In the night from May 2 to 3, 1945, just five days before the end of the war, members of the Waffen-SS shot 228 Jewish men, women, and children who had been deported from Hungary to Austria for forced labor in the spring of 1944. As of mid-April, they were interned in a transit camp in Hofamt Priel near Ybbs Persenbeug (Lower Austria). The eleven-year-old Tibor Yacov Schwarcz was able to hide under a straw mattress and survive; his mother Ilona and his sisters Éva and Judith were murdered. To this day, it has not been possible to determine the perpetrators. The bodies were initially buried not far from the scene of the crime and only transferred to the Jewish cemetery in Sankt Pölten on April 26, 1964. Only a small memorial stone without names bore witness of their fate.
Exactly seventy years after the crime and after years of research, the Institute for Jewish History in Austria (Injoest) finally installed a commemorative stone for the victims. Yacov Schwarcz came with his wife Elisheva, his four children, and three of his sixteen grandchildren to inaugurate the stone. Roughly 120 people, from politicians to students, attended to pay their respects to the victims, to read their names aloud, and to pray the Kaddish. After the ceremony, Yacov Schwarcz’s son Roni expressed great hope: In all this evil there is Tikkun Olam, the possibility of “Healing the World.”
- Information in English: injoest.ac.at/en/mass-grave-hofamt-priel
