Hans Ungar

• Born on: 29.8.1916
• Birthplace: Vienna (Wien),
• Category: Diploma program
• Right of domicile: Wien (Wien),

The English version is based on a translation by artificial intelligence. The authentic version is the German version.

Hans Ungar came from a bourgeois family that owned several fashion salons in Vienna and was friends with famous writers like Stefan Zweig and Hermann Bahr. His parents Paul (born on October 19, 1877, in Vienna) and Alice (born on May 27, 1889, in Vienna, maiden name Kranner) married in 1910 at the Vienna City Temple (1st District).

After obtaining his high school diploma, Hans completed training as a reserve officer in the military camp Kaisersteinbruch (Burgenland). He then enrolled at the University for World Trade. Here, he took three semesters of the diploma program between the winter semester 1936/37 and the winter semester 1937/38. He passed the last examination, the First (General) Examination, in February 1938. After the 'Anschluss' of Austria, the Jewish student had to leave the university. There is no record of him receiving a certificate in the preserved documents of the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Thanks to support from former superiors of the Austrian Armed Forces, Ungar managed to emigrate to Latin America. At the end of July 1938, he left the family apartment at Lange Gasse 74/3/10 (8th District of Vienna). He traveled via Hamburg to the Colombian port city of Cartagena, from where he took a paddleboat to Bogotá.

Through emigration, Hans was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. His parents were killed in the Sobibor concentration camp, to where both had been deported from their apartment at Nußdorfer Straße 4/31 (9th District of Vienna) on June 14, 1942. His older brother Fritz Heinz (born on June 30, 1912, in Vienna) had already been taken into "protective custody" by the Vienna police on May 17, 1938, and subsequently transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. From there, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on September 23, 1938, where he was forced to work in various labor detachments; among other duties, he had to serve as a gravedigger. On October 17, 1942, he was "released" from Buchenwald to Auschwitz-Birkenau/Oświęcim, as the camp administration termed the forced transfer to the extermination camp in the General Government. Here, Fritz Heinz Ungar was murdered on February 22, 1943.

Hans initially worked in Colombia for a British banker. Not long after, he met his future wife Elisabeth (called Lilly), who had also escaped persecution through emigration. She came from the Wiener family Bleier, and her closest relatives also fell victim to the Holocaust. The marriage with Lilly resulted in one son and one daughter.

In the cultural history of post-war Colombia, Hans played an important role. In 1946, he initially took over as manager and later as owner of the oldest bookstore in the country: the "Liberia Central," which had been founded in 1926 by the Austrian Pablo Wolf. In the 1950s, he opened an art gallery and was one of the co-founders of the "Universidad de los Andes" in Bogotá. He also worked as a lecturer at this university. Additionally, he moderated a weekly literary program on the radio and published articles in newspapers and magazines on topics such as Karl Kraus, Johann Strauss, or Vienna at the turn of the century. Moreover, he maintained contacts with many other Jews who had fled National Socialism to Latin America at that time. Despite being expelled from his hometown and the deportation of his family members during the Nazi era, he regularly traveled to Vienna after World War II to attend cultural events and maintain contacts with the Austrian cultural world. For his numerous contributions to the cultural development in Colombia and to the promotion of German and Austrian culture in Latin America, he was honored multiple times: in addition to Colombian awards, he received the Silver Honorary Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria (1964) and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art (1979). The Federal Republic of Germany awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit.

Author: Johannes Koll

Source material

Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Universitätsarchiv, Karteikarte und Alte Prüfungsliste.
GenTeam. Die genealogische Datenbank, http://www.genteam.at [31. Mai 2014].
Meldeauskunft des Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchivs, GZ MA 8 – B-MEW – 699909/2013.
Opferdatenbank des Dokumentationsarchivs des österreichischen Widerstands (http://www.doew.at ).
Arolsen Archives, Sign. 12114027, Bildnummer 130501726 (Deportation der Eltern nach Sobibor) und Sign. 01010503 oS, Bildnummern 7323245 bis 7323248 (Inhaftierungen von Bruder Fritz Heinz in den Konzentrationslagern Dachau, Buchenwald und Auschwitz-Birkenau).
Bernhard Brudermann: „Wahrscheinlich ist die Literatur der beste Weg, um dieses einzigartige, widersprüchliche, großartige Land zu verstehen“ (Kolumbien), in: DAVID. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift, H. 65 vom Juni 2005, http://www.david.juden.at/kulturzeitschrift/61-65/65-Ungar.htm [30. August 2013].
Karen Naundorf: Señora Lilly und die Bücher. Geschäftssprache Wienerisch: Ein Besuch in der ältesten Buchhandlung Kolumbiens, in: Jüdische Allgemeine. Wochenzeitung für Politik, Kultur, Religion und jüdisches Leben vom 11. Oktober 2007, http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/4474 [5. November 2016].