Joachim Chaim Willner and his wife Ella Rachel

“We hereby inform you that the documentation concerning these previously confiscated items was either destroyed during the course of the war or was shredded a long time ago. Thus, dear Mr. Willner, it is no longer possible to provide you with information on the transfer of your father’s business inven­ tory in 1938.” (Letter from the Dorotheum Auktions­, Versatz­, und Bank­ Ges.m.b.H. to Kurt Willner, 27. 2. 1997) The “business inventory” mentioned here referred to items of jewelry worth “62,006.73 Schillings”, as declared by the watchmaker and jeweler Joachim Will­ ner in his “property declaration” dated 15 July 1938. Joachim Chaim Willner was born in the small Galician village of Szpiklose, about 60 km east of Lemberg, on 19 February 1890. The differing surnames of his parents, Moses Zekorje and Lea Willner, suggest that they, like many orthodox Galician Jews, were only rabbini­ cally married, not officially. The couple had another son, who was called David Meyer. His fate as well as the fate of his wife and their four children is unknown. In 1913, Joachim Willner moved from Brzezany in Galicia to St. Pölten. He lived in Franziskanergasse 6, where he also ran his watchmaking and jewelry business. With his first wife, Margit née Friedmann (1898 Budapest – 1939 Budapest), he had two sons, Robert (born 1920) and Kurt Mosche (born 1923). Following their parents’ divorce in 1925, the two sons lived with their mother in Budapest. According to the public registry, Robert lived with her until 1934, while Kurt moved to live with his father in St. Pölten in 1929. In 1929, Joachim Willner married Ella Rachel Deutscher in Vienna. She was born on 8 March 1900 to Urie Zweifler and Süssel (Zissel) Deutscher in Roznia­ tow (Stanislau district, between Dolyna and Kalush). Like her husband, she thus also came from a pious background in Galicia. The couple lived with Kurt in Schulgasse 2, running their business in Franziskanergasse 6 as well as another branch in Kremser Gasse 29. For many years, Joachim Willner administered the poor relief fund of the Jewish community organization, while Kurt was an ent­ husiastic member of the Zionist organization “Betar”. Following the “Anschluss”, the couple had to vacate their apartment, finding refuge with the Frischmann family in Adolf­Hitler­Platz 7 (previously Rathaus­ platz). A part of the business and its inventory was confiscated by the Gestapo, while the rest was forcibly relinquished to the Dorotheum. On 10 September 1939, the couple was forced to relocate to Taborstraße 44/3 in Vienna’s second district. Robert had already returned to Budapest on 13 September 1939 and managed to flee to the USA via Cherbourg in August 1939 aboard the S.S. New York. In 1942, he joined the US Army, where he rose to the rank of captain. With the help of the Palestine Office in Vienna, his brother Kurt managed to flee to Palestine/Eretz Israel, where he got married in 1948. He finally emigrated to the USA in 1958. The two brothers lived together with their respective wives in Rhode Island. Robert died aged 95, Kurt aged 97. Neither of them had any children.

On the “Kladovo Transport”

Joachim and Rachel joined an illegal refugee transport in Vienna on 25 Novem­ber 1939, consisting of a group of altogether 822 people who traveled by train to Bratislava, from where they aimed to get to Palestine via the Danube and the Black Sea. Since Romania barred entry to the transport and the Danube finally froze over, they were forced to spend the winter on the overcrowded boats in the port town of Kladovo by the Iron Gates. Although they received emergency aid from Yugoslav Jewish communities, they suffered both from the cold and from a lack of space, food, and hygiene, which led to an outbreak of disease, especially in the summer. On 18 September 1940, the refugees were taken by boat 300 km upstream to the town of Sabac on the River Sava, where the older adults were housed in private accommodations and the youth groups in a derelict grain mill. In January 1941, the number of people “concentrated” there grew to around 1400. On 6 April 1941, German troops invaded Yugoslavia, which capitulated on 17 April. The persecution of Jews in Serbia began immediately. Sabac was under the jurisdiction of a Wehrmacht regiment consisting overwhelmingly of Austrian soldiers, which initially only implemented a forced labor regime. However, as early as August, Jewish refugees were publicly hanged in retribu­ tion for partisan resistance activities. On 11 October 1941, all the men from the “Kladovo Transport” were rounded up by soldiers and driven into the Zasavica concentration camp, which was still under construction at the time. The hope that the refugees would survive through forced labor turned out to be an illu­ sion: Joachim Chaim Willner was part of the group who were shot dead on 12 October. The massacres that occurred on 12 and 13 October are documented in reports and even some photographs created by the Serbian forced laborers who had to dig the mass graves. Rachel Willner was also evidently shot dead in Zasavica near Sabac in October 1941, though the exact date is unknown. She was thus an exception, for all the other women were deported to the ill­equipped Sajmište concentration camp, where they were murdered in gas vans in the spring of 1942. Not until 4 June 1997 did the Willner brothers, following intense research efforts, receive an “excerpt from the death register” from the Special Registry in Bad Arolsen in Germany confirming the murder of their father and stepmother in Zasavica.