Christa Beran, originally Christa Denner (1922–1992), was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n Christian who was awarded the title “

Righteous Among The Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to s ...

” for helping a Jewish woman ( Edith Hahn) survive the Holocaust.

Life

Beran was born Christa Denner in

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

in 1922. In June 1942, Denner's Jewish neighbour Edith Hahn Beer was ordered to report to 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 or ...

. Knowing that Hahn was likely to be deported to a

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

, Denner and some friends sheltered her in different hiding places. As time progressed, however, the group found it increasingly difficult to provide food for Hahn, and a plan was devised for helping her escape from Vienna: in July 1942, Denner gave her own identity papers and food ration cards to Hahn, later reporting the documents lost to police. Hahn travelled to Germany under the name Christa Denner, eventually married a German, and managed to survive under her assumed identity until after the war ended. Beran (née Denner) was recognized as one of the "Righteous Among The Nations" in 1985, and her name was added to a wall of honour in commemoration of her deeds.

Life

References

External links

Further reading