In Austria, a former refugee bought the asylum home in which he himself lived as an unaccompanied minor refugee. after leaving his native Punjab, India, as a teenager to start a new life in Europe.
After the native Indian Sukhdeep Singh heard about the sale by the Diakonie, he wanted to save the Laura Ganter house in Hirtenberg and its history from property speculators.
The 34-year-old project manager at Siemens bought the house and is now converting it. He doesn’t want someone to buy it who has no connection to the house and its history and its founder, said Singh, who is now married and has three young children.
40 unaccompanied underage refugees have been looked after by the Diakonie in the house founded by the Jewish actor and writer Otto Tausig since 2001,
“I’ll make something nice of this house,” says Singh.
Although most of the 16 apartments are to be rented for profit to pay off the mortgage, at least four apartments are reserved for asylum seekers who are not expected to have fixed rent.
A young mother and her 12-year-old daughter, currently in a government-run asylum center, will be among the first residents.
The founders of the house are Father Karl Helmreich, who has a lifelong right of residence, and the Jewish actor and writer Otto Tausig, who died in 2011 and who, after being forced into exile by the Nazis, devoted the second half of his life to charity.
The house is named after Tausig’s grandmother Laura Gatner, who died in a Nazi concentration camp. Otto Tausig became Singh’s personal godfather and made it possible for him to study engineering for three years.
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