Kurier, February 17, 2020

German original: https://kurier.at/chronik/oberoesterreich/die-gerechten-vor-den-vorhang-holen/400754295

Exhibition: At Schlossmuseum in Linz, an exhibition shows that courage during the NS - regime was a decision.

Completely refuted, Esther Zychlinski knocked at the gate of the Schatz family in the spring of 1945. Some five kilometers away she had escaped the Mauthausen concentration camp through a hole in the fence. Maria and Johann Schatz took the girl in, the family’s children were filled in. Zychlinski remained hidden in the farmhouse for several months; even during a search by the SS the family remained strong and passed the girl as their own daughter. In 1995 Esther Zychlinski contacted the family from Israel and appealed to the Holocaust Memorial Site Yad Vashem to add Maria and Johann Schatz posthumously to the so-called „Righteous.“ This is an official distinction by the State of Israel for all those people, who protected, hid, or enabled the flight of Jews without asking anything in return during the NS – regime.

As of February 2, those people are being called before the curtain by the exhibition The Righteous. The non-profit Austrian Friends of Yad Vashem initiated the project with Professor Michael John (Johannes Keppler University of Linz, JKU) and Professor Albert Lichtblau (University of Salzburg). After stops in Vienna, Graz, Klagenfurt, and Innsbruck, the exhibition is now on display in Upper Austria for the first time. „In that regard, we particularly put the Righteous from our federal state in the spotlight,“ Professor Michael John from JKU explains. The biographies are put in historical context and thereby the era of NS terror is illuminated as well.