Maria Lanc (born Maria Jenewein; 1911 – 15 November 1995) was an Austrian humanitarian. She lived in Gmünd,

Lower Austria Lower Austria (german: Niederösterreich; Austro-Bavarian: ''Niedaöstareich'', ''Niedaestareich'') is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Since 1986, the capital of Lower Austria has been Sankt P ...

with her husband Arthur Lanc, a medical officer, in 1944. He and his wife owned the house number 35 in Kirchengasse. In the early summer of 1944 a carriage of 1700 Hungarian Jews which were sheltered in a grain silo, arrived in Gmünd. Arthur and Maria Lanc decided to help the inmates of the camp by all available means to alleviate their suffering. They collected clothes, food, medicine and baby linen. In the late autumn of 1944 an order was issued that in case that the frontline approaches the Jews should be transferred to a

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

in order to be killed. The date for the evacuation of the Jews was assigned for the end of March. Arthur Lanc hurried to the camp and decided to rescue three Jewish families - the family Fisch with three children aged five, four and one, the Yugoslavian nurse Piroska Blau and Georg Uhely, a lawyer from

Ödenburg Sopron (; german: Ödenburg, ; sl, Šopron) is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő. History Ancient times-13th century When the area that is today Western Hungary was a province of the Roman Empire, a ...

. In the night these three families flew through a small backdoor of the grain silo. At first the fugitives were hidden at the place of forester Christ, afterwards they were housed and hidden in the house of Arthur and Maria Lanc - conscious that an act like this was under threat of death penalty. On 16 December 1986 Maria Lanc and her husband Arthur Lanc were bestowed the medal of the

Righteous among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...

by Yad Vashem during a festive ceremony in Vienna.

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Maria Lanc
– her activity to save Jews' lives during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

website 1911 births 1995 deaths Austrian Righteous Among the Nations People from Gmünd, Lower Austria Women in World War II {{Austria-hist-stub