Nittnergasse 4 (laid 2013)
Johann Fink
Commitment to Communism
Johann Fink, born 12 October 1897 in Wolfsberg near Leibnitz, divorced.
Arrested in November 1939 and died in the Dachau concentration camp.
The National Socialists had enacted the so‑called “Malicious Practices Act” (Heimtückegesetz): “Anyone who publicly makes inflammatory, malicious, or base‑minded statements about leading figures of the state or the NSDAP, about their orders, or about the institutions they created, in a manner likely to undermine the people’s confidence in the political leadership, will be punished with imprisonment.”
Critical remarks to colleagues, passing on a foreign radio broadcast to a neighbor, or careless comments in a tavern could lead to convictions under this law. After serving a prison sentence, “protective custody” usually followed — meaning transfer to a concentration camp.
A Gestapo report dated 4 November 1939 stated: “Due to publicly professing Communism, the machine molder Johann Fink, born 12 October 1897 in Wolfsberg near Leibnitz, Styria, DR., kfl., divorced, residing in Wiener Neustadt, Nittnergasse 4, was arrested. He had declared to guests at the Lang tavern in Wiener Neustadt that he was and would remain a Communist.”
But another factor made Fink particularly hated by the Nazis: in 1937 he had traveled to Paris intending to join the International Brigades to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic against Franco’s putschists. However, the recruitment commission rejected him due to a stiff arm joint — Fink was disabled. He returned home, was imprisoned by the Schuschnigg authorities, but released again because nothing could be proven against him.
The Nazis now seized this unyielding man and sent him to a concentration camp. He does not appear to have been kept alive for long.
The DÖW victim database now lists: Place of death: Dachau; Date of death: 5 November 1942 (query 2025).
Anton Blaha, based on Resistance in the Wiener Neustadt Region 1938–1945 by Karl Flanner