Hans was born to a Jewish family in the Austrian capital of Vienna. His parents ran a successful export shop for ladies' hats and sold their wares to many different countries. As a boy, Hans attended a private, preparatory school in which courses were taught in both English and German.
1933-39: Hans was attending business school when the Germans annexed Austria in 1938. Hans and his family watched from their window as German troops, led by Hitler, goose-stepped into Vienna. Hans was immediately forced out of school. About two weeks later, an Austrian appointed by the Germans told his family he had instructions to liquidate their business. His parents no longer believed they had a future in Germany and decided to leave. The family left for Italy in 1939.
1940-45: Hans and his family settled in Genoa. One day in 1940 two Italian policemen came and told them they were to be interned because they were Jewish. "But don't worry," they said, "We're human beings. We're not animals. We're not the Germans." The Italians took them to the village of Compagna, and a month later, to Tortoreto in central Italy. His family was housed in a hotel overlooking the sea and were allowed freedom of movement. They could go to the movies and were even given pocket money. In 1943 they were liberated by the British army.
Hans worked as an interpreter for the Allies until the end of the war, and then spent three years arranging for JDC-funded ships to smuggle Jewish refugees into Palestine.
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Judith, nicknamed Julie, was one of five children born to religious Hungarian-Jewish parents in the Burgenland, the eastern province of Austria that was part of Hungary until 1921. She married Tobias Dichter, a traveling salesman from Vienna who had sold merchandise to her father. The Dichters moved to an apartment in Vienna's Jewish Leopoldstadt district, where they raised two children.
1933-39: The Germans have annexed Austria. One week after the annexation, Germans came to Julie's apartment to take her husband and son but left after no one answered the door. Several months later, the Germans confiscated her husband's drugstore and all of its contents ("Aryanization"). Judith and Tobias have urged their children to leave Austria, but Judith and her husband are too old to immigrate. Anyway, the Germans will probably leave old people like them alone.
1940-42: Judith and Tobias have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Last June, for the second time in two years, they were forced to move out of their apartment in Vienna. They were ordered to leave their personal property behind and were put on a transport of 1,000 Jews, many of whom were elderly like them and many of whom they knew. At least their children are safe abroad, and Tobias and Judith are still together. Now, the Germans are telling them that they are to be moved to a work camp.
On September 19, 1942, Julie and her husband were deported to Maly Trostinets, a German killing site near Minsk. They were killed on arrival.
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The elder of two daughters born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Helene was raised as a Catholic in Vienna. Her father died in action during World War I when Helene was just 5 years old, and her mother remarried when Helene was 15. Known affectionately as Helly, Helene loved to swim and go to the opera. After finishing her secondary education she entered law school.
1933-39: At 19 Helene first showed signs of mental illness. Her condition worsened during 1934, and by 1935 she had to give up her law studies and her job as a legal secretary. After losing her trusted fox terrier, Lydi, she suffered a major breakdown. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and was placed in Vienna's Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Two years later, in March 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany.
1940: Helene was confined in Steinhof and was not allowed home even though her condition had improved. Her parents were led to believe that she would soon be released. Instead, Helene's mother was informed in August that Helene had been transferred to a hospital in Niedernhart, just across the border in Bavaria. In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.
Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg "euthanasia" center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of "acute schizophrenic excitement."
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Born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Otto grew up in a city well known for its musical tradition. The younger of two children, Otto began studying the piano at age 10. After entering the Vienna Conservatory of Music, he gave his first concert at age 14. Encouraged by Maestro Bruno Walter, he hoped to become a conductor and concert pianist.
1933-39: After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Otto was kicked out of the Vienna Conservatory. One night, two men ordered him to go with them to a cellar, where they forced other people to mop and scrub. They told Otto to wait his turn, but in the confusion he escaped. To get out of Austria, he entered a piano contest in Belgium. From Belgium he went to France, and then sailed for America on August 11, 1939.
1940-44: In New York Otto gave piano lessons and concert recitals. He also gave benefit performances for Austrian resistance groups and Jewish refugees from Europe. After the U.S. entered the war, Otto was given a choice--either join the U.S. Army or be deported as an enemy alien. He chose the army. In October 1944 he was sent into combat in France and southern Germany. His job was to interrogate German prisoners; they all denied knowing anything about concentration camps, but Otto had already seen the camps with his own eyes.
Otto was stationed in Germany at the end of the war. A day before he was to return to America, he was killed. The cause of his death is still under investigation.
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Leo was the oldest child and only son of Polish immigrants in Vienna. His father, a tailor and amateur Yiddish actor, died of an illness in 1930 when Leo was 9. His mother supported the family by working as an embroiderer; Leo helped out by looking after his two younger sisters. They lived in one of Vienna's large Jewish districts on the east side of the Danube Canal.
1933-39: Anti-Jewish sentiment escalated after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Jewish men, including some of Leo's uncles and neighbors, were arrested every day. Leo was 17 and afraid it could happen to him, so his mother urged him to flee Austria. He took a train to Trier, Germany, and swam across the Sauer River to Luxembourg. Once there, a relief group assisting refugees from Germany and Austria smuggled him to Belgium.
1940-44: Germany invaded Belgium in 1940 and Leo was deported to a refugee camp in France. He escaped by crawling under the fence, but was arrested in 1942 and eventually sent to the Drancy transit camp. En route to Auschwitz by cattle car, Leo and a friend worked all day to pry open the bars of the window. Driven by fear and hoping for luck, Leo leapt from the train. With the underground's help, he got false papers as "Max Henri Lefevre" and worked for the underground forging IDs and locating German troops.
After D Day, Leo worked with refugees in Limoges, France. His mother, sisters and 55 other relatives perished in the Holocaust. Leo immigrated to the United States in 1947.
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Frederick was born to a Jewish family in the Austrian capital of Vienna. His father died when he was a baby, and he and his mother moved into an apartment with Frederick's widowed grandfather. As a young boy, Frederick attended a Viennese public school.
1933-39: Frederick was a rambunctious child. Once, when his grandfather was baby-sitting, Frederick used a silk lampshade as a "parachute," and jumped from the top of the wardrobe closet. That was the last time Frederick's grandfather would baby-sit. Frederick was 13 when Germany took over Austria. Fearing the Nazis, Frederick's mother, together with his aunt's family, arranged for them to be smuggled to Belgium via the Netherlands.
1940-42: As illegal refugees in Brussels, the Dermers were sheltered by the Jewish community. To help support his mother, Frederick worked illegally in a leather shop, tooling items such as wallets and belts. The Germans occupied Belgium in 1940. In 1942 Frederick received a summons from the German authorities to report for "labor" duty.
Frederick was deported immediately after appearing for his summons. He perished at age 17.
Item ViewThe Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Leo and his family were confined to a ghetto in Lodz. Leo was forced to work as a tailor in a uniform factory. The Lodz ghetto was liquidated in 1944, and Leo was deported to Auschwitz. He was then sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system for forced labor. As the Soviet army advanced, the prisoners were transferred to the Ebensee camp in Austria. The Ebensee camp was liberated in 1945.
Item ViewSaul grew up in a religious Jewish family. He was trained as a tailor. In 1939 he was sent to forced labor along with most of the young men of his town. He worked in many different labor camps before being deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp system in 1944. While working there, Saul's hand was broken by an SS guard. He eventually ended up in the hospital in the Dachau camp. He was liberated by US troops in May 1945. After the war he returned to his hometown and was reunited with his sister. They lived in a displaced persons camp in Austria, where Saul met and married his wife, Miriam. Saul, his wife, and their two children settled in the United States in 1957.
Item ViewIn June 1941, Richard was ordered to active duty in the US Army. After a period of training, he was sent to Europe. He entered Austria in April 1945. A patrol came upon the Mauthausen camp and Richard was appointed to take command of the camp. He organized those inmates who had survived in the camp until liberation in May 1945, and brought in two field hospitals. After 35 days in Mauthausen, he was transferred to a post in the Austrian Alps.
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