Lambert Grutsch

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Lambert Grutsch ( April 16, 1914 in Jerzens , Tyrol - April 16, 1995 ) was an Austrian Righteous Among the Nations . He saved the life of Helena Horowitz, a young Polish Jewish woman.

Life

Lambert Grutsch came from a family of mountain farmers in the Tyrolean district of Imst . The parents' farm was called "Ritzler" and was in Kienberg. Grutsch was not fit for military service because of a physical handicap, but was able to work and was assigned to STUAG Bau-AG , a road construction company founded in 1928 that also laid railroad tracks. During the war years of 1943 and 1944, Grutsch was deployed by the company in Poland, in Biezanów, now part of Krakow . There he was employed as a crane driver.

In the company canteen he met a young Polish woman, Julia Sypek, who worked there. In reality it was Helena Horowitz , a Jew from Dębica , born. 1926, who had managed to escape from the ghetto of her hometown in December 1942, to take on a different name, to acquire new papers and to find work at STUAG, first as a cleaner, later in the canteen kitchen.

Helena had experienced the atrocities of the German occupiers against the Jews and feared that her false identity might be exposed. She wanted to get to safety. After learning that Grutsch's family owned a farm in Tyrol, she asked him to take her there. She promised him that she would help diligently in the house and in the fields. Helena knew that the Americans had landed in Italy in 1943 and was hoping for a quick liberation of Tyrol from the Nazi regime. At the beginning of 1944 Lambert told the young woman that he was going to be on leave in February and that she could come with me. Helena then inquired whether there was a Gestapo base in his home town . Lambert replied that he knew that she was Jewish. He had found out about this from his superior, another Austrian. He had helped another Jewish woman and learned from her Juliet's secret.

Grutsch brought the young woman back home, introduced her as Julia and did not reveal her secret to her own family either. Julia, who was also called Jula, helped diligently on the farm and became friends with Lambert's youngest sister Adelheid Grutsch. Lambert Grutsch had to return to Poland and was questioned extensively there about Julia Sypek's whereabouts, because employees of the company had seen them at the train station. However, he remained steadfast and withheld her whereabouts. So Helena Horowitz was able to survive despite the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime.

After the end of the Nazi regime, Helena Horowitz went through various camps and finally came to Paris with an uncle . One of her uncles asked Grutsch for her address and received it from Grutsch. Eventually Horowitz, whose entire family was killed during the Nazi regime, was able to emigrate to the USA. She settled in New York, got married and had a daughter. She kept in touch with Grutsch and his sister. Out of gratitude to her Savior, she campaigned for him to be included in the list of the Righteous Among the Nations , but this did not happen during his lifetime. Yad Vashem finally stated: “Lambert Grutsch risked his life by illegally hiding a Jewish woman in his house after he helped smuggle her out of Poland - an act for which he could have been punished with death. He received no material consideration for his actions. "

On June 30, 2002 Lambert Grutsch was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations .

literature

Web links

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Individual references, comments

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Jerzner Gemeindezeitung, June 2008 PDF file, p. 4
  2. ↑ AEIOU : STUAG Bau-AG , accessed on July 26, 2016.
  3. ↑ In Lambert Grutsch's Yad Vashem biography, the name of the rescued woman is consistently written as “Helena Horwitz”, but in the accompanying captions as “Helena Horowitz”. Since the USC Shoah Foundation also uses the spelling “Helena Horowitz”, it is also used here.
  4. ↑ There is little evidence of Grutsch's life and work after 1945. One concerns the stone pine trees that apparently fell from him and were used in later years: Cuddling like in a tree house ( memento of the original from July 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.maroundpartner.com archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 26, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Grutsch, Lambert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Jerzens
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1995