Maria Lanc
Maria Lanc (* 1911 as Maria Jenewein; † November 15, 1995 ) lived with her husband, the medical officer Arthur Lanc , in 1944 in Gmünd , Lower Austria . The couple owned a house at 35 Kirchengasse.
In the early summer of 1944 a transport with 1700 Hungarian Jews arrived in Gmünd, which was placed in a granary. Arthur Lanc and his wife Maria decided to give the inmates whatever means necessary to alleviate their suffering. They collected clothes, groceries, medicines and linen for babies and children.
In the late autumn of 1944, an order was given that the camp inmates should be transferred to the concentration camp for extermination when the fronts approached . The date for the evacuation of the Jews from the camp was set for the end of March. Dr. Lanc rushed to the camp and decided to save three Jewish families - the Fisch family with three children aged five, four and one, the Yugoslav nurse Piroska Blau and a lawyer from Sopron, Georg Uhely.
During the night the three families fled through a small back door of the granary. The refugees were first hidden at the head forester Christ, then they were housed in the house of Maria and Arthur Lanc until the end of the war, aware that the death penalty was threatened for such an act.
On December 16, 1986, Maria Lanc and her husband Arthur were awarded the Medal of Honor “ Righteous Among the Nations ” by Yad Vashem in a solemn ceremony in Vienna . In 2016, Lancplatz in Vienna- Leopoldstadt (2nd district) was named after her and her husband.
literature
- Israel Gutman, Daniel Fraenkel, Jacob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians , page 324 f. Wallstein Verlag, 2005 ( online version )
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lanc, Maria |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jenewein, Maria |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian Righteous Among the Nations |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1911 |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 15, 1995 |