Friedel Bohny-Reiter

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August Bohny (1st from left), Friedel Reiter (1st row seated: 2nd from left) SRK employee meeting in Montluel, June 1942
Camp de Rivesaltes (2013)

Friedel Bohny-Reiter (born May 20, 1912 in Vienna ; † December 18, 2001 in Basel ) was a Swiss nurse with Austrian roots.

Life

Friedel Bohny-Reiter was evacuated from Vienna to Melk an der Donau in 1914 with other children . Her father died on the front lines during the First World War . In 1919 she returned to Vienna and in 1920 she was sent to recovery deportation with a children's train to Switzerland organized by a Swiss relief committee. She stayed with her foster family in Kilchberg , attended school there and trained as a nurse in Zurich . She was naturalized in Switzerland when she was twenty.

After a year and a half work stay in Florence , she registered in Switzerland in 1941 with the Swiss Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK; from 1942 onwards, Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross ). The SAK sent her to the Camp de Rivesaltes internment camp in southern France , where she stayed until it closed in 1942. There she met her future husband August Bohny , who ran the SAK children's homes in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon . She campaigned for the children there, worked with Emma Ott , Elsa Lüthi-Ruth and Elisabeth Eidenbenz from Maternité suisse d'Elne and in 1943/1944 took over the management of the Abric house in the children's home Le Chambon-sur Lignon. In this way she was able to save numerous internees from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp .
After France was liberated in December 1944, she returned to Switzerland. She lived with August Bohny in Basel and was the mother of four children (Jörg, Verena, Hansruedi and Christoph) and a foster son (Ralph).

She painted souvenir pictures about Rivesaltes, with which she participated in various exhibitions. In addition to the pictures about Rivesaltes, she also painted various pictures of landscapes from various trips.

The estate is in the Archives for Contemporary History in Zurich.

Honors

  • 1990: Honored in Yad Vashem as « Righteous of the Nations »
  • 1994: Moral Courage Award from the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers (today: Jewish Foundation for the Righteous ), together with her husband

Publications and documentary

  • Journal de Rivesaltes 1941-1942. Zoé, Carouge 1993, ISBN 2-88182-189-8 (French translation of the diary).
  • Forecourt of extermination: diary of a Swiss sister in the French internment camp Rivesaltes 1941–1942. Introduction: Michèle Fleury-Seemuller, Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild , Erhard Roy Wiehn. Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn. Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 1995, ISBN 3-89191-917-4 .
  • Documentary Journal de Rivesaltes 1941–1942 , 1997
  • Camp de Rivesaltes: Diary of a Swiss sister in a French internment camp 1941–1942 . Preface by Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild. Introduction by Michèle Fleury-Seemuller. With the collaboration of Helena Kanyar Becker ed. by Erhard Roy Wiehn. Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2010, ISBN 978-3-86628-291-9 (extended new edition of Vorhof der Vernichtung ).

literature

  • August Bohny: Unforgotten Stories. Community service, Swiss Children's Aid and the Red Cross in southern France 1941–1945. Preface by Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild. Edited and introduced by Helena Kanyar Becker. Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn. Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 978-3-86628-278-0 .
  • Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian Aid for Children and Official Refugee Policy 1917–1948 (= Basel Contributions to History. Volume 182). Schwabe, Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-7965-2695-4 .
  • Mathilde Paravicini : Children come to Switzerland. In: Eugen Theodor Rimli (ed.): The book from the Red Cross. The Red Cross from the beginning until today. Fraumünster-Verlag, Zurich 1944, pages 336–367.
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Another Switzerland. Helpers, children of war and humanitarian policy 1933–1942. Chronos, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905313-04-9 .
  • Paul Senn : «If you are human ... feel my need. Read in faces! " A photo report of the activities of the Swiss aid organization in children's homes and refugee camps in the south of France. In: Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung . Vol. 31, No. 9 (February 25, 1942), pp. 261-265.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedel Bohny-Reiter in the wiki Gerechte der Pflege , accessed on December 22, 2018.
  2. ^ Yad Vashem - The Righteous Among The Nations: Bohny-Reiter, Friedel (accessed April 2, 2018)
personal data
SURNAME Bohny-Reiter, Friedel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiter, Friedel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-Swiss nurse
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 2001
Place of death Basel