Neunkirchner Straße 52 (laid in 2022)
Alfred and Ilka Beer
The son saved – the parents deported
Alfred Beer, born January 16, 1890, in Sergie, Bukovina.
Wife Ilka Beer, née Bauer, born July 28, 1889, in Schwarzau.
Son Kurt, born 1921 in Wiener Neustadt.
Alfred and Ilka Beer were deported to Kielce on February 19, 1941, where they became victims of the Shoah. Their son Kurt survived in England.
The Bukovina region, occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1775, had been part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria until 1848, and became a separate crown land in 1849. Beginning in the 1880s, and increasingly in the late 1890s (due to pogroms in Russia and the resulting refugee movements), Jews from Galicia and Bukovina began migrating to southern Lower Austria. Compared to the Jews coming from western Hungary, those from Galicia and Bukovina formed a distinct minority within the Jewish community of Wiener Neustadt.
Alfred Beer married Ilka Bauer, who came from a western Hungarian family and was born in Schwarzau on July 28, 1889. Ilka and her six siblings – all born either in Schwarzau am Steinfeld or Wiener Neustadt – were raised in Wiener Neustadt. Their father Ignaz supported his family as a trader and peddler, enabling his only son Leopold to study law in Vienna. The daughters Hermine, Rosa, Ilka, and Laura married and settled in the Steinfeld region, while Margarete and Erna remained unmarried. Thus, Wiener Neustadt became the center of life for the entire Bauer extended family.
Ilka’s brother, Dr. Leopold Bauer, became the last president of the Jewish Community of Wiener Neustadt in October 1938. He attempted to provide assistance for numerous community members – whether financial aid, food distributions, or emigration efforts. For the Beer family, emigration applications had been submitted in May 1938, but without success. However, Ilka’s youngest sisters, Margarete and Erna, managed to emigrate to England, which ultimately helped Ilka’s son Kurt as well. Kurt, who was the same age as his cousin Irma (Dr. Bauer’s eldest daughter), was unable to flee to Palestine with the early youth transports, but thanks to interventions by his two aunts, his emigration to England was eventually secured.
The parents who remained in Vienna, Alfred and Ilka, first lived at Untere Augartenstraße 21. On February 19, 1941, both were deported to Kielce. They were murdered in the Shoah.
Werner Sulzgruber