Judith Gabriel Dichter

Judith, nicknamed Julie or Julia, was one of five children born to religious Jewish parents in the city of Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt was part of a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire known as the Burgenland. Historically, this region was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, but after World War I it became part of Austria. In her 20s, Julia married Tobias Dichter, a traveling salesman from Vienna who had sold merchandise to her father. The Dichters moved to an apartment in Vienna’s second district, called Leopoldstat. This part of Vienna was home to a large Jewish population. There, Julia and Tobias raised three children, Carl, Elly, and Margaret.

1933-39: In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Shortly afterwards, Nazis came to Julia’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. This theft was part of the Nazi German regime’s plunder of Jewish-owned property. Julia and Tobias urged their adult children to leave.

1940-42: Julia’s daughters Margaret and Elly both immigrated to England in 1939. Her son Carl immigrated to the United States in 1940. In June 1942, Julia (age 66) and Tobias (age 67) were deported from Vienna to the Theresienstadt ghetto. They were imprisoned in the ghetto for three months.

On September 19, 1942, Julia and her husband were deported to the Treblinka killing center along with about 2,000 other elderly Jews. They were killed on arrival. There are no known survivors of this transport.