Hedwig-Stocker-Park

The fate of the politically persecuted prisoners also affected some of their guards, who were not all loyal National Socialists. Hedwig Stocker began her service at the prison of the district court in March 1941. She was thirty-eight years old at the time. After the end of the NS regime in 1945, twelve former prisoners signed a petition urging the continued employment of – as it is called – the "good spirit of the politically imprisoned": "She did everything for us, despite disregarding her own person and the risk of losing her position, such as providing food, always giving us the possibility to lead a human existence, [..] In the last critical days, when events at the prison in Stein also spread to Krems (6–8 April), Mrs. Stocker, on her own initiative, prepared and supported the escape of political prisoners." It remained unmentioned that Stocker had hidden the resistance fighter Maria Polak in her cottage for a month, as she feared the SS might still carry out a punishment on Polak shortly before the end of the war. Hedwig Stocker continued her service until 1950.

She died in 1997. In 2021, the city of Krems' advisory board of historians proposed naming a small park immediately next to the old city wall in memory of Hedwig Stocker.