Johann and Maria Schatz
Maria Schatz (* November 6, 1889 - January 1, 1948 ) and her husband Johann (* April 25, 1889 - July 4, 1956 ) saved the Jewess Esther Zychlinski-Feinkoch (* December 23, 1926 in Lodz ; † 2000 in Tel Aviv ) before the Holocaust by hiding them on their farm near the Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps until the end of the war in May 1945. They are the only "Righteous Among the Nations" from Upper Austria .
The rescued: Esther Zychlinski-Feinkoch
Esther Feinkoch was born in Lodz . As one of the last survivors of her family, she was deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz at the end of 1944 . Then she was sent to the Freiberg subcamp , where she had to work with around 1,000 Jewish women for the Arado aircraft factory. Due to the advance of the Red Army, the camp was "evacuated" from April 14, 1945, and the transport to Mauthausen took 16 days. The approximately 300 to 500 women were housed in the so-called "Gypsy camp " in the "Messerschmitt barracks" west of the quarry .
In the spring of 1945, 18-year-old Esther escaped from the camp through a hole in the fence. On her escape through the forest, she came to the Schatz family's house in Frankenberg 14. She knocked on a door and asked Maria Schatz for water. After she had drunk, Esther dragged herself on, but after a short time, driven by hunger, came back and knocked on the door again. Maria Schatz opened again, who had just cooked the feed for the pigs. Esther pounced on it and began to eat from it. In view of the pitiful condition of the girl, whom she easily recognized as a concentration camp prisoner, Maria Schatz burst into tears. She fed Esther, gave her clean clothes and put her in one of the children's rooms.
Esther was picked up once by the SS. Since the family's children were also privy to the family, 16-year-old Franz Schatz passed off Esther as his sister and was able to save her. Esther was hidden on the farm until the camp was liberated on May 5, 1945.
After the war, Esther emigrated to Israel. At the ship she met her brother; the two were the only survivors of their family. She remembered the couple she had saved and told the story to her children several times. She also mentioned the Austrian couple in the report that she submitted to Yad Vashem in 1995.
Appreciation
Only after the death of Esther Zychlinski-Feinkoch did her son Arie Zychlinski start looking for the Schatz family. After finding their offspring, he turned to Yad Vashem. On November 25, 2009, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem posthumously honored the couple with the Medal of Honor of the “ Righteous Among the Nations ”.
During a grand ceremony on June 2, 2010, the Israeli ambassador presented the certificate to the descendants of the family in the parliament in Vienna.
The story of Esther and the Schatz family is also told in the exhibition The Righteous in the Steyr Work World Museum .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Blog entry by Arie Zychlinski
- ^ The "Freia GmbH" from Arado - a satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Freiberg
- ↑ Pascal Cziborra: Freiberg concentration camp: Geheimeutzen , Lorbeer-Verlag 2008, ISBN 3938969059 , page 103
- ^ Johann and Maria Schatz on the page of the project A Letter To The Stars
- ^ Entry in the Yad Vashem database
- ↑ APA June 2, 2010: State of Israel honors Austrian anti-fascists - Johann and Maria Schatz honored as "Righteous Among the Nations"
- ↑ Austrian Friends of Yad Vashem 2 June 2010: Upper Austrian couple as "Righteous Among the Nations"
- ↑ Church newspaper June 16, 2010: They existed all over Europe - Righteous Among the Nations
- ↑ Homepage of the exhibition The Righteous - Courage is a question of decision
- ↑ Church newspaper September 18, 2013: Decision for humanity