Image: MK
Serena Abrahams, the granddaughter of the head of the Jewish community in Steyr, Nathan Pollak, recently regained Austrian citizenship. In 1941 her entire family was stripped of her citizenship by the National Socialists.
Abraham’s grandfather Nathan Pollak bought the house at Enge No. 6 in 1918 and opened a clothing store there in 1924. From 1920 until his death in 1933 he was the head of the Jewish community in Steyr. Her grandmother Sidonie Pollak founded the Jewish Women’s Association in Steyr in 1930 and was its first president.
2005 first visit to Steyr
In March 1938, the shop at Enge No. 6 was put under provisional management and Aryanized by Franz and Max Haubeneder in August 1938. Sidonie Pollak died in Los Angeles in 1952. Serena Abrahams’ father Alois Pollak graduated in 1920 from what was then the Steyr State High School, today BRG Michaelerplatz, and studied medicine in Innsbruck. In 1939 he had to flee from the Nazis to the USA. In Los Angeles he was a very popular doctor who died in 1949 at the age of only 47.
In 2005, Serena Abrahams visited Steyr for the first time with her sister Daphne Lera and other relatives. She attended the memorial service at the Jewish cemetery. In 2011 she came to Steyr again and stayed in contact with the Mauthausen Committee Steyr.
When descendants of Austrian victims of National Socialism were granted easier access to Austrian citizenship in 2020, her dearest wish was to regain citizenship. In January 2023, 82 years after her family’s citizenship was revoked, she regained citizenship. “A happy day for me,” she wrote to the Mauthausen Committee, which had helped her get the necessary registration data from her family in Steyr.
Source: Nachrichten
