Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Theresa Stangl told her sister, Helene Eidenböck, nothing of Stangl’s role at Hartheim or Treblinka; she only told her sister that she moved with Stangl to Damascus. Eidenböck married her husband, an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust by fleeing to Shanghai when she was 49 in 1958. The Eidenböcks only learned of Stangl’s crimes when the news broke in 1964 that Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was searching for him. The news devastated the Eidenböcks, especially Mr. Eidenböck (whose first name isn’t given).

After working in Damascus for a year, Stangl saved enough money by 1949 to buy tickets for Theresa and their children to move there. As required by law, Theresa registered her departure with the Austrian police, telling them she was joining her husband who escaped. Sereny verifies that this account is true.

In Damascus, Theresa found that Stangl was once again the nice man he’d been before the war. After their arrival, Stangl lost his job and Theresa found work as a masseuse. Within months, Stangl found a well-paying job as a mechanical engineer at another textile company. With his new job, Stangl moved his family out of the boarding house they’d been staying in, the address of which is mentioned in several books about Nazi escape networks, into a nice apartment.