Foreword to the 2024 Edition

This is the story of my family, more specifically the story of my mother Ruth’s early childhood, whose fate in Deblin plays a key role in this book. After the war, my mother came to Vienna with Hermann Wenkart, whom I unfortunately only briefly knew as my grandfather, and his wife Klara, my grandmother. She was raised by the Wenkarts in Vienna, who remained in Austria after the war. Hermann Wenkart passed away in 1974.

In 1959, Ruth met my father, Raphael Marcovici, in Vienna. My father, himself a Holocaust survivor, was deported to Auschwitz from Transylvania, Romania, in 1944, along with his sister Blanca. Blanca was murdered in Auschwitz at the end of 1944. In January 1945, my father was transferred to Dora-Mittelbau, where he was liberated by American troops on April 11, 1945. The rest of my father’s family—his parents, two other sisters, and three brothers—fled to Canada and Israel.

My parents stayed in Vienna and built a supermarket chain together, which they ran until my father passed away in 1982. My sister Annette was born in 1963 and tragically died at the young age of 29. I was born in 1969, work in mechanical engineering, and also live in Vienna.

It took my mother many years after the war to reconnect with relatives, as there was no contact with extended family. Eventually, in 1995, she succeeded in locating her half-brother Paul in Paris, where her biological father had fled during the war. Sadly, Paul had already passed away five years earlier.

From her immediate family, only her aunt Clara, who later adopted her, and her father survived the Holocaust. Her grandfather Emanuel, her sister Hedwig and her young daughter, as well as her mother Anna, were all murdered.

My mother, Ruth Marcovici, passed away on August 2, 2024, in Vienna. She spent her final years at the Jewish retirement home Maimonides in Vienna.

In May 2013, I decided to republish my grandfather’s 1963 book and, in October 2024, to release an expanded edition with added visual material. In 2013, it had become difficult to find copies of the original book, which my mother had often lent to friends to read. Now, in 2024, interest in testimonials from that time remains relevant. I wish to make the book and its message of reconciliation and the story of one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” accessible to a wider audience.

The story my grandfather tells in this book is one of hope, where, amid the greatest catastrophe faced by the Jews, a miracle or a unique coincidence occurred in a camp in Deblin. An Austrian officer risked his life to save 400 Viennese Jews. This story parallels the survival of my uncles and aunts in Romania, who were saved by Christians from the village of Budest and hidden in the forest for years. These two stories have deeply influenced me, and I hope that sharing this book will inspire others with this positive message of humanity.

Michael Marcovici, Vienna, 2024