Adele PASCH was born in Waidhofen an der Thaya (in Lower Austria) on November 13, 1878. She was one of the four children of the Jewish couple Julie and Josef Pollak – shopkeepers who lived in Linz, the capitol of Upper Austria, during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Based on the registers of the Israelite Community of Upper Austria, it is clear that Adele and Friedrich PASCH1 were married on February 11, 1906 in the Linz Synagogue.
Information about their siblings that doesn’t appear in these registers could be obtained from other sources, which made it possible to search for the Shoah victims in their families.
Friedrich PASCH had operated a shoe store in Salzburg since 1901: starting on the Makartplatz and after 1912 in a large store on the corner of the Dreifaltigkeitsgasse (number 20) and the Paris-Lodron-Straße (number 2). Before too long he had a few branch shoe stores in Upper Austria as well.
Adele and Friedrich PASCH had two children born in Salzburg:
Hans, born on December 23, 1906 and
Grete, born on March 4, 1908
The PASCH family lived in the first floor above the store at number 2 Paris-Lodron-Straße. They were one of about 50 Jewish families who managed to get local citizenship rights (the »Heimatrecht«) in Salzburg under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
It’s particularly notable that Friedrich PASCH was a member of the local Zionist organization in Salzburg, and, like his contemporary Sigmund Freud, he was also a member of the B’nai B’rith Lodge.
Friedrich PASCH died at age 62 on July 22, 1934 in the Hromada Sanatorium2, which was mainly used by Jews in Salzburg. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Linz according to the death notice in the Neue Freie Presse of July 24, 1934.
Adele, Grete and Hans PASCH inherited the largest shoe store in Salzburg, with about 20 employees, along with branch stores in Linz, Wels and Braunau am Inn, and a property in Linz at 54-56 Landstraße.
Since the 1920s, their flourishing »Jewish« shoe store had been on a boycott list published by the Salzburg Antisemitic League – which aimed to destroy the economic existence of all Jews and drive them out of their homes without any means of subsistence.
Adele, Hans and Grete PASCH operated their shoe store and its branches successfully until the stores were all confiscated by the Nazi regime in 1938.
Those who profited from these »Aryanizations« in Salzburg and Linz are known by name: Georg Matthis and Josef Fischer, Friedrich Oelsinger and Emmerich Müller.
They were the perpetrators while the 60-year-old widow Adele PASCH, her 30-year-old daughter Grete and her 31-year-old son Hans were robbed and driven away.
They did have the opportunity to say goodbye in Vienna to their relatives, siblings, aunts and uncles there – but it was a farewell destined to have no reunion.
Their escape was successful. In England, their first home, Hans PASCH married Hilda, a Jewish woman originally from from Innsbruck, when they were reunited in England after their separation in Salzburg.
After a failed marriage with a Jew from Innsbruck, Grete PASCH never remarried.
There was war going on when the refugees crossed the Atlantic on the S.S. Cameronia and they landed in New York on July 29, 1940. After the end of the war and the victory over the Nazi regime, Adele, Grete, Hans and Hilda PASCH became US citizens.
The survivors then learned about the violent deaths of their relatives who had remained in Vienna. It became clear that Adele PASCH was the only Shoah survivor of the Pollak siblings3 and that a brother of her husband Friedrich 4 was also able to survive the years of terror.
In 1948 the ownership of the Linz property at 54-56 Landstraße was returned to Adele, Grete and Hans PASCH, but there was no restitution for their stolen assets in Salzburg and elsewhere.
In 1956 Adele PASCH died at age 77 in New York (Westchester Hills Cemetery), her daughter Grete died in New York at age 60 in 1968 (Ferncliff Cemetery) and her son Hans died in Englewood, Colorado at age 89 in 2003.
Strangely, in an interview with Hans PASCH, published in Salzburg in 1998, the Shoah victims on his father’s and mother’s side remained unnamed – obscured traces of memory in the family memory.
1 Friedrich PASCH was born on March 4, 1872 in Skrysov, (in the Pribram District of Bohemia [now the Czech Republic]). He was one of several children of Henriette Kompert Pasch and Jakob Pasch, buried in the Jewish cemetery of Selcan (Seltschan), Bohemia/Czech Republic.
2 See the entry for Grete DE FRANCESO (Weissenstein), Sanatorium Hromada, Salzburg, 11 Franz-Josef-Straße.
3 Siblings of Adele PASCH: Ida Tandler (Widow), Oskar and Emil Pollak and their wives were Shoah victims (see the DÖW-Online-Databank).
4 Friedrich PASCHs brother Karl, born in Selcan on October 11, 1878, survived the Shoah and died in the Bronx, New York, in 1948.
Sources
- Israelitische Kultusgemeinden (the official Jewish Communities) of Linz and Salzburg (the birth and death records of the Salzburg community were destroyed by the Nazis)
- Salzburg City archives: Business records, local register, police registration fies and Krieger photo collection
- Schuhhaus Pasch advertisement (Salzburger Volksblatt April 30, 1912, p. 22; Salzburger Wacht May 21, 1912, p. 8)
- Geduldet, geschmäht und vertrieben. Salzburger Juden erzählen, Daniela Ellmauer, Helga Embacher and Albert Lichtblau, Salzburg 1998, pp. 169-202
- Albert Lichtblau: »Arisierungen«, beschlagnahmte Vermögen, Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen in Salzburg, Wien-München 2004, p. 36ff.
- Verena Wagner, Jüdisches Leben in Linz. Wagner Verlag, 2008
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid at Salzburg, Paris-Lodron-Straße 2
