Kerner Paul & Helene (Szlany); Son: Paul

Kerner, Paul Kerner, Helene Kerner, Paul Jr. Helene Kerner (née Szlany, b. 1902) had known the Jewish Lichtenstein family from Tyrnau in western Slovakia, where Koloman Lichtenstein was the director-general of a sugar factory. When, in the early 1930s, the Lichtenstein family – father, mother, and three children – moved from Tyrnau to a six-room apartment in a fashionable neighborhood in Bratislava, Helene Kerner and her husband, Paul Kerner (b. 1885) occupied the second floor of the house. After 1939, when the persecutions of the Slovakian Jews began, the Kerners had to watch as their Jewish neighbors were forced to leave their house. First they moved to a less-fashionable neighborhood in Bratislava itself, and later, in 1942, to a remote suburb on the outskirts of the town. The Kerners did everything in their power to relieve the misery of their Jewish friends. While they were still living in Bratislava, the son, Paul Kerner, Jr., would deliver food parcels to them three times a week packed by his mother, Helene. After the beginning of the deportations, Paul Kerner, Sr., and the Fiat firm in which Zoltan Lichtenstein, the eldest son, was employed, left no stone unturned in their efforts to arrange a certificate of exemption for the Lichtensteins. However, all their efforts came to naught. At dawn, at the end of September or early October 1944, all the remaining Jews of Bratislava were rounded up and lined up at the railway platform. They were all to be deported to Auschwitz. When Mrs. Kerner learned what was happening, she immediately warned the Lichtensteins, who still had some time to move away from their house. After a half-day stay in the Martins cemetery, Paul Kerner, Sr., arranged for them to be driven in secret to the Dubravka village, some 15 kilometers from Bratislava. As the Lichtensteins had no food-ration cards, the Kerners regularly smuggled to them foodstuffs that they had hoarded for their own use. After the entry of the Russians onApril 4, 1945, the Lichtensteins returned to their former apartment, while the Kerners were driven away from their home as German collaborators. On December 25, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Paul and Helene Kerner and their son Dr. Paul Kerner as Righteous Among the Nations.