CHAPTER 17

DEPARTURE 1939

We are prisoners of time. Each anxious day is spent in meaningless routine, eating whatever is at hand, tidying rooms that we will soon leave, peering out the curtained windows at the streets below to see if there is anything sinister happening. We have little patience to do our needlepoint. We have received no newspapers. No friends come to call and now the days of family visits are past. The radio bristles with static and sometimes the broadcast is clear enough for us to understand the hammering words of Hitler’s incitement or the strains of some Viennese waltz but even in that there is no longer pleasure. The “Aryan” Austrians, as the Nazis now call themselves, are outside, still walking about carefree. They salute the Nazi soldiers, and some raise arms casually in patriotic greeting. “Heil Hitler,” they say. Their children, well fed and grinning, are cherished angels to be petted and spoiled while Jewish children huddle out of the sunlight with nothing but hunger and despair.

With anxious anticipation we count the days to the date on our train tickets. Now it is here and the moment is bittersweet. Willi and I watch Mama closing the door of our home for the last time. She hesitates for a minute, wondering whether there is any purpose in locking the door as she usually does. Nothing has sense any more, not even the simple act of closing and locking one’s door. For a person who has lived her life by convention and regulation, she is caught in a fog of disorientation. She seems uncertain about what to do next and remains stopped and immobile. Her eyes are focused on the number fifty-six on the door, the address that has represented safety for all of her married life. This was her home, the place where she gave birth to each of her children, where her husband died, and where, finally, the Nazis violated her sanctuary and stole her life.

I take her gently by the arm as if we were just going out for a stroll. “Come along, Mama, it’s a fine day for a trip,” I say, although the sky is heavy with dark, furling clouds and the damp air is holding back the rain just as we are holding our tears, unwilling to let the first drops fall in fear of the storms that will follow.

A taxi takes us to the train. Driving through the streets of Vienna we stare silently out the windows, each absorbed in our own memories as landmarks and favourite haunts flit by. At the station we walk together, Willi standing on one side, and I on the other, our arms linked to Mama, anchored to her for strength, we to her and she to us.

Our train will take us from Vienna to the port at Trieste where we are to board a ship for the long journey to the Far East. I am hoping to see Poldi at the station, but dreading his reaction when he realizes that his parents are not with us. His and Dolu’s documents are not yet settled so they cannot join us, but they will come to see us off at the ship.

Clasping our precious documents tightly, we await inspection before we are allowed to board. We remain in line, bundled in our woollen coats, frightened, cold, and desolate. Our exhaled breath hangs suspended in the air. This is the only chance we will have to escape with our lives. We have witnessed a plague of death and have been spared.

Others who did not wait for the Nazis to slaughter them chose another route. From those around us, huddled together in the grey mist, we hear the whispered names of friends, neighbours, loved ones who had turned the gas on in their homes to take their own lives, to end the struggle they could no longer endure. They breathed their last as they stood by their windows, hand in hand, watching the temples burn and the streets of Vienna become a furnace of smoke and scorching flame. Some question if those were the wiser.

We wait in line for hours in the wet cold. Steam rises in thick clumps from the trains chugging and lurching into the station, their metallic fumes engulfing us. The uniformed men standing guard treat us with coarse brutality. Bit by bit we have been degraded and dehumanized. This is the systematic destruction of the minds, bodies, and finally the souls of a proud and courageous people. Nazi soldiers shout commands and demand our documents which are stamped, one by one. Every bag is searched to be sure we are not taking anything of value from the country; we must show papers that prove all taxes have been paid in full.

We are treated with revulsion and disrespect, a source of ridicule for the bored soldiers who think nothing of what they are doing to us. These men have the power to decide what we can take with us and what must be left behind. In the end, we are allowed one suitcase each besides the possessions that we shipped ahead and which we hope to see when we reach China. We have nothing but the clothes we can pack in our valises and things we can carry – more clothing, some toiletries, and other necessities but nothing of much value. The rest is confiscated. We are each given three English pounds, the only currency we have, then we’re allowed, at last, to board the train that will take us across the Austro-Italian border and then to Trieste.

As the train pulls away from Vienna and I see the snowy hills of my youth receding behind us, it is too much to bear. The joy of my childhood, the sense of belonging that was always so important to me, has been taken away forever. I will not be able to visit Papa’s grave again. Even this tiny morsel of his memory has been wrenched from me. How dismal the future appears and how suddenly old and tired I feel.

I think of my sisters and their husbands, who have gone ahead. Will we ever see them again, I wonder. And Poldi’s parents, the source of such pain, have been left behind, alone and frightened, taken to a camp where they will be mistreated, of that I am sure. Once again, a wave of sorrow and guilt washes over me.

The train rocks and swerves from side to side as it snakes along the curving tracks that are taking us farther and farther from Vienna. Mama is asleep in her seat, her head slumped on her chest, her handbag resting on her lap.

At the border, military officials demand to see our passports, in which we have been listed as displaced persons. Each little book is stamped with the huge letter “J” for Jew, branding us wherever we will go, ensuring that it will be difficult to blend into another culture. We are marked and vilified, categorized as pariahs.