Lives Remembered. Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism

262 Pages·2015·4.02 MB·English

Lives Remembered
Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism
Z
Lives
Remembered
Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism
214
140
172
Fritz Neugebauer Preface 6

Dr. Renate S. Meissner, MSc Autobiographical Testimonials as Individual Landmarks
of Collective Memory 7
Mag. Dr. Manfred Müller Life Stories as Textual Memorials
The Collection of Memories from the Archives of the National Fund
of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism 13
Jewish stories
Lizi Jalkio Every day is farewel 20
Edith J. Now which hand is Jewish and which is Aryan? 38
Alice Hirschfeld … may you be destined for a happy and prosperous future 46
Peter S. When wil we be able to live again? 52
Susan Course It is a god country to which you are headed 86
Victor Gans … how wonderful it is to be fre 90
Eva A. So, now this firting is wel and truly over … 108
Hans Reichenfeld … I think I’ll play my cello instead 118
Chava Guez Back then, in the beautiful city Vienna 124
Table of Contents Lives Remembered 5
Kurt Flusman Stations of my life 130
Jenny de Nijs … even the greatest love doesn’t help 140
Stories of Viennese Czechs
Veˇra Bezecná 1938 was a year of great suffering for our whole family … 166
Deserters‘ stories
Richard Wadani I was a deserter 168
Kurt Püringer … sentenced to death 171
Fritz Maria Rebhann … on the run after undermining military morale 172
Gottfried A. … we didn’t want to have anything to do with this war 174
Stories of the “Righteous”
Maria Springer We lived under great pressure 192
Stories of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Hermine Liska When they took me away it was terrible 195
Stories of “Children of Spiegelgrund”
Anna Maierhofer The Spiegelgrund Song 198
Rudolf Karger I was a child of Spiegelgrund 200
Stories of Descendants of Victims of Euthanasia
Maria M. No one can replace a mother 207
Stories of Carinthian Slovenes and Partisans
Bartholomäus O. I was so terifed, I couldn’t speak 208
Theresia Hafner It was as if I had lost a brother 211
Ferdinand Hafner … and so I kept quiet when I was questioned 214
Hemma V. Suddenly there was only German 217
Johann Kežar Our area was caled “bandit-land” 220
Stories of “Asocials”
Ingeborg R. For we were asocials 25
Ludwig W. Adamec The dignity of work 28
Franziska Jagerhofer I only knew work 236
Stories of Roma und Sinti
Anton Müler My number was Z6835 238
Adolf Papai If it had lasted another year, there would have been none of us left 244
Walpurga Horvath … I stayed, I stayed alive 250
Koloman Baranyai Today they are taking the Roma away … 257
Thanks 262
Legal disclosure 262
Preface
Fifteen years ago, the establishment of the National Fund signified
a change in the way the Republic of Austria dealt with the victims of
National Socialism. The National Fund was the acknowledgement
and expression of a new, responsible Austrian identity. At the same
time, it was an acknowledgement of the fact that many Austrians
actively participated in the crimes of the Holocaust and others deli-
berately looked the other way. As a result, since the 1990s, Austria has
been particularly aware of its special responsibility.
The establishment of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria
for Victims of National Socialism was a fundamental step towards
the victims of the Holocaust; symbolic assistance from Austria.
During the course of the last 15 years, Austria has continued on this
path with the establishment of the General Settlement Fund and the
Reconciliation Fund, with the Art Restitution Law and finally with the
agreement to restore the Jewish cemeteries.
In viewing the life stories of survivors highlighted in this volume and
the achievements of the National Fund to date, it becomes evident
how necessary and important its establishment was – from the
aim of making direct payments to the victims as at least a symbolic
gesture, to the sponsorship of projects for scientific research and
commemorative work.
I would like to thank the many dedicated people who play a part in
this vital work of the National Fund and I look forward to the further
activities of the National Fund with great optimism.
Fritz Neugebauer
Second President of the National Council
Autobiographical Testimonials Lives Remembered 7
Autobiographical
Testimonials
as Individual
Landmarks
of Collective
Memory
Dr. Renate S. Meissner, MSc
8 Lives Remembered Autobiographical Testimonials
One of the major concerns of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims
of National Socialism is safeguarding the memory of Austrians who, for one of the many
reasons the Nazis managed to devise, fell victim to that murderous regime.
The National Fund was established in 1995 to document Austria’s acceptance of its
responsibility for the victims of National Socialism. During the course of its ffteen years
of activity, over 30,000 people have entrusted their life stories to us, usually as part of the
process of fling applications for a symbolic compensation payment that we have been
commissioned to disburse. Many of these life stories were told in face to face interviews,
even more in writing by applicants who have contacted us from 78 different countries.
In addition to their signifcance as a unique source of contemporary history,
autobiographical memories not only help to create a critical awareness of past wrongs on
the part of young and future generations but are also often an important step towards the
“world outside” for the affected persons themselves. Although offcial acknowledgement
of individual suffering was notoriously long in coming, the opportunity to present their
personal story to the public, even 70 years after the event, meant for many people a
validation of their experience and gave them a sense of certain closure. One applicant
expressed this as follows:
“I am glad that you chose to publish my story. In fact, I can’t really believe that, after so many
years, my story is being recognized for the frst time as the story of a victim of National Socialism.”
th
The 15 anniversary of its foundation gives the National Fund an opportunity not
only to present an account of what it has achieved in its felds of activity, but also to give
the victims a voice and to make their testimony available to a wider public.
This volume contains 33 autobiographical testimonials from almost all groups of
victims recognized by the National Fund: Jews; Roma and Sinti; Carinthian Slovenes;
deserters; people persecuted on political grounds; so called asocials; Jehovah’s Witnesses;
Viennese Czechs and people who experienced the horrors of Spiegelgrund as children;
and from one of the “righteous”.
In addition to revealing information on the various reasons for which people were
persecuted during the National Socialist era, which even historically interested readers
are unlikely to be aware of in detail, these stories give an insight into lives marked by
Autobiographical Testimonials Lives Remembered 9
persecution on a daily basis. They also bear witness to people who were themselves not
persecuted by the Nazis and who were willing to help those that needed help most, thus
enabling some to survive.
How did the various texts come into being and how did they end up in the archives
of the National Fund? All texts were written by applicants for the purpose of providing
details of their persecution. In addition to asking for a few biographical data required
for processing, the application forms also offered applicants the opportunity to outline
their stories of persecution in greater detail. In addition to this, many applicants chose
to enclose letters, notes, diary entries as well as fairly comprehensive life stories written
especially for their application. In order to offer a balanced portrayal of the different
groups of victims, the texts are supplemented here with additional documents, which
resulted partly from a request to the authors to expand on the existing text; some were
sent to the National Fund by applicants on their own initiative with the request for
publication. Consequently, the autobiographical testimonials presented here differ with
regard to their literary form, their dates, their original intention and their length.
For the autobiographical testimonials by Jewish authors, we have selected a special
format of autobiographical writing for this volume: the diary. For children and teenagers,
the diary was where one recorded day-to-day events; adults on the other hand often used
it as a way of coping with the persecution they were suffering and, in some cases, also to
document events for their children and the following generations.
Almost all of the autobiographical notes of Carinthian Slovenes are the results of
interviews and the same applies to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In the case of the Roma and Sinti, the submissions made in the application form
regarding their persecution are generally rather matter of fact. In order to be able to
document the persecution of this group more fully in this volume, we have drawn on
interview transcripts from the project “Mri Historija” conducted under the auspices of
the association “Roma Service”.
Despite the fact that these stories of persecution are all different and that their
authors belong to different groups of victims, what they all have in common is
the insight they allow us into suffering, discrimination and horrendous brutality.
In addition to this, they all owe their existence to the determination of these
10 Lives Remembered Autobiographical Testimonials
people to share with others what they went through in their lives. They conjure
up the incomprehension, the helplessness, the fear that all of us would feel in a
comparable situation and the traumas that they sustained and, by doing so, they
serve as a warning to present and future generations never again to allow such a
regime to come to power again. They must be read as an attempt to render the
indescribable describable and the incomprehensible understandable. But they are
also a testament to hope, the will to survive and the need for such experiences to
be carefully documented so that they may contribute towards a more peaceful
future.
The fact that the numbers of contemporary witnesses are now rapidly dwindling
gives rise to the question: How can the awareness of the Holocaust be passed on to
future generations? The facts of the Holocaust will endure only in the form of their
cultural reconstruction in narratives, among which the life stories of people with frst-
hand experience take pride of place. They enable an ever new, personal and immediately
accessible approach to these historical events. They succeed not only in reconstructing
the past but also in re-substantiating it.
The transformation of remembered facts into narrative and into collective
memory can be viewed as an exercise in bridge-building. It is a dialogue, if a mute
one, between the authors of the autobiographical testimonials and their readers.
Enabling the passage of personally experienced stories into the social consciousness
and hence also into the collective memory is the purpose that this publication hopes
to serve.
The importance for the applicants of the documentation of their life stories and of
the opportunity to talk about their experiences to the staff of the National Fund was
1
expressed as follows by David Vyssoki, the Medical Director of ESRA :
“The fact that they were actively listened to by competent and interested staff, that their biography
and medical history was recorded and documented are acts that are perceived as recognition by the
survivors, as interest expressed by the state and by society in their story and their suffering. This is
precisely what can put an end to their speechlessness and silence, as a frst step towards new coping
2
strategies for survivors.”
1From the outset the National Fund has been in close cooperation with ESRA, an initiative founded in 1994 for the psycho-social and socio-therapeutic
support of victims traumatized by the Holocaust and of the “second generation”.
2David Vyssoki, Die Bedeutung des Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus aus therapeutischer Sicht, in: National-
fonds (ed.), In die Tiefe geblickt. Lebensgeschichten, Vienna 2000, p. 9.
Autobiographical Testimonials Lives Remembered 11
Transformed into written life stories, the memories of past suffering become a means
for the person at the centre of this drama of coming to terms with that suffering. And
for all of us each individual story goes on to form a landmark in the collective memory.
We would like to thank those who, by entrusting their stories to us, have allowed us
to share their experiences and who willed us to make them available to the public in the
spirit of the pledge “never again”.
Dr. Renate S. Meissner, MSc, born 1959 in Vienna, ethnologist and Jewish Studies scholar.
Deputy Secretary General and Scientific Director of the National Fund of the Republic of
Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Author of numerous publications on, among
other things, Yemeni Jewry; most recently Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer
des Nationalsozialismus: Die Lebensgeschichten der Opfer – mehr als eine historische
Quellengattung (in: War nie Kind, Parlament Transparent 2008); ÜBER LEBEN. Erinnern im
Kontext des Nationalfonds (in: Die „Wahrheit“ der Erinnerung, StudienVerlag 2008).