Women's Portraits

Lotte Freiberger

“After 1945 we were beggars, had no flat, no clothing, no income”, said Lotte Freiberger at the interview. Just off her entrance room there is a sign “Lotte Freiberger fashion parlor”.

1923 born in Vienna, the father Jewish, the mother Christian, was Lotte after the race laws of Nürnberg a so-called “Validity Jewish” with the Jewish badge and all the constraints that were adjuncted to that.

Charlotte: “Which memories do you have of your childhood and youth?”

Lotte F.: “My father was a wholesaler for silk and yarn, we were doing well until the National Socialists integrated Austria to the German Reich in 1938. From then on my father and I had to wear the Jewish badge with all the constraints that were adjuncted to that.

Back then it was like that: if somebody was looking for a flat and you were known as being Jewish, one piece of information at the right place was enough and the legitimate owners had to move out. At our place in Meidling the janitor helped someone to get our place that way. Altogether we had to move six times between 1939 and 1945, not voluntarily. Furniture and all the other things got lost with the time. We got a room in the ninth district. I had to leave the school after the fifth grade and had to start fatigue duty and was not allowed to do my Master’s exam in dress making. People who carried the Jewish badge were just allowed at the drafty platform of the tram. On some trams we were not allowed to ride at all. It was really humiliating. Three times the SS came to me and wanted to take me along.”

Charlotte/Gerti: “And after 1945 who were you able to get back to a more or less “normal” life?”

Lotte F.: “Therefor we were lucky because we survived at least. The flat were I am living now, we obtained in 1945. I suffered of and I am still suffering of depression and fear. Back then my therapy was aspirin which a doctor prescribed. Depression as an illness was not recognised back then. To survive I mended dresses, my salary was one litre of milk. I still was content, I did not have any milk for years. In 1945 I got the dispensation for the examination for the Master’s certificate and opened a fashion parlor, where you saw the sign outside. Later I got self employed with a commercial agency and worked here at home at this desk. I learnt English myself which was necessary for this job…”

Gerti: “What did you do later, in the phase of life after work?”

Lotte F.: “When I was 57 years old, I went in early retirement. Through an acquaintance I got to know the “Documentary Archive of the Austrian Resistance” and that they need people there for the reprocession of the past. My reason to investigate there voluntarily, to find pieces of evidence and to order them was, and still is, that we contemporary witnesses have a certain obligation to keep everything for the posterity and pass it on. Otherwise everything gets lost. I worked there for 22 years.”

Charlotte/Gerti:  “Did the time at the DÖW help you to handle these difficult times better personally?”

Lotte F.: “No actually the opposite. Already in the beginning my emphasis was on the medical crimes of the NS and the euthanasia. It was difficult to bear how quickly children were sentenced to receive a deadly injection. Pursued was in this age of the NS everbody inferior such like Roma and homosexuals for example.
During the National Socialist dictatorship nobody knew what happened and nobody asked when somebody disappeared. If there was any information it was only orally. And after the war nobody wanted to talk about it.”

Gerti/Charlotte: “Today you are 88 years old, are very alert, the newspaper is on the table and you take part in political and daily events. How do you stay so active?”

Lotte F.: “I am kept alive through music, especially classical music. I read a lot, play solitaire and scrabbles, organize discussion rounds or cultural evenings- the next topic will be Schnitzler - keep in contact with the young people from the documentary archive. We are still a family.”

Thanks for the conversation.

Lotte Freiberger passes on her experiences in books and films. She has a daughter with who she keeps good contact. Now, being 88 years old, and after two fractures of the leg she doesn’t like to leave the house that much anymore, she rather invites friends and acquaintances. She calls herself still traumatized from the war events: “With my husband I never talked about it.” (Documentary: “Endlich darüber reden” -Talk about it finally - Herbert Link, 2007).

The DÖW (Documentary Archive of the Austrian Resistance) deals with resistance and persecution, Holocaust and exile, investigation of offenders, ... and is the most extensive in the German-speaking region. www.doew.at

Gerti Zupanich, Charlotte Rastl