{"id":471,"date":"2020-08-19T00:31:01","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T22:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austrianresistance.org\/?p=471"},"modified":"2020-08-19T01:10:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T23:10:42","slug":"a-true-friend-of-the-documentation-center-of-austrian-resistance-franz-s-leichter-turns-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.austrianresistance.org\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"A True Friend of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance: Franz S. Leichter turns 90"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
An American with an extraordinarily long-standing\nrelationship with the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance turns 90 on\nAugust 19, 2020: Franz S. Leichter, the younger son of K\u00e4the Leichter\n(1895\u20141942), outstanding Austrian economist, women\u2019s rights activist, and\nresistance-fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the short civil war of February 1934, K\u00e4the Leichter\nand her husband, the social-democratic journalist Otto Leichter, fled to Zurich\ntogether with their two sons, Heinz and Franz, where they remained for several\nmonths. After the \u201cAnschluss\u201d of March 1938 the Nazis tried to arrest Otto\nLeichter, but he managed to escape to Czechoslovakia under a false passport.\nK\u00e4the Leichter and her two sons applied for legal emigration. However, she was\narrested by the Gestapo on May 30, 1938. Friends of the family looked after her\nchildren. Otto Leichter, who meanwhile had fled to Paris, made every effort to\nrescue his sons. A maid and good friend of the family accepted the risk of\ntraveling abroad with Franz, posing as Franz\u2019s mother. Franz\u2019s brother Heinz was able to leave the\ncountry with legal emigration papers. After the beginning of World War II, the\nFrench authorities arrested Otto Leichter as an \u201cenemy alien.\u201d The kids had to\nstay in homes for children\u2014Franz in the south, Heinz near Paris. After three\nmonths their father was released and he and the boys were reunited, albeit\nwithout their mother\u00ad, who was deported to Ravensbr\u00fcck, the Nazi concentration\ncamp for women, in January 1940. When the German Wehrmacht overran France in\nMay 1940, they fled Paris together with hundreds of thousands of French nationals\nand refugees from Germany and Austria. After some weeks in Montauban, they left\nFrance with a forged exit certificate, traveled across Spain to Lisbon, and took\na Greek steamer to the United States. In late September the ship landed in\nHoboken, NJ. Muriel Gardiner, one of the greatest rescuers of Austrian refugees\nin the US, helped the two sons gain admission to a boarding school in\nConnecticut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May 1942, Franz and Heinz learned about the death of\ntheir mother. The Gestapo had issued a notification that she had died because\nof circulatory disturbance in Ravensbr\u00fcck; actually, she had been gassed in the\neuthanasia killing center of Bernburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 1945<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Otto Leichter tried to return home to Vienna, but after two\nyears he moved back to the US, where he died in 1973. Heinz (Henry) and Franz\nbecame attorneys-at-law. In the 1960s Franz entered politics and joined the\nDemocratic Party. When, after six years in the Assembly and 24 years in the\nSenate, he withdrew from the New York State legislature in 1998, the \u201cTimes\u201d characterized\nhim \u201cas something of a maverick in Albany\u2014one who would as willingly attack\nDemocratic governors as he would Republican ones. A loud critic of state tax\nsubsidies to businesses, Mr. Leichter has also railed against the state\u2019s\ncampaign finance laws, which he considers lax. As a liberal Democrat in a\nRepublican-controlled Senate, Mr. Leichter said he viewed his job as \u2018raising\nissues and making noise.\u2019\u201d (New York Times, April 21, 1998)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whenever Franz travels to Vienna, he visits the family grave\nat the Zentralfriedhof. An urn next to the tombstone contains soil from\nRavensbr\u00fcck. For several months a leaflet has hung from that urn, bearing a\npoem written by K\u00e4the Leichter in the concentration camp in late 1941 or early\n1942. In the first lines of this poem she is talking about her troubled sleep\nand a dream about her two sons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was with my children. Covered both and told them: \u201cMum comes soon, be good and don\u2019t cry\u201d. We sat still, my husband and I, for not waking the children. Suddenly I started up from my sleep, saw the moonlight on the iron bedstead, Me lying there, among so many and yet so lonely and cold: Me in Ravensbr\u00fcck, you in Sachsenhausen, in Dachau or Buchenwald…<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
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