Bahngasse 38 (laid 2022)

Adolf and Amalia Jaul

Flight to the Coast of Palestine – Death in Atlit and on Mauritius

Adolf Jaul, born on October 12, 1871, in Wiesmath, and
Amalia “Mali” Jaul, née Winkler, born on July 12, 1872, in Hochwolkersdorf;
daughter Hilda, born 1899, and son Emil, born 1901, both in Neufeld.
Son Emil was able to emigrate to Italy and survived.

The rest of the family found space on the last illegal ship transport via the Danube and onward to Palestine. Adolf fell ill with typhus and died shortly after arrival in the Atlit camp. The rest of the family had to transfer to another ship, the “Patria,” which the British intended to use for the further deportation of refugees. However, a bombing attack by a Zionist underground organization, intended to prevent the ship from sailing, sank the vessel. Amalia Jaul and the family of her daughter survived the sinking. Amalia Jaul was deported to Mauritius and died there in the internment camp.

From the western Hungarian region, some members of the Jaul family had settled in the administrative district as well as in the city of Wiener Neustadt in the 19th century. The successful hereditary migration to southern Lower Austria motivated further family members to move to the region or from a local rural community to the provincial town, including Adolf Jaul, who was born 1871 in Wiesmath, worked as a traveling salesman in the border region. He found his wife in nearby Hochwolkersdorf.

In 1906, the couple chose the Steinfeldstadt (Wiener Neustadt) as their home. At that time, they moved with their two children Hilda and Emil from Neufeld to the city and took up their first lodgings at Brodtischgasse 5. Adolf found work in the munitions factory. From the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the family lived in the “Städtischer Bürgerhof” at Bahngasse 38. After World War I, Adolf ran a grocery store at the same address, which was called “Jaul & Gerstl,” indicating a business partnership with the Gerstl family—unsurprising since the Jaul, Gerstl, and Winkler families were connected by marriage.

After the “Anschluss,” Adolf Jaul was forced to close his grocery business. He and his wife left the city in July 1938 and were able to remain at Pramergasse 21 in Vienna. The family was deeply worried by the arrest of their son Emil, who was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald. However, he was released and, thanks to financial support from relatives, managed to flee to Italy, while an emigration application for the family to Bolivia proved unsuccessful.

But then, suddenly, not only Adolf and Amalia, but also their daughter Hilda, together with her husband Erich Schischa and their children Lilly and Walter, had the chance to board a ship transport via the Danube to Palestine. On September 4, 1940, the arduous journey into the unknown began. What had been carried by much hope ended in bitter tragedy: Adolf fell ill with typhus and died just days after his arrival in Atlit. His wife Amalia was transported by the British authorities to Mauritius, where she died in internment in 1941. Only Emil and—by sheer luck, thanks to a rescue operation from the sinking “Patria” off the coast of Palestine—Hilda, along with Erich, Lilly, and Walter Schischa, survived.

Werner Sulzgruber