The evening of the rally in the Heldenplatz, David went to see his father. His parents were surprised to see him, but when he had drunk a cup of coffee with his mother, he said that he needed a word with his father, if she would excuse them.
Marta Bernstein, who was quite used to the men retiring to Friedrich’s study for a brandy, agreed readily enough and returned to her embroidery.
“Well, David? What’s this all about?” Friedrich dropped into his favourite chair in front of the fire. His study was his refuge, the place where he was never allowed to be disturbed by the rest of the household, and the fire was always made up and the room warm.
David poured them each a generous brandy and carried one of the glasses over to his father. Taking the other to a chair across the fire from him, he raised his glass, looking at the flames through the amber spirit.
“I’ll tell you what it’s about,” he said. “After what has happened today…”
“What has happened today?”
“This welcoming rally for Hitler in the Heldenplatz… I think we should seriously consider leaving.”
“Leaving?” Friedrich looked up in surprise. “Leaving Vienna?”
“Not leaving Vienna,” David said patiently. “I mean leaving Austria. You said yourself that it was a good thing Berta wasn’t here, that she was safely in England. Perhaps we should be getting the other children out, too.” He took a sip of his brandy, and then went on, “Ruth came to see me earlier this evening.”
“Ruth? And what has she to say to anything?”
“She was in the Heldenplatz this morning and…”
“More fool her!”
“Father, will you listen, please! I know you don’t think much of Edith’s family, but over the last few weeks I’ve grown to have a great deal of respect for Ruth.”
He thought again of the conversation he had had with his sister-in-law earlier in the evening. She had arrived at the house, and asked Anna if David was in. He had said he would call Edith, but Ruth had stopped him.
“No, David, don’t call Edith yet. It’s you I need to talk to.”
“I see. Well, I suppose you’d better come into my study then.” He had led her into the comfortable room off the hall where he, like his father, found refuge from his family. Despite the fact that spring was definitely in the air, there was a fire burning brightly in the grate, and Ruth went eagerly to warm her hands.
David closed the door behind them. She’s going to ask me for another loan, he thought sourly. He gave her a tight smile and said, “Well now, Ruth, what can I do for you?”
“Do for me?” Ruth echoed. “Nothing, David. I’ve not come to ask you for a favour, I’ve come to tell you what I saw today and to warn you…”
“Warn me? Warn me about what?” David waved her to a chair. “You’d better sit down and tell me what this is all about.”
Ruth sat, and still holding her hands out to the warmth of the fire, told him what had happened to her that morning.
“What I’ve come to tell you, David, is that you and Edith and the children should get out while you can. Your parents, too. You’ve got enough money to go anywhere in the world. You should leave Austria while you still can.”
“I see. Well, thank you for that bit of advice, Ruth,” David replied coolly. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Look, David,” Ruth didn’t trouble to hide her irritation at his tone, “I know you aren’t particularly fond of any of Edith’s family, but like it or not we are here. We’ve escaped from the Nazis once, we’ve lived through what they do to Jews. What I saw today terrified me. All Austria was welcoming Hitler, and what the Nazis have been doing in Germany is going to happen here. I tell you this, David, if I could afford to get my family away from Vienna, out of Austria, I would do it. I would do it tomorrow.” She got to her feet then, and walked to the door. “Life is going to change out of all recognition from now. You’re in a position to do something, if you act fast. That’s all I came to say. Good afternoon.”
She had left the room closing the door softly behind her, leaving David staring after her. He heard voices in the hall, Edith greeting Ruth with surprise, not knowing she was in the house, and then there was the sound of the front door closing. David moved to the window and saw Ruth striding off down the street, her coat held closely about her against the chill in the wind. He had to admit she had earned his respect the way she had brought her children out of Germany to the safety of Vienna, and how she had set herself to provide for her family since they had arrived. She had hardly called on his generosity at all, and the loans Edith had made her were all being paid back. Partly that irritated him, women in his circles did not take jobs in a haberdashery, but loath as he was to admit it, even to himself, it impressed him. He wished Edith showed as much spirit sometimes.
He sat down by the fire again and considered what she had told him. He realised things were not going to be easy from now, but as a well-established figure in Viennese society, he didn’t think he or his family were in danger… not in any real sense. And yet… Ruth had been serious about her warning, and she spoke from bitter experience.
“She’s a strong and determined woman,” David said to his father now.
“More than can be said for your wife,” Friedrich snorted.
“Father! For God’s sake let’s not go into all that again. Listen to what I am telling you now. Let’s face it, Father, we’ve seen the way things have been going these last few weeks. We shouldn’t have been surprised by Friday’s announcement. Schuschnigg had been gradually giving in to Nazi demands for the past two months. He was never strong enough to take on Hitler… or our own Nazis, for that matter.” David shook his head. “No, Father, it could well be time to get the children out, and fast.”
“You’d all have to go,” stated his father. “You could hardly send the children somewhere else on their own! Would you leave your home, your work, the rest of your family, just like that?”
“You and Mother could come as well. We’d all go.”
“Just desert Austria, you mean? I never took you for a coward before, David!”
David sighed. “Father, I’m not a coward, I’m simply being realistic. Look at what happened to Ruth and her family. They were turned out of their home more than once, and they finally had to buy their way out of Germany. She’s now living in three rooms in a tenement block, hoping Kurt can escape and find her.”
“She was married to a shopkeeper,” grumbled Friedrich, “a nobody. They aren’t going to do the same to the likes of you, a well-known orthopaedic surgeon.”
“We don’t know that,” David replied. “Yes, Kurt was arrested, so what happens if they arrest me… or you? How would Mother, or Edith manage?”
“Why would they arrest me?” demanded Friedrich.
“Because, Father, you’re a Jew.” David looked across at his father. Sitting upright in his chair, he stared back at David out of deep-set dark eyes, his nose prominent above a mouth hidden by his luxuriant white beard. His hair was combed back from his high forehead, and he wore his koppel on the back of his head. He looked as he had always looked to David, but now viewing him through the eyes of an Austrian, rather than a son, David could see that he was the archetypal Jew, the Jew of the caricatures and cartoons that had been filling the German newspapers for four years or more.
“It’s just something we ought to think about,” David said at last. “We have to try and protect our own. After all it’s quite possible that I won’t have my job at the hospital for very long.”
“Why ever not? They’ll still need doctors.”
“I know, but Jewish doctors in Germany are only allowed to treat Jewish patients now. The same thing could happen here.”
“Well, we don’t have to rush into anything. We’ve plenty of time to think about it,” Friedrich announced, getting to his feet. “Now, I must have my quiet time.”
David stood up, too. “I’ve got to get back,” he said. “But do think about what I’ve said, and we’ll discuss it again soon.” He left his father, already turning to his books, and quietly let himself out of the apartment. He didn’t go in to say goodnight to his mother, she would have quizzed him on the reason for his visit, and he wasn’t ready to discuss the idea with her yet. Friedrich, he knew, would spend the rest of the evening studying his books.
David had long since given up study of the scriptures. He considered himself Austrian first and Jew second, only attending the synagogue near Liechtenstein Park with his family on special occasions, but he had seen what had been going on in Germany, and had heard firsthand from Ruth what was happening to the Jews there. What she had told him today simply reinforced what she had said before. He had no illusions, things were about to change, but how much and in what way he was far less certain, and taking the family out of Austria was a huge decision, not one to be taken lightly.
It was two weeks later that he received a telephone call at the hospital. Edith was on the line, sobbing so hard as she spoke that he couldn’t make out what she was saying. All he could hear were the words “Come home! You must come home, now!”
He went at once, for there was a note of hysteria in her voice that he’d never heard before. When he reached the house he found his mother there, looking extremely pale, her eyes wide with fear. She held a cup and saucer in her hands, but they were shaking so much that the cup rattled against the saucer and the tea slurped over the rim of the cup onto the front of her skirt. She appeared not to notice, simply sat, shaking, as David greeted Edith and asked what on earth was going on.
“It’s the Nazis, they’ve taken your father and…”
“Taken my father? Where? Where have they taken him?”
Edith wrung her hands. “We don’t know! They simply took him away when he started to argue…”
“Argue about what? Edith, for goodness’ sake pull yourself together and tell me exactly what has happened.”
“The Nazis want Oma and Opa’s apartment.” David hadn’t realised that Paul was in the room, but he turned to him now. His son was standing in a corner by the window, watching the street below. His face was pale, but he seemed calm enough.
“All right, Paul. You tell me.”
“There are some top-brass Nazis who’ve arrived in Vienna and need places to live. They’re simply taking them. They’ve found out where rich Jews live and they are just turning them out and moving in. When Opa said they couldn’t have the apartment, they sent some soldiers. The soldiers pushed Oma out into the street and marched Opa away. Maria was still in the apartment, and she came out with Oma’s coat and bag. The soldiers told Maria that she could pack one suitcase for Oma, and then she was to go back into the apartment and get it ready for its new owners.” Paul fell silent as he came to the end of his story.
“What are we going to do?” cried Edith. “What are we going to do?”
“First you’re going take Mother upstairs to her room and make her comfortable. Then ask Cook to make her some nice hot soup.” He looked at his panic-stricken wife. “Come on, Edith, you’ve got to be strong. Dissolving into tears isn’t going to help anyone.” He turned to his son. “You stay here with your mother,” he said, then on a sudden thought asked, “Where’s Naomi?”
“She’s having tea at Hilda’s.”
“Right, well I want her home straightaway.” David went to the door to call Anna, and found her on the point of coming in. “Ah, Anna. I want you to go round to Frau Schweiz’s. Collect Miss Naomi and bring her home at once. If necessary you can say there is an illness in the family, but she must come home at once.”
Anna glanced at the old lady sitting, still shaking in the chair, and gave a half-smile. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” she said, and left the room.
“What about your father?” Edith had slumped into an armchair beside her mother-in-law. She looked up at David now, her eyes huge and staring in the whiteness of her face.
“I’ll try and find out where they’ve taken him and see if I can get him released. I’m sure they’ll let him go again now that they’ve made their point.” David sounded far more assured than he felt. He had no idea how to find his father, or whether they, whoever they were, might release him. All he could do was go first to the police and work from there.
His car and driver, Jacob, were still waiting for him outside and he had himself driven straight to the local police station. Although it wasn’t in the same area as his parents’ apartment, he went there because he knew the local police chief.
“Wait here,” he told Jacob, and went inside in search of Superintendent Müller.
When he asked for the superintendent, the desk officer looked him up and down and said, “Who shall I say wants him?”
“Dr David Bernstein.”
“Wait here.”
The officer disappeared and was gone some time. David waited in the front office. There was nowhere to sit down, so he stood, reading the posters up on the walls. One or two were quite old dealing with reported crime from several months ago; another explained how to register for the plebiscite that had been planned for Monday 13th March, but most of them were new, and mostly related to restrictions for Jews. Jews were not allowed to attend Austrian schools. Jews were to register as Jews on pain of deportation. Jews were not allowed to shop in Austrian shops. Jews were allowed to ride only in certain parts of public transport. David read them all and then read them again. He knew of many of the directives, but had not really understood the number of them, nor the heavy restrictions. Jews no longer had any rights as citizens, because they were no longer citizens.
The desk officer returned to his place, but did not speak to David, simply began writing notes in a ledger.
David approached the desk again. “Is Superintendent Müller there?” he asked.
The man looked up, as if surprised to be addressed while he was working. “He is in his office. He will see you when he has time.”
David felt his temper rising at the young man’s impudence. “I’d like to see him now, please,” he said.
“He will see you when he has time,” repeated the man, and returned to making his notes.
David waited another ten minutes, during which several people came into the police station, and were dealt with swiftly, efficiently and politely by the desk officer.
David looked at the door that led into the inner part of the police station. He knew the way to Superintendent Müller’s office, he had been there several times when he had helped the police with some medical matters. Normally he would have been shown straight upstairs, given coffee, asked what he wanted. Today he faced the blank expression of a young desk officer and a closed door.
He was about to walk through the door and run up the stairs before the young man could stop him, when a bell rang and the desk officer looked up.
“The superintendent will see you now. Follow me.”
“It’s all right,” David said mildly, “I know my way.”
The young man stopped in the doorway, and turned to face him. “We do not allow Jews to wander round the police station,” he said. “Follow me.”
David followed him. They reached the superintendent’s office and the young officer knocked on the door. When called to enter, he stepped inside and said, “The Jew is here to see you, sir.”
“Thank you, Lombay.”
Lombay moved out of the way and allowed David to go through the door, then he stood behind him as if to prevent his escape.
“Thank you, Lombay,” repeated the superintendent. “Go back to your duties on the desk.” Lombay looked disappointed, but he closed the door and David heard his feet on the wooden stairs.
Superintendent Helmut Müller was sitting behind his desk. Once the door was closed he got to his feet, but he didn’t extend his hand to David as he would once have done, and David was immediately aware of a difference in his attitude.
“Herr Doktor,” Müller said, politely enough, “what can I do for you?” He did not offer David a seat, though he sat back down himself, leaving David to stand in front of him, making David feel like a schoolboy called up before the headmaster. He fought to quell a rising anger; he needed this man’s help.
“I’ve come for your help,” he replied. “My father has been arrested, and I don’t know where they’ve taken him.”
“And you think this has something to do with me?”
“No, I’m sure it hasn’t,” responded David quickly, “but I thought you might know where he would have been taken.”
“So, who arrested him?” The superintendent sounded a little more relaxed.
“My mother says it was some soldiers. They came to move my parents out of their apartment so that some German officers could live there, and my father argued with them.”
“That was very stupid of him,” remarked the superintendent.
“Superintendent Müller, my father is an old man. He has lived in that apartment for the last twenty-five years. What would you have done?”
“If I were confronted by the SS and I were a Jew, I’d have left without a fuss, and thanked God that I had not been arrested,” replied the superintendent. “Look, Herr Doktor, we have worked together occasionally over the years and I’ve nothing against you… or most Jews actually, but you are going to have to realise our political masters have changed. I cannot afford to be seen as a friend of Jews. I cannot afford to be seen taking a sympathetic line. I am in as much peril from my own men informing on me to the authorities as you are. The laws of Austria with regard to Jews are now the same as those of Germany.”
“I understand,” David replied quietly, “but I have to find my father and try to get him released.”
Superintendent Müller sighed. “You know the Hotel Metropol in Morzinplatz?”
David nodded, the colour draining from his face. He did indeed know of the Hotel Metropol, who did not after these last few weeks?
“He will probably have been taken there. It’s become the Gestapo headquarters… there are cellars…” His voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you any further, Herr Doktor, except to say, if I were a Jew, I would go nowhere near the place. Heil Hitler!”
“Thank you, Herr Superintendent,” replied David quietly. “Good day,” and he left the room.
Jacob drove slowly along Franz-Josef-Kai until he was within two hundred yards of the Hotel Metropol, when David said abruptly, “Stop here and let me out. Keep driving round and pick me up again here.” He opened the back door of the car as Jacob drew to a halt and was out before his driver could open his own door. David stepped onto the pavement and mingled with the throng going about their business there. He walked towards Morzinplatz where the Hotel Metropol stood in all its elegance and style. Four storeys high, its main entrance dignified with tall columns, its windows tall and wide, it was an imposing building. A beautiful building, once the preserve of the rich and famous, and now, draped with swastika banners, a house of terror. The Nazis had been in Vienna for only three weeks, but already the rumours were circulating about the horrors of what went on within. People disappeared inside, not through the graceful portico at the front, but through a small, back entrance that, it was said, led straight to the cellars where prisoners were kept and tortured.
David stood across the square from the hotel and looked at it in despair. How could he discover if his father was in there? There were SS guards outside the front door, and, even as he watched, a long, black sedan drew up at the front. The two sentries snapped to attention, while the driver of the car leaped out to open the door for his passenger. All three men saluted the man who strode inside, returning their salutes with a casual “Heil Hitler”. David had seen pictures of that man in the papers, and seeing him in the flesh now he shuddered; Heinrich Himmler was an extremely powerful man, and every Jew with any sense of self-preservation was in mortal fear of him. David shrank back into a doorway, and watched as the black car glided away again, disappearing round the back of the hotel. He knew his nerve had failed; he knew he dare not approach the hotel. Keeping his head down, he crossed the street and walked beside the canal until he reached the Salztor Bridge. Standing on the end of the bridge, David looked along Salztorgasse towards the back of the hotel, but although he could see the building, he could not see the infamous door leading to the cellar. Could his father really be in the hands of the Gestapo? How could he find out? Müller’s advice was good advice. No Jew should go within a mile of the Hotel Metropol. If his father was in there, there was nothing he, David, could do, certainly not immediately, certainly not without careful thought.
Shaken and frightened, and ashamed of his fear, David retraced his footsteps along the canal to the corner where Jacob had dropped him, and as his car slid up beside him, he wrenched open the back door and scrambled in.
“Home,” he said.
“There is nothing we can do if he has been taken to the Metropol,” he said to Edith when he reached home again, and armed with a stiff drink told her what he had discovered.
Edith stifled a cry. “What will you tell your mother?” she asked. “What shall we tell the children?”
“We tell the children nothing more than they know already. That he has been arrested, but will be home again soon. As for Mother, we’ll see how she is. Today she was in shock. Tomorrow she’ll be stronger. In the meantime I will consider what, if anything, we can do.”
“Can you really not go into the hotel and ask?” Edith looked at him with wide blue eyes. “He’s your father. They must tell you if he’s there. If it were one of my family…”
David turned away, his shame at his own fear making him harsh. “Your family! When your sister wrote to you and told you she’d been burned out of her home by the Nazis, you didn’t even answer the letter,” he snarled. “Don’t talk to me about family duty.”
It was Paul who found his grandfather. Coming home from school the next day, he saw a crowd gathered on a street corner. They were shouting and jeering, their laughter ringing out across the street. Paul walked over to see what all the fun was, only to stare in horror at what he saw. A group of people were on their knees and armed only with a scrubbing brush and bucket of water, were being made to clean the street. Two SS men stood over them, ready to deal with any trouble. Even as he watched, one of the guards kicked an old man in the ribs shouting at him to scrub harder, and as the old man’s face jerked upward, Paul found himself staring down at his grandfather. The jeering crowd applauded the soldier’s action, with shouts of, “That’s right! Make the dirty Jew clean up properly! Come on, Granddad, get scrubbing. Time you did an honest day’s work!” There were some small children in the crowd; one, high on his father’s shoulders, chanted merrily, “Dirty Jew! Dirty Jew! Dirty Jew!”
Paul stood petrified, his face a mask of horror. His grandfather, looking up, saw him. Paul took a step forward and the old man hurled the scrubbing brush at him, screeching shrilly, “Seen enough, have you? Come for a good laugh? Here to see the Jews getting what’s coming to them?” His shrieks were cut off by another boot in the ribs, and another roar of laughter from the assembled crowd as he crumpled forward on the ground. Paul turned away sickened, his legs like jelly as walked away. Once round the corner and out of sight he began to run, and although the breath was screaming in his lungs, he didn’t stop until he was home. David was already there, and came out of his study to see what was the matter as Paul crashed through the door and collapsed sobbing on the floor.
“Paul? Paul! What on earth…?”
“Opa! It’s Opa!” was all he could say.
Gradually they calmed him down, and he managed to tell them what he’d seen. Opa, scrubbing the streets. Opa on his hands and knees with a scrubbing brush and bucket, the jeering crowd, the little boy chanting… and the soldiers with guns… kicking, kicking Opa in the ribs.
“Where, Paul? Where was this?” asked his father.
Paul still looked dazed but he knew where. He passed that street corner every day on the way to school.
“Antonstrasse,” he said. “By the pharmacy.”
David turned to Edith who, wide-eyed with fear for her son, was sitting beside Paul on the sofa, clutching his hand. “Edith, you must go and see what’s happening,” David said. “Go and find out where they are keeping him?”
“Me!” Edith shrieked. “How can I go? I have to stay here and look after Paul.”
“Paul’s fine,” David said, trying to stay calm himself. “It has to be you, Edith. If I go anyone there will recognise me as a Jew. You look as Aryan as the best of them. No one will notice you in the crowd and maybe you can follow and find out where he’s being held.”
Edith stared at him in horror. “David, I couldn’t,” she stammered. “I really couldn’t.”
“Edith, my father earned himself a kicking so that your son, our Paul, wasn’t recognised as a Jew by the crowd. You have to go.”
“I’ll go back, Papa,” Paul said. He sat on the sofa beside his mother, white-faced, but determined. “I’ll go back and see what’s going on.”
“No!” Edith was on her feet. “I’ll go.” Without another word she walked out of the room and they heard the front door slamming behind her.
Paul stared up at his father. “Will she be all right?” he asked. “You should have gone.”
“No,” replied David, “I would have made things worse, and might have been arrested as well, which would have helped no one. Your mother can pass as just a bystander, just another in the crowd. Now we’ll just have to wait.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Less than ten minutes later Edith was back at the front door, calling David to fetch the car.
“They’ve moved on,” she said, “and they’ve left your father in the gutter. Come on, David. Get the car, we can pick him up.”
Within moments, they were in the car and on their way. They reached the street corner and saw what looked like a heap of old rags at the side of the road. As the car came to a halt, the three of them leaped out and ran to the old man. He was unconscious, his head bleeding, his arm twisted at an alarming angle, but he was breathing, his breath coming in painful rasps.
“Gently,” David said as he ran exploratory hands over his father’s body. “He’s dislocated his shoulder, we must move him very carefully and get him onto the back seat of the car.” Awkwardly the three of them lifted the old man and carried him to the car. He was a dead weight in their arms, and it was difficult to manoeuvre him through the car door, but at last they managed it.
“You’ll have to walk home, Paul,” said his father. “There’s no room for you. Off you go, quickly. We’ll see you at home.” Paul set off at a trot, and, having made the old man as comfortable as they could, David and Edith got back into the car. As they pulled away and turned the car for home, there was a thud on Edith’s door and she spun round to see a woman reaching for another stone to hurl at them, shouting as she did so, “Dirty Jews!” David accelerated away and the second stone fell short.
They got Friedrich upstairs and into bed, and, while he was still unconscious, David managed to ease his father’s shoulder back into its socket. Then he bathed the cut on his head and gave him a thorough examination.
“He’s very bruised,” he told his mother as she waited anxiously by her husband’s bed. “His ribs are probably cracked and will be very painful when he wakes up, but as far as I can tell they aren’t broken. The head wound looks worse than it is. They always bleed a lot.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “He’s lucky. It could have been a lot worse. He needs rest, but it won’t be long before he’s feeling much better.”
“And when he is,” David said to Edith much later when they were alone, “we’ll have to decide what we’re all going to do.”
“What can we do?” Edith said bleakly. “Things are going to get worse.”
“Yes,” agreed David. “The time has come to leave. I spoke to my father about it before. Now we must give it serious consideration.”