Leo Tschöll

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A Letter To The Stars , Aktion Allee der Gerechten in Vienna (2011)

Leo Joseph August Tschöll (born March 2, 1893 in Graz-Geidorf ; † December 23, 1980 in Vienna-Hietzing ) was an Austrian rescuer of the Jews who was honored as Righteous Among the Nations .

After Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938, he emigrated to Yugoslavia and built up a company in Belgrade . After the occupation of the country in 1941, he fled to Hungary and again founded a patent office in Budapest .

In 1944 the situation of the Hungarian Jews worsened . This year, came fascist party the Arrow Cross Party to power, the deportation of Jews by the German Nazis supported. During this time, Leo Tschöll provided shelter on his property in Gödöllő to several Jews who turned to him for help . These included two 19-year-old members of the Betar resistance movement, Robert Offner and Sabtaj Nemet, who had managed to escape when the Košice ghetto was founded in March 1944.

After the Betar resistance movement found the two men a safe hiding place, Tschöll allowed them to use his patent office to forge papers. This resulted in hundreds of documents that were distributed to Jews in Budapest. When Offner was arrested by the police in August 1944, acquaintances removed all references to the illegal activities from Tschöll's office. Offner escaped from prison about a month later and resumed his work in the Budapest underground.

As early as June 1944, when the Jews in Budapest were interned in so-called “Jewish houses”, Tschöll hid more and more Jewish families in his apartment and provided them with food and clothing until they could move to other hiding places. Since the resistance movement was looking for hiding places, Tschöll claimed an empty villa on the pretext of needing living space for workers in his office, in whose converted basement 30 people and weapons were hidden. At the end of 1944 Tschöll also made it possible for several Jews to leave the country by providing them with protective passports .

In December 1944 the police discovered Tschöll's activities, about which he was informed by friends. Although an immediate search of his apartment was to be expected, Tschöll went into the apartment to warn a Jewish woman who was hiding there with her child before he went into hiding until the end of the war.

In 1956 Tschöll returned to Vienna . On February 13, 1968, Dr. Leo Tschöll from the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial presented the Righteous Among the Nations award.

literature

  • Daniel Fraenkel, Jakob Borut (ed.): Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians . Wallstein Verlag , Göttingen 2005; ISBN 3-89244-900-7 ; P. 367 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth book of the Roman Catholic parish St. Johann am Graben Volume 9, Folio 301 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Leo Tschöll on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
personal data
SURNAME Tschöll, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tschöll, Leo Joseph August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz-Geidorf
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1980
Place of death Vienna-Hietzing