Reinhold Duschka

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Memorial plaque for Reinhold Duschka in Mollardgasse 85a

Reinhold Duschka (born June 29, 1900 in Berlin ; † May 1993) was an Austrian blacksmith. Because of his help towards persecuted Jews, he is considered Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Duschka hid the Jewish chemist Regina Hilde Kraus and her ten-year-old daughter Lucia from the beginning of 1939 to April 1945 in his workshop for handicrafts in Mollardgasse 85 a, in the 6th district of Vienna. This house belongs to the Kaiser Franz Joseph I Government Jubilee Fund in 1908 . In April 2013 a memorial plaque for Duschka was placed on the facade in Mollardgasse.

Shortly after Austria's "annexation" to the German Reich in 1938, the Jew Regina Kraus, née. Steinig, who followed her husband to Persia with her then nine-year-old daughter Lucia, received the necessary transit documents, but had no money for the ship passage. At the beginning of 1939 her apartment was confiscated by the National Socialists.

Duschka, who was friends with his father, gave Regina and Lucia shelter and protection from persecution and deportation in his workshop, although he knew that this was putting himself in mortal danger. He provided the two people in hiding with food and clothing. Duschka got Lucia textbooks with which her mother could teach her in hiding. Over time, Regina and Lucia learned how to work metals for Duschka’s work and helped him with this. With the money she earned, Duschka bought food for Regina and Lucia on the black market.

In 1944, the Dushka workshop was badly damaged in an Allied bombing raid. Duschka took Regina and Lucia, who had only survived by chance, to an alternative quarter and later to a small summer house in Hütteldorf , where he kept them hidden until the end of the war. He passed them on to his neighbors as relatives from the "Altreich" . Regina and Lucia were able to survive the Second World War . After the World War, Duschka rebuilt his bombed workshop and worked in it until he retired. On March 7, 1990, he was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations award.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lucia Heilmann: Hidden in Vienna . In: Renate S. Meissner (Ed.): Lives Remembered . Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism. National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, Vienna, 2012, vol. 2, p. 46
  2. ↑ Invitation to Grüne Mariahilf: Opening of the memorial plaque to Reinhold Duschka.
  3. ^ 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. 306 f.
    Duschka Reinhold : Awarded the award on the website of Yad Vashem .
personal data
SURNAME Duschka, Reinhold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Righteous Among the Nations
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 1993