STAFF WRITERS
LOUISE Gahleitner was just 10-years-old when two Nazi officers stormed her house and arrested her mother.
The 92-year-old Austrian-born woman, who has lived in Moe since 1958, is a child holocaust survivor. January 27, marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day – 78 years since the end of World War 2 – and Ms Gahleitner tells her harrowing story, with a smile that radiates warmth. Ms Gahleitner was separated from her family when her mother, Judith, was arrested in June 1940 for being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. She explained that Nazi officers ransacked their home and found copies of banned literature – that actively condemned the Nazi regime – which was enough to take her mother away. “I missed school at the time, and I was out on the patio while my mum was being escorted by two tall men,” Ms Gahleitner said. “They found a copy of a Watchtower (magazine) in a sugar bag and another one in a rice bag because that’s how mother used to hide her things. “That was the proof they needed, and she was then taken away and as soon as I saw her face, I knew she was going to be arrested. “I was too scared to move all day and at about evening time (a) woman came in to get me.” Four weeks later, Ms Gahleitner’s mother, Judith, faced the Magistrates Court in Waidhofen, and and was sentenced to prison for two-and-a-half years. She refused to stop preaching, and was retried nine months later and sentenced to death. “The magistrate told (Judith) she doesn’t have to go to jail or anything but just stop preaching, just stop talking about it, that’s all you must do, you can believe what you like, just stop talking about it,” Ms Gahleitner said. “I started to cry and wanted to touch her, but I was yanked back. I wasn’t allowed to touch her. She was taken out and she turned around at the door and looked at me and that was the last time I saw her for five years.” Ms Gahleitner was placed in a foster home and had to sleep in a cot that was so small she could not stretch out her legs. Her pillow smelt of vomit and the straw mattress she slept on was soaked with the urine of previous children. She explained her knuckles were raw as the skin was scrapped off after being forced to clean the floors of the foster home with large wire brushes, which were too big for her small hands. Covered in lice with sores all over her body, one day Louise Gahleitner decided to run away from what she described was a “very bad place”. “One Sunday I ran away, and they didn’t even notice I was gone… I ran back to my hometown and asked some of my mother’s friends if they would look after me but they all shut their door on me and nobody wanted to be involved,” Ms Gahleitner said. “I ran to the railway because I did not want to get caught. I didn’t want to go back there (foster home).” “At the railway there was a big building, and I spent the night underneath the staircase. I was hungry, I was cold, and I ran through the railway yard looking for something to eat, a half-eaten apple or anything I could find,” said Ms Gahleitner. The following day, Ms Gahleitner was approached by a kind lady who offered to take her in. “I sat on a step in the sun and a lady tapped me on my shoulder and asked me if my name was Louise. I was scared, but she told me not to worry… she took me home and cleaned me up,” Ms Gahleitner said. “She looked after me for more than a week, and she bought me new clothes and then found a nice foster home for me in Germany.” At 15-years-old, Ms Gahleitner was reunited with her mother, who survived four years in a concentration camp. Her mother worked as a cleaner in a metal fabrication shop and attracted the attention of the Nazi’s after a colleague ‘dobbed her in’ for suggesting Adolf Hitler needed a “good clean”. Judith was offered instant freedom if she signed a declaration renouncing her faith and confirming her allegiance to the Nazi regime – something she refused to do. The night before her scheduled execution, Judith suffered a stroke and was transferred to a prison hospital before being sent to Ravenbrück Concentration Camp. Ravenbrück was eventually liberated by allied forces. Ms Gahleitner explained she had “no idea” what a concentration camp was and did not believe her mother was a prisoner in one of them. It wasn’t until the pair moved back to Austria and her mother began to describe the horrors of the camp that she realised her mother was “somebody special”. “She wasn’t talking about the concentration camp at all, she just was glad to see me again and she was very exhausted. When she decided we go back to Austria, she told me why she was in a camp and what happened to her,” Ms Gahleitner said. Ms Gahleitner’s mother Judith migrated to Moe in 1965, despite not speaking the language and having trouble adjusting. In a lot of ways she felt at home, until her death in 1978, she was 80-years-old. Louise is now 92-years-old and still living in Moe today. 1500 Jehovah’s Witnesses died during the Holocaust. More than 850 children were taken from Jehovah’s Witness parents and sent to reform schools, orphanages or families who were loyal to Hitler. Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only group persecuted in Nazi Germany that were offered a way out of persecution and personal harm by signing a document renouncing their faith and confirming their allegiance to the Nazi regime – something Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to do.
