Hilde Zaloscer

Zaloscer was born in Tuzla, Bosnia Herzegovina (then Austria-Hungary),[2] the eldest daughter of the affluent Jewish lawyer and state-official Dr. Jacob and his wife Bertha (née Kallach).

Her family settled in Vienna, where she finished her secondary education and studied art history and prehistory at the Vienna University (Ph.D. 1926, her dissertation being "Die frühmittelalterliche Dreistreifenornamentik der Mittelmeerrandgebiete mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Denkmäler am Balkan").

[3] According to an article penned by author Judith Belfkih for the Wiener Zeitung, the Jewish Museum Vienna determined that Zaloscer was one of at least 13 women who undertook "fictitious marriages" to escape Nazi persecution through emigration during World War II:[4] What almost unites them all: the women were silent for a long time about their fictitious marriages and the resulting double lives - to protect the children or the later partners.

The motivation of the women was clear: they fought for survival and deliberately accepted the many risks - from denunciation of extortion and sexual assault - to their safety....

The biographies traced in the exhibition certainly convey the image of extremely self-confident and equally courageous women - by the political activist and writer Hilda Monte, the later doctor Rosl Ebner or the art historian Hilde Zaloscer, who was professionally married to Egyptian exile.Between 1946 and 1968, Zaloscer was a professor of art history at the University of Alexandria where she became a prominent and world-renowned expert on Coptic art.