Meyer Monchek

Meyer MONCHEK, born on March 30^th, 1909 in Brooklyn, NY/USA (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Brooklyn, NY/USA, Citizenship 1938: USA), son of Pincus (Pinches) Monchek (1879–1955, merchant in New York) und Anna (Hannah Henya) Monchek, née Bronitsky (1878–1939), lived in Vienna's 9^th district, Pelikangasse 14, was enrolled finally in the fall term 1937/38 at the Medical School in the 5^th and last year of his studies (fall term 1937/38 was validated on February 19^th, 1938).

In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis"') was issued on April 4^th, 1938), although he as an American citizen was not subject to the Nazi racial law.

His son Mark Monchek later recalled that the family originally emigrated from Poland and Russia via Ellis Island to New York in 1880 and settled in Brownsville Brooklyn (Bristol Street). Meyer had six siblings, all of whom worked in the wholesale toy business (Shepher Toy), and only Meyer went to college. His attempt to study medicine at New York University to become a doctor failed because of the Jewish quota there. So, despite the great distance, he decided to go to Europe to study medicine and chose the University of Vienna because he was still familiar with his grandparents' Yiddish and had learned German as a foreign language in high school. He studied at the University of Vienna from the fall term of 1933/34, but went back home in the meantime to work in a post office in the USA and earn money. After the Anschluss and the impossibility of continuing to study medicine under National Socialism, he moved to Switzerland, to the likewise German-speaking University of Basel, and completed his studies there with the dissertation "Congenital cerebellar atrophy, probably caused by vascular hypoplasia" (Schahl:Basel 1939).

He returned to the USA after receiving his doctorate in 1939, worked in Brooklyn at Unity Hospital in the outpatient department and practised as a general practitioner. However, he also trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His first wife Barbara Shilo (1923-2015) had fled from Prague to the USA as a Jew in 1938, became a writer and painter. In his second marriage, he married the Viennese-born photographer Lisl Steiner (1927-2023) in 1970. As a Jew, she had to flee from Austria to Argentina in 1938, where she studied art at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes "Fernando Fader" in Buenos Aires, then worked in documentary film and later emigrated to the USA in 1960 and worked as a photographer for Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Life and the Associated Press. In the early 1970s, she and Meyer Monchek moved to Pound Ridge, NY.

Dr. Meyer Monchek died on May 5^th, 1992 in Pound Ridge, NY/USA.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1937–1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 440; Mark MONCHEK,The Legacy of Surviving Disaster, 2022; wikipedia: Lisl Steiner; information by courtesy of Ernst Sehnal, Vienna 06/2023.

Herbert Posch