Photo: Anton-kurt, 2011/Wikimedia Commons CC BY 3.0
Josef Vallaster (1910–1943)
Worked at the Hartheim killing centre and was a guard at the Sobibór extermination camp
Josef Vallaster of Vorarlberg worked for the killing operations at Hartheim “euthanasia” centre as a so-called burner. He performed the gassings, after which he burned the corpses. Like other perpetrators in the Nazi’s programs to murder sick and disabled people, from 1942 onwards, Vallaster also participated in the mass murders in Eastern Europe and became an SS guard at the death camp Sobibór. He was killed by Jewish prisoners in a camp uprising.
It was not until 2009 that he was seen as a war criminal. Until then he had been honoured as a soldier who died in battle on a war memorial in his hometown Silbertal and in the records of the deceased at the monument of war heroes at Äußeres Burgtor on Heldenplatz square in Vienna.
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