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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: He lost his parents to the Nazis. Now their names are engraved in a Viennese memorial he helped build
Description: Kurt Yaakov Tutter was born in Vienna in 1930. Eight years later, Nazi Germany annexed Austria. The Tutters escaped to Belgium, only for the Nazis to follow in 1940. Kurt's parents were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, while he and his five-year-old sister hid in an attic before being smuggled into an orphanage.
Austrians have long considered themselves Adolf Hitler's first victims, and it took the Austrian government 50 years to admit its complicity in rounding up, deporting and killing Austria’s Jews. Kurt Tutter played one small but critical role in that transition.
On Nov. 9, 2021—the anniversary of K...