Katalin Vidor

Katalin Vidor (born September 22, 1903 in Zalaegerszeg , † June 7, 1976 in West Berlin ) was a Hungarian contemporary witness and survivor of the Holocaust.

Life

Katalin (Katharina, Kathika, Kathleen) Sommer came from a Jewish family. After graduating from high school, she went to study in Vienna , then lived again in Zalaegerszeg as the wife of the doctor Gábor Vidor (1895–1958, original name: Weisz). Their son Tibor was probably born in 1928. In April 1944, the family was arrested by the Hungarian gendarmerie, which was cooperating with the Eichmann Command, and ghettoized with the other Jews from the city of Zalaegerszeg. In July all three were deported in cattle cars to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Vidor was housed there in camps B III and B II. In mid-October she was transported to the Sackisch forced labor camp and on November 2 to the Merzdorf camp (both satellite camps of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp ). There it was liberated by Red Army troops in May 1945 .

The son Tibor was presumably selected for murder immediately after arriving in Auschwitz . The husband survived the Nazi era as a slave laborer and paramedic in Italy. After 1945 he worked as a dentist in Feldafing .

Katalin Vidor initially returned to Hungary (Zalaegerszeg and Budapest ). After repeated attempts, she wrote her report on the period under Nazi violence in 1959. His focus is on resilience and individual resources among the women captured. (“Vidor Gáborné” is a traditional Hungarian version of the name under which the original edition appeared.)

Later she worked as a translator for psychological topics, lived in West Berlin , where she also died.

plant

• Vidor Gáborné: Háborog a sír (Budapest 1960: Magvetö Könyvkiadó)
  • Katalin Vidor: Under the Sign of the Star (Berlin / GDR 1963; Translator: Bruno Heilig ) - Republished under the title: Everyday Life in Hell (Berlin 2014) pdf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Magyar Életrajzi lexicon