The Bockenheim Network Rescues Tuschi Müller

Tuschi Müller received an order to appear at the Gestapo after her sister Eva had escaped and did not come to work anymore. Desperately she contacted Margarete Kahl who immediately brought her to her own home. She was housed in the laundry room at Blanchardstrasse 22 and the Kahls considered how to proceed further. Tuschi was very scared so that an escape across the Swiss border was not a possibility. As a result she was given a new curriculum vitae and a relevant passport, issued in the name of Ruth Hoefler. Margarete Kahl would wake Tuschi in the middle of the night and ask her details about her new identity in order to prepare her should an emergency occur. At the very start of her escape she found herself sitting in a train compartment with SS men but she did not show her fear. Unfortunately she did not reach her destination Budapest because the border crossing failed. Dr. Kahl had provided her with a cyanide capsule, which she hid in her hair bun. Under no circumstances did she want to get in the Gestapo’s hands during a control search, but luckily she did not need the poison. Tuschi remained stuck in Vienna. She found a job, of all places, in the “Lion’s Den” by which was meant the copying center of Vienna’s Nazi “Gauleiter”.

Her excellently faked documents and disguise made it difficult for her to prove her Jewish heritage after the war. She contacted her rescuer Dr. Kahl who helped her out with a written confirmation. Tuschi used the first opportunity after the war to emigrate to the USA and headed to friends she knew in Los Angeles. She remained in contact with the Kahls’ sons even after their parents’ deaths. When the sons looked for witnesses to participate in the honoring of their parents as “Righteous amongst the nations” at Yad Vashem, they asked Tuschi Müller to contribute a few words. She responded very late and after much hesitation: “The reason for this? Because I don’t like rummaging around in the past …”

See: Petra Bonavita: Mit falschem Pass und 
Zyankali, Stuttgart 2009, pages 24-27.

[german version]