Legath Gisela ; Son: Martin ; Daughter: Haas Frieda (Legath)

Legath, Gisela Legath, Martin Legath, Frieda Gyorgy Krausz lived in Szombathely, Hungary. In 1943, he was drafted into a military labor-service battalion, one of the groups established to take advantage of Hungary’s Jews as a source of unpaid labor. The group was assigned to various jobs in Hungary. In February 1945 the group was transported to Austria, as part of a Hungarian government-sponsored “donation” of Jewish workers to the German Reich. Krausz’s unit was sent to the village of Eberau in the southern part of Burgenland in southeast Austria. Some of the Jews, including Krausz, were sent to work in a local flourmill. As the Red Army advanced, the Jews were sent on foot to the Mauthausen concentration camp in one of the Nazis’ infamous death marches. Krausz and his friend Cundra managed to escape, hiding in the nearby forest. After about a week and a half, suffering from hunger and exhaustion, they decided to turn to local residents and to ask for food and shelter, despite the risk that they would be handed over to the Nazis. Arriving in the village of Deutsch-Ehrensdorf in the province of Burgenland, Krausz and Cundra came to the home of the Legath family. Although the fugitives presented themselves as refugees from Hungary, Gisela Legath, the mother of the family, identified them immediately as escaped Jews. Together with her children, Martin Legath, 14, and Frieda Legath (later Haas), 13, Legath took pity on the men, and hid them in the family’s grain silo. For two months, until the end of the war, Martin and Frieda alternated in bringing the Jews water and food twice a day, while the mother provided them with clothing belonging to her husband, who had been drafted into the army. A few days later, a battalion of SS (probably Waffen SS) soldiers arrived in the area, and established a kitchen on the Legath’s property, right next to the grain silo where the Jews were hiding. A Wehrmacht soldier who was attached to the SS group discovered the Jews, butGisela Legath argued that, rather than turning them in, the Jews should be put to work. The soldier was convinced, and commanded Krausz to work in the kitchen, while Cundra, a tailor by profession, fixed the SS soldiers’ clothing. After two weeks, the force left the village, leaving Krausz and Cundra behind. The Legath family endangered themselves by hiding fugitive Jews: a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. They did not receive any compensation for their activities, and shared their food and clothing with the Jews during a period of great scarcity. Gyorgy Krausz moved to Israel after the war, and changed his name to Giora Karny. On January 12, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Gisela Legath, her son Martin Legath and her daughter Frieda Legath as Righteous Among the Nations.