“PREFERABLY ALL TOGETHER . . .”

The heading “Family members” appears above a box on page two of the form. This box is divided into ten lines. Eight of them have been filled in by Hansi’s Aunt Frieda: she lists herself and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Litzi; her older sister, Sophie, and Sophie’s eleven-year-old daughter, Ilse; her twin sister, Rosa, who was Hansi’s mother; and Rosa’s family— namely, Hansi, his father Moritz, and his brother Herbert. Below that is a pre-printed question: “Which of the aforementioned family members are to emigrate now, and which later?” Her immediate family first, wrote Frieda, “but preferably all together.”

This form had been issued in early May 1938 by the Emigration Department of the Welfare Center of the Jewish Community of Vienna. The Austrian Jewish Community, which had represented the interests of local Jews since 1852 and served as an umbrella organization of 440 Jewish associations in Vienna alone, had for the most part been closed within days of the Anschluss. But just two months later they opened again, newly restructured: in addition to promulgating the new Nazi laws, their other main task was referred to as “emigration.” The community had pledged to the Nazi regime that it would persuade 20,000 destitute Jews to “emigrate” the following year. Such people weren’t hard to find. The community distributed two-page “emigration forms” that collected data including their name, occupation, income, and family members, as well as their preferred destination and any relationships with people abroad. Within the first three weeks, 40,000 people came forward. Including Frieda.

It’s unusual to have written the names of eight relatives on the “emigration form,” the Jewish community archivist explains as she zooms in on the scanned gray sheet on her screen. Such a high number is rare. I’m a bit proud of my great-great-aunt Frieda, whom I never met. The many names on the form must mean she was more devoted to her family than most. Right?

My great-grandfather Moritz also filled out the same form; his is dated May 10, 1938. His couldn’t look more different than his sister-in-law’s. The scans show how Frieda’s form had passed through many hands—it’s full of seals, stamps, and annotations, and its edges appear worn. And no fewer than seventeen additional pages are attached. Moritz’s form, on the other hand, is empty except for his own information. Its paper looks smooth, and not a single other page is attached.

Moritz’s handwriting, which I’m seeing here for the first time, is loopy and confident. When asked for “previous occupation and most recent position,” he simply replied “businessman.” To the question “Have you learned a new trade? If so, what?” he replied “house painter.” That’s odd, I think. In a situation like that, wouldn’t you have been expected to outline your skills in detail? Even in listing relatives he seems to have been less solicitous than his sister-in-law, filling in only four people: his wife, his two sons, and a sixteen-year-old niece.

Moritz probably filled out the form less carefully because he guessed his chances of emigrating were low. He declared having nothing to fund his own emigration, which would be a problem since the Nazi regime did its utmost to seize Jews’ assets before they left the country. “Emigration taxes,” “atonement fees,” and payments to the national “Emigration Fund” were due, so you had to provide pricey evidence you’d obtained the necessary permits and paid for steamer tickets, foreign currency exchange, and visas on your own.

In order to qualify for an entry visa to the United States, you also had to have an American citizen willing to file an affidavit guaranteeing they would take care of the refugees. The third major hurdle was a restrictive immigration law that set a quota based on how many people from a particular country were already living in the United States. There were too few places for the refugees trying to flee the territory now under Nazi control: by June 1939, 309,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had applied for 27,000 available spots.

My great-grandfather, it seems, had been more realistic than his sister-in-law—a point often reiterated in Hansi’s notes. His father, he writes, accurately assessed situations, possibilities, and risks, and made wise decisions in accordance with the circumstances. Later on, that’s what saved his son’s life.

The seventeen scanned pages attached to my great-great-aunt Frieda’s form allow me to understand what happened to the family between May 1938 and November 1939: the first page details the Jewish communal organization’s “home check” and describes their living situation in keywords. Shortly after the Anschluss, Frieda’s husband had been arrested because one of his vendors had filed a false complaint against him, presumably hoping to take over his furniture business. “Business liquidated—nothing kept,” it reads. An administrator appointed by the Nazi regime had taken over the operation and dissolved it within a few months. As a result, Frieda and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Litzi, were left to rely on the Jewish community’s welfare program, receiving thirty Reichsmarks a month and meals from the food bank. In August 1938 they could no longer afford their own apartment, or perhaps they were evicted. Frieda moved in with her twin sister, Hansi’s mother, where she shared a room with her daughter. Years before, prior to the birth of Rosa’s sons, the sisters and their husbands had lived together for a while.

“Affidavit obtained from cousin,” wrote the Jewish community representative who checked on their living situation. How had my great-great-aunt Frieda managed that? She knew that her now imprisoned husband had a cousin named Israel Simochowski, who had emigrated to New York shortly after the turn of the century and Americanized his name, going by Irving Simon. No one had had any contact with him since.

I send Frieda’s granddaughter, a psychologist living in the New York suburbs, an email asking how Frieda found her cousin: she’d gotten hold of a New York phone book and looked for her husband’s cousin’s name. “I’d guess she found a lot of entries with that name and wrote them all. Fortunately, one of them was him.” Irving agreed to issue the affidavit. Frieda’s next step was to apply for a visa at the American embassy. Compared to many Austrian Jews, her odds for getting a spot under the quota system were better: her husband had been born in Kiev and his Russian citizenship applied to his family by extension; fewer people were applying under the Russian quota than the Austrian one.

Ilse, Hansi, Litzi, and Fritz circa 1930.

Meanwhile, Frieda and her sisters looked for ways to get their children out of the country. Frieda’s husband was in prison, and in April 1938 Sophie’s husband had taken his own life. Hansi’s parents were the only ones still together. In the wake of the November pogroms, as representatives of the Jewish community in Britain began organizing transportation and accommodation for persecuted children, they signed up all of the family’s five children: Hansi and his brother, Herbert; Sophie’s children, Ilse and Fritz; and Frieda’s daughter, Litzi. There were more applications than available seats, which is why orphans and those whose parents were in custody were given preference. So Litzi, Ilse, and Fritz got a spot, but Hansi and Herbert didn’t. In December 1938, they said their goodbyes at the train station. The others would soon follow, they said.

Even though they had grown up together like siblings, Hansi only mentions his cousins’ escape in passing. Is this a question of indifference, repression, or simple forgetting? All these years later, it’s Ilse, who stayed in London and became an elementary school teacher, and Litzi, who moved to New York, who tell me what it was like to leave Vienna and their family. Ilse had to cut off her long, black braids before departure. Braiding her hair was enough of a production that the twelve-year-old couldn’t do it on her own, and who knew whether she’d find anyone who’d lend a hand in England. I compare the last picture taken before her departure with one taken a few months earlier. She looks years older with the pageboy haircut, I think. Her hand rests on her mother’s shoulder, their heads almost touching.

Litzi, then sixteen, was looking forward to the journey. She’s a little ashamed of that now, she tells me during my visit to her home on Long Island. She was one of the few who had learned English at school and couldn’t wait to put it to use. As she bade her parents goodbye at the station, her father, recently released from prison, cried. Her mother maintained her composure. “We’ll see each other again,” she told her daughter. And Litzi believed her.

In August or September 1939, Litzi’s parents finally got an entry visa for the United States. It was valid only for two people. The rest of the pages attached to Frieda’s form document the bureaucratic gauntlet that now lay before them. They’d have to go through innumerable official channels set up by the Nazi regime for maximum laboriousness, and designed to exact the greatest expense. Anyone wanting to take valuables with them had to pay a 100% surcharge. Securities and insurance couldn’t be executed. Obtaining a tax return—just one of several pieces of proof required to leave the country— meant collecting documents from four different authorities. Then came the “political safety clearance,” “certificate of good conduct” to prove you had no police record, and proof that housing had been secured; you needed a new passport, had to provide a list of all your assets, and then, when you finally had an exit visa in hand, you were given a mere fourteen days to leave the country. Otherwise, you could be deported to a concentration camp. Outside countless offices and embassies, the SS whipped people as they waited in line.

The bureaucracy was vexatious. The family only received a tax-clearance declaration “as a favor,” I read in a letter Litzi’s father wrote to the “esteemed Jewish communal organization,” also attached to Frieda’s form. I wonder if “as a favor” meant in return for a bribe, which was apparently quite common. The tax clearance was only valid for three months. After all that, he found himself without money to pay for their travel, and the steamer tickets would cost 865 Reichsmarks. He had already sent two telegrams to relatives in the United States. But he also knew the local religious community received financial support from British and American Jewish organizations. “Therefore, I see no other option than to turn to my esteemed religious community, and I implore you to help us obtain two steamer tickets,” he writes. “It would really be terribly sad if, with all the necessities already lined up, we were to lose the chance of a lifetime solely because we couldn’t get steamer tickets.”

On November 7, 1939, he received an appointment with the “Emigration Department—Customs Clearance Group” of the Jewish communal organization, I learn from another pre-printed sheet attached to Frieda’s form. The next page is full of handwritten notes and several stamped seals, all dated early November 1939. “2 steamer tickets 865 Reichsmarks ($346).” “Tickets paid for in Amsterdam,” someone noted on November 12, 1939. At the last minute, the money from the United States had come through. Their American cousin, Irving Simon, a butcher by trade, had sold his car for it.

Litzi still has her parents’ tickets. On November 22, 1939, Frieda and her husband boarded a Holland America Line steamer in Rotterdam: 3rd Class, Cabin 553, Bed D, and Cabin 592, Bed B. Its destination was Hoboken, New Jersey.

Twin sisters Frieda and Rosa had spent their entire lives together. They looked alike—same dark, chin-length curls, same slightly starry-eyed gaze, same stocky figure—and had always found it funny when others confused them. They often walked hand in hand on the street. They spent Sundays, vacations, and holidays together. And for the last few months, they had once again shared the same apartment. All that was now over. Frieda left, and Sophie and Rosa stayed in Vienna.

“Preferably all together …” Frieda, full of hope, had naively written on the form just a year and a half earlier. In March 1938, my grandfather’s family had consisted of six adults and five children. As I gather information on their various fates, I wonder what the sisters thought and said when they parted. Did they realize the family had been destroyed? Maybe they didn’t view the situation so hopelessly. Everyone had left promising to look for any and every opportunity to bring the rest of the family along later on. When Ilse spent some time at a Quaker boarding school in southern England, she repeatedly asked if they had room for her two cousins, but the school was already overcrowded. She learned English, although her Austrian accent remained strong, since she was there with so many fellow refugee kids. When war broke out in September 1939, escape to England became impossible. Ilse’s brother, Fritz, went to Sydney, where a Jewish family took him in. They tried to obtain a visa for his mother, but the complex process slowly dragged on. Frieda and her husband went to New York, where they started out living with Irving and his wife as they looked for work. Later, once they could afford their own apartment, they opened a small furniture store in the Bronx and scraped together enough money to bring over their daughter, who had been placed with a host family in Liverpool. Then they tried to get their other relatives out of Vienna. Maybe they would all be together again soon.