Hauptplatz 13 (laid 2010)
Gustav Robert Braunberg
Abandoned by His Wife
Gustav Robert Braunberg, born on January 17, 1896, in Vienna, dental technician.
Wife Olga Anna, née Berinatz, born September 3, 1890, in Vienna, Roman Catholic.
Daughter Anna, born 1926 in Baden, Roman Catholic.
In 1938, he fled to Prague. He was deported to Theresienstadt on August 18, 1944, and on September 29, 1944, further to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed on September 29, 1944.
Gustav Robert Braunberg was born in Vienna. His parents ran a small men’s hairdressing shop in Seidengasse but both died before the Anschluss. Gustav Braunberg became a dental technician. He had his practice at Hauptplatz 13 in Wiener Neustadt, where he also lived at the end. Gustav Braunberg was married to Olga, an “Aryan,” and like her, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. Their only child, Anni Braunberg, was baptized and raised Catholic and developed a very special relationship with her father during the few years she was allowed to spend with him.
Everything changed in 1938 with the Anschluss. Anni was expelled from school and only then learned from her mother that her father was of Jewish descent. After SS men entered the apartment and practice at the end of June 1938 and confiscated everything, Gustav Braunberg was given eight days to leave Wiener Neustadt. Within that week, his wife divorced him, later moved with their daughter to Reichenau, and left Braunberg to his fate. He fled to Prague, where he was able to work for some time with a friend who was a dentist. There he applied for a visa to South America, which was never granted. In 1943, Anni was able to visit her father in Prague for almost a week. It was their last meeting. In September 1944, Anni received one last card from her father from the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Only in 1945 did Anni learn, through a letter from the Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question in Prague, the terrible news that his name was on the list of the dead from the Auschwitz camp.
Anton Blaha, based on the book “Im Namen meines Vaters” by Anni Stern-Braunberg