The Austrian Embassy marks the Commemorative Year 2018 in Pristina, Kosovo
“Julius Madritsch – Ein Gerechter unter den Völkern”
Documentary, AUT, PL 2018; Director: Piotr Szalsza
Film production: Wiener-Krakauer Kultur-Gesellschaft, 5. Dez. 2018
Julius Madritsch’s path is a very peculiar one. An early supporter of the National-Socialist party, he turned into the pivotal figure in saving several hundred of persecuted people. Together with two fellow Austrians, Raimund Titsch and Oswald Bouska, he employed Jewish workers in his textile factories in occupied Poland during 1940-1944, thus preventing authorities to reach them. In a last ditch effort, after his businesses were closed down, he cooperated with Oskar Schindler in order to keep as many of his Jewish workers as possible in employment. In 1964, he and his colleagues were honoured with the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations bestowed by Israel’s Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre. This documentary, directed by Piotr Szalsza, retells the almost forgotten story of this Righteous Among the Nations.