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Julius and Olga Berdach with their daughter Michaela and granddaughter Agnes Daisy

“Expression of gratitude. We feel obliged to express our sincere and heartfelt gratitude in this form to Dr. Julius Berdach for his protracted, devotional, and tireless treatment of our daughter Herma’s serious and complicated illnesses. We therefore warmly recommend Dr. Berdach to all.” These cordial words were published by the grateful Gruber family, Passauer Straße Nr. 69, in the St. Pöltner Zeitung No. 51 on 19. 12. 1929 The extremely popular physician Dr. med. Julius Berdach was born in Tyrnau (then in Hungary, today Trnava in Slovakia) on 11 November 1864 to Adam Zadik and Julie (Jittel), née Szidon. He had thirteen siblings, who lived spread across the entire monarchy. On 23 December 1891, he completed his doctorate in Vienna and immediately enlisted in the army as a physician. Shortly there­ after, he married Olga Reiner, who was born in Vienna on 17 February 1865 to Dr. Michael Reiner and Agnes, née Hirsch. Julius’s and Olga’s daughter Micha­ ela, who was presumably named after her prematurely deceased maternal grandfather, was born in Vienna on 17 January 1893. Due to the father’s career, the family moved around a lot. At the latest by 1901, Julius was working in Trifail in Lower Styria (today Trbovlje in Slovenia) at a hospital of the “Bundeslade”, an autonomously run social insurance company for miners. He published numerous articles, mostly relating to his field of specialization, namely epidemic nuchal rigidity (mening­ ism), which was especially fatal to infants and young men “who lived under suboptimal conditions” (as Berdach wrote in the Marburger Zeitung No. 47, 18. 4. 1905, p. 4). Julius’s son Hans, known as “Hanserl”, was born in Trifail on 26 April 1900. To the great sorrow of his parents, he died of pneumonia at six years of age and was buried together with his grandmother Agnes Reiner in the Jewish section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery. Olga Berdach thus lost her son and her mother within two days of each other, on 19 and 21 July 1906. In November 1915, Berdach received an “accolade for services rendered in the military’s medical division” on account of his direction of the military hospital in Stockerau and the pro bono training he performed for 65 nurses, preparing them for field hospital work on the front. In July 1916, he was transferred to the military hospital in St. Pölten, where he finally settled after the end of the war as a general practitioner in Kremser Gasse 26. Soon thereafter, he establish­ ed an apartment and practice in Julius ­Raab­ Promenade/Schießstattpromena­de 38, which included a radium treatment facility. He frequently advertised the effectiveness of radium treatment to combat arteriosclerosis and rheumatism in the St. Pöltner Zeitung. As a prominent doctor, he was also an acquaintance of Arthur Schnitzler, who mentioned him in his diary in 1912. In 1933, he was granted the title of “Medizinalrat” (an official honorary title). In its rationale dated 24 October 1933, the district medical insurance authority of St. Pölten emphasized his work to combat the epidemics of nuchal rigidity and typhus in Trifail as well as his unpaid work of fifteen years as a school physician. He was especially praised for his committed and unfailingly polite treatment of public health insurance patients and his readiness to take emergency calls “at any time of day or night, despite his advanced age”. Berdach held numerous lectures regarding his medical career at the Chamber of Labor. In December 1933, and presumably in the years that followed, too, he took in a child for lunch every day as part of the winter relief program of the federal and city governments. His family was charitable, but not religious: Olga quit the Jewish community in early 1932 and Julius defined himself as “irreligious” in 1938, but neither converted. As late as June 1936, non­Jewish patients were publishing notices expressing their “sincerest gratitude” for Dr. Berdach’s excellent treatment. Two years later, on 11 July 1938, when he had already been forced to relocate to Vienna, he had to fill out a “register of Jewish property”. Aside from 8,400 Reichsmark in cash and a few bonds, he declared under valuables: “A no longer complete set of silver cutlery for 12 persons, in use for 40 years” (Vermögens­ verzeichnis Nr. 8903, NÖLA, p. 3). Julius and Olga Berdach had already unregis­ tered from St. Pölten together with their daughter and their 18­year­old grand­ daughter on 29 June 1938 when they moved to Neutorgasse 15/7 in Vienna’s first district. At this point, the apartment would not yet have been a “collective apartment”, as Julius declared rent, electricity, and a telephone as expenses in his property register. On 14 July 1942, Julius and Olga were deported to The­ resienstadt. Olga succumbed to the difficult living conditions on 15 November 1942, at 78 years of age. The cause of death was cited as “heart failure”. Julius followed her on 16 March 1943."