Hauptplatz 20 (laid in 2010)
Ludwig Huber
“Suicide Squad”
Ludwig Huber, born on July 24, 1894 in Tauchen, married, railroad employee.
Arrested on June 21, 1940 charged with preparing high treason, convicted on November 14, 1941 to three years in prison; released on July 24, 1943 and drafted into a penal company on January 5, 1944. Missing since October 17, 1944 in Yugoslavia.
Ludwig Huber attended elementary school in Tauchen and held various jobs. In 1920, he joined the Austrian Federal Railways as a station and warehouse worker, and from 1929 he worked in Leobersdorf as a baggage supervisor.
Huber was a member of the Social Democratic Party and the Free Railway Workers‘ Union from 1920 to 1934. In “Austrofascist” times he was part of the “Fatherland Front.”
In September 1939, a communist group was founded in Kottingbrunn, mainly composed of railway employees. Early in 1940, Ludwig Huber joined. Members were urged to work for the Communist Party, recruit others, and collect membership dues (1 Reichsmark/month).
There was contact with the Vienna KPÖ organisation, from which the group received pamphlets for distribution. These leaflets called for the government’s violent overthrow and for the end of fascism.
The group, with 15 members, was exposed and Ludwig Huber arrested on June 21, 1940. He and his codefendants were convicted of preparing high treason on November 14, 1941—Huber received three years of prison.
In July 1943, he was released and soon conscripted to the Wehrmacht in Penal Division 999 (“suicide squad”) in Yugoslavia. Since the night of October 16–17, 1944, after a fight near Ston on the Dalmatian coast, Ludwig Huber has been missing.
On June 15, 1999, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the waiting room of Wiener Neustadt train station for three railway workers who died for freedom—Heinrich Sauer, Josef Höger, and Ludwig Huber.
Anton Blaha after the indictment from Vienna’s General Prosecutor on July 10, 1941.
Photo: Ludwig Huber (© StAWN, Photo Collection IVM)