Leokadia Justman: Austria's Anne Frank

ORF, February 4, 2025

German original: https://religion.orf.at/stories/3228630/

The story of the Polish Jewess Leokadia Justman, who survived the Nazi era with the help of Tyrolean resistance fighters, has recently been discovered and documented. Her story is reminiscent of that of Anne Frank.

The discovery of Justman's life story is an important historical testimony. Her escape and rescue from the Nazis in Tyrol was documented by an interdisciplinary research project and can be seen in an exhibition at the Innsbruck Landhaus until October. The exhibition shows historical finds and documents the escape story. This was recently also published in German translation by Tyrolia Verlag under the title “Brechen wir aus!” (Let's escape!).

Justman's story was uncovered by Tyrolean contemporary witness Martin Thaler. Thaler remembered a young woman named Lotte, who his mother hid during the Nazi era. It later turned out that it was Justman, who had fled from the Warsaw ghetto to Tyrol under a false name. Her father, Jakob Justman, was murdered in the Reichenau concentration camp, while she and her friend Marysia were arrested by the Gestapo. Thanks to the help of five Tyrolean police officers and three women in the resistance, they were able to escape and survive.

Interdisciplinary research project

Innsbruck historian Niko Hofinger recognized the significance of the story and began researching it. He was supported by retired detectives Peter Hellensteiner and Toni Walder, who found evidence in police archives supporting the story's authenticity.

Catholic theologian and Jesuit Dominik Markl then initiated an interdisciplinary research project to make the story available to a wider public.

Escape with false papers

Justman was born in 1922 in Lodz (Poland) into a liberal Jewish family. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, her family was expelled to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, her mother was deported to Treblinka and murdered. Her father Jacob obtained false papers for his daughter and a number of young people of the same age.

Since the German Reich was experiencing an extreme labor shortage, Poles were welcome anywhere in search of work. Disguised as Polish Christians, they managed to escape to Tyrol by train in March 1943.

Hidden by police officers

In March 1944, she and her friend Marysia were betrayed and arrested. Thanks to the help of Nazi opponents within the police apparatus, they were protected from deportation in the Innsbruck police prison for a long time. The police officers strongly advised them to flee. The opportunity arose when a U.S. bombing raid destroyed the office wing of the prison.

The young women were hidden for weeks in the apartment of police officer Rudolf Moser and Marianne Stocker, who were supporting a local resistance group. When it became unsafe there, police officer Anton Dietz provided them with false identities, so that they could travel on to Lofer disguised as Christian Polish laborers. Justman found accommodation with a family as a maid.

The pastor of St. Martin/Lofer, Josef Wintersteller, and his housekeeper were the only people there to whom Justman revealed her Jewish identity. Wintersteller supported her in all matters and gave her hope for a new life after the war.

First Jewish Wedding in Tyrol after the War

After the war, Justman returned to Innsbruck and became secretary of the Jewish Committee. In Innsbruck, she met Joseph Wisnitzki, a Jewish refugee who had been able to go into hiding as a gardener in Bludenz until the end of the war. The two married in September 1945, the first Jewish wedding in Tyrol after the Nazi reign of terror. The couple later emigrated to the United States, where they started a family.

She had her father's body exhumed and buried at Innsbruck's Westfriedhof Cemetery. And at her instigation, five policemen and two women from Tyrol who had helped her at the risk of their own lives were recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the international Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.