Provenance and early years Erna Raus was born in
Vienna, the youngest of her parents' seven recorded children. In terms of the
race-based classifications that became important to governments after
1934, and more particularly, in the context of intensifying state-mandated antisemitism, after
1938, her father was considered "Christian" and her mother was considered "Jewish". Her father died when she was three, leaving her mother to bring the children up as a single working mother. Sources provide very few details of her resistance activity. One act of defiance involved simply giving birth. Two of her four grandparents were classified by the authorities as "Jewish", which meant Erna Raus suddenly found that she was deemed a
"Grade I Mischling", which ruled out any possibility of attending a girls' secondary school Following the
February uprising of 1934 the recently established
Austrofascist government had enforced their new ban on the
Social Democratic Party with determination. This had triggered the emergence of the
Revolutionary Socialists, an antifascist socialist resistance movement, made up of activists from the
crushed former party. Karl Musik had set up what sources identify as a
Revolutionary Socialist cell in
Vienna during this period. Erna and Karl were clearly aware of the personal danger in which their resistance involvement placed them both. Sources insist Erna's involvement in her lover's / fiancé's political activities was not great, but she did attend at least one
Revolutionary Socialist meeting: her presence was reported, presumably by a fellow participant working as a government informant, to the
security services.
Malchow A few weeks later Erna Raus was transferred again, this time to the
satellite camp that had been set up at nearby
Malchow a couple of years earlier in order to provide the adjacent
Munitions Plant with
forced labourers, mostly of foreign provenance. By 1945 more than 5,000 were employed. Early that year Erna Raus became one of them. Erna Raus finally became Erna Musik. The couple's son was born in 1947 and a second daughter in 1957.
Vienna business community Erna Musik joined the
Freie Wirtschaftsverband (small businesses association), newly relaunched and renamed in order to emphasize its break with ten years during which it had effectively been taken over by the National Socialist government. The small businesses sector in Vienna was still heavily male-dominated, but Musik was able to use her membership of the association to build up its women's section. Musik was also a member of the Ravensbrück Camp Association, serving as its chairwoman between 2000 and 2005. With the
Austrian Ministry for Social Affairs Erna Musik served as a member of the Victims' Welfare Commission, representing the interests of
various concentration camp victims' associations.
Death During her final years she was constrained by illness and left her apartment only very rarely. Erna Musik died in
Vienna a few weeks short of what would have been her eighty-eighth birthday. Her body was buried in the
Stammersdorf main cemetery. == Recognition and celebration ==