Memorial Plaque for Pastor Anton Koperek at the Church of Kreuzen

Anton Koperek was born in 1902 in Essen, Germany, and entered the seminary for priests in Klagenfurt in 1924. In 1937, he came to Kreuzen near Paternion as a parish priest. After the annexation of Austria by the NS regime, he resisted the rules of the National Socialists and, for example, invited forced laborers to Mass. After being denounced by locals, he was arrested by the Gestapo on May 28, 1942. Anton Koperek was deported to the Dachau concentration camp and died there on November 11, 1942. A memorial plaque in the rear wall of the church in Kreuzen, within the cemetery, remembers him.