Kuttelwascher Otto & Mina

Kuttelwascher, Otto Kuttelwascher, Mina Otto Kuttelwascher was a plumber who lived in Vienna with his wife Mina (Hermine) and three small children. One of his friends was a Jewish woman named Erna Kohn (later Katzenell). In May 1942, the Kuttelwaschers learned that Kohn (who was at that time in a labor camp in Germany), her mother and her sister, were on a list of Jews that were to be transported to the East, and they offered to hide them in their home. This offer was made despite the fact that the Kuttelwaschers, a family of five, lived in a small, three-room apartment. The offer seemed too risky to Kohn’s mother and sister, and they joined the other Jews who were transported to the East. Neither survived. When Kohn arrived in the city from Germany and did not find her family, she turned in desperation to the Kuttelwaschers, who hid her in their apartment until the end of the war. The Kuttelwaschers endangered themselves by hiding a Jew, a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. They did not receive any payment for their actions, and spent a great deal of their own money in order to supply Kohn with food and clothing over a period of three years, despite the fact that they were not well off. After the war, Kohn moved to the United States, where she married. On September 18, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Otto Kuttelwascher and Mina Kuttelwascher as Righteous Among the Nations.