Eva Gutfreund

And when Hitler came, we also had to leave school...

Eva Gutfreund was born in 1926 in Vienna as an illegitimate child. Her mother was given the choice of either being disowned by her family, or giving away her daughter. She decided to do the latter, so Eva Gutfreund was put into a home and, at the age of three, was placed with foster parents. Her foster family rented out the smaller room of their two-room flat to be able to pay the rent. Despite this poverty, Eva Gutfreund describes her childhood as being a happy period. The "favourite aunt" Grete visited her niece from time to time, and brought chocolates and sweets along with the maintenance payments. In 1938, Eva’s life changed. Her natural mother was Jewish, and she was therefore considered a "non-Aryan" according to the National Socialist race laws. On October 19th, 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo at five o’clock in the morning, some days after a neighbour had threatened to denounce the family for anti-regime remarks. While Eva Gutfreund was being held in prison at the "Elisabethpromenade" in 1943, she heard that her mother had been brought to the neighbouring cell in the Gestapo jail. Her mother was released with the help of her "Aryan" husband, and survived the war in a "privileged mixed marriage" in Vienna. Eva Gutfreund was deported to Ravensbrück on November 15th, 1943.

I went to school in the Pazmanitengasse, and the children actually – really threw stones at us, at the other children there. (…) But the worst time was when they were wearing the stars. But I actually never wore a star, never wore a star. (…) But at school - well, we did learn, and it was ordinary – but leaving school, and going in as well, there always were children and threw things at us and spit on us. And then it was a long way, from Reichsbrücke to Pazmanitengasse …

Persecution and assassination of Viennese Jews

After the takeover of the National Socialists, a large part of the Viennese population took part in pogrom-like attacks on Jews, and in the ransacking of their shops and apartments. The "Aryanization" of Jewish property was carried out by NSDAP agencies, by the municipality of Vienna, and by private initiatives of non-Jewish Viennese. Eva Gutfreund’s grandparents were robbed of their three leather shops and their place of residence in this way. Between March 1938 and the end of July 1939, 104,000 Viennese Jews were forced to emigrate. After the war started, leaving became much more difficult, as the National Socialists had decided to ghettoize the Jews rather than force their emigration. In 1941, the systematic deportation and assassination of the Viennese Jews started in ghettoes and extermination camps in the East. The deportation of Jews all over Europe was carried out according to the example of Adolf Eichmann’s "Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung" ("Central agency for Jewish emigration") in Vienna.