Winkler Eduard

Herda, Franz and his daughter Vera Manthey Winkler, Eduard Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich and Irmgard (von Borcke) The deportation of the Jews from Germany to the east began in 1941. At that time around 3,200 Jews in Munich were concentrated in Jewish houses and an assembly camp from where they were transported. Professor Franz Herda helped rescue several of these persecuted Jews. He had been born in 1887 in Brooklyn, New York, to a German father and an American mother, but he grew up in Germany and even served in the German air force as a pilot in World War I. Herda became a painter and settled in Munich. It is said that he met Hitler in the 1920s and that he had expressed his opposition to Hitler’s ideology in no uncertain terms. Sometime in 1937 Herda met Miss Alberetine Gimpel (b. 1896), a Jewish woman. When the deportations of the Jews began in November 1941, Herda promised Gimpel to help her in time of need. Soon Gimpel had to move to a so-called Jewish house at 125 Lindwurm Street. In May 1943 the inhabitants of the house were informed that they would have to be present in their homes the following day—indicating that they would be picked up, taken to the assembly camp, and deported. At night Gimpel secretly left her home and used a public telephone to call Herda (Jews were no longer allowed to own telephones). The following day, at six o’clock in the morning, Gimpel went to a prearranged meeting point in one of the city’s parks. Herda met her and took her to the home of an acquaintance, Eduard Winkler, at 104 Hohenzoller Street. Although she was a total stranger, Winkler hid Gimpel in a small room in his apartment until August 1943. Fearing the arrival of unannounced guests, she stayed in the small space, only rarely staying in other rooms of the home, and she could not stay near the window, lest she be spotted by a neighbor. During air raids, when everybody went to the shelter, Gimpel stayed in her room. “I was a prisoner in my room,” wrote Gimpel in 1954, “and in addition there was the permanent fear of being discovered and the consequent danger to my hosts.” Hiding a Jewish woman had severe repercussions on the nervous state of Mrs. Winkler, whose son had fallen at the front. It was therefore decided to move Gimpel to a new hiding place. Herda came one night and took her to his studio, where she remained hidden until May 1944. Here too Gimpel had to stay away from the windows, remaining in the atelier during air raids, lonely and frightened and terrorized by any unusual noise. Herda realized that his ward’s situation had worsened, and he feared that because her existence in hiding had become unbearable, Gimpel might surrender to the authorities. He decided to take her to his daughter’s place. Vera Manthey was living outside Munich in Umratshausen, near the lake of Chiemsee. Gimpel stayed there for four months, until September 1944, and was then transferred to Poing in the district of Traunstein, where she was hidden until the end of the war by the writer Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen and his wife, Irmgard. Reck-Malleczewen was arrested at the end of 1944 because of his anti-Nazi activity and taken to the Dachau concentration camp, where he perished. Although Irmgard Reck-Malleczewen was warned that she too was in danger, she continued to hide Gimpel. Gimpel, who was aware of the warning, suffered a mental breakdown. There was, however, no alternative hiding place, and she remained in Poing until the end of the war. After the war Herda and Gimpel married and immigrated to the United States. Herda also helped other persecuted Jews. Max Bachmann, born in 1883, was married to a German non-Jewish woman, but in 1943 he heard that he would be deported. He fled from his home and found refuge in Herda’s apartment, where he stayed for some time, until he could move to his wife’s relatives, who lived outside of Munich. After the war Bachmann became the head of the Jewish community in Munich. Richard Marx, born in 1924, was a Mischling of the second degree (the term for someone having one Jewish grandparent). He was therefore protected from deportation until late 1944. His mother owned a grocery shop, and he would often bring food to Herda to help support Jews in hiding. In November 1944 he too was in danger of deportation, and Herda arranged for him to be hidden at his daughter’s home. Vera Manthey hid him until April 1945. After the war Marx married Vera, but their married life was cut short when she died in 1955. On January 14, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Franz Herda, his daughter Vera Manthey, Eduard Winkler, and Friedrich and Irmgard Reck-Malleczewen as Righteous Among the Nations.