Heinrich Gelb and his son Maximilian

“GELB Heinrich, merchant, St. Pölten, Kremserlandstraße 51, caring for a semi-blind wife, has a destitute son in Vienna, the man is incurably ill, receives month­ ly support payment of 13.33 Reichsmark from the local Jewish community organization, pays monthly rent of 20.67 Reichsmark, constitutes most urgent emergency.” List of welfare recipients, Welfare Department of the Jewish community organization in St. Pölten, before November 9, 1938

Heinrich Gelb was born on July 1, 1879 to Wilhelm and Julie Gelb, née Lederer. Like his siblings Adolf, Max, and Amalie, known as Mali, he first saw the light of day in St. Pölten, while his sisters Katharina Katy and Eugenie Jenny had been born in 1872 and 1877, respectively, at the family’s former home in Lackenbach. The family of eight hailed from the traditional Jewish milieu of the “Seven Communities” of western Hungary, which later became Burgenland, and migrated to St. Pölten around 1878. The preserved documentation states that Heinrich was a merchant or trader. The entire family was subject to poverty: Heinrich’s sisters remained unmarried; as victims of the Shoah, Amalie and Katharina were commemorated with Stones of Remembrance at Kerensstraße 14 in 2019. Eugenie died in 1939 while still living in St. Pölten and Max managed to flee to Shanghai and later to the United States. It is currently not known where Adolf survived, but he died in Vienna in 1959.

On February 4, 1906, Heinrich and Cecilia Cilli Salzer from Bratislava got married in Vienna. The couple lived together at Kremser Landstraße 51 in St. Pölten. Ten months later, on December 9, their son Maximilian, known as Max, was born, followed one and a half years later, on July 18, 1908, by their daughter Gisela. As Maximilian stated in the emigration questionnaire he submitted to the Jewish community organization in Vienna, he was already living in Berlin in 1912, mean­ ing as a small child with his family. After finishing school, he completed his train­ ing as a technical salesman. In 1933, he returned from what had become Nazi Germany to Vienna and planned to emigrate to the United States. Although he did have a passport, he had absolutely no assets, given that he had been unemployed for some time. He answered the question about whether he had a valid entry visa with the statement: “Marrying an American woman” – it cannot be determined whether this was reality or just wishful thinking. The fact that he claim­ ed his deeply impoverished father was an “art dealer” was presumably also due to his desperate need to emigrate. In any case, on February 28, 1939 the Emigration Department granted him a support payment of 30 Reichsmark to help with his travel costs, yet he did not manage to flee – presumably due to his lack of a visa.

On October 20, 1939, Maximilian found himself among the 1,000 Jews deported from Vienna to Nisko on the River San on the border to soviet-occupied Poland to build a concentration camp there. Following the failure of this project, which was doomed from the start, he joined 35 others on a “500-kilometer march through the most impassable territories of Poland,” finally arriving “sick and totally exhausted from hunger and exertion” in Belzec, 115 kilometers from Lublin, which was not yet home to an extermination camp at that time. These words were written on December 13, 1939 to the board of the Vienna Jewish community organization by Siegmund Flieger, a former employee of that organi­ zation, accompanied by a desperate plea for support. His list of men “who can neither go forward nor back” included Maximilian Gelb. In April 1940, he finally managed to return to Vienna, but there was no salvation possible there, either. He was forced to move into a collective apartment at Obere Augarten­ straße 70/20 in Vienna’s second district and was deported to Opole on the same transport as his father on February 26, 1941.

On July 18, 1934, his father Heinrich had submitted a request for support to the Jewish community organization in St. Pölten stating that he had returned to the city ten months previously as a “refugee from Germany.” Over the following years, he lived off the support of the Jewish community and his sisters. Himself a very sick man, he lost his sister Jenny on April 19, 1939, followed two months later by his wife Cecilia. Both are buried in the Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten, but no gravestone could be erected at the time due to the dire situation. Heinrich had to relocate to Floßgasse 6/8 in Vienna’s second district and was deport­ ed to Opole on February 26, 1941. Aside from his son, the transport included 43 other Jews from the catchment area of the St. Pölten Jewish community. One year later, the SS began the liquidation of the totally overfilled ghetto under their control. On March 31, 1942, a transport departed for the Belzec extermination camp, followed by deportations in May and October to Sobibor. It is not known where, when, or how Heinrich and his son Max were murdered.

Gisela, Heinrich’s daughter and Max’s sister, who had married Kurt Remak in Berlin, survived both Theresienstadt and Auschwitz and later migrated to New York, where she died in 1978. At an undeterminable point after 1945, the surviving relatives erected a grave plaque each for Eugenie Jenny and Cecilia Gelb. On Jenny’s gravestone, they commemorated their murdered siblings as follows: “To the memory of our good siblings Kathie, Heinrich, and Mali Gelb, who did not return after being deported. They are deeply mourned by their brothers and relatives.” The second grave plaque, which was comparably simple in style, commemorates Cecilia and her son Max, “who had to forfeit their lives in those fateful years.” This plaque was only rediscovered during the renovation of the Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten between 2022 and 2024 and was re-erected.