Location: 8530 St. Oswald im Freiland
The former Reich Labor Service (RAD) camp was the site of the murder of five partisans who had been operating on the Koralm. They were executed on the orders of Kreisleiter Dr. Hugo Suette by members of the RAD.
In the village of St. Oswald im Freiland (municipality of Kloster), a camp of the Reich Labor Service (RAD) was established in 1938. Initially, the RAD men were mainly engaged in road construction. In the fall of 1944, the Koralm region, along with Kloster, became an area of operations for the Slovenian partisans and the “Kampfgruppe Steiermark,” as well as the “Koralmpartisanen” (Christian Fleck). This situation led to the RAD men becoming increasingly involved in military operations against the partisans, conducting patrols in groups.
At the end of March 1945, five partisans appeared at the local group leader’s office in Osterwitz, requisitioning supplies. They were three men from the Kampfgruppe led by Leo Engelmann and two Slovenes. After this was reported to the RAD, a group of about 20 men from the camp was sent out to capture them. On the morning of April 1, 1945, they found the five partisans in the “Klug-Keusche,” near the camp. The partisans surrendered without resistance and were taken to the RAD camp, where about 40 to 50 men were stationed at the time. The camp leader, Oberfeldmeister Friedrich Scholler, then called the Kreisleiter of Deutschlandsberg, Dr. Hugo Suette, to seek further instructions. Suette ordered over the phone that the five prisoners should first be interrogated and then “disposed of.” During the march to the interrogation, one of the Slovenes was shot in the hip and left severely wounded in the open. In the evening of April 1, the five partisans were executed by RAD men with gunshots to the back of the head at the camp’s shooting range and then buried. The wounded Slovenian was carried to the execution site.
After the collapse of the Nazi regime, a trial was opened against the individuals involved in the execution at the People’s Court at the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Graz. A total of seven former RAD men were brought to trial, but Hugo Suette, who had escaped from the Wetzelsdorf camp under unclear circumstances in November 1946, was not among them. The harshest sentences were given to Scholler and Unterfeldmeister Walter Sachse, who were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. However, none of the convicted individuals served their full sentence.
Literature: Markus Roschitz, Ing. Alfred Neumann und die Glasfabrik in Wies. Aspekte eines „Arisierungsfalls“, in: Jahrbuch für Mitteleuropäische Studien 2019/2020. Wien/Hamburg 2020, 219–251. Markus Roschitz, Die NSDAP in der Region Schwanberg 1930–1938 (= Forschungen zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde der Steiermark; 85). Innsbruck/Wien 2020, 367 und 383–386. Gerfried Schmidt, Gemeindegeschichte von Limberg bei Wies. 3. Teil: Limberg in schweren Stunden. 1914–1955. Wies 2002, 92–93.
Text: Markus Rieger-Roschitz / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences
