Coat of arms of the Tirolia Innsbruck student fraternity. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Online at: Attribution: presumed Leopold Huter - AKV Tirolia, PD-alt-100, https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3858804 (Accessed: May 17, 2026)

Photo: Volderwildbad. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available online at: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Volderwildbad#:~:text=Das%20Anwesen%20Bad%20Volderwildbad%20liegt,ein%20Ortsteil%20der%20Gemeinde%20Volders. (Accessed: May 17, 2026). Acquisition of the guesthouse and pension Volderwildbad by Josef Fink and his wife. House brochure, 1950s.

The Reichenau Labor Camp in Innsbruck is one of the darkest, yet least known, chapters in the city's history. For US visitors and history buffs, this site serves as an important memorial, away from the major concentration camps.

From 1941 to 1945, the Gestapo operated a so-called work education camp (Arbeitserziehungslager - AEL) in the Reichenau district. It was not an extermination camp, but a brutal system of Nazi forced labor. Its goal was to break "insubordinate" workers through beatings, starvation, and hard labor.

Over 8,600 people passed through the camp, including Soviets, Poles, Italians, and also Austrians. At least 130 people died here from hangings, freezing, or exhaustion. Many were subsequently deported to Dachau or Auschwitz.

The barracks were torn down after the war. Today, only a small memorial stone in the Rossau district commemorates the victims. A new, dignified memorial site in Innsbruck is planned for 2026. Visitors can see the location to remember the crimes of the Nazi era.

After liberation and the end of the Third Reich, Dr. Josef Fink returned not only to his beloved Volderwildbad but also to politics. For the ÖVP (Austrian People's Party) , he was sent to the National Council (Nationalrat) – a worthy conclusion to a life lived in the spirit of democracy and humanity.
The Enigmatic Aftermath: The Case of Heinrich AndergassenBut Josef Fink's life holds one final, surprising turn, which we will illuminate conclusively here. Just a few weeks after the end of the war, on May 12, 1945, Dr. Fink issued an affidavit – for a man one would not expect to be on his side: Heinrich Andergassen.
As our website ns-widerstand-hallintirol.com details, Andergassen was an SS-Untersturmführer and Gestapo officer who was executed as a war criminal in Italy in 1946. He was responsible for brutal interrogations, deportations, and terror against the civilian population.
In his affidavit, Dr. Fink wrote, however:
"I was arrested in 1939 […] I am aware that Criminal Commissioner Andergassen, in whose department my case was handled, treated the matter benevolently and in my favor, thereby contributing significantly to the relatively favorable outcome."
This statement, which Fink wrote out of gratitude for his mild treatment in 1939, stands in stark contrast to everything we know today about Andergassen. Does it fit the picture of the Nazi opponent Fink?
Three Possible Interpretations of This Ambivalent Document

1. Personal Gratitude: Josef Fink was a fair and honest person. He wrote down what he himself had experienced: A Gestapo officer named Andergassen had stood up for him. In the immediate post-war period, when the goal was to identify perpetrators, he considered it his duty to record this experience.
2. The Perfidious System of the Perpetrators: Fink's affidavit is a perfect example of how people like Andergassen operated. Through apparent "good deeds," they created a network of gratitude that was supposed to protect them in the event of a collapse. Fink, who was unaware of Andergassen's other atrocities, fell for this deception.
3. The Burden of Ambivalence: History is rarely black and white. The statement shows the difficult reality that the same perpetrator could be both a torturer and, for the wrong reasons, a rescuer. For Josef Fink personally, Andergassen was the reason he might not have had to experience the concentration camp after all. Even a courageous resister could not simply discard this gratitude.

What remains is the realization: Dr. Josef Fink was a courageous man who risked his life to save others. That he issued an exonerating statement to an inhumane figure like Heinrich Andergassen after the war does not make him a sympathizer, but rather shows the tragic contradictions of life under a dictatorship. It is an important, if uncomfortable, piece of the puzzle that teaches us not to reduce historical figures to simple formulas.