Aleksy Jagla (1920–1942) was born in Wieniec, Poland, and was forced to work under the Nazi regime in Saalfelden, Salzburg, on a farm in Marzon. On 8 January 1942, aged 21, he was executed by hanging in a remote wooded area near Saalfelden. The Gestapo justified the killing by claiming he had a relationship with Johanna Blaickner, a “German” maid working on the same farm, which Nazi racial ideology condemned as “racial defilement.” Other Polish forced labourers were compelled to witness the execution as a warning. Official records later disguised his death as “sudden cardiac death."
Thomas Rieder (1911–1943) was born in Saalfelden, the son of a railway worker, and grew up with ten siblings. With little schooling, he worked from childhood as a farmhand, dairy worker, quarry worker, labourer, and alpine herdsman. After being briefly called up for military service in 1940, he was released because of a knee injury, but later failed to report his changes of residence to the military authorities. He lived under an assumed name on remote alpine pastures and was repeatedly arrested for theft and for avoiding registration. Nazi courts portrayed him as a “dangerous habitual criminal,” “antisocial,” and a draft evader. On 23 June 1943, the Salzburg Regional Court sentenced him to death. A clemency request failed, and he was executed in Munich-Stadelheim on 30 July 1943.
