Schörghofer family

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The Schörghofer family was a family living in Munich and Miesbach during the Nazi era , whose members saved several Jews from the Holocaust and were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial in 1968 . The family consisted of the married couple Katharina and Karl, the son Karl Schörghofer junior and the daughter Martha Schörghofer-Schleipfer.

time of the nationalsocialism

Schörghofer senior (* 1879 in Hallein near Salzburg , † 1962) was cemetery administrator of the new Jewish cemetery in Munich from 1923 , to which u. a. also owned a nursery. After the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, the Protestant Christian family was increasingly exposed to hostility. Since the National Socialists wanted to sell the gravestones and sculptures in the cemetery or use them as building material for road construction, the Schörghofers defended and hid the cultural assets.

From 1943 onwards, the Schörghofer family repeatedly hid Jews on the grounds of the cemetery and tree nursery, which they were able to save from deportation to extermination camps. At the end of February 1945, after 14 months in hiding, seven people in hiding - three men and four women - were betrayed to the Gestapo by an informer . Most of them escaped in time, and two were arrested. The Schörghofers were threatened with deportation to the Dachau concentration camp in the event of a renewed aid operation for Jews , but one of the refugees found refuge with them again.

From 1943 Schörghofer sen. together with Joseph Sebastian Cammerer several times . For example, father and son Schörghofer secretly buried a woman who had been hiding by Cammerer and who had committed suicide in the Munich cemetery. Cammerer and Schörghofer senior also brought the young Jew Gerda Neuberger, whose arrest was imminent, to Schörghofer's daughter Martha Schörghofer-Schleipfer, who lived with her husband in Miesbach (Upper Bavaria). Neuberger spent the time there until the end of the war.

Karl Schörghofer senior commented on the dangers to which the family exposed themselves as a result of the rescue operations with the words:

“I know I'm putting my life at risk, but everything comes at a price. If someone wants to save his fellow human beings, he must be ready to risk his own life. "

literature

  • Daniel Fraenkel, Jakob Borut (ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005; ISBN 3-89244-900-7 ; P. 247 f.
  • Anton Maria Keim (Ed.): Yad Vashem - Die Judenretter from Germany. Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, Christian Kaiser Verlag, Mainz / Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7867-1085-6 , ISBN 3-459-01523-3 , p. 37, p. 130.
  • Kurt Grossmann : Evidence of human bravery in the Third Reich. In: Hans Lamm (Ed.): Past days. Jewish culture in Munich. Langen Müller Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7844-1867-8 , pp. 438-440.