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Katharina Thaller
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"Everything was cut up and pulled to pieces..."
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When Katharina Thaller returned to Klagenfurt on 5 July 1945, her father, who had survived the Dachau concentration camp, had already searched for her via the radio. She hardly recognized her village, and her parents’ house was partially damaged. The cohesion of the family was destroyed. The concentration camp experiences were not talked about, her mother left the family, and the children could no longer get along. Katharina Thaller lived with her father for a time. In the mid-1950s, she moved to her own apartment in Klagenfurt. She preferred her independence over having electricity. She was granted a small victim’s pension, and preached whenever her health permitted it. She was often seriously ill in the following decades. In 1997, when Jehovah’s Witnesses began to reappraise their history of persecution, she was prepared to bear witness for the first time.
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"Yes, the brothers only returned late from the war. So we rejoined later. (…) Everything was cut up and pulled to pieces, there was no feeling of belonging any more, because then each one only thought of himself … Everyone had different thoughts because of the war … I was a stranger, too. I never had this intimate relationship any more... "
"... but she knew – she was the mayor's niece – that they had imprisoned me, and she said: „You know, that was a right disgrace to imprison you, because you hadn't done any harm to anyone.“ Said I: „With Hitler, only those who haven't done any harm to anyone were put into prison, the criminals have stayed free.“
"But I never talked about it [the concentration camp] to him [her father], he never said a thing. I would have wanted, because with me, a lot of things were … walled in, where I wasn't able to escape. (…) Yes, I coped with it by myself, I speculated about it, why it was like that, and why has it happened like that, why have we been there, but I never really got anywhere with it."
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Jehovah’s Witnesses after 1945
Amongst the 800 Austrian Jehovah’s Witnesses, more than 140 had died in concentration camps or had been executed. The survivors once again took up their activities, preaching and proselytizing. Until recently, young men were given prison sentences for their complete conscientious objection to military service. In a state of war, they are threatened with high sentences for their refusal of military service, as for example in the war in the former Yugoslavia. On 10 July 1998, Jehovah’s Witnesses were recognized as a religious community in Austria. Currently they number about 21,000 believers.
On May 7th, 2009, Jehovah's Witnesses were also legally recognised as a religious community.
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