In Memoriam Ilse Weber – against forgetting

Irma & Irmi

Irmi Horn introduces Ilse Weber and reads from “Es war einmal, es ist noch gar nicht lange her” & “In deinen Mauern wohnt das Leid”, Irma Servatius (viola) accompanies musically.

Ilse Weber und Mutter Therese Herlinger, 1920er Jahre, Quelle: Kingston Ostrava Group & Archiv des Jüdischen Museums Prag, Nachlass von Hanuš Weber

Series WOMEN EMPOWERMENT.
Ilse Weber, née Herlinger (11 January 1903 in Witkowitz (now Vítkovice), then Austria-Hungary – 6 October 1944 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp), was a Czechoslovakian German-language writer. Many of her texts were published posthumously. During the persecution of Jews by German authorities in Czechoslovakia, Ilse Weber was deported from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to Auschwitz in 1942, where she was murdered in a gas chamber together with her son and other children she had cared for in captivity.

National Socialism was widely accepted very early on at the universities in Graz. In February and March 1938, the time of the illegal demonstrations, the lecture theatres were almost deserted because the students had almost completely committed themselves to the “movement”. There was also widespread student participation in the SS and SA.

After the upheaval, the University of Graz saw itself as the south-eastern outpost of the new German conception of science, as a cultural-political pioneer of Germanness and as a “bulwark against the danger from the East”. In a jubilant telegram to Adolf Hitler, the university thanked him for the long-awaited unification with the German Reich. The request to name the University of Graz “Adolf Hitler University” was not granted; the Ministry of Education rejected the application in September 1938.

In 1934, 1,720 people belonged to the Jewish Community, which was 1.1% of the total population of Graz. The majority of Jewish residents lived and worked in the districts of Lend and Gries, the Murvorstadt. In the months following the “Anschluss”, the National Socialist terror set in – arrests, “Aryanisations”, forced emigration. Between March and November 1938, 417 Jews from Graz emigrated to Palestine alone. During the “Reichskristallnacht” – the November pogrom of 9/10 1938, the ceremonial hall and the synagogue fell victim to organised arson. Jews who remained in Graz were subsequently forced to move to Vienna, from where they were later deported. In March 1940, the Jewish Community was dissolved and Graz and Styria were now considered “Judenrein” (clean of Jews).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)