Petsche Roman

Petsche, Roman Erich Roman Erich Petsche, born in 1907 in Gottschee (now called Koĉevje) in Slovenia, lived in Ried, in the Tyrol province of western Austria. He was a painter. In March 1944, he was among the forces that occupied the city of Novi-Sad which was, since 1941, under Hungarian rule. As an officer, Petsche was assigned housing in a house belonging to Tibor Czarney, a lawyer, who was sent to a labor camp from which he never returned. Petsche moved in with the family: Czarney’s parents, his wife Vera, his five-year-old twin daughters Miriam and Hava and his Aunt Olga. On March 24, 1944, the Jews of Novi-Sad found out that, the next day, they were to be deported to concentration camps. Petsche decided to save the girls. He took them by train to Budapest, where their aunt hid them in a convent. Petsche returned to Novi-Sad the same night. He gave the Czarney family his wife’s address and told them to jump from the transport train and get to Austria, where she would look after them. Except for the grandmother, who was too sick to travel, the rest of the Czarney family went on the transport, but they did not jump from the train. They arrived at Auschwitz, where only the aunt Olga survived. Petsche continued to look after the grandmother, who had stayed behind in Novi-Sad. He transferred her to a hospital in the city and visited her regularly until she died. Petsche endangered his life by helping a Jewish family, and particularly, by smuggling the two Jewish girls over the border, crimes that were punishable by death. The twin girls survived, and after the war came to Israel, where they both married. Olga Czarney also came to Israel, where she married. On May 3, 1982, Yad Vashem recognized Roman Erich Petsche as Righteous Among the Nations.