Right here – at Anichstrasse 19 – Margarethe Kelderer and her sister Eva Weber sheltered Fred Mayer, head of Operation Greenup led by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), from the henchmen of the Nazi regime in spring of 1945. It was they who enabled Mayer to collect– also with the help of Kelderer and Weber – information on Wehrmacht troop movements and other relevant military information and transmit this to his colleague Hans Wijnberg, who was hidden in Weber’s and Kelderer’ hometown of Oberperfuss. He then passed this information on to the US Army headquarters in Italy. Margarethe Kelderer also let Mayer use her flat to meet local opponents of the Nazi regime such as Georg Wallnöfer, Fritz Moser, and Josef Heiss. The flat thus became a central hub of espionage and data collection in the service of the Allies’ struggle against Nazi Germany.
On the run from the Gestapo, it is here that Fred Mayer found refuge in the late hours of April 20, 1945. Despite Nazi officials threatening execution for providing aid to Allied foreigners, Margarethe Kelderer offered Fred Mayer her help. Around 11 o’clock at night, a group of eight men sent by the Gestapo stormed Kelderer’s apartment and arrested Fred Mayer and Eva Weber. Kelderer was told to report for arrest the next day so she could say goodbye to her children, who were staying with relatives in Oberperfuss. Facing a difficult decision, Kelderer instead fled to Bavaria where she hid in a monastery until the area was liberated by the US Army. In the subsequent days, Mayer was tortured by Gestapo agents while Eva Weber was imprisoned in the Gestapo’s camp in Innsbruck-Reichenau.
As recently as 2013, the US government awarded high honours to the men and women of Operation Greenup. Putting their own lives on the line, they played a major part in preventing large numbers of potential civilian and military casualties by helping to orchestrate the peaceful handover of Innsbruck and the Tyrolean Alpine region to US troops. In 1989, Margarethe Kelderer was awarded Austria’s Cross of Honour for merits surrounding the liberation of Austria. Her sister Eva could not receive this honour since she had died in May of 1945 as a result of her imprisonment due to her part in the operation. Fred Mayer received the Tyrolean Eagle Award in 1990 and Hans Wijnberg was awarded the same medal posthumously in 2011.
Margarethe Kelderer, Eva Weber, and their brother, the Wehrmacht deserter Franz Weber, who had hidden Mayer and Wijnberg in Oberperfuss in February of 1945 – they all risked their lives as part of Operation Greenup. They contributed in major ways to the resistance against the Nazi regime in Tyrol and to the Allies’ liberation of Austria.
