A Jewish musicologist from Vienna who was murdered in the Holocaust has been remembered with the return of a historic book to a British family who are her surviving relatives.

Vienna’s Music and Arts University (MUK) had found a book dedicated to musicologist Else Bienenfeld in its collection. Bienenfeld was deported in 1942 to the Nazi death camp Maly Trostenets in Belarus, where she died.

In a ceremony last month, the volume Ratschläge für Aufführungen klassischer Symphonien: Band II: Schubert und Schumann (Advice for Performances of Classical Symphonies: Volume II: Schubert and Schumann) was handed to her great-niece Susie Deyong, who was accompanied by her son Nick.

The MUK also unveiled a plaque by the school’s entrance that acknowledges the institution was founded during the Nazi period and adhered to National Socialist ideology. Mrs Deyong told the JC: “It was incredibly emotional. Half the time I was in tears because, of course, it brought back so many memories.”

The Deyongs also attended the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at the site of the former Villa Blauhorn, the house where Mrs Deyong’s grandparents Josef and Gusti Blauhorn and their children Karl, Anni, and Georg moved in 1924.

The Blauhorns were enthusiastic supporters of Viennese arts and culture. After March 1938, the estate in Vienna’s affluent Döbling neighbourhood was Aryanised. Their villa passed into the hands of the Nazis’ Teachers Union, which used it as a training facility.

The Blauhorns fled via Switzerland to Britain. In 1949, the Villa Blauhorn was restored to the family on the condition that the property be sold to the City of Vienna at a knockdown price.
In 1952-53, the city built the Julius-Deutsch-Hof — a council housing complex consisting of 210 flats — on the site.