Hugo Brainin
Hugo Brainin (born October 19, 1924 in Vienna ) is an Austrian locksmith , survivor and contemporary witness of the Holocaust .
Life
Hugo Brainin lost his father at the age of six and his mother in January 1938. He had an older brother, Norbert , born in 1923. His family was involved in the rawhide trade and during the annexation of Austria there were two uncles in Great Britain. The brothers heard Schuschnigg's speech on the radio and it was then clear to all family members that they had to emigrate. When the brothers tried to go rowing, they were refused because they were Jews. During the so-called Reichskristallnacht the brothers were in the Pazmanite Temple in the second district, because it was customary among the Jews for their male descendants to say the funeral prayer every day for a year in the synagogue. This is what the brothers did for their late mother.
“On November 9, 1938, a number of Radau brothers and hordes came in front and set the house on fire. My brother and I walked out the back and home, unmolested. That was a key experience for us. "
The uncles managed to get the family's two aunts and a total of seven children to England, where they arrived on December 24, 1938 after a ship voyage. The two brothers were among them. In Great Britain Hugo Brainin was recognized as a refugee and worked as a locksmith and technical draftsman. “If immigration laws had existed back then as we do now, we would not be sitting here. Then I would most likely have ended up in an oven like most others, in Auschwitz or somewhere else. "
In 1946 he returned to Vienna to “build socialism”. His brother Norbert stayed in London and founded the Amadeus Quartet . He met his future wife, Lotte Sontag, born in Vienna in 1920 as the daughter of two Ukrainian refugees, Jetty and Maurici Sontag. Lotte Sontag had resisted the Nazis, was betrayed and arrested in Belgium in 1943 and was massively tortured by the Gestapo. She was deported to Auschwitz and later to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and only barely survived.
Hugo and Lotte started a family. They had two daughters, Elisabeth and Marianne. Today both work with mentally ill and traumatized people. Hugo Brainin worked for Austrian engineering companies and regularly traveled to Tehran and Baghdad for professional reasons . In his free time, he was out and about in schools with his wife as a contemporary witness. On March 11, 2018, he appeared as part of an Ö1 matinee in the Burgtheater and told of the days in March 1938.
Brainin sees himself as an "orthodox atheist with Jewish roots".
Quote
"You know, if I didn't laugh, I'd have to despair!"
Web links
- Hugo Brainin's speech on the occasion of the commemoration of March 12, 1938 , Ö1 ORF.at, March 14, 2018 (accessed on March 17, 2018)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Primavera Driessen Gruber : Norbert Brainin. In: Lexicon of persecuted musicians from the Nazi era . Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen. University of Hamburg , March 29, 2017, accessed on March 17, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c Science - Austria Press Agency: Gisela Linschinger: 1938/2018 - Contemporary witness: "Wherever you looked, there were Nazis with us" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (December 21, 2017) (accessed March 17, 2018)
- ↑ a b Renata Schmidtkunz : In conversation with Hugo Brainin, contemporary witness. In: orf.at . March 15, 2018, accessed March 17, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Brainin, Hugo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian locksmith and emigrant during the National Socialist era |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 19, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |