Adolf and Berta Berger, née Brosan

“The undersigned requests once more for my sales contract to be settled as soon as possible [...]. I therefore entreat you to settle this matter for me as I am repeatedly being pressured here to emigrate, but cannot do so without these funds, which I need for 3 ship tickets.” (Alfred Berger to the Vienna Vermögens­ verkehrsstelle, 29. 3. 1939)

Adolf Berger was born on 27 May 1889 to Philipp Berger and Johanna, née Mühlrad. His wife Berta Brosan was born on 27 December 1885 in Groß Meseritsch (Velké Mezirici, Moravia). Alfred, their only child, was born in Vienna on 13 August 1919. Adolf served as an officer during World War I before settling in St. Pölten as an underwear manufacturer. The family’s apartment and the small business were located in a detached house with a garden in Handel Mazzettistraße 75. Adolf and Berta were active in both the Jewish community and the Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (Union of Jewish Frontline Soldiers) while Alfred was an enthusiastic member of the Jewish sports association Makkabi and of the Zionist association Betar. All the preserved correspondence reveals that Adolf, Berta, and Alfred led a loving family life.

During the November Pogroms, Adolf Berger was arrested and interned in Dachau from 14 November to 9 December 1938. At the end of 1938, his business was deleted from the trade register. Adolf Berger was forced to sign a declaration to the Gestapo that he would leave the “Ostmark” by 20 December 1938, yet despite numerous petitions, the forced sale of his house dragged on until mid-May 1939, to the chagrin also of the “Aryanizers”, Ernst and Barbara Thürauer. The Berger’s destination was here cited as Shanghai, suggesting that they had not received an entry permit for any other states. Only their son Alfred was registered with the “Aktion Gildemeester” in Vienna as holding a visa for the USA.

On 11 July 1939, the family was finally able to emigrate, initially finding refuge with a relative in Opatija (at the time an Italian city known as Abbazia, today in Croatia). On the next leg of their flight in Grossetto (Tuscany), the family was arrested. Like all detained men, Adolf and Alfred were interned in the Ferramonti Cosenza camp on 25 July 1940 while the women were interned separately in Ferrandina, 160 kilometers to the northeast.

On 30 August 1940, Berta wrote the following hopeful message to her husband and son, addressed to “Campo di Conzentramento 8, Ferramonte”: “I hope that all three of us will still be happy in America. Many many kisses.” From 25 November onward, the family were reunited in the Ferramonti concentration camp and endeavored to be allowed to emigrate to the USA.

Alfred Berger received a visa for the USA on 1 April 1941 and was able to depart from Lisbon on the S.S. Ciudad de Sevilla on 15 May 1941. The preserved correspondence reveals that he was taken in by relatives in Iowa and was quickly able to find work. He immediately began trying to save his parents, but on 12 November he received a letter from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society in New York informing him that the American consulate in Rome no longer existed: “... your parents cannot hope to obtain American visas at this time.”

Five months after Alfred’s departure, on 4 October 1941, Adolf and Berta Berger were relocated back to the north of Italy, 660 kilometers away to San Lorenzo, Arcidosso, and on 17 April 1944 were moved another 300 kilometers north to the transit camp of Fossoli, today a district in Carpi in Modena province. From there, they were deported to Auschwitz on the eve of 17 May 1944, where they were murdered on 27 May.

After the war, Alfred Berger tried in vain to find out what had befallen his parents, writing numerous letters to the Italian authorities and the Red Cross. Only with a letter from the Communità Israelitiche Italiane dated 26 September 1951 did he finally know for certain: “Adolf and Berta Berger were sent (from Italy) to an extermination camp in Poland and were murdered in the gas­cham­bers at their arrival there.”