Zacharias Murmelstein
- Born on: 17.9.1913
- Birthplace: Lemberg (Lwow),
- Category: Diploma program
- Right of domicile: Drohobycz (Drohobycz),
The English version is based on a translation by artificial intelligence. The authentic version is the German version.
Following his attendance at a Gymnasium and two semesters at the University for World Trade Lemberg/Lwów, Zacharias Murmelstein was enrolled at the University for World Trade in Vienna in the winter semester 1937/38 and summer semester 1938. After the 'Anschluss' of Austria, however, the Jewish student was no longer able to participate in classes or examinations. Already on 18 March 1938, not even a week after the Wehrmacht's invasion, he gave up his apartment at Nußdorferstraße 42/1/2/12 (9th district of Vienna) and returned to Lemberg. His last examination at the University for World Trade was the First (General) Examination, which he took in February 1938.
After the German Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland, he was initially arrested but was soon released because Lemberg had been assigned to the Soviet Union in the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In 1940, he and his mother Debora (née Geyer) were sent by the Soviet authorities to Alma Ata (now Almaty, Kazakhstan). In 1941, the year of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Zacharias enlisted in the Red Army. After the war, he initially returned to Poland but eventually emigrated to Palestine and settled in Israel, where he hebraized his surname to Mor.
Zacharias was the younger brother of the Viennese rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein. He belonged to the Israelite Cultural Community and became a member of the Jewish Council of Vienna after the 'Anschluss' of Austria — that is, the Jewish organization forced by the National Socialists to collaborate in the deportation of the Jewish population to extermination camps. After the deportation to the Theresienstadt/Terezín ghetto, Benjamin Murmelstein initially served as deputy to the Jewish Elder of this concentration camp in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Paul Eppstein. After Eppstein was shot by SS men at the end of September 1944, he became the Jewish Elder of Theresienstadt. In this capacity, Murmelstein also attempted to reconcile cooperation with the henchmen of the Nazi state with efforts to protect as many Jewish women and men as possible from death by extermination. The antisemitism researcher Jonny Moser (10 December 1925 to 23 July 2011) noted about him: "Murmelstein was certainly not a helpful person, but he was also not a collaborator." (Moser 1992, p. 94) The multi-day interview that French director Claude Lanzmann conducted with Benjamin Murmelstein in Rome in 1975 was released in 2013 as the documentary Le dernier des injustes. Some excerpts of the interview are also available through the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive.
The mother of the Murmelstein brothers fell victim to the Holocaust: Debora was murdered in July 1941.
Author: Johannes Koll
Source material
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Universitätsarchiv, Karteikarte und Alte Prüfungsliste.
Meldeauskunft des Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchivs, GZ MA 8 – B-MEW – 297776/2013.
E-Mail von Dr. Wolf Murmelstein (Ladispoli, Italien) an Dr. Johannes Koll vom 8. und 11. Juni 2013.
Jonny Moser: Dr. Benjamin Murmelstein, ein ewig Beschuldigter?, in: Miroslav Kárný/Margita Kárná (Hrsg.): Therensienstadt in der „Endlösung der Judenfrage“, Prag 1992, S. 88-95.
Yad Vashem: The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en [30. August 2013].