Aron Grünhut

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Aron Grünhut

Aron Grünhut (born March 31, 1895 in Preßburg (now Bratislava ), † May 6, 1974 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa , Israel) was a merchant from Pressburg and a functionary of the Jewish-Orthodox religious community, who was responsible for the rescue before and during the Second World War organized by more than 1,300 racially persecuted citizens of present day Slovakia and neighboring countries.

biography

Childhood and Adolescence (1895-1919)

Aron Grünhut came from a pious Orthodox Jewish family with eight children. His father William Grünhut died when Aron was 11 years old, his mother Fani had to support the family on her own and opened a eatery on Zámocká Street. During the First World War , Aron Grünhut served in the Austro-Hungarian army as a medic in the hospital. In 1919 he married Etel Wosner from a wealthy Jewish family from Dunajská Streda . Five sons were born in the following years: Otto, Leo, Joseph (Akiva), Benjamin and William.

Interwar period (1919–1938)

In the interwar period, Grünhut became a catering entrepreneur and dedicated himself primarily to the goose liver trade . He ran a Jewish restaurant, was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and was active in the Orthodox Jewish community in Bratislava. Thanks to his work as a businessman and frequent trips abroad, Grünhut understood a lot about the political situation in Europe . He followed the radicalization of conditions in Germany with concern and knew of the danger that threatened Jews as a result of Hitler's policies . A notable case of helping Jewish refugees from persecution in Austria was Grünhut's work for one hundred Jews from Kittsee and the surrounding area who were held captive in a tugboat on the Danube island of Sihoť . After difficult efforts lasting several months, Grünhut managed to get all of them valid travel documents with which they could legally leave the country. At the same time, Grünhut had a tent camp built for hundreds of homeless Jews who had gathered near Dunajská Streda . At the same time he organized their departure to Palestine .

In October 1938 Grünhut rescued Juda Goldberger , a Preßburg clothing merchant who was kidnapped and arrested in Austria on the orders of the Gestapo . Grünhut managed to free Goldberger and to enable him and his family to escape to the United States . After Grünhut found out about the Kindertransport to England that Sir Nicholas Winton had organized in Prague , he managed to get a group of Jewish children from Bratislava to leave. For ten boys - including his son Benny - he organized the necessary travel documents so that they could travel to London in June 1939 , where they survived the war. Only after many years did it emerge that the future Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Tibor (Yitzchak Tuvia) Weiss was among the boys , as was the future London Rabbi Kurt (Scholem Ber) Stern and the Israeli journalist legend Paul Kohn .

The high point of Grünhut's efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution was his mission in July 1939, during which he wanted to bring as many Jews as possible to safety in Palestine. For this he rented two luxury Danube steamers (Queen Elizabeth and Tsar Dusan ), which left the port of Bratislava with 1,365 refugees from Slovakia, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia. The voyage, which was initially planned for six days, dragged on significantly due to reprisals by the Bulgarian and British authorities, so that the refugees ultimately had to spend more than four weeks in international waters on the Danube. It was only after Grünhut's difficult and intensive negotiations that they were able to transfer to the cargo ship Noemi Julia in the Romanian port of Sulina in the Danube Delta on the Black Sea and arrive at their destination in Haifa after another strenuous 83 days . The port city in Palestine was then under a British mandate . Grünhut arranged the entry visas for Palestine.

The Second World War (1939-1945)

Grünhut did not want to leave his hometown Bratislava even after the outbreak of World War II and remained active in the Jewish resistance. Because of his activities, he was arrested by the authorities in late 1942. He remained a political prisoner in Ilava for a few months until his friends and family obtained his release from prison in May 1943. Grünhut's wife and his youngest son managed to escape to Hungary in the meantime, to which Grünhut also followed after his release. In Budapest he lived under a false identity and hid with his wife in the building of the former Czechoslovak embassy. The Czech stoker Emanuel Zima saved his life there. Until the liberation of Budapest, Zíma hid other Jews besides Grünhut and his wife and thus saved their lives. Grünhut never forgot this: towards the end of the 1960s, he succeeded in getting Zíma to receive Israel's highest award, “ Righteous Among the Nations ”.

After the war (1945–1948)

Aron Grünhut returned to his hometown Bratislava on May 10, 1945. From then on he tried to help the few Jews who returned from the concentration camps , and provided shelter and medical care for the survivors of the Holocaust . At the same time he worked on restoring the Jewish Orthodox community. After the communists came to power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 , Grünhut and his family decided to emigrate to the newly founded state of Israel .

Life in Israel (1948–1974)

Grünhut never forgot his hometown in exile. He tried to keep alive the legacy of Jewish Bratislava in Jerusalem and financed the construction of a new synagogue and a yeshiva , which was named Pressburg. This yeshiva continued the tradition of the oldest Jewish school in Bratislava, which was once made famous by Chatam Sofer . Grünhut organized fundraising in Israel and supported the Jewish communities in Slovakia. He campaigned for the rescue of the Jewish Orthodox cemetery in Bratislava and for the reconstruction of the memorial of Chatam Sofer. In later years he summarized his memories of the Jewish Orthodox Bratislava and the persecution of Slovak Jews in the book Catastrophe Time of Slovak Judaism - Rise and Decline of the Jews of Pressburg , which was published in 1972 in Tel Aviv in German.

The legacy of Aron Grünhut

Memorial plaque in Bratislava

After Grünhut's death, his efforts to save human life were largely forgotten. The public only learned about his life and the rescue of persecuted Jews through the work of the Slovak journalist Martin Mózer. While researching children from Pressburg Jewish Orthodox families threatened by Nazism, he came across Grünhut's name. He found that it was him who helped children from Bratislava on the rescue trains to England organized by Sir Nicholas Winton. Martin Mózer researched the story more closely and finally created the exhibition Aron Grünhut, Savior of the Jews, Fighter for Human Rights. Subsequently, the Slovak media began to be interested in his story. On October 7, 2015 in Bratislava at Heydukova Street 8, on the house where Aron Grünhut lived, a plaque was unveiled, commemorating his contribution to the rescue of racially persecuted citizens of Slovakia.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Grünhut, Aron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Hungarian-Israeli businessman
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Pressburg (today Bratislava )
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1974
Place of death Tel Aviv-Jaffa , Israel