| Born: | 06-30-1916 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Berta BONDI (married name HAAG), born on June 30th, 1916 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of Siegmund Bondi (major industrialist, 1877–1945) and Ernestine Bondi (née Moslechner, 1886–1944) and niece of Dr. Samuel Bondi (1878–1959), private lecturer ("Privatdozent") at the Medical School of the Univerity of Vienna until 1938, lived in Vienna's 2nd district, Untere Augarten-Strasse 1. She passed her school-leaving examination ("Reifepruefung"/"Matura") at the private grammar school M. M. Luithlen in the summer of 1935 and began studying at the University of Vienna in the fall term of 1935/36 and was last enrolled in the 3rd year of her studies at Philosophical School in the spring term of 1938, attending lectures in psychology, philosophy, ethnology and history.
Under National Socialism, she was forced quit her studies and leave the University of Vienna for racist reasons.
Her cousin Gabriele Bondi (1915–1992), who had studied at the Medical School, was also expelled from the University of Vienna.
Her father's family business (the Jakob Neurath company) was expropriated ("aryanized") in 1938, her father, Siegmund Bondi, was able to emigrate to the Netherlands/Holland, but was later deported to the Westebork transit camp, Drenthe/The Netherlands and later to concentration camp Bergen-Belsen/Germany, where he died of typhus on May 1st, 1945. Her mother was also bdeported to goncentration camp Bergen-Belsen and was murdered there in 1944
Berta Bondi managed to emigrate to Palestine (Israel) in 1938 and became a social worker. She married Paul Haag in 1945 and they had four children. Her husband died in Tel Aviv in 1983.
Of her three siblings, Dr. Hermann Samuel Bondi (1910–1944) died in the Holocaust – he was murdered in the Sobibor concentration camp in 1944 – the other two survived: Dr. Jeanette Judith Benjamin (née Bondi, 1911–1992) in Israel and Felix Isaac (Yitzchok) Bondi (1914–1990) in the USA.
Berta Haag, née Bondi, died in 2008 in Hod Hasharon, Petach Tikva/Israel.
She is commemorated at the University of Vienna in the "Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938" (2009) and at the "Memorial to the History Students and Teachers of the University of Vienna Expelled under National Socialism | When Names Shine" (2022).
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1935–1938; information kindly provided by Alice Bondi, UK, 2010; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 367; KNIEFACZ/POSCH 2017b; POSCH/FUCHS 2022, 75–76.
Herbert Posch
