The Persecution of a Minority in Solbad Hall, 1939-1945

Disenfranchisement and Local Surveillance

In 1939, a community of thirteen people, belonging to a minority persecuted by the Nazis, lived in Solbad Hall. The group consisted of three men, their partners, and their children. They all worked for a local construction company in Hall and had their homes on Salvatorgasse and Kurzer Graben.
Their lives in the small town were abruptly restricted from the autumn of 1940 onward. Following a report from the Solbad Hall gendarmerie post to the Tirol Gau leadership on September 23, 1940, which registered "all foreign-born persons residing in the locality," they were confronted with the brutal reality of Nazi persecution. From the end of October 1940, they were forbidden from leaving the municipal district of Solbad Hall based on the so-called Restriction of Movement Decree (§17).
This arbitrary order cut them off not only from their work but also from the simplest leisure activities. Even a train ride to Schwaz to pick mushrooms was no longer permitted. They were trapped in the town where they had built their lives.
Their addresses remain with us as silent witnesses to this history: Salvatorgasse 12 and 14, Kurzer Graben 6, Lendgasse 51.
The following biographies tell the personal stories of these citizens of Hall and give a voice to their names and their history.

The Winter Family: Murdered in Auschwitz 1943

The Fate of Barbara Winter and Her Three Children

Barbara Winter, born on June 4, 1904, lived with her father and her three children in Hall in Tirol. Under the racist laws of the National Socialists, the family was persecuted as "Gypsies."
In January 1943, the Nazi Reich Criminal Police Office ordered the deportation of all people classified as "Gypsies" residing in the Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, into the so-called "Gypsy family camp."
At the end of March 1943, Barbara Winter was arrested together with her three children – Maria (15), Anna Maria (6), and Josef (2) – and first taken to the police prison in Innsbruck. On April 3, 1943, they were deported from Innsbruck to Auschwitz concentration camp on a transport with 61 other victims.
Her children did not survive the hell of Auschwitz:
·       Josef Winter, born on July 28, 1941, was just two years old when he was murdered in Auschwitz on May 2, 1943.
·       Anna Maria Winter, born on January 27, 1937, died just a few days after her brother, on May 13, 1943. She was six years old.
·       Maria Winter, born on November 26, 1928, died on October 30, 1943, at the age of 15 in Auschwitz.
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Their mother, Barbara Winter, survived the genocide. She returned to Hall after the end of the war. The town that had once been her home was now overshadowed by immeasurable loss. Like the other surviving relatives, she eventually left Solbad Hall forever.

Martin and Genoveva Herzenberger: Three Generations, One Fate

Martin Herzenberger (1930 – 1943)

Martin Herzenberger was born on April 26, 1930. His short life ended at the age of just 13 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was one of the youngest companions in suffering on the same deportation train from Innsbruck to Auschwitz that also carried Barbara Winter and her three children to their deaths on April 3, 1943. The exact date of his death is unknown—a silent witness to the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime, which extinguished even the lives of children.

Genoveva Herzenberger (1860 – 1942)

Genoveva Herzenberger, born in 1860, was an elderly citizen of Hall in Tyrol. At the age of 82, she was abducted from her hometown in 1942 and taken to the Niedernhart killing center near Linz. She was murdered on August 31, 1942. Her fate is part of the Nazi "euthanasia" murders, the Aktion T4, in which tens of thousands of sick and disabled people were systematically killed.

The Euthanasia Program - Aktion T4

"Aktion T4" was the code name for the systematic Nazi program to murder people who were sick, disabled, or socially "maladjusted." Under the pretext of "euthanasia" ("beautiful death"), over 70,000 people were killed by gassing or lethal injection in specially established killing centers like Niedernhart. The operation is considered a rehearsal for the later Holocaust.

Source: Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference (Ed.): "Aktion T4". URL: https://www.ghwk.de/en/aktion-t4 [Accessed: August 23, 2025].