Greta Fischer

Greta Fischer (born January 19, 1910 in Bautsch , Austria-Hungary , † September 28, 1988 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli educator and social worker of Austrian-Jewish origin.

Life

Greta Fischer grew up with five older siblings in a German-speaking family in Budišov, Czechoslovakia since 1918. Her parents were the veterinarian Leopold Fischer and Ida Fischer, nee Mayer. When she was 20, Greta Fischer went abroad, initially to Switzerland, where she worked as a riding instructor. She later trained as a kindergarten teacher and worked as a nanny near Lviv in Poland. She was a nanny in Paris from 1936 to 1938. In 1939 she emigrated to London with three siblings in good time, the other two siblings escaped to Palestine . Her parents stayed in Czechoslovakia and were murdered by the Nazis in Treblinka concentration camp in 1943 . Fischer worked in London as a nanny and later as a kindergarten teacher in various institutions for war-traumatized children. From the psychoanalyst Anna Freud, she learned about trauma therapy work with children.

In June 1945 Fischer went to Munich, where she worked as one of the voluntary helpers of the UNRRA team in the children's center in Indersdorf . She took care of the traumatized children by showing understanding for their situation and helping them to reintegrate into life with a lot of affection. In September 1945 she was promoted to Principal Welfare Officer (senior social worker). In 1948 she left Indersdorf to accompany a group of children to Canada and to help them integrate. She then graduated as a social worker and then worked with autistic children in Montreal . In July 1965 she went to Israel, where she set up and headed the social work department of the Hadassah Clinic in Jerusalem . At the age of 70 she found the time to collect and write down the personal experiences she had made in the Indersdorf monastery. In 1988 she died of a heart attack in a bus station in Tel Aviv . Fischer's niece donated her collection, including 127 photos of displaced children, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992 . Since 2011 there has been a Greta Fischer School (special needs school) in Dachau in honor of Greta Fischer. In 2012 Greta Fischer received a memorial stone in her hometown Budišov.

literature

• Anna Andlauer: Back to Life - The International Children's Center Kloster Indersdorf 1945–1946 , Antogo Verlag Nürnberg, 2011 ISBN 978-3-938286-40-1
• Anna Andlauer: Greta Fischer and the work with young Holocaust survivors in the “International DP Children's Center Kloster Indersdorf” 1945–1946 . In: Jim G. Tobias / Peter Zinke (eds.): Main topic: Life afterwards - Jewish new beginning in the land of the perpetrators . Antogo, Nuremberg, 2010 ISBN 978-3-938286-37-1 , pp. 11-25 I.
• Michael Berkowitz: The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality . Univ. of California Pr. 2007 ISBN 0-520-25114-8 - p. 284
• Eva Kolinsky: After the Holocaust: Jewish survivors in Germany after 1945 , Pimlico, 2004 ISBN 978-1-84413317-8 , pp. 88 ff.
• Jim G. Tobias, Nicola Schlichting: Temporary home: Jewish children in Rosenheim 1946-47. On the history of the “Transient Children's Center” in Rosenheim and the Jewish DP children's camps in Aschau, Bayerisch Gmain, Indersdorf, Prien and Pürten , Antogo, Nuremberg, 2006 ISBN 978-3-93828631-9 , p. 117

Web links

• Marco Zimmermann: Greta Fischer's help for concentration camp victims - honoring an unusual woman . Radio Prague website from September 26, 2012
• Stories of the lost children . Merkur-Online website of Münchner Merkur from May 30, 2011
• Greta Fischer School: The naming honors a special educator . Website of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Greta Fischer - pioneer in the psychological care of young Holocaust victims radio.cz, accessed on December 19, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Why Greta Fischer School? ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. schule-schlossberg-dachau.de, accessed on December 19, 2012. 
3. ↑ Behind the Collection rememberme.ushmm.org, accessed December 19, 2012.
4. ↑ Memorial plaque for Greta Fischer website Merkur-Online from May 2, 2012