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Eva Gutfreund
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Nobody knew where I came from…
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After the liberation, it took Eva Gutfreund four months to struggle back from Ravensbrück to Vienna. There she learned of her grandparents’ and her aunt Grete’s assassination in a concentration camp. A doctor diagnosed her physical state as 50 % invalidity. Nevertheless, Eva Gutfreund immediately started looking for work, and found employment in a knitting factory. This job had been arranged for her by Mrs. Löw, a social worker who had already taken care of her in her childhood. In 1947, Eva Gutfreund’s daughter was born. In 1950, she married the child’s father. The three of them shared a ten square meter flat for nine years. Eva Gutfreund continued working in different enterprises until her retirement. Eva's husband also has painful experiences of National Socialism. His sister, who had converted to Judaism before 1938, and her husband and child, had been murdered by the National Socialists. The only person Eva Gutfreund talks to about her experience is her husband. In 1954, she had to undergo serious surgery - a perforation of the fallopian tube and septic peritonitis. This was followed by gall surgery, bladder and vertebral surgery. Her health remains seriously impaired to this day.
Posthumously, she was awarded the Decoration of Merit in gold of the federal land of Vienna on March 8th, 2001. She probably died between February 21st and March 2001. We do not know her exact date of death.
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After arriving at Westbahnhof station, I asked a man there – it was eight or half past eight in the morning – where the tram left. And he told me, well, he'd like to know that himself, when one would leave. So I again had to walk from Mariahilf, from Westbahnhof station, to the second district to Vorgartenstraße, where I had lived before I had been taken away and – then I arrived there, and the first encounter there was the wife of that individual who had got me there. And she said: „Well, and you're back again, too?“ - And actually in my euphoria, I badly insulted her, but I think that was less than what I had been through
Then I had to see about a food ration card, as things stood then in '45, and I also had to see a doctor, because it got worse and worse, and I had more and more pus in those holes. And the doctor told me then I should got to a baker and ask him to give me a package of yeast every day, and the baker then asked me what I needed it for, and I just showed him my hands, and he said I could come. And it really helped me.
Once, there was some sort of a call, and I went to the Kultusgemeinde. What they had said was that, if you knew someone who had helped a Jewish family or a Jewish individual, they should come and they would get a parcel. And I went there, and said, well, the Forster family – we were called Forster – they had helped me, and they sent parcels to me to the concentration camp. And I brought one of these parcels home.
We never got an apartment. What I got, was a one-off payment of 2,740 Schillings, that was my compensation. And now those 70,000 Schillings. But I got nothing for the time I worked for Siemens in the concentration camp. I don't have any claim on those shops my grandparents had, because I was a child outside marriage. Because of this, I don't have any claims.
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Anti-Semitism after 1945
Nearly 65,000 Jewish men and women from Austria were murdered by the National Socialists. After 1945, about 14,000 Jewish emigrants returned to Austria. The new Austrian government slowed down the return of "Aryanised" property, because any share in the responsibility of the "Shoah" was denied. The mayor of Vienna in those days, Theodor Körner, called anti-Semitism in Vienna "a fairy tale". At the same time, anti-Semitic activities continued in Vienna, such as demonstrations against Jewish survivors of concentration camps (displaced persons), threatening letters to the reconstituted "Israelitische Kultusgemeinde" (Jewish religious community) and defilements of Jewish cemeteries. Anti-Semitic dispositions are increasingly revealed during public debates in the media (such as the Peter-Kreisky-Wiesenthal or the Waldheim affairs) .
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