Friedler family papers

Friedler family papers 

Moritz Wolfgang Friedler (1918-2000) was born in Vienna to Mendel and Chane Friedler. He was a member of Religious Zionist youth groups and worked on agricultural farms in preparation for eventual emigration to Israel. He was beaten during Kristallnacht and escaped with his cousin to England, where he worked for the Jewish Agricultural Training School in Abergelle, North Wales. His father was deported to Vyhne, Slovakia, and his mother to Maly Trostinec, and both were killed. Moritz returned to Austria after the war to discover what happened to his parents, and he assisted displaced persons as part of the British Jewish Relief Unit before joining the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and becoming the Director for JDC in Upper Austria in charge of Displaced Persons Camps in Linz and Salzburg. In 1951 he married fellow JDC employee Gertrude Marx in Linz. In 1955 the couple moved to Brazil, where Moritz worked for the local HIAS director, and the couple immigrated to the United States in 1958. Trude Friedler (1927-2004) was born Gertrude Marx in Vienna to Wilhelm and Regina Marx. Her parents separated, her mother performed as a chorus girl in traveling shows, and Trude lived in Jewish children’s homes from 1934 to about 1941. When the children’s homes were closed by the Nazis, she rejoined her mother in the second district of Vienna, to which Jews had been encouraged to relocate. Trude was sent to Germany to perform forced agricultural labor for two months in the spring of 1941, and when she was returned to Vienna, she and her mother performed forced labor for the Georg Schicht works and the Wiener Holzwerke. They were briefly arrested by the SS in early 1942, but a family friend helped obtain their release. In June 1942, a member of the Jewish police warned them that they were again scheduled for arrest, so Trude and Regina went into hiding. They never had false papers and relied on friends and bribes. They spent part of their time on a ship of the Danube Shipping Company, the Stadt Wien. They were aboard that ship, anchored near Linz, at the end of the war when they were liberated by American troops. Trude and Regina Marx, were the only survivors of their large extended family. 

Friedler family papers