Kreiner Alois & Josephine

Kreiner, Alois Kreiner, Josephine Alois Kreiner was the best friend of Walter Posiles, a Czech citizen living in Vienna. Posiles met and fell in love with a young Viennese woman, Edeltrud Becher (later Posiles*). The two wanted to marry in 1938, but after the Nazi annexation of Austria in March of that year this became impossible because Posiles was considered Jewish under the Nuremberg laws, and marriages between Aryans and Jews were forbidden. Posiles fled to Prague, but stayed in touch with Becher, and the two even managed to visit each other clandestinely on a number of occasions. During the roundup and expulsion of the Jews of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the camps in 1942, Walter Posiles, together with his two brothers Hans and Ludwig, fled to Vienna, where they found refuge in an attic apartment belonging to Friedrich Kunz, the fiancé of Edeltrud Becher’s sister, Charlotte. The apartment was available most of the time because Kunz was in the army, but when he came home for vacations, the sisters were forced to smuggle the brothers to alternate hiding places. Kreiner and his wife Josephine hid Ludwig Posiles in their apartment – first for a short time, and later, over long periods. Kreiner also employed Ludwig in a wine shop he managed. The Kreiner’s 13-year old son, Otto, also knew about the family secret, which lasted from June 1942 until Posiles emerged from hiding at the end of the war. The Kreiners endangered themselves by hiding a Jew in their apartment, a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. They also regularly collected food stamps for the three Posiles brothers. After the war, Walter Posiles and Edeltrud Becher married, but they divorced in 1962. Both of them continued to live in Austria. Ludwig Posiles also continued to live in Austria after the war. On October 26, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Alois and Josephine Kreiner as Righteous Among the Nations. File 1426