Unforgotten
A Memoir of Dachau
1st Edition
Published on 1. September 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-3-943324-99-0 (ISBN)
Description
In this short and gripping memoir Franz Thaler describes his experience of unimaginable suffering at the hands of the Nazis. His father voted to let his family remain Italian citizens and not to become citizens of the German Reich. Franz Thaler, just a young man of nineteen, decided not to serve as a soldier in Hitler's army, and fled to the mountains. When his family was threatened by the Nazis with reprisals, he handed himself in, was arrested, put on trial and sent to the concentration camp in Dachau.When the American soldiers arrived in Dachau at the end of the war, he and some of his surviving inmates were not set free but remained prisoners. They were transported with others to a camp in France and forced to march during the final stage of the journey. There they were at last set free and allowed to return home.Franz Thaler describes all these appalling events with insight, clarity and passion, but also with a quite remarkable humanity and an astonishing lack of bitterness.
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Franz Thaler was born in Reinswald in South Tyrol on 6 March 1925.In the referendum ("Option") in 1939 his father decided that the whole family should remain Italian citizens. Despite this Thaler was called up to do military service in the German Wehrmacht in 1944 at the age of 19. Instead of enlisting he fled to the mountains, but gave himself up when his family was threatened with reprisals. He was arrested and sent to Dachau where he spent about five months. When the Americans arrived in Dachau he became a prisoner-of-war of the Americans and was taken to a camp in France, where he was finally set free and allowed to return home. After the war he became a craftsman in quill embroidery, and continued to work until his recent retirement. After publishing his memoir of Dachau in 1988 ("Unvergessen", now available in Raetia Verlag, Bolzano), he did educational work with young people, which included accompanying them on trips to Dachau. In 1997 he received the Verdienstkreuz desLandes Tirol (Order of Merit of the Land of Tyrol) and in 2010 he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Bolzano.