Richard Graubart

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Richard Graubart ( May 5, 1899 in Innsbruck - November 10, 1938 there ) was an Austrian merchant and a victim of the National Socialist November pogroms .

Life

Richard Graubart's parents were the merchant Simon Graubart (1863–1936), who came from Galicia, and Sophie nee. Königsbacher from Württemberg. He had two older brothers, Erno (born in 1894 and died in childbirth) and Alfred (born in 1895) and a half-brother, Siegfried (born in 1890), from an earlier marriage of his father. His brother Alfred took over the shoe shop Graubart founded by his father on Museumsstrasse.

In his youth he learned to play the violin. From November 1916 he studied electrical engineering in Vienna. On April 20, 1917 he was drafted into military service and trained as a pioneer in Linz and Klosterneuburg. He achieved the rank of sergeant and was used in demolition squads on the southern front. On November 12, 1918, he disarmed, continued his studies in Vienna and became an engineer. In 1931 he married Margarethe geb. Hermann. The couple had a daughter, Vera. From 1931 Richard Graubart was a substitute member of the Israelite Cultural Council in Innsbruck. He eventually worked as a businessman and co-owner in the family business. From 1932 to 1935 he, his wife and daughter lived at Beethovenstraße 7 in Innsbruck, then until 1938 at Museumstraße 8, and finally on the first floor of Villa Gänsbacherstraße 5, on the ground floor of which Edith and Wilhelm Bauer lived. After the annexation of Austria to Hitler's Germany, the Graubart family's business was the target of public defamation and window smearings. The property was then " aryanized " very quickly .

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, a commando consisting of at least nine SS men in civilian clothes rang the bell and shouted: “Gestapo. Open immediately, house search! ”. The leader of the squad was SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Aichinger. The caretaker was immediately evicted and the SS men broke into the apartments. Richard Graubart was - while his wife and daughter were locked away in another room - "assassinated by a stab in the back that left a gaping wound three to four centimeters wide below the shoulder blade." The only thing the then four-year-old daughter could remember in 2012 was a piercing scream from her dying father. The writer Christoph W. Bauer : "Your father knew his murderers as they knew him, they were Innsbruckers like him."

Meanwhile, Wilhelm Bauer was fatally injured by the SS men on the ground floor with stab and blow wounds and, when his wife tried to call a doctor, the telephone line was torn from the wall. After a few minutes, the homicide squad left the villa. Margarethe Graubart was finally freed from the locked room by Edith Bauer and found her husband dead in a pool of blood. The doctor could be called from the phone in the Graubart apartment, but he did not arrive with rescue men for an hour. Wilhelm Bauer died while being transported to the hospital. According to a protocol of the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP, Aichinger is said to have stabbed both victims, but Richard Graubart's death was caused by another SS man with a blow to the head. The proceedings were discontinued because the SS men only acted on orders.

It later emerged that the villa had previously been promised to party comrades. Graubart's apartment became the apartment of the National Socialist mayor. All Jews had to leave Innsbruck within a few weeks, including Margarethe Graubart and her daughter. They moved to Vienna on November 28, 1938, where they succeeded in bringing the girl to safety on a children's transport to England. The mother followed a few months later. Margarethe Graubart returned to Innsbruck after the fall of the Nazi regime, the daughter stayed in England. The widow moved back into the villa and lived there until 1996 when she moved to her daughter for health reasons.

Alfred Graubart was attacked in his apartment that same night and beaten to the point of unconsciousness. He suffered facial injuries and a concussion. Richard Graubart's brother and half-brother were able to emigrate to England and survive the Shoah . Alfred Graubart went to the USA in 1940 and returned to Austria in 1960. Siegfried died in London in 1963, Alfred in Vienna in 1980.

Richard Graubart was not buried until November 11, 1946 at Innsbruck's Westfriedhof .

Commemoration

The base of the pogrom memorial with the name of Richard Graubarts

At the Innsbruck pogrom monument , his name was depicted with broken glass on the copper base, as was that of the other victims.

swell

literature

  • Thomas Albrich; Michael Guggenberger: One of these November criminals is rarely on trial. The criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of the so-called “Reichskristallnacht” in Austria , in: Thomas Albrich; Winfried R. Garscha ; Martin F. Polaschek (ed.): Holocaust and war crimes in court: the case of Austria . Innsbruck: Haymon, 2006, ISBN 3-7065-4258-7 . On Innsbruck pp. 34–44
  • Thomas Albrich (ed.): The perpetrators of the Jewish pogrom in Innsbruck in 1938 . Innsbruck: Haymon, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7099-7242-7

Individual proof

  1. ↑ Horst Schreiber: The November Pogrom in Innsbruck a short overview , on the website Der Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz
personal data
SURNAME Greybeard, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian businessman and victim of the National Socialist November pogroms
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH innsbruck
DATE OF DEATH November 10, 1938
Place of death innsbruck