End of the War and Postwar Period

At last there were clear signs that the war was over. He returned home on May 5, 1945, where he continued to work as a farmhand until April 1946. The nightmare was finally over. The table below shows an overview of the persecution Engleitner had to endure.

The intervention of the allied occupying powers, particularly the Americans, meant that he was released from forced labor in April 1946. He found work as a night watchman in a soap factory, which enabled him to continue his missionary work by day, which he did with great enthusiasm and dedication.

In 1949 he married Theresia Kurz, whom he lovingly nursed in the last seven years of their marriage right up to her death in 1981. Theresia had a child from a previous marriage. Engleitner himself was unable to father any children. This was a result from a concentration camp guard kicking him so hard in between the legs that he was left sterile.

For many hears, Engleitner had to live with the stigma of being a former "KZler", concentration camp inmate. Many people thought of him as being a useless person. Even after the war they did not understand that most of the concentration camp inmates weren't criminals.

As a Jehovah's Witness, he didn't receive compensation for his suffering for decades. Only in recent years, when his life story was published in the book "He just said No", Engleitner received due respect. People around him started to realize that such a unique had been living among them.

Today he lives in St. Wolfgang, in the house he built before the war.