Else Feldmann (25 February 1884 – 1942) was an Austrian

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

, playwright,

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

, and victim of the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. She grew up in

Leopoldstadt Leopoldstadt (; bar, Leopoidstod, "Leopold-Town") is the 2nd municipal Districts of Vienna, district of Vienna (german: 2. Bezirk) in Austria. there are 103,233 inhabitants over . It is situated in the heart of the city and, together with Bri ...

as the daughter of poor

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

parents with her six siblings. She attended college, but after her father lost his job she was forced to leave school to work in a factory. In 1908, she became a contributor to the

newspaper '' Arbeiter-Zeitung'' and went on to co-found a socialist writers group, ''Vereinigung sozialistischer Schriftsteller'', with Jewish socialist poet Josef Luitpold Stern, communist author, poet,

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

, and

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music ...

Fritz Brügel, Jewish anarchist and socialist

lyricist A lyricist is a songwriter who writes lyrics (the spoken words), as opposed to a composer, who writes the song's music which may include but not limited to the melody, harmony, arrangement and accompaniment. Royalties A lyricist's incom ...

and poet Theodor Kramer, and early

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

author Rudolf Brunngraber.
Keepers of the Motherland: German Texts by Jewish Women Writers
', Dagmar C.G. Lorenz. 1997. Feldmann was able to develop stories from her articles into novels to reach a wider audience with her socialist message. She began working full-time for the ''Arbeiter-Zeitung'' in 1923 until the newspaper, along with other socialist and communist political activity, was forbidden by the austrofascist Fatherland Front Party in 1934. On June 14, 1942, Feldman was captured by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

and sent to

Sobibór extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As a ...

, where she was murdered.

Books

* '' Lowenzahn: Eine Kindheit'' * '' Liebe ohne Hoffnung'' * '' Der Leib der Mutter'' * '' Martha und Antonia''

References

Austrian women writers Austrian women poets Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust Austrian people who died in Sobibor extermination camp Austrian civilians killed in World War II People from Leopoldstadt 1884 births 1942 deaths 20th-century women writers 20th-century Austrian writers 20th-century Austrian journalists Jewish dramatists and playwrights {{Jewish-hist-stub