Margit Maria Heger (geb. Schwimmer)

Margit Maria Schwimmer was born in Budapest as the legitimate daughter of Ernst Ludwig Schwimmer, a doctor and university professor at the University of Budapest, and his wife Helene (Illona), née Kern. She came from a Jewish family, but her parents had probably already converted to the Catholic faith. Nothing has been preserved about her childhood and youth.

In 1889, she moved to Vienna and married Hans Heger, a Catholic pharmacist from Troppau in Moravia [today: Opava in the Czech Republic], in 1890. Their son Ernst Egon was born in 1895 and their daughter Helene in 1899. Hans Heger is the owner and publisher of the newspaper 'Pharmazeutische Post', Margit Heger takes care of the household.

In 1910, the 15-year-old son Ernst Egon dies and in 1916 the 17-year-old daughter Helene dies. At the time of the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the break-up of the dual monarchy and the expulsion of the House of Habsburg, Margit and Hans Heger were in Vienna. During the interwar period, the Heger couple were not politically active.

On March 12, 1938, Margit and Hans Heger witnessed the demise of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation was adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Margit Heger was considered a 'full Jew'. Only her upright marriage to an 'Aryan' prevented further persecution.

On April 26, 1940, Hans Heger died, leaving Margit Heger without any further protection. Like all Jewish women, she had to adopt the additional name 'Sarah'. On May 26, 1944, she had to vacate the apartment she had lived in for 50 years and move to a Jewish collective apartment at Malzgasse 7 in Vienna's 2nd district. From there, she was deported on June 28, 1944 on transport 48 c to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Margit Heger was liberated by the Red Army in Theresienstadt concentration camp on May 8, 1945 and immediately returned to liberated Vienna. She finds a new apartment in Fichtnergasse in Vienna's 13th district and joins the newly founded Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.

Margit Heger died in Vienna at the age of 77 and was laid to rest in the family grave at Vienna's Central Cemetery.