The original of this article was published by the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. on their website in 1995 and is no longer available.
Magdalena Müllner - A Young Austrian Copes With the History of Her Country
Laa an der Thaya, a small town approximately 35 miles straight north of Vienna and only two miles from the border with the Czech Republic, is the unlikely hometown of a budding young expert on synagogues.
Growing up in this predominantly Catholic town, she once watched, at age sixteen, an Austrian television program called "The Synagogues in Lower Austria." She was startled that a small but thriving Jewish community once existed in her town.
"I asked my mother and grandmother about a synagogue or a Jewish community that had once been a part of Laa," commented Magdalena to the Bethesda Gazette. "At least 50 per cent of the population of Laa -a town of nearly 4,500 people - don't know that a Jewish community ever existed." How Ms. Müllner got to talk to the Bethesda Gazette is quite a story.
Now a nineteen-yearold student at the Vienna University Law School, Ms. Müllner three years ago fully immersed herself in the research of Jewish life in Laa before the Holocaust. She managed to find 14 families, now living all over the world, which had lived in Laa. "I didn't want those people to die a second death by being forgotten," explains Müllner.
Felix Yokel, of Bethesda, grew up in Laa and lived there until the Anschluß. He even went to the same school as Müllner did decades later. He received a letter from her in 1993.
"I was touched by her sincere attempt to document our history," said Mr. Yokel who did not return until 1989. "It is remarkable how much she has accomplished at such a young age."
Ms. Müllner was recently invited by the Yokel family in Bethesda. During her stay, she was asked to speak about her research at the Holocaust Museum. She also has become quite a globetrotter. Before Bethesda, there had been trips to California and Israel.
