Josef was born in Augsburg in 1953. His parents were both in prisons and concentration camps as political victims of the Nazi regime. Three family members were murdered.

Josef is a technician and application programmer by profession. His intensive theoretical and practical involvement with the medium of film made him a recognized filmmaker and photographer by 1980. In 1985, he was awarded the Otto Brenner Culture Prize at the Augsburg Congress Hall for his first feature-length cinema documentary.

Socially critical documentaries and cinematic biographies followed, including one on the developments of right-wing extremism in Germany. His film "Anna ich hab Angst um dich" has been shown in various European countries. Josef has been a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm in Germany for many years and is a member of the German Union of Journalists.

In 1970 Josef became involved in the preservation of the Jewish cemeteries in Kaufering and the reappraisal of the history of the concentration camp subcamps in Kaufering. He was involved in the district youth committee of the DGB and worked on the board of the Augsburg Stadtjugendring. Josef has participated in many contemporary witness projects and is still active in youth and adult education. From the mid-1970s until 1985, he was instrumental in preserving the memories of 32 victims and different groups of victims of the Nazi regime in the Swabia/Augsburg area. His work with survivors of the concentration camps and the resulting psychological consequences for the persecuted and their successor generations was particularly intensive. For more than 25 years he was active in the presidium of the Dachau Camp Community and most recently, together with Max Mannheimer, represented the successor generation of former German concentration camp prisoners in the Comité Int. De Dachau. Memorial work and the transmission of these experiences from that time to the present day are important concerns for him in order to make the current political situation better explainable and tangible.

With his films he wants to raise persons awareness of the causes of extremism.

Josef Pröll is a certified lecturer at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial and a contact person for trade union educational work. He is active on the board of the "Förderverein für Int. Jugendbegegnung und Gedenkstättenarbeit e.V." and is an ambassador of the Augsburg district office for the Augsburg district, ambassador of the "Respect" campaign of IG Metall and, as part of the federal program "Democracy Live!" (Federal Ministry of Family Affairs), he is a member of the Augsburg monitoring committee. For many decades, he has dedicated his work to remembrance culture and youth work, initiating and organizing film work projects and workshops, and leading excursions to the memorial sites of Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

His intensive examination of the Augsburg families Oberdorfer, Friedmann and Schnell as well as the topic of "Aryanization" in connection with the new film "Die Stille schreit"® were new and deeply moving for him.