Alfred Otto Munk: letter to his father Hans Munk, after April 10, 1938. Jewish Museum Hohenems
On the day of the pseudo-democratic referendum on Austria’s “Anschluss” to the German Reich on April 10, 1938, Alfred Otto Munk (1925 – 2002) and his 23-year-old sister managed to escape near Lustenau to Switzerland. Their mother, Rega Brunner, daughter of Lucian Brunner, had organized a smuggler and forged papers and had the children picked up by car in Vienna. She herself had already fled Austria around the days of the “Anschluss” and was staying in Zurich. With two additional helpers, her children reached Swiss soil. The family left Zurich in October and immigrated to the USA where Alfred Otto Munk initially joined the US army. After war end, he studied at Stanford and worked for decades in American oil companies. Alfred Otto Munk’s letter about his escape from Austria was addressed to his father, Hans Munk, who—divorced from Rega Brunner since 1926—had already moved to the USA in 1937 and was residing in California. In his agitation, Alfred Otto Munk apparently forgot to mention that the day of his escape from Austria had also been his 13th birthday.
Alfred Otto Munk, letter to his father, April 1938
German editions of Gerald Reitlinger’s books: The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945, turned into Endlösung. Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939-1945, Berlin 1956) / The SS-Alibi of a Nation, turned into: Die SS. Tragödie einer deutschen Epoche, Munich 1957 / The House built on Sand, the conflicts of German policy in Russia, turned into Ein Haus, auf Sand gebaut. Hitlers Gewaltpolitik in Russland 1941, Hamburg 1962. Jewish Museum Hohenems
Following their enormous social ascent in Trieste, Carlo Brunner and his wife Caroline, née Rosenthal, married their three daughters to three Reitlinger brothers, bankers in Vienna, London, and Paris. Gerald Reitlinger (1900-1978) was born as the youngest son of Albert Reitlinger and Emma Reitlinger, née Brunner, and pursued cultural studies and art. From 1930 until 1931, he participated in an excavation in Iraq and subsequently undertook several research trips to Iran, Turkey, and China. After World War II, Gerald Reitlinger published the first complete overview of the National Socialist mass murder of the European Jews: The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945 appeared in 1953 in London. In 1956 followed The SS. Alibi of a Nation 1922 – 1945. Gerald Reitlinger was an enthusiastic collector of Asian and Islamic ceramics. He bequeathed his large collection, which was damaged by fire shortly before his death, to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford where it now forms the Gerald Reitlinger Gallery.
Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 1953. Questions of Responsibility
