Ella Lingens-Reiner, M.D. (18 November 1908 – 30 December 2002) was an Austrian physician and is one of the Righteous Among Nations honored by Yad Vashem. She and her husband Kurt Lingens M.D., with Baron Karl von Motesiczky, harbored multiple Jews in their home during the Second World War. She was sent to Auschwitz by the Gestapo in 1942 and then later was imprisoned at Dachau. She survived the war and became president of the organization of former Auschwitz prisoners, Österreichische Lagergemeinschaft Auschwitz.
Early life
Born on November 18, 1908, in Vienna, Lingens had a doctoral degree in law and studied medicine at the University of Vienna. She married Kurt Lingens, another physician who was active in an anti-fascist organisation, on March 7, 1938. Together they had a son, Peter Michael Lingens, on August 8, 1939. During the Austrian Civil War and the Social Democratic Party falling to the Austro-fascist state, Ella Lingens joined a circle of resistance fighters formed around Otto and Käthe Leichter. She worked in a legal advice centre run by the Social Democratic Party in Vienna, having been a member of their local branch executive.
During the war
Arrest
When the Nazis annexed Austria, Ella became involved in the direct aid of Jews. During the Kristallnacht riots, she hid ten Jews in her room. In 1939, the Lingenses met Baron Karl von Motesiczky, an anti-Nazi who had studied medicine at the University of Vienna. They became close friends and were invited by the Baron to stay at the home he owned in the Hinterbrühl suburb of Vienna. Here Baron Motesiczky hosted many anti-Nazi resistance members and Jews during the Nazi occupation. During several months between 1941 and 1942, the Lingenses hid a young Jewish woman named Erika Felden in their apartment. They acquired cards for Felden from a married couple who were responsible for food-ration cards. When she came down with a gastrointestinal infection, the Lingenses’ housekeeper gave Felden her identity card so she could undergo medical treatment under an assumed name. During this period, the Lingenses aided other Jewish friends, using their apartment as a refuge, storing valuables, and using their connections to help friends escape the Gestapo. In 1942, Alex Weissberg-Cybulski, a Jewish acquaintance who was hiding in Krakow, requested that the Lingenses help him and some friends reach Hungary. The Lingenses asked a connection, Rudolf Klinger, to assist them, and he offered to accompany Weissberg-Cybulski and his friends to the border. Klinger was a Jewish former stage actor who was secretly working as an informer for the Gestapo. He had allowed one person to escape so as the ensure others could be caught with greater certainty. In August 1942, Weissberg-Cybulski sent two Jewish couples to Vienna, the brothers Bernhard and Jakob Goldstein and their wives Helene and Pepi. They came with the papers of Polish agricultural labourers, and stayed in the Lingenses' apartment for a few days. Klinger then brought them to the border, but suddenly turned them in to the Gestapo and reported the Lingenses and Baron Motesiczky. On October 13, 1942, the Lingenses and Baron Motesiczky were arrested. The Gestapo also found out that Felden had lived with them without being registered to the authorities. It also happened that they found a letter from Jewish friends who lived in the United States who were trying to get news about people whom they had left behind. Kurt was assigned to a unit of soldiers sent to the Russian front as a form of punishment. Ella and Baron Motesiczky were found guilty of aiding and abetting Jews and were sent to Auschwitz. The Lingenses' son was left behind in Vienna.