. In May 2011, the Museum acquired a second set of interviews for the project, coordinated and conducted by Gerald Steinacher, with Franz Haller as the camera operator.
Date: 2009 December 05-2011 April 22
Oral history interview with Theresia Raich-Graf
Oral History
Theresia Raich-Graf, born in 1919 in St. Leonard, Italy, describes the drafting of her brothers into the German Army in 1944; her brothers' desertion from the German Army, resulting in the arrest of her family and many others; her imprisonment in Bozen concentration camp; conditions in the camp, including forced labor, hunger, and the execution of prisoners who tried to escape; the guards who were all members of the SS; a female Kapo who was a Jewish woman in hiding as a German; the treatment of the Jewish inmates in the camp; transports of Jews to Mauthausen; her release from the camp in 1944; and recognizing on the street a former SS guard after the war.
Oral history interview with Erich Pichler
Oral History
Erich Pichler, born in 1926 in St. Leonard, South Tyrol, Italy, discusses deserting the German Army with his older brother Karl and joining the local police; his arrest by Sudtirole Ordung Dienst (SUD) police, trial, and sentence to 11 years in prison with Karl; serving time in a criminal barrack at Dachau concentration camp in November 1944; witnessing SS guards humiliating prisoners who attempted to escape; his transport with Karl to an internment camp in Mosbach; working in several factories; the diversity of the population at Mosbach, including German, Croatian, Polish, and Norwegian prisoners; the composition of the guard at Mosbach, which included Hungarian SS and some local policeman; the evacuation of the camp to Dachau; harsh living conditions, overpopulation, and lack of food in Dachau; seeing soldiers loading bodies onto trucks; the arrival of American forces; being imprisoned by the Americans along with the camp’s guards because he wasn’t wearing a prison uniform; the threat of being executed as a war criminal; his time in the camp in Fusstehfeldbruck; and his release in August 1945.
Oral history interview with Franz Haller
Oral History
Franz Haller, born in 1924 in St. Leonard, South Tyrol, discusses his mobilization into the Italian army as a soldier and later recruitment into the Wehrmacht; living in hiding for four months following his desertion from the Wehrmacht in June 1944; his family’s arrest; their release after his surrender to authorities; his sentence to 12 years in a prison camp by a judge associated with the SS; his imprisonment in Dachau and then in Hersbruck for a short period of time until he was transferred back to Dachau; seeing prisoners from the main camp who were separated from his barracks by a wire fence; the harsh living conditions for the KL prisoners; working in a quarry; seeing prisoners faint and die while working; seeing KL prisoners carry corpses from the barracks and work sites to roll-call; witnessing an SS soldier shoot a Latvian prisoner whose body remained in the middle of the roll-call area for three days; the arrival in Dachau of a train full of exhausted and dying people from Danzig; sanitation crews putting the bodies from the transport, some possibly still alive, on trucks for disposal; his memories of his friend Anton Kumigsreiner who looked like a living skeleton while in Dachau; and escaping Dachau with his brother and being intercepted by American forces.
Oral history interview with Franz Thaler
Oral History
Franz Thaler, born in 1925 in Reinswald, Italy, discusses his time in hiding in the forest after the capitulation of Italy to Nazi Germany; his fear that he would be mobilized into the German Army; threats by local police against his family if he did not turn himself in to the authorities; his cousin, a supporter of the Nazi movement, who suggested that that he join the police unit in Schlanders; his sentence by an SS military judge to 10 years in prison as a deserter; his arrival in Dachau by train; being humiliated along with other prisoners in from the of the SS; failing medical tests that would send him to fight at the front; deaths of many prisoners at the hands of Kapos and from hunger and disease; the execution of prisoners by the SS; his transfer to Hersbruck, where he worked in a quarry and on the construction of the camp; attempted escapes by prisoners; the evacuation of the entire camp to Dachau; the bombing of the train by American forces; trucks and barracks full of bodies at Dachau, presumably left there because camp guards did not have time to burn them as American forces approached; and his liberation by the Americans.
Oral history interview with Alois Raffeiner
Oral History
Alois Raffeiner, born in 1917 in Kartaus, Austria, describes living with his family in South Tyrol; choosing German citizenship during the referendum; joining the Wehrmacht in 1939 to become a mechanic; his experiences as a soldier in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front; witnessing the mistreatment of Jewish forced laborers; his time in Minsk, Belarus; conditions in the ghetto; learning of mass murders of Jews, including small children, by the SS; his understanding that the war with the Soviets was necessary, but his sense that Germany had lost its humanity in regard to persecution of Jews; his difficulty coping with the murder of Jews; encountering thousands of Soviet prisoners of war; his retreat from Minsk; the execution of Soviet soldiers and partisans; and his imprisonment in a Soviet prisoner of war camp.
Oral history interview with Maria Niederkofler-Wierer
Oral History
Maria Niederkofler-Wierer, born in 1922 in Ahrntal, South Tyrol, discusses the August 1944 arrest of her family following her brothers’ desertion of the local police regiment in South Tyrol; her family’s farm which was later plundered by local Nazis; her cousin, who as a soldier, participated in her family’s arrest along with local citizens from the Südtiroler Ordnungsdienst (SOD) and Ortsgruppenleiter Jakob Oberhollenzer, the owner of the local inn; her family’s interrogation in a prison in Brunich; their transfer to Bozen (Bolzano); the different types of prisoners at the camp, including political prisoners, Jews, Italian intellectuals; and some English pilots; conditions in the camp, including starvation and disease; names of some of the camp’s guards which included local Italians, Ukrainians, and Germans; the barracks for Italian intellectuals; the disappearance and murder of the Italian intellectuals who were taken away by truck loaded with machine guns; working outside the camp, cleaning offices of the guards; witnessing frequent beatings of prisoners; hearing about the death of one of her brothers who was shot by a guard; hearing about and seeing physical evidence of the torture of female prisoners in Fossily; witnessing a hanging in January 1945; frequent transports of trains taking prisoners to Auschwitz and Mauthausen; witnessing donkey carts transporting bodies from the camp hospital; a guard who, because he felt guilty, confessed to her that he had shot an Italian prisoner in the camp; her liberation from Bolzano in February 1945; accidental meetings with former members of the SS who were in hiding in Brixen and Arntal valley while they arranged for transport to South America; hearing about her cousin’s participation (for money) in organizing transports of former members of the SS; her mother’s refusal to the war with their cousin; and her thankfulness for their survival.
Oral history interview with Heinrich Moroder
Oral History
Heinrich Moroder, born in 1925 in St. Ulrich, discusses his mobilization in Wehrmacht in Italy; knowing Dominik Moroder who was active in the SS headquarters in Florence; Dominik Moroder’s involvement in organizing the deportation of Jews and the killing of partisans; Dominik Moroder’s death in Argentina approximately 30 years after the war; and another officer from Val Gardena who later was the president of the tourism agency there.
Oral history interview with Robert Moroder
Oral History
Robert Moroder, born in 1926, discusses his family’s decision to stay in South Tyrol, Italy as Dableiber during the South Tyrol Option Agreement in 1939; discrimination against his family from members of the Nazi Party and those who chose to immigrate to Nazi Germany (the Optanten); the beating of Italian Fascist leaders in St. Ulrich by local Nazis following the Wehrmacht takeover in September 1943; the imprisonment of five prominent Dableiber from Val Gardena in 1943; his father’s imprisonment in Klausen; a German captain who saved the five Dableiber from deportation to a concentration camp; an attack on his house by local Nazis belonging to Südtiroler Ordnungsdienst (SOD); his mother’s death; being drafted into the Polizeiregiment Schlanders; being sent to Northern Italy to an SS commando unit in Feltre and Belluno; members of the Nazi party from Vinschgau Valley who belonged to the unit; the power of the local mayor Josef Anton (Gasthof Adlerwirt) in drafting people from the village, particularly Dableibers, into the army; his acquaintance with Dominik Moroder who was part of the SS headquarters in Florence in 1943-44 and was responsible for the deportation of Jews and killing and torture of partisans; the Italian police force’s (Carabinieri) search for Dominik Moroder who was hiding in the Val Gardena in South Tyrol; and seeing Dominik Moroder freely walk into the village in 1952.
Oral history interview with Alois Raffeiner
Oral History
Alois Raffeiner, born in 1917 in Kartaus in Austria, describes his family’s attainment of German citizenship when living in South Tyrol in 1939; joining the Wehrmacht and being stationed on the Eastern front in 1941; his awareness of the disappearing Jewish community in Minsk; the Jewish ghetto in Minsk to which he had regular access; trading food to Jewish mechanics to fix his car; the massacre of the Jews of Minsk; using alcohol to cope with inhumane conditions; taking photographs of many events of the war for the purposes of Nazi propaganda; how many in South Tyrol saw German forces as liberators; his memory of propaganda that the Jews were enemies; being told to kill Russian prisoners of war without bullets; the terrible treatment of Russian prisoners of war; the mass burial of German soldiers after the battle for Moscow; retreating from Minsk; an execution of partisans in Maloarchangelsk village in Russia; and his imprisonment by the Russians.
Oral history interview with Alois Zoschg
Oral History
Alois Zoschg, born in 1926 in St. Nikolaus in Ulten in Italy, describes his draft into the SS Polizei Regiment Brixen in 1944; his decision not to desert because his mother would have been imprisoned; the refusal of many of the young recruits to swear allegiance to Hitler; his assignment to the SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division in Silesia to fight the Soviets; witnessing the shooting of many German prisoners at the end of the war; his imprisonment as a POW by the Soviets at Auschwitz in 1945; conditions at the camp including hunger, forced labor, and a barrack full of female hair; and his release in late 1945 to return home to South Tyrol.
Oral history interview with Benedikt Oettl
Oral History
Benedikt Oettl, born in 1926 in Passeiertal, South Tyrol, describes the imprisonment of his family in Bozen as a result of his brother deserting the German military; how the enforcement of the Sippenhaft (kin liability) depended on the whims of the Nazi mayor; his forced labor working on rail tracks near Bozen; witnessing the torture and executions of prisoners in the lager; how the Italian Jewish prisoners in the camp were treated harshly and eventually sent to Dachau; how his own treatment as a German was not terrible; how after the war victims and perpetrators had to live with each other again; and the presence of a suspected former member of the SS in his village after the war.
Oral history interview with Theresia Graf
Oral History
Theresia Graf, born in 1919 in St. Leonard in Passeier South Tyrol, describes her choice of Italian citizenship in 1939, and her subsequent harsh treatment by locals who chose German citizenship; the deportation of disabled citizens and speculation over their deaths; her arrest along with family members in 1944 as a result of her brothers’ desertion from the German Army; the internment camp in Bozen; the local mayor who was a fanatical Nazi; her release from the camp; convincing her brothers not to seek revenge on local Nazis after the war; SS officer Haage, the former deputy commander of the Bozen concentration camp whom she found hiding on her family’s farm; her decision not to alert the authorities of his whereabouts; and other former Nazis who lived in her village after the war.
Oral history interview with Johann Raffeiner
Oral History
Johann Raffeiner, born in 1927 in Laas, South Tyrol, describes his family’s choice of German citizenship during the Option Agreement in 1939; being drafted as a Suedtiroler Ordnungsdienst (SOD) guard in 1944; witnessing Jewish slave labor in a marble quarry in Laas; being drafted into the SS Totenkopf division; departing for Prague, Czech Republic in 1945; being chosen for the SS because of his blond hair and blue eyes; being stationed at Heinrich-Himmler-Kaserne and going through military training; witnessing the final days of the Third Reich; abandoning Prague during the civilian uprising; attempting to reach American forces, but being caught by the Soviets; trying to get rid of his SS tattoo; his imprisonment as a POW in a Soviet gulag; and his release in 1949.
Oral history interview with Gianni Faronato
Oral History
Gianni Faronato, born in 1927 in Feltre in Italy, describes his involvement with the Partisans; his arrest by the SS in 1944 and imprisonment in the prison camp in Bolzano; his transfer to Aussenlager Gossensass, where he remained until the end of the war; the last days of the war when he was ordered to burn the documents from the Fascist government regarding the status of Italian Jews; the burning of the Grand hotel Gröbner, the last headquarters of the SS in Italy; returning home in 1945; the aftermath of the war, including how many SS officers got away without a trial; and his life after the war.
Oral history interview with Maria Niederhofler
Oral History
Maria Niederhofler, born in 1922 in Ahrntal, Italy, describes the imprisonment of her family in Bozen concentration camp in 1944 because of the desertion of her brothers from the local police regiment; the guards in Bozen concentration camp; her knowledge that the people who were deported were gassed in Germany; and an SS guard who hid in South Tyrol after the war.
