Schlögelgasse 3 (laid 2013)
Moritz Schulhof
Death in the Budapest Ghetto
Moritz Jakob Schulhof was born on March 12, 1876, in Sárvár, Hungary. He was a chief cantor and ritual slaughterer.
His wife, Esther Schulhof (née Illés), was born on January 20, 1882, in Szirma, Hungary.
Their children were Desider (born 1903), Hermine (1908), Jenö (1910), Eleonore (1911), Aranka (1914), Bernhard (1916), and Helene (1924).
Moritz Schulhof died in the ghetto in Budapest. His wife Esther and the remaining children managed to escape the Shoah. Desider took his own life in 1928.
Esther Illés came from a wealthy, strictly orthodox family in Hungary. She was a woman of refined manners and strict faith. Through marriage to the Talmud teacher Moritz Schulhof, two deeply religious and educated people came together.
The family moved from Eger (Hungary) to Wiener Neustadt in 1926 and found housing at Kaiserbrunngasse 7. In spring 1932, they moved to the first floor of Schlögelgasse 3. At that time, only Bernhard, Eleonore, Aranka, and Helene still lived at home with their parents.
From 1927, Moritz Schulhof was employed as cantor by the Israelite Community in Wiener Neustadt. A cantor is a religious official, serving as a prayer leader, teacher of religious studies, and community servant. For financial reasons, in 1935 he was also given the role of ritual slaughterer. The Jewish population would mostly bring chickens, but sometimes also sheep, to the “slaughter house” (Baumkirchnerring 4, next to the synagogue) to be ritually slaughtered according to Jewish law.
After the “Anschluss” (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany), the Schulhof family emigrated to Hungary—Moritz, his wife Esther, and daughter Helene to Budapest; daughter Hermine, her husband, and their three children went to Yugoslavia. Later, Hermine and one of her children rejoined her parents in Budapest.
In November 1944, the Schulhof family was taken to the Budapest Ghetto, where they fought to survive. The “Great Ghetto” was created to gather up to 70,000 Jews for easier deportation to Auschwitz. Moritz Schulhof died there in January 1945. His wife Esther and their children survived the Shoah.
Anton Blaha, after “Lebenslinien” by Werner Sulzgruber.