Baruch Sonntag
| Born: |
05-06-1898 |
| Faculty: |
Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: |
Deprivation of academic degree |
Baruch SONNTAG (born on May 6th, 1898 in Seletin/Austro-Hungaria, Bukowina [Romania]), son of Moses and Getti Sonntag, had graduated at the Medical School at the University of Vienna on March 4th, 1929 with the academic degree 'Dr. med.'. and lived in Vienna's 3. district, Hintzerstraße 2 and later bought the house in Vienna's 4. district, Heumühlgasse 14, were he lived in flat Nr. 37. He acquired the Austrian citizenship and with that the right to practice medicine in Vienna.
He was perpetrated for racist reason and was put in jail from March 20 to mid of June 1938 in Vienna, Karajangasse and in the
Wiener Landesgericht für Strafsachen, from mid of June until beginning of August in the Gestapo headquarter in „
Hotel Metropol“.
Beginning of September 1938 he succeeded to flee from Vienna together with his wife
Eugenie Sonntag (nee Fränkel) and their children Ruth and Hans Robert Sonntag. The forced migration brought them via Brussels/Belgium to Brazil, were they settled from beginning of April 1939 in Sao Paolo (on January 22, 1952 he was naturalized and became a citizen of Brazil).
In times of Nazism he was deprived of his academic degree on May 8th, 1941 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig'). With his wife
Eugenie Sonntag (nee Fränkel), who also was deprived of her academic degree.
His wife died in the emigration in Brasilia and he remarried. With his second wife Edith he moved to Portugal in the 1960ies.
It took 62 years since the deprivation - and a very long time since the end of Nazism - until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on April 10th, 2003 posthumously in a solemn ceremony.
Lit.: POSCH/STADLER 2005, information from Mag. Barbara Sauer (Project "Medical Doctors in Austria 1938-1945. Deprivation of Rights, Expulsion, Murder"); Austrian State Archive/Archiv der Republik/06-Finanzen/Hilfsfonds AHF 8373.
Herbert Posch
