Zwi Nigal

Zwi Nigal (born on April 13, 1923 in Vienna as Hermann Heinz Engel ) is an Austrian- Israeli contemporary witness who had to flee his hometown Vienna in 1939.

life and work

Nigal comes from a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna. Father and grandfather were railroad workers. His mother served as a nurse during World War I. His upbringing was “Austrian, but also Zionist.” His childhood heroes included Andreas Hofer , Prinz Eugen , Winnetou and Old Shatterhand , as well as King David and Samson . He experienced the annexation of Austria on the one hand as a trauma, on the other hand as a banal everyday occurrence. He describes how as a young Jew boy he heard Hitler talking on Heldenplatz , how the swastika flags hung down to the floor in the Große Stadtgutgasse and how suddenly everyone - including the students - had "a week's vacation". When they returned to school the crucifix was gone. Instead, there was a picture of Hitler hanging there. Back then you also needed luck, says Nigal. When two HJ gangs fought over him (“Des is' our Jew” one, “Well, this is our Jew” the other), he was able to flee in the meantime. The German teacher presented his work, unaffected by the events of the time, with the ambiguous comment: “The only tragic thing is that another German-foreign element wrote the best work.” Nigal then fled Vienna at the age of 16 , to Palestine . His mother arrived there five years later, and his father was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

For many years he refused to give lectures in schools. He didn't think his life was special. "It was a completely normal life, the typical life of a person of my age." And he added: "The typical life of a European-born Jew."

In 2018 he was one of the 130 Holocaust survivors who were invited to Vienna by the Austrian Chancellor and the Minister of Education for the funeral services for the 80th anniversary of the November pogroms . On this occasion, his former school, the AHS Zirkusgasse in Leopoldstadt , Vienna's second district, invited him to give a lecture. Zwi Nigal accepted the invitation. It was very quiet when he entered the ballroom and confessed: “The last time I was so excited before the mathematics Matura.” The 95-year-old spoke “without further ado, almost with understatement.” Around 60 students listened attentively . At the end of his lecture in the AHS Zirkusgasse, he had an image projected onto the screen: It shows him with his two sons, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His succinct comment: "This is my personal victory over Hitler."

Quote

“I thought: never again Vienna. Never again Austria. Today I have friends here again. "

- Zwi Nigal

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Julia Schenk: Never again Vienna: Nigal came back after all , interview with contemporary witnesses. Zwi Nigal (95) told students of “his” old school about the Holocaust, Kurier (Vienna), November 9, 2018

Web links

• Zwi Nigal tells about his life , eyewitness conversations at Freiburg schools