Deported to the Lackenbach camp by their hometown
In October 1941, Georg Ujvari, born in 1902, wrote a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Halbturn hoping that the latter would contact the Lackenbach camp administration and arrange a return. Together with his wife, Katharina, born in 1901, Georg Ujvari had lived in the municipal shepherd’s house and worked for the municipality until 1938. On 21 September 1941, they were deported to the ‘Lackenbach Gypsy camp’. Katharina Ujvari (camp number: 1827) was sent as a forced labourer in Reich Autobahn construction to Alland in today’s federal state of Lower Austria, while her husband, Georg (camp number: 1826) was transferred to the Reich Autobahn camp at Klausen-Leopoldsdorf, near the Lower Austrian town of Baden bei Wien.
Katharina Ujvari, too, wrote to the mayor and requested that she be allowed to return home and to ensure that the belongings they had left behind remain untouched. All such hopes were in vain, however: the mayor, Michael Steiner, had the letters filed away with the official note ‘To be left unanswered’. The unpaid wages and the couple’s belongings were confiscated, with the proceeds; after deductions to pay alleged debts, the funds were transferred to the Lackenbach camp administration, not the legal owners. In 1943 Georg and Katharina Ujvari were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, where they were murdered.
Author: Baumgartner, Gerhard
Source: Brettl, Herbert: »...ich glaube wir haben uns das nicht verdient...« Die Familie Ujvari zwischen Assimilierung, Ausgrenzung und Tod; in: Kropf, Rudolf; Polster, Gert (Hg.): Roma und Sinti von 1938 bis zur Gegenwart. Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten aus dem Burgenland, Band 158, Eisenstadt 2016, S. 127-146
Herbert Brettl
(2017)
