Steinfeldgasse 18 / Siglgasse 9a (laid 2012)
Felix Kobler
Listening to enemy broadcasts
Felix Kobler, born on 27 December 1889 in Zizkow near Prague, trained saddler.
Wife Rosa Kobler, née Reismüller, born on 13 August 1901.
Daughter Gertrude, born in 1928.
As a Jew, he was taken into various labor camps. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for listening to “enemy broadcasts” and deported to the forced-labor camp Gross Strehlitz, where he died.
He probably entered service in Wiener Neustadt during the First World War. There he met the fully Aryan master baker’s daughter Rosa Reismüller, married her in 1921, and had one child with her, daughter Gertrude. In 1934 he learned the baker’s trade from his father-in-law and took over his business in 1937, which he ran until the political upheaval.
After the Anschluss, Felix Kobler was no longer allowed to continue running his bakery because his paternal grandparents were Jewish.
In 1938 he moved to Vienna without his family, where he again worked as a bakery assistant until July 1939. Then, as a Jew, he was sent to a labor camp on the Präbichl and to other locations, and from April 1941 he was again employed as a laborer.
From the court records: “In August 1941 the accused Kobler met the accused Schaffranek, and they arranged a visit. Schaffranek had brought a large Siemens radio set, with which foreign stations could be received, to his workplace, where Kobler visited him. […] After the accused discovered that the London station could be heard with the available radio and that it primarily broadcast German-language news about the war situation, they decided during later repeated visits by Kobler to Schaffranek always to tune in to the London station and listen to the German-language news. They did this about six to ten times.”
From the judgment of the Special Court at the Regional Court of Vienna against Felix Kobler of Wiener Neustadt and Johann Schaffranek of Vienna for the crime under the Broadcasting Ordinance, 24 June 1942: “The defendants are sentenced as follows: Kobler to three (3) years’ imprisonment, Schaffranek to two (2) years’ imprisonment. […]”
Note: “According to victim welfare records, Felix Kobler was taken to the Gross Strehlitz forced-labor camp and declared dead in 1949.”
Anton Blaha, based on Widerstand und Verfolgung in Niederösterreich 1934–1945, Volume 3.