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Titus Lantos

Tobias Portschy
transcription:
Tobias Portschy, who ran the Hotel Rose in Rechnitz. That was the deputy district manager. And Tobias Portschy comes from Unterschützen. Oberschützen and Unterschützen were German centers. For example, when Hitler invaded, they built a memorial on the hill with a huge golden eagle, which of course was then smashed, but the monument still stands in a kind of Valhalla. Everything around is multilingual. Oberwart is Hungarian. Near Sziget is also Hungarian, then there are Croat villages and the only Germans are the Oberschutz. These were German farmers and also Protestants, later with the monument to Pastor Wimmer, who had the first Bibles smuggled in from Germany. They were very conscious of their Germanness. And Potschy, funnily enough, was the one who was a terrible friend of the Germans in the sense that he had all the Jews and Gypsies removed. He reported to Germany after fourteen days. Burgenland is free of Jews. So, that was his up and down. He picked on my father because of the Hungarian name. He said: “Mr. Lantos, when are you finally going to take a German name?” And my father, as cheeky as he was, said: “After you, Mr. Gauleiter, after you.” (pause) That impressed him that he has been transferred again. The time was like that. And then the portschy is, yes. When the Nazi bigwigs fled from the advancing Russians, the Oberwart district leader also threw a torch into the new town hall in Oberwart.They heated everything up and quickly scorched earth when they vented. And they forced my father to lead the Volkssturm and fight against the Russians. He said: "I'm not stupid, I'm not going to let myself be burned for an idea that I never represented." And then he issued ID cards to the Volkssturm people in the Nazi office in Großpetersdorf, that they are looking for people who have escaped from the Volkssturm. The SS patrolled. They would have destroyed anyone. In no time they were gone and gone. The father saw the Russians approaching with his binoculars and followed us into the woods, where we were already waiting for them to come. They were all old men. And yes. These are stories that I wanted to tell the people of Burgenland, but they don't attach any importance to them. (es ): “You will hear them, we will record them” (es ) And the thing is, childhood memories keep coming back throughout life and then you have the comparisons. If you take Ukraine today, if you take Russia under Putin. When you hear a report on the street in Moscow or somewhere. These are the same answers that everyone would have said during the Hitler era if they were asked what they thought of Adolf. So what? The best of all time, what else can he say. If he says the opposite, he is taken away and he is already in prison. The same things repeat themselves. That doesn't scare me. The only horror is that it repeats itself, that people haven't learned anything from the matter.