Otto was born on March 25, 1881, in Piller, Tyrol, Austria as the last of twelve children to the poor and modest farmers, Alois and Hildegard Neururer.

When he was 8, his father died and his mother suffered periodic bouts of depression.

He was brilliant but timid and also battled depression with a call to the religious life from early on. Supported by his uncle, he studied for the priesthood in Brixen, under the Vincentians, and was ordained in 1907.

He wanted to become a Jesuit to join the missions but his ill health prevented him.

He served as parochial vicar of the Saint James Parish where he also taught religious education.

After 1932, he was directed to several areas of France and Austria, but his final assignment was as parish priest of Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Goetzens. He also provided spiritual services to the Christian Social Movement which was in the spirit of the papal document, Rerum Novarum.

In 1938, German troops marched into Austria, integrating the country into the German Reich. This led to the suppression of political opposition, including the arrest or persecution of many Catholic leaders who opposed the regime including many clergy.

Father Otto had advised a parishioner girl not to marry a divorced man who was an atheist, and of dissolute life with questionable morals. She did not follow his advice and instead made Otto’s advice known. This man happened to be a personal friend of a Nazi party leader and politician, who dealt directly with Hitler and had Otto arrested on December 15, 1938, on the charge of “defamation of Germanic marriage”.

After just under a year in prison at the Dachau Concentration Camp, he was transferred to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp that was known for its cruelties and mass shootings.

As it was known that he was a priest, he was often tortured, yet he shared his meager food rations with the weakest prisoners.

Catholic rituals were forbidden and punishable by death, and even though he suspected a trap, because of his priestly mission, he agreed to perform a baptism for a prisoner who had approached him.

It was a trap and he was sent to the punishment block to endure several instance of severe torture.

After a month, by the order of Sergeant Major Martin Sommer, the “Executioner of Buchenwald”, he was taken away and hung naked upside down where he suffered cruelly, without complaining, praying for his executioners. After an agonizing 34 hours, on May 30, 1940, he died.

He was the 1st priest to be murdered in a Nazi camp. A fellow priest who assisted him in his torments and survived, Alfred Berchtold, provided witness and account to Otto’s actions, torture, and death.

For God’s Glory.

Buchenwald Concentration Camp: