Obituary Dr. Helga Feldner-Busztin (1929 – 2024)

Oct 25, 2024 | JMW News

Dear Dr. Feldner-Busztin, Dear Helga,

Since I now know that it can help the living to write letters to the deceased, the obituary for you will now take this form. We did not really know each other, but since you are represented several times in the Jewish Museum Vienna, this seems a viable way to me. In October 2008 you donated 55 postcards to the Jewish Museum Vienna, which had been written by Margarethe Mezei and her children Kurt and Ilse to you and your mother, Hertha Pollak. Your mother met Margarethe Mezei at a Viennese post office, and the two women realized that their husbands were imprisoned at the same camp in Italy. The 200 men were deported from there to Auschwitz and all but two were murdered. One of the survivors was your father, Paul Pollak, who was a doctor. You were a little younger than the two Mezei children, Kurt and Ilse, and became friends with them. In a conversation on the occasion of the donation of the cards to the museum, you said that you had tried out your cooking skills on the Mezeis; you served potato soup.