Saidler Maria

Saidler, Maria Maria Saidler was a widow who worked as a cook in the home of the Fleischners, a Viennese Jewish family, during the 1930s. After the Nazi annexation of Austria, the Fleischners’ financial condition worsened to the point that they could no longer afford to pay for a private cook. At the same time, Mrs. Fleischner became ill. Saidler had a close relationship with her employers, and volunteered to help the family without pay. Later, when the authorities forbade her to live in a Jewish house, Saidler moved to her own apartment, but continued to help the Fleischners. In October 1942, when the Fleischners were about to be deported to the east, Saidler offered them a hiding place in her apartment. The Fleischners refused, and were sent to Theresienstadt, where Saidler regularly sent them packages. In 1944, they were sent to Auschwitz and killed. Saidler extended help to another Jewish woman, a widow named Anna Sommer (née Schaffer) who, according to plans made in advance, escaped to Saidler’s house when the Nazis came to deport her. She stayed in Saidler’s apartment only at night, staying by day in the home of a half-Jewish friend. Saidler endangered herself by sheltering a Jew in her home, a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. She didn’t receive any financial compensation for her actions, and shared her food rations for three years with the Jewish woman she saved. The son of the Fleischners moved to Sheffield, England, where he changed his name to Fleming. Anna Sommer’s daughter, Therese, left Vienna in 1933, and spent the war in Iran, where she worked in a British financial organization. After the war she returned to Vienna. On May 31, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Maria Saidler as Righteous Among the Nations.