Viktor Isidor Schratter

Viktor Isidor Schratter

“About half a year ago, a relative told me that my sister-in-law, Paula Sara Gott­lieb (who is currently in Poland), told her that my ex-husband Viktor Israel Schratter (who is currently in Poland) had received a letter from my daughter-in-law telling him that she and her husband had received American citizenship.” Statement from Maria Schratter at the office of the Lord Mayor of the City of St. Pölten, 13 April 1942

Viktor Isidor Schratter was born in Bielitz (Silesia) on 11 February 1881 to Samuel Schratter and Sara, née Klein. It is not known when the family moved to Vienna, yet it was at the “Vienna municipal administration” at Haydngasse 12 in the sixth district that Viktor married his Protestant fiancée Maria Lebl on 28 June 1904. Their son Otto was born on 10 May 1905 and was baptized in the Protestant Gustav-Adolf-Church in the sixth district. The couple ran a laundry store at Austinstraße 103 in St. Pölten. Maria was evidently the specialist, for her father was already described as a “laundry washer.” She continued to run the business after the “Anschluss,” yet astoundingly submitted a property reg­is­tration form on 15 July 1938 listing two properties in Vienna, even though as an “Aryan” she was not required to do so. She stated that this was because her husband was “a Jew of German citizenship.” Yet Viktor is not named in the extensive documentation regarding various properties at his residential and business address at Austinstraße 103 in Viehofen/St. Pölten.

According to the Nuremberg Race Laws, Viktor and Maria’s son Otto Schratter was defined as a half-Jew, “Mischling of the first degree,” while Otto’s wife Hildegard, née Arndorff/Abeles was defined as a “full Jew.” Hence, she was forced to submit a property registration form on 14 July 1938 and fled to the United States as early as September 1938. Otto followed her there on 13 March 1939, one month after his father was forced to relocate to Nelkengasse 4 in Vienna’s sixth district. Several applicants competed for the “Aryanization” of the properties, yet evidently no expropriation ended up taking place. Three years later, the deeds were still registered under Hildegard Schratter’s name, which is why her mother-in-law Maria was summoned to the office of the Lord Mayor of St. Pölten on 11 April 1942. In her statement, Maria spoke of her “ex-husband.” The divorce must have taken place after 15 July 1938, perhaps out of consideration for the wife, who was henceforth living in a “mixed marriage.” Maria Schratter stated that the properties still belonged to her daughter-in-law, yet she could not prove that the latter had already become a citizen of the United States – which would have rendered the expropriation of her properties impossible. In any case, all the properties were “Aryanized” in 1944 and
restitut­ ed in 1948.

From 2 November 1941, Viktor Schratter was already interned in Neustadt 29a/6 of the ghetto in Łódź near Warsaw, which the Nazis had renamed
“Litzmannstadt” after a German general. He worked as an electrician in this enormous, horrendously overcrowded, and insufficiently furnished site of “extermination through labor.” On 12 September 1942, he was picked up during the so-called “Operation Gehsperre,” a one-week lockdown during which
12,000 people – hospital patients, elderly and inform people, and children – were rounded up, deported to Chelmno (Kulmhof), and murdered in a gas van. In 2008, the municipal cultural association Mariahilfer Kulturplattform had a memorial plaque affixed at Nelkengasse 4, Viktor Schratter’s last address, commemorating all seventeen individuals who were deported from this house and murdered.