Giulia Hine

I fled to Switzerland

Giulia Hine was born on 30 September 1925 in Vienna to Mia Hasterlik-Koritschoner and Julius Koritschoner, a businessman and industrialist. The family lived a typical upper-middleclass existence there until the death of her father in 1928.

According to the Nazi “Nuremberg Laws” Giulia Hine was Jewish. She managed to reach Switzerland in December 1938; today she lives in the USA. Her mother fled to England in 1939 and emigrated to the USA before the war was out. Susanne Wolff, Giulia Hine’s half-sister from her mother’s first marriage to Ernst Weiss, managed to flee to Kenya at the age of 18. Her grandfather Dr. Paul Hasterlik was deported to Theresienstadt, where he died. Her aunt Auguste Hasterlik, who was married to the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966), managed to flee to the USA.

Giulia Hine donated the extensive collection of letters and documents belonging to the Hasterlik family to the Florida State University. They can be viewed online at ww2.fsu.edu/collections/hine-collection.

I fled to Switzerland and was stuck there until 1946 while my mother fled to USA, my sister to Kenya; my father had died in 1928. I had no relatives in Switzerland.

In Switzerland I was taken in by Frau Alice S. In 1941 while going to school I got sick with Poliomyelitis and spent over one year in hospitals. When I could walk again somewhat I had to work as a maid in several small-town families until I could finally join my mother in New York City. A year later I got married and had three children. There was no opportunity to study in a school.

The autobiographical interview with Susanne Wolff, Giulia Hine’s sister, was published in volume 3 of the National Fund’s Series “Lives Remembered. Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism” (Vienna 2013).