Luci Pollreis

Luci Pollreis was an Austrian Righteous among the Nations.^[1]

The young Viennese woman hid two Jewish women and a Jew in her apartment in Vienna, on her farm and in a country house in Ramsau near Hainfeld three years from 1942.

It was the couple, Max and Johanna Arnold and the sister of Max, Leopoldine Stern. Max has been ordered by the Gestapo, to move from Pressbaum, where he lived, to Vienna. He had been commissioned to register at the Jewish community. As he desisted, he was arrested on suspicion of Rassenschande and taken to the regional court II, where he remained imprisoned for six weeks. After his release he went underground as a submarine. He met his future wife Johanna. She asked an acquaintance to help him and his sister Johanna Leopoldine.

One day this friend turned to Luci Pollreis, who lived alone since her husband was drafted into the Wehrmacht. Would she be ready to accept and hide three Jews, who are threatened to be arrested by the Gestapo? Luci Pollreis immediately gave a positive response.

Luci was a dressmaker, and Max, who was working in the same branch, helped her at work. Again and again members of the Gestapo appeared and were searching for the missing Jews. In the night she often took the three from her home to the factory, her country house or to friends. Max, Johanna Arnold and Leopoldine Stern survived the war thanks to Luci Pollreis.

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