Christa Beran

Christa Beran (née Denner), also called Christl , (* 1922 ; † December 1992 ) was an Austrian Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Christa was one of two daughters of an engineer, her mother came from Belarus and had died. The Denner family moved to Vienna and, at the age of fourteen, Christa met her new neighbor, the eight-year-old Jewish law student Edith Hahn , from whom she received tutoring. A lifelong friendship developed between the two. After graduating from commercial school, Christa Denner ran a souvenir shop; she protected her childhood friend Hans Beran in the Third Reich, as his father was of Jewish origin and so his Aryan certificate was not complete. After the war ended, the couple married.

She helped Edith Hahn, who had fled a work camp of the Besthorn company in Aschersleben in 1942 , to obtain false “Aryan” papers: She gave her her baptismal certificate, student identification and food cards . She reported to the police that she had lost her papers on July 29, 1942 while sailing on the Old Danube . Edith Hahn assumed the identity of Christa Denner and thus survived the war.

Decades later Edith Hahn wrote to Simon Wiesenthal and described this help to him. He informed the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem , which Christa Beran honored as Righteous Among the Nations on June 4, 1985 .

literature

Edith Hahn-Beer, Susan Dworkin: The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. Rob Weisbach Books, William Morrow, New York 1999, ISBN 0-688-16689-X
Edith Hahn-Beer, Susan Dworkin (German): I went through the fire and didn't burn - an extraordinary life and love story . Translated from the English by Otto Bayer. Bern, Munich, Vienna: Scherz 2000, ISBN 3-502-18287-6

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Beran, Christa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Denner, Christa (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH	1922
DATE OF DEATH	December 1992