Maria Lanc
Encyclopedia
Maria Lanc lived in Gmünd
, Lower Austria
with her husband Arthur Lanc
, a medical officer, in 1944. He and his wife owned the house number 35 in Kirchengasse.
In the early summer of 1944 a carriage of 1700 Hungarian Jews which were sheltered in a grain silo, arrived in Gmünd. Arthur and Maria Lanc decided to help the inmates of the camp by all available means to alleviate their suffering. They collected clothes, food, medicine and baby linen.
In the late autumn of 1944 an order was issued that in case that the frontline approaches the Jews should be transferred to a concentration camp in order to be killed. The date for the evacuation of the Jews was assigned for the end of March. Arthur Lanc hurried to the camp and decided to rescue three Jewish families - the family Fisch with three children aged five, four and one, the Yugoslavian nurse Piroska Blau and Georg Uhely, a lawyer from Ödenburg.
In the night these three families flew through a small backdoor of the grain silo. At first the fugitives were hidden at the place of forester Christ, afterwards they were housed and hidden in the house of Arthur and Maria Lanc - conscious that an act like this was under threat of death penalty.
On 16 December 1986 Maria Lanc and her husband Arthur Lanc
were bestowed the medal of the Righteous among the Nations
by Yad Vashem during a festive ceremony in Vienna.
Gmünd
Gmünd is a town in the district of Spittal an der Drau, in the Austrian state of Carinthia.The municipality is situated within the valley of the Lieser river, a left tributary of the Drava, east of the Hohe Tauern mountain range.-Municipality breakdown:...
, Lower Austria
Lower Austria
Lower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...
with her husband Arthur Lanc
Arthur Lanc
Arthur Lanc was medical officer in Gmünd and responsible for the medical care for all Jewish forced laborers in the area of Gmünd. It wasn't allowed to administer medicine to these people. Together with the veterinarion, a Dr. Krisch, he set aside medicine for the Jewish forced laborers and helped...
, a medical officer, in 1944. He and his wife owned the house number 35 in Kirchengasse.
In the early summer of 1944 a carriage of 1700 Hungarian Jews which were sheltered in a grain silo, arrived in Gmünd. Arthur and Maria Lanc decided to help the inmates of the camp by all available means to alleviate their suffering. They collected clothes, food, medicine and baby linen.
In the late autumn of 1944 an order was issued that in case that the frontline approaches the Jews should be transferred to a concentration camp in order to be killed. The date for the evacuation of the Jews was assigned for the end of March. Arthur Lanc hurried to the camp and decided to rescue three Jewish families - the family Fisch with three children aged five, four and one, the Yugoslavian nurse Piroska Blau and Georg Uhely, a lawyer from Ödenburg.
In the night these three families flew through a small backdoor of the grain silo. At first the fugitives were hidden at the place of forester Christ, afterwards they were housed and hidden in the house of Arthur and Maria Lanc - conscious that an act like this was under threat of death penalty.
On 16 December 1986 Maria Lanc and her husband Arthur Lanc
Arthur Lanc
Arthur Lanc was medical officer in Gmünd and responsible for the medical care for all Jewish forced laborers in the area of Gmünd. It wasn't allowed to administer medicine to these people. Together with the veterinarion, a Dr. Krisch, he set aside medicine for the Jewish forced laborers and helped...
were bestowed the medal of the Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
by Yad Vashem during a festive ceremony in Vienna.
Literature
- Israel GutmanIsrael GutmanIsrael Gutman is a Polish-born Israeli historian of the Holocaust.Israel Gutman was born in Warsaw, Poland. After playing an important role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, he was deported to the Majdanek, Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps. His older sister died in the ghetto. After...
, Daniel Fraenkel, Jacob Borut: Lexikon der Gerechten unter den Völkern: Deutsche und Österreicher, page 324 f. Wallstein Verlag, 2005 (Online Version)