Memorial Stone for Georgy Halpern

On April 3, 2017, journalist Beate Klarsfeld and cultural affairs councillor Andreas Mailath-Pokorny unveiled a memorial stone at Rotenturmstraße 29. Here lived until 1939 Georgy Halpern, who was deported together with six other Jewish Viennese children from the children's home Izieu (France) to Auschwitz.
The children's rescue organization Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) brought Jewish children from all over Europe, whose parents had been deported by the National Socialists, into safety in the east of France at the children's home La Maison d’Izieu. Although the staff tried to keep the children's origins secret, on April 6, 1944, at the order of Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon, all 44 Jewish children and adolescents aged 5 to 17 years as well as seven caregivers were arrested by the Gestapo and soldiers of the Wehrmacht. 42 children and five adults were deported from Lyon via the transit camp Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau and immediately murdered. Miron Zlatin, the head of the children's home, and two teenagers were shot in Reval (now Tallin) in Estonia. Léa Feldblum, a caregiver, was the only survivor.