Marko Feingold survived four Nazi concentration camps: Auschwitz, Neuengamme, Dachau, and Buchenwald. After liberation in 1945 he ended up in Salzburg by accident, when Soviet forces blocked the convoy heading home to Vienna. He stayed for the rest of his life, dying in the city on 19 September 2019, aged 106. The Marko Feingold Steg, a pedestrian bridge over the Salzach River, was renamed in his honour after his death.
The Story
Feingold grew up in Vienna's Leopoldstadt, the Jewish district. After the Anschluss in 1938 he was arrested and, through a series of escapes, forged papers, and failed routes, ended up in Auschwitz in April 1941 as prisoner number 11,996. He was transferred to Neuengamme, then Dachau, then Buchenwald, where American troops liberated the camp in April 1945. His brother Ernst did not survive.
He arrived in Salzburg not by choice but because Soviet troops blocked the return route to Vienna. The American escort rerouted the survivors to the American-controlled zone. Feingold opened a clothing shop on Getreidegasse, helped set up networks to move tens of thousands of displaced Jewish persons toward Palestine through the Bricha organisation, and became president of Salzburg's Jewish community, a role he held for decades.
What made him irreplaceable was not the title but the willingness to speak. He gave interviews, visited schools, appeared in documentaries, and continued talking publicly until he was past one hundred years old. When Austrian society was reluctant to confront what had happened, Feingold kept the record present and personal.
The bridge renaming was a gesture the city got right: public and permanent. He died in Salzburg in September 2019; the Makartsteg formally became the Marko-Feingold-Steg in 2021. The Marko Feingold Steg crosses the Salzach River and carries his story across the water every day.
