Irene Donath hid Jews in The Hague hotel, book recounts

A book presented at a former synagogue in Kobersdorf recounts how local Jewish woman Irene Donath and her partner hid Jews in a hotel basement in The Hague during the Nazi era. ORF reported that the pair saved numerous people.

Donath and Josef Thum, who later became her husband, sheltered people in the basement of the Des Indes hotel, described as the so-called “Wehrmacht hotel”. The book, whose title translates as “The day the devil came to Des Indes”, is based on research by journalist Casper Postmaa into the history of the hotel.

Postmaa said he was surprised by the scale of the story. He began researching it ten years ago and made significant discoveries only recently, after he was allowed to search the National Archives.

Donath was the daughter of Kobersdorf’s former municipal doctor and moved to the Netherlands around 1928. Three years after the war ended, she learned that her missing only son had been murdered in a concentration camp. She later died by suicide.

Alfred Lang of the Burgenland Research Society said stories like Donath’s were not found in major standard works on Austrian history or Nazism, highlighting the value of local research. The book has so far been published only in Dutch, and the society is working to have it translated into German.