Jakob Josef Apfel

Jakob Josef Apfel is born in Vienna as the illegitimate son of the Jewish railroad official Leopold Josef Apfel and the non-denominational Juliane Novotny. Leopold Apfelt immediately recognizes his son, baptizes him Catholic, the parents convert to the Catholic faith and marry a year later.

After attending compulsory school, Jakob Apfel starts working for the railroad, just like his father. He marries and becomes the father of a child, but is widowed in 1937.

Immediately after the occupation of Austria by the Third Reich, he marries again in May 1938. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation is adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Jakob Apfel is considered a 'Half Jew' or 'Mischling 1st degree'.

On December 31, 1938, Jakob Apfel is forced to retire as a 'Mischling 1st degree' after 34 years of service. He subsequently set up a grocery store.

As a grocer, he embezzled the strictly rationed food and passed some of it on to Jewish fellow citizens and French prisoners of war, both for a fee and free of charge. This did not go unnoticed and Jakob Apfel was arrested on July 22, 1942. On July 30, 1942, he is sentenced by the Special Court in Vienna to 6 years in prison and a fine of 3,000 Reichsmarks for 'crimes under §1 of the War Economy Ordinance, burglary and fraud (forgery of documents) and for violating the price regulations'. He serves his sentence in Garsten prison and is deployed to the entrenchment work in Steyr. On 20 April, shortly before the capitulation of Hitler's Germany and the liberation of Austria, he is released.

After the war, Jakob Apfel works as a merchant again and joins the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich