Holstein Olga (Kopal)

Matouschek, Lydia Holstein, Olga Lydia Matouschek and Olga Holstein were two twin sisters (b.1886) who lived in Vienna. They were both divorced (their maiden name had been Kopal) and they shared a single apartment. Their niece, Edeltrud Becher (later Posiles*) met and fell in love with Walter Posiles, a Czech citizen, in 1936. The two wanted to marry in 1938, but after the Nazi invasion of Austria in that year, this became impossible because Posiles was considered Jewish under the Nuremberg laws, and marriages between Aryans and Jews were forbidden. Posiles fled from Austria to Prague. He stayed in touch with Becher, and the two managed to visit each other clandestinely on a number of occasions. In the autumn of 1939, after the Gestapo received an anonymous tip about Becher’s romantic relationship with a Jewish man, she escaped to her sister in Hungary. Later she returned to Vienna, apparently in 1941. Despite the difficulties created by their illegal status under Nazi racial law, the couple refused to end their relationship. Posiles crossed the Austrian border twice in order to visit Becher in Vienna. The couple needed a place to be together in Vienna, and Becher’s aunts, Lydia Matouschek and Olga Holstein, allowed them to use a room in their apartment for eight days each time during both of these illegal visits, so that they could be together. Their decision to help the young lovers put Matouschek and Holstein in grave danger. They were guilty of hiding a Jew -- what’s more, a Jew who had entered Austria illegally. In addition, the aunts were also facilitating the romantic link between a Jew and an Aryan. Still, Matouschek and Holstein stood by their niece, and continued to provide a place for her clandestine meetings with Posiles. In 1942, when the Jews of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were being sent to concentration camps, Posiles escaped with his two brothers Hans and Ludwig to Vienna, where Becher hid them in an attic apartment belongingto Friedrich Kunz, the fiancé of her sister Charlotte (Becher*). Matouschek and Holstein knew about the brothers’ hiding place and helped as best they could. Matouschek sent Posiles an identity card, which had belonged to an acquaintance that had been killed in an accident. With this identity card, Posiles was able to leave the apartment and move around freely. When Posiles became seriously ill with pneumonia and was in danger of dying, Holstein found a doctor who was willing to care for Jews in hiding. This doctor saved Posiles’ life. During the period that the Posiles brothers were in hiding, Matouschek and Holstein used their apartment to give refuge to another Jewish woman, Carola Fischmann (or Stern), a former teacher who they had employed as a housekeeper. After the war Posiles and Becher married, but they divorced in 1962. They continued to live in Austria. On October 26, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Lydia Matouschek and Olga Holstein as Righteous Among the Nations. File 1428 File 1429