Righteous Among The Nations

Julius Madritsch  


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In Kraków, Madritsch saved the lives of thousands of Jews and also sought to make their lives more bearable. He employed many workers with no professional experience or training. Together with his factory manager Raimund Titsch, he provided humane and comfortable working conditions. Every worker received enough bread each day to enable him to sell part of it and buy other foodstuffs. Jews were allowed to make contact with Poles outside the factory. The factory kitchens fed more than a thousand Jewish workers with food unobtainable elsewhere. Furthermore, Madritsch even set up new workshops including at Płaszów concentration camp (in 1943 after the Kraków Ghetto was liquidated and closed), Bochnia Ghetto (in 1942) and Tarnów Ghetto (in 1942; like Kraków it employed about 800 workers with 300 sewing machines) to help as many Jews as possible. He claimed that he did this due to the "constant begging of the Jewish council [in Kraków]".

Just before the Kraków Ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, Madritsch worked with Oswald Bosko to allow many families, particularly those with children, into his nearby factory; thus saving more Jews from death. He arranged to have the children placed in homes of Poles in the city. Several weeks later he obtained permission from the SS to transfer some of these Jews to his factories at Bochnia and Tarnów. On 25 March 1943, only twelve days after the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto, Madritsch and Titsch transferred as many Jews as they could by train to Bochnia and Tarnów.