[1][2][3] In 1939 his father decided in the South Tyrol Option Agreement[4] that his family should remain Italian citizens, not adopt German nationality.
Thaler received a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp from a military court.
He, and many of his fellow inmates, were forced to march to a camp in France, where they were finally set free.
Thaler’s memoir, Unvergessen (Unforgotten), was an important catalyst in initiating, and contributing to, the discussion of what happened in South Tyrol during the Nazi era.
In 1997 he received the Order of Merit of the Land of Tyrol, in 2010 he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Bolzano,[5] and in 2013 he was chosen, together with Nazi opponent and victim, Josef Mayr-Nusser, by the South Tyrolian Society for Political Science as Political Personality of the Year.