Ehn Anna

Ehn, Anna Anna Ehn lived in Vienna during World War II. During this period, almost all the men in Austria had been drafted into the army, and Hungarian Jews were “loaned” to Austria to make up for the shortfall of industrial and municipal workers. In 1944, a group of Hungarian Jews, mostly women and children from Debrecen, were sent to Vienna. They were employed in various kinds of manual labor, and received only minimal food rations. Therefore, the children were forced to beg for food from passersby. One member of the Jewish group was 13-year-old Ilona Katz, who came to Vienna with her mother and her six siblings. One day in October 1944, Katz turned to Anna Ehn, who was passing by in the street, and asked her for food. Ehn immediately took pity on Katz, giving the girl what little food she had with her, and from that point on brought Katz food almost every day. Some time later, Katz’s older sister was wounded in a bombing raid and taken for treatment to a hospital operated by the SS. When Ehn found out, she went to the hospital and asked to transfer the Jewish girl to her home in order to take care of her. In this way, she identified herself as a “Jew lover” – a dangerous characteristic during the period of Nazi domination. Ehn received permission to take the Katz sister to her home, and took care of her for three months, until her condition improved somewhat. Thus, she saved the life of this Jewish girl, because if she had remained in serious condition in an SS hospital, she would surely have been killed. Ehn received no payment for her efforts, nor for the personal risk she took by showing compassion for a Jew. Near the end of the war, the Hungarian Jews who had been sent to Vienna were transported to Mauthausen. Katz and her sister managed to survive. After the war, Katz immigrated to Israel. On October 26, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Anna Ehn as Righteous Among the Nations.