Regine Halbrecht, verh. Berman

Born:	03-20-1915
Faculty:	Philosophical School
Category:	Expelled student

Regine HALBRECHT (married BERMAN[N]), born on March 20^th, 1915 in Monastyriska, Galicia/Austro-Hungarian Empire [Monasterzyska/Poland, today: Монастириська/Ukraine] (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), daughter of David Halbrecht (1880–1965, carpenter) and Mina Halbrecht, née Goldberg (1887–1974), lived in Vienna's 20^th district, Stromstrasse 81/24/13, was enrolled finally in the fall term of 1937/38 at the Philosophical School in the 3^rd year of her studies and took courses in History, Romance and German language and literature Studies. In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism she was forced to quit her studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis") was issued on October 15^th, 1938). She married Walter Bermann (1915-2008) on June 7^th, 1938 in the Schiffschul Synagogue in Vienna's 2^nd district and they moved to Graz/Styria, where her husband taught at an elementary school for Jewish children and where they had to experience the November pogrom, in the course of which Walter Bermann was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. Regina Bermann then fled to her parents-in-law in Vienna, as her own parents had managed to emigrate to the USA immediately after the Reich Pogrom Night, together with her youngest brother Max (1921-2002) - they left Hamburg for New York with the SS Germany on November 17^th, 1938, arriving there on November 26^th (since one of the father's brothers had already emigrated to Brooklyn/USA in 1924, the parents had the foresight to obtain entry visas to the USA as early as March 11^th, 1938, the day before the "Anschluss", but the Aryanization of her father's carpentry business and the bureaucratic hurdles of the Nazi regime had delayed their departure until then). When Regina Bergmann's husband was released from Dachau with the condition that he emigrate immediately from the Third Reich, she intensified her efforts to obtain passports, which she finally succeeded in doing on November 24^th, 1938 and December 9^th, 1938. Walter Bermann succeeded in obtaining one of the coveted Palestine student visas to legally enter the British Mandate territory of Palestine [Israel] and to study at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. He was thus able to enter Palestine legally via Cyprus in early 1939 and was enrolled at the Hebrew University on March 15^th, 1939. In June 1939, Regina Bermann was finally able to leave Austria for Palestine, also on a student visa.
For both, however, this was only a transit stop. With an affidavit from a brother-in-law in America, they succeeded in obtaining American entry visas in Jerusalem on July 18^th, 1939, and they started their passage from Trieste, Italy, on November 1^st on the SS Saturnia to the U.S., arriving in New York, NY, on November 17^th, 1939, and joining their parents at 744 Miller Ave. Brooklyn, NY, where her younger brother Max and older sister Lea, her husband Henry Krochmal and their five-year-old daughter Anita were also already living.
In March 1940 their daughter Esther Berman was born there.
With a loan from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, they were able to obtain immigration papers for their parents-in-law and save them from the Holocaust. Her own parents became U.S. citizens in March 1944, Regina Berman and her husband became naturalized U.S. citizens on May 21^st, 1946, and they all lived together at 366 Pennsylvania Ave, Brooklyn, Kings, NY. Regina Berman, née Regine Halbrecht, died on June 10^th, 2008 in Brooklyn, New York, NY/USA.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937–1938; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/VVSt/Gew. 4058 und 4218; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 399; Treva WALSH, She who saves one life: The story of Regina Berman (30. Juli 2020, https://mjhnyc.org/blog/she-who-saves-one-life-the-story-of-regina-berman/); www.genteam.at; www.ancestry.de.

Herbert Posch