Displaced veterinarians: recovering lost histories

In 2018, historian Lisa Rettl published a book detailing the experiences of Jewish students and graduates of the Veterinary University of Vienna between 1930 and 1947.

While researching, Rettl traced the path of Nachman Nagel, a 1937 graduate who returned to his hometown of Czernowitz, then in Romania. Initial research suggested Nagel may have been murdered in the Holocaust, but three years later, Rettl received correspondence from Nagel’s family in Israel.

The family revealed that Nagel had emigrated to Palestine in 1938 and built a life there with his wife, Gertrude Neufeld. Contact with the families of former students Otto Kohane and Karl Weininger followed, revealing their fates as well. Kohane fled to Palestine as a refugee in 1939, while Weininger survived the Holocaust as a forced laborer and later moved to Israel in 1962.

Rettl discovered the three men had formed a close circle during their time at the university, a strategy to cope with the rising antisemitism within the institution and its faculty, which openly supported National Socialism even when it was outlawed. In 1933, Nazi students physically attacked Jewish students, including Nagel, Kohane, and Moses Singer, in a classroom at the university.

Singer subsequently abandoned his studies, while Nagel and Kohane persevered, though Nagel later told his family how difficult completing his degree had been. In May 2023, the Veterinary University of Vienna invited the families of Nagel, Kohane, and Weininger to Vienna. The visit prompted further research, leading to projects focused on remembering and healing. Nagel went on to become a respected veterinarian in Israel, serving the kibbutzim and enjoying a long career before his death in 2000 at age 88.