United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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.
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The Friedler family papers are arranged as five series: I. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society materials, 1948-1957, II. Biographical materials, 1919-1962, III. Correspondence, 1938-1993, IV. Photographic materials, 1918-1953, V. Writings and drawings, 1935-1940s
The Friedler family papers include JDC and HIAS records, biographical materials, correspondence, photographs, writings, and drawings documenting Moritz and Trude Friedler, his parents’ deaths during the Holocaust, her mother’s survival, both families’ efforts to escape Austria before the war, Moritz Friedlers’ work for the JDC and HIAS after the war, and their immigration to the United States. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society materials consist of correspondence, name lists, and reports documenting Moritz Friedler’s postwar work for the JDC in Austria, highlighting his many responsibilities and including statistics and camp activities. This series also includes reports documenting his 1950’s work for HIAS in Brazil. Biographical materials include birth certificates, police registration cards, proofs of employment, passports, and visa applications documenting Trude and Moritz Friedler, her mother, Regina Marx, and her grandfather, Max Kohn. This series also includes an anti-Semitic note left at Regina Marx’s door around 1938. The correspondence series includes letters from Moritz’s parents, Chane and Mendel Friedler, while Moritz’s mother was in Vienna, Moritz’s father had been deported to Vyhne, and Moritz had escaped to England. The letters document Moritz’s mother’s desperate efforts to escape Austria. Additional correspondence between the Austrian government and Moritz documents Moritz’s postwar efforts to collect reparations for property his family owned, and correspondence with Simon Wiesenthal documents the Friedlers’ lifelong friendship with him. Photographs depict Trude Friedler and her mother as well as a cemetery in Ebensee, the Hallein Displaced Persons Camp, a Hanukkah children’s play in a DP camp, the work of the JDC in Austria, and the desecration of synagogues in Vienna after Kristallnacht. Writings and drawings include Trude Friedler’s translation of the novel I To You, a copy of the original novel in German, fashion design drawings by Trude Friedler, and a notebook of poetry called Wien Wortlich by Josef Weinheber transcribed by Trude Freidler
Friedler family papers