Julius Madritsch (4 August 1906 – 11 June 1984) was a Viennese Austrian businessman who helped to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust. Biography In the spring of 1940 Madritsch came to Kraków to avoid enlistment in the German Wehrmacht. Being a trained draper, he was appointed trustee of two Jewish confectionery stores, Hogo and Strassberg. Madritsch soon learned that he could make more money by manufacturing textiles. At the end of 1940 Madritsch was able to open a sewing factory in Kraków that employed about 800 Jews and Poles with 300 sewing machines. Similar to Oskar Schindler, Madritsch gained a reputation as a good man who treated his Jewish workers well; he was "wonderful to his Jews". In Kraków, Madritsch saved the lives of thousands of Jews and also sought to make their lives more bearable. He employed many workers with no professional experience or training. Together with his factory manager Raimund Titsch, he provided humane and comfortable working conditions. Every worker received enough bread each day to enable him to sell part of it and buy other foodstuffs. Jews were allowed to make contact with Poles outside the factory. The factory kitchens fed more than a thousand Jewish workers with food unobtainable elsewhere. Furthermore, Madritsch even set up new workshops including at Płaszów concentration camp (in 1943 after the Kraków Ghetto was liquidated and closed), Bochnia Ghetto (in 1942) and Tarnów Ghetto (in 1942; like Kraków it employed about 800 workers with 300 sewing machines) to help as many Jews as possible. He claimed that he did this due to the "constant begging of the Jewish council [in Kraków]". Just before the Kraków Ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, Madritsch worked with Oswald Bosko to allow many families, particularly those with children, into his nearby factory; thus saving more Jews from death. He arranged to have the children placed in homes of Poles in the city. Several weeks later he obtained permission from the SS to transfer some of these Jews to his factories at Bochnia and Tarnów. On 25 March 1943, only twelve days after the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto, Madritsch and Titsch transferred as many Jews as they could by train to Bochnia and Tarnów. Madritsch had to intervene constantly with the SS, the police and the Labor Office to obtain work permits for his Jews. For instance, the Labor Office insisted that