Martin Schönhorn

Born:	12-07-1912
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled student

Martin SCHOENHORN, born on December 6^th, 1912 in Berhometh/Bukowina, Austro-Hungaria [Berhomete pe Siret/Romania], died on December 4^th, 2010 in Tel Aviv/Israel. In 1938 his entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') was Salzburg/Austria and he had the Austrian citizenship. He was the only child of Josef (merchant in Salzburg) and Ernestine Schoenhorn (nee Schaerf). He was 5 when the family moved from Vienna to Salzburg. There he attended school and graduated from high school ('Bundesgymnasium Salzburg') in 1931. Because of a severe illness, he decided to study medicine in the age of 16 later on and so he was enrolled at the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1931. He lived in Viennas 9^th district, Gruenentorgasse 14 and was in his fifth year of medical studies when he was forced to leave the University in the spring term 1938 (only one year away fro mhis graduation). He was not able to finish his studies later in his live. On November 10^th, 1938 ("Reichskristallnacht") he was arrested at the railway station ('Westbahnhof') and was deported to the concentration camp Dachau in Bavaria where he was kept in prison until January 21^st, 1939. An aunt, who already lived in Palestine, managed to arrange an immigration permit to Palestine and so he was able to get free from Dachau. Supported and accompanied by Margarethe Greulinger (nee Balog) he could initially fled to Italy by the end February 1939, then emigrated to Palestine on his own, where he arrived on March 2nd, 1939. First he worked in an plantation for oranges, then he joined the British Army in May 1940. During the Second World War he fought in Egypt, Libya, Greece, Cyprus and Palestine before he quit the military service in the British Army in December 1946. He started to work in private laboratories in Tel-Aviv then. His parents, who were able to emigrate to Bolivia/Latin America, survived and joined him in Israel in 1947.
In October 1943 he had married Rivka (nee Braun, deceased in 1994) and in June 1947 his only child, his daughter Irit was born.
In June 1959 he began to work as a toxicologist in the newly established Institute for forensic medicine in Tel-Aviv, and later on became chief of the toxicological laboratory there. He formally retired in 1978 but continued working there as a freelancer and became head of the library at the Institute, before he finally retired in 2005, after an accident in the age of 92. Martin Schönhorn deceased on December 4^th, 2010, in the age of 98 in Tel-Aviv.

Lit.: information from his daughter Irit Schönhorn, 2011, and from Christine Wielander, nee Merker (grandniece of Margarethe Greulinger), 2015.

Herbert Posch