Brother Gereon: A forgotten hero in the fight against the Nazi regime!

Brother Gereon: A forgotten hero in the fight against the Nazi regime!

An exciting film project sheds light on the fate of Brother Gereon, an often forgotten Nazi victim from East Tyrol. The Tyrolean director Hermann Weiskopf is working on a half-hour educational film called “#GEREON”, which is aimed at young people and should be completed by the end of the year. Gereon, whose real name was Josef Ausserlechner, was a resistance fighter who died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944. The film will be shot in various locations, including Innsbruck and his home town of Kartitsch. Weiskopf describes Gereon's story as a "little hero's journey" and wants to promote tolerance and humanity in today's context, as [kathpress.at] reports.

The film is told in a modern docu-drama style, with a fictional framework in which a TikToker explores the story of Gereon and highlights the atrocities of the Nazis. Weiskopf, who already caused a stir with the film about the Tyrolean martyr Otto Neururer, sees this as an opportunity to make complex historical topics accessible to young people. Filming is planned for the summer, and the premiere could coincide with the opening of a memorial for Tyrolean Nazi victims in Wilten Abbey, as [krone.at] informed.

Commitment to historical awareness

The story of Brother Gereon, a lay brother from Kartitsch, shows how an ordinary person remained courageous in the face of National Socialism. After years of being forgotten, his life story was rediscovered through the commitment of Martin Riederer, a Premonstratensian in Wilten Abbey. Riederer describes how young people became aware of Gereon's fate, which ultimately led to this film project. With the aim of not only documenting the events of the Nazi era, but also reflecting them, the filmmakers will design the sequences in such a way that they can be easily integrated into lessons and attract wider attention.