This was initiated by the Haslach writer Peter Paul Wiplinger, who now knows that his relative Josef Steffelbauer’s resistance during the Second World War is being remembered.
“In memory of Josef Steffelbauer from Haslach, who deserted the German Wehrmacht because he no longer wanted to take part in the war and wanted to be responsible for the crimes of the Wehrmacht. He was shot on February 12, 1943 as a deserter trying to escape.” This is the inscription on the plaque that will be presented on Sunday at 10.30 a.m. in the Haslach parish church and later attached to the war memorial.
The initiator of this action is Peter Paul Wiplinger, who was born in Haslach: “The truth of a place is more and something completely different than what is written in a local chronicle. The truth I mean is the never told, the silent and forgotten stories of those people who lived at that time”, he describes the intention behind his need to put up the commemorative plaque for Steffelbauer.
Not the whole truth
He reports that only 13 text pages of 459 pages in the Haslach local chronicle are devoted to the so-called “Nazi period”. “And this as a list of facts and indication of events that are correct, but by no means constitute and depict the reality and certainly not the truth of the place Haslach an der Mühl,” says Wiplinger, and points to the special importance of the connection to the events in Ukraine. He hopes: “That a certain rethinking will begin to take place, leading to the insight that heroes are not those who kill others, but rather those ‘heroes’ who – facing life instead of death – do this very killing of people, even knowing that their lives are at risk; or that they may even lose their lives as a result of their disobedient attitude.”
Because, Wiplinger believes: “What we have known for a long time or should finally know is that a war today is no longer a ‘war’, but the indiscriminate and empathetic arbitrary destruction of life and human civilization. And that this is never a basis for solution to a conflict, but is a pointless and unacceptable anachronism in human history.”
Source: Nachrichten
