08/02/06

Holocaust (1938-1939)

The invasion of Austria began in in 1937, about nine months after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. A group of brown-shirted SA (stormtroopers) assassinated president Dollfuss (who had outlawed the nazi party and organized the "Heimatwehr" ) while he was making a speech in the chancellery. Several hours later the German army advanced up the Alps from Bavaria, but Mussolini’s army came from the south over the Brenner Pass and stopped them at Austria’s border. Mussolini knew enough about Hitler’s true intentions to want Austria preserved as a buffer.

In March 1938 Hitler had made a bargain with Mussolini, reinforced his nazi supporters in Austria, mainly in Tyrol, and invaded Austria with little or no opposition. I saw the German tanks roll into Vienna one night from the window’s of father’s darkened "Salvator Apotheke" on the Kärnterstrasse (Vienna’s fifth avenue). In October I would witness the same spectacle in Prague. Within days of this "Anschluss" (annexation) prime minister Kurt von Schuschnigg was imprisoned, never to be seen again, and so were dozens of patriotic legislators and other officials who refused to join the nazi party. Cardinal Innizer, head of the Austrian catholic church, made not even a gesture against the mounting atrocities. And the rest of the World stood by silently. All countries, even neutral Switzerland, turned back refugees to their death.

Father had applied for immigration visas to America. because he saw what was coming, but there were quotas and long waiting lists. Jews were forced to sell all assets under the "Arisierungs" law.

Our two bicycles were stolen, and there was nothing we could do about it. Walter Vogel was told by his father, a civil engineer employed by the government, that seeing me might cost him his job, and other friends also avoided my company just because antisemitism was suddenly fashionable. But contrary to present popular misconception, the vast majority of Austrians were neither nazis nor antisemites.

Father was arrested by the Gestapo but luckily released two days later after he agreed to the forced sale of all his assets. Some relatives and friends were not so lucky. Uncle Victor Goldschmidt refused to relinquish his motor factory and fled to Prague, and uncle Alfred fled to Paris, where he was later arrested. His brother-in-law was murdered in Dachau. Our villa was sold to Beate Much, wife of a minor nazi official and we moved to a cramped apartment on Weimarerstrasse, after sending all of our furniture to a warehouse in Trieste. Father’s Alte Salvator Apotheke Vienna’s largest pharmacy) was sold to a nazi pharmacist, but the pharmaceutical manufacturing facility on the second and third floors was simply stolen. After deducting all legitimate and illegitimate taxes, there remained 21,934 Reichsmarks, which was collected as "Reichsfluchtsteuer" (tax for fleeing the Reich).

Father had made various preparations for a more modest life in America. He had condensed our library and traded our Bösendorfer concert grand for a Schweighofer baby grand. Mother was learning how to make candy and artificial flowers, and I was sent to study commercial art under a leading commercial artist named Slama in downtown Vienna.

Vivid memories of that period, when I was 14 and Eric was 11. A glimpse of sibling relations. Mother brought home a box of bon-bons she had made in her candy class. She offered them first to Eric and left the room. Eric ate a few, and then licked all the remaining ones so I couldn’t eat any. I was so outraged by this display of malice that I remember it to this day. I have forgiven but not forgotten

Every day I had all-day art lessons in Slama’s penthouse studio off the Hohe Markt, a square in downtown Vienna. It was a class of a dozen grown-ups, and we did oils, pastels, water colors, charcoals, portraits, nudes (with father’s permission), posters, animation, caligraphy, etc. We learned about printing technologies, how ancient fresco-al-frescos were made, a very comprehensive course. We had lunch at a nearby sandwich shop run by a Mrs Trzesniewski.. Her open-face sandwiches were famous. In 1999 we were amused to learn that Andrew Demmer, Franzi’s son, had bought the place and added it to his teashop chain, openng Trzesniewski sandwich shops in several suburbs.

In October 1938 father felt that we had to leave now or never, as Hitler had announced his intention to invade Czechoslovakia to liberate all of the Germans in Sudetenland, as he called it. He said that this would satisfy all his territorial claims. Our American immigration visas were still in the indefinite future, and the nazi government did not permit emigration without an immigration visa.. Father had managed to get immigration visas from the Belgian Consul-general in Zagreb, a friend of uncle Alfred. Alfred was Konsul of San Salvador and had diplomatic privileges and connections. Armed with these visas and a couple of suitcases we took a train to Brünn to say farewell to Grandmother, Uncle Bubi and aunt Gitta. Father tried all night to persuade them to depart as well, but they saw no reason to leave all of their possessions. Grandfather had died recently, and Grandmother didn’t believe that they would harm a poor old doctor’s widow, beloved by the whole town. Uncle Bubi thought he was safe being a reserve officer in the Czech cavalry. So we took a train to Prague next morning, planning to continue two days later to Brussels. We checked into a downtown hotel, just in time to see the German tanks roll down the main street.

Next morning father went to Uncle Victor’s apartment to say good bye, but returned shortly with a very sad face. The night before uncle Victor had shot several gestapo agents as they came to arrest him in his attic apartment, and then shot himself. The need to depart had become crucial, but a new obstacle had arisen.

It was impossible to go to Belgium without re-entering Germany, a very risky thing to do with jewish passports, but there was no alternative, no airlines. Father‘s worst fear materialized. We got as far as the Belgian border at Aachen (Aix la Chapelle), where the Belgians stamped our passports "returned for false visas". Evidently theBelgian consul in Zagreb had been decommissioned for issuing visas to immigrants illegally. They put us on a train back to Cologne, virtually penniless and without visas. It is only much later that I appreciated my father’s courage under the predicament. .

We checked into a private guest house (b&b) in Cologne, and next morning father went to find help. He made contact with an organization called HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) which specialized in saving nazi victims. We left all our luggage except for what we could carry in our backpacks. At midnight we were picked up by a guide in a black Chevrolet and taken to a farm house on the Luxembourg border, where a second guide led us bushwhacking up a hill with dire warnings to keep quiet and not to run if detected. We started down the other side of the hill and lay down in the brush, overlooking a gravel road half-way down, perpendicular to our course. It was the Luxembourg border, flanked by several coiled barbed wire fences. In the valley beyond there was a paved road brightly lit by yellow sodium vapor lamps. Freedom.

Our guide explained that we would wait for the next German patrol to walk along the gravel road, and then we would have about half an hour to follow him along a tunnel cut through the barbed wire. We would have to stay close enough to keep him in sight, because he would not call or turn to find anyone who got lost. German soldiers would shoot to kill. It was a matter of life and death. An exciting scene straight out of Karl Mai adventure books.

We watched the road under a hazy moon for what seemed like an eternity, until two German soldiers walked by from right to left, toward a watchtower with a searchlight on top, talking loudly. Our guide turned and whispered: "good! They have been drinking!" While they were still within earshot, we started down a zig-zag path through the barbed wire, across the gravel road, and ended up on the sod-covered roof of a stable built into the hillside. Soon we were in the warm kitchen of a farmhouse, being fed warm milk and fresh brown buttered bread by the farmer and his wife. They spoke french. After a short rest we walked further down the hill to the paved road in the valley, where our guide delivered us to the driver of another black Chevrolet parked in the woods. We detoured through the woods around the Belgian border guard. It was dawn by the time we neared Brussels. We arrived at the apartment of my uncle Robert Goldschmidt, the mining engineer who had a motorcycle with a side car, and the driver produced the suitcases we had abandoned in the hotel in Cologne. Uncle Goldschmidt had recently married a beautiful blond Belgian girl, who fed us all a great breakfast and put us to bed for a much-needed rest. .

Within days father got an appointment as adjunct professor at the University, with a paid position developing advanced hormones and enzymes for a pharmaceutical company owned by a man named Le Couvreur. We found an apartment in the house of a widow named Madame Paulis in the suburb Schaerbeek. She had six cats. Soon I was enrolled at the Athenée Schaerbeek a high school near Brussels airport. Madame Paulis had a light blue air-cooled Renault roadster which hadn’t run for some time, and I earned pocket money by fixing it and doing handy jobs in her house. I bought tools with the money, some of which I still own, including a vernier caliper.

Eric and I joined a swimming pool, and found to our amazement that in Belgium even little boys didn’t go swimming in topless trunks. We were chased back into the locker room the first time we went swimming and wore girl style bathing suits thereafter.

We made excursions including one to Antwerp, where I saw enormous Rubens paintings in the cathedral, including the famous one of Prometheus chained to a rock with an eagle eating his liver. I often visited the "Centennaire", the enormous glass world’s fair building on the grounds of the royal palace, where they had an airplane and glider show.

In November 38, one month after our arrival, Chamberlain had the infamous meeting at which he made a non-aggression pact with Hitler, essentially allowing him to invade the rest of Europe for promising to leave England alone. "Peace in our time" he announced triumphantly as he returned to London brandishing his famous umbrella. Everybody was outraged at this cowardly betrayal. Except of course for the Belgian nazi party called the "Rexists". All other Belgians bore a deep hatred of Germans for the atrocities they had committed in World War One. There was a caretaker at the University who had a stiff knee. The Flemish village where he grew up harbored a spy, and the German army lined up the entire population against the church wall, still riddled with bullet holes, and shot every tenth family, including his. Both his parents died, and he was shot in the knee, perhaps by a well-meaning soldier. He feigned death, to be rescued that night by nuns from a nearby convent. It was not an adventure one is likely to forget.

In August 1939 Stalin and Hitler made a non-aggression pact which galvanized the allied nations into mobilizing, but too late. Hitler invaded Poland and Finland and then turned his troops westward, invading Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and France. Our American immigration visas were issued by the American consulate in Brussels just after the Polish invasion, and we departed for Rotterdam via one of the very last trains, with the Germans on our heels. We came very close to seeing Hitler’s tanks roll into Brussels. We left Europe on the Statendam, second-largest ship of the Holland-America Line. One of my classmates at the Athenée , Paul Peremans, was the son of the captain of the flagship Amsterdam, and his family fled shortly after we did. Paul wrote to me describing how the Germans had strafed the long line of refugees on the highway, killing hundreds. Paul’s family survived, but was unable to leave Europe.

When we departed Rotterdam, the channel had already been mined, and a dozen sailors stood watch on the bow. They spotted several mines and guided the steersman around them. The mines looked like oversize soccer balls with protruding spikes . I remember reading 20,000 leagues under the sea, in French from the ship’s library, and making friends with the crew. I spent much time visiting the engine room, where I saw one of the first gyro-stabilizers. The Statendam was destroyed after her return, when the Germans bombed Rotterdam after the Dutch surrender. It is a war crime I had the satisfaction of avenging. More of that later.

We landed at Staten Island on the fifth of December 1939, and lived with our Brno cousins, the Eisler family in Jackson Heights, an affluent suburb until we moved to an apartment in Elmhurst in early spring.

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