Viehboeck Anton & Antonia

Viehböck, Anton Viehböck, Antonia Anton Viehböck and his wife Antonia (Toni) lived with their two young children in Innsbruck in the Tyrol province of western Austria. In 1943, Viehböck was in Munich, Germany, when he met David Ballhorn (b. 1892), a Jew who had been hiding since 1942, first in Berlin and then near Munich. Ballhorn was looking for someone who would help him escape from Germany and Viehböck, who didn’t know Ballhorn at all, agreed to help. The Viehböcks decided to hide Ballhorn in their home, using a shelter that they had built for protection during aerial bombardments. They hid Ballhorn from October 1943 until the end of the war on May 5, 1945. They shared their food with him and took care of all his needs. The Viehböcks endangered themselves and their family by hiding a Jew, a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. They received no payment for the danger they took upon themselves – in fact, they shared their food with him during a period in which food was becoming more and more scarce. After the war, Ballhorn returned to Germany and took up residence in Berlin. On April 16, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Anton Viehböck and his wife Antonia Viehböck as Righteous Among the Nations.