CHAPTER 7

POLDI 1936

The uneasy political atmosphere in Vienna is a cloud that settles upon us, then lifts once more. Whenever there is a burst of anti-Semitic sentiment in the papers or when a violent upset of government takes place, we sink back into our gloom, but whenever there is a time of quiet, we hope that things have returned to normal and we go about our day-to-day lives without concern. Maybe, we think, the worst is over.

In the end, what are we but Viennese? For me, there is no other way of life and this, I believe, will always be my homeland, so there is no choice but to live every day to the limit and to revel in all that a youthful spirit can attain.

Stella, like Erna, is now married. Walter is quite a lot older than she, but offers a kind of fatherly protection that she craves. His straight black hair is sleeked back and parted neatly on the side. He likes to play the piano when he comes to visit and then to tease me and Willi. We find him a comical sort but soon get used to his antics and accept him as one of the family. Mama sighs with relief as one by one her older daughters are settled away with husbands and new lives of their own. I tell her not to expect me to get married soon. There are so many things yet to do and to see and my life is too full and wonderful to pin myself down to marriage. Young men come to call on me and I have a whirlwind of activities to occupy myself. To be young and carefree in Vienna is a delicious daily delight, and my hunger for its bounty is never satiated. I help Mama in the store, but also choose fabrics for my own use and spend my extra time going to the dressmaker to be fitted for new clothes for all the parties and occasions that fill my head with frothy dreams.

Early in the mornings I walk to work at our store on Klosterneuburger Strasse, peering into shop windows along the way. On sunny days I stroll nonchalantly, waving to the friendly old man at the watch repair shop as he looks up over his spectacles from his work. His door is open to let the fresh breeze in as he sits bent over at his bench. The hat shop window is one of my favourites. I like to stop and take in the latest display, narrow brims with swooping feathers in the fall, bright flowers and trailing ribbons on wide brims in summer.

There is a bakery where the smell of fresh loaves or sugary cakes fills the air and then the barber shop, its white and red swirling pole spinning round and round. Men seated in the black swivelling chairs with foot rests, their faces covered in white shaving cream, make me smile. The butcher shop is always busy. Ladies stand in line to argue about the rising cost of meat and examine each cut with care before it can be weighed, then wrapped in brown paper and white twine. The butcher sees me walk by and shouts a greeting.

Streetcars clatter by and cars honk horns. There is an ice factory where huge blocks of ice are produced and delivered daily by horse-drawn carriages to restaurants and grocery stores and to those homes that have ice boxes. We don’t have one and need to purchase fresh food every other day or so but it is hardly a problem with the abundance that is available. The milkman arrives at our door early each morning in his wagon with old horse that nods its head up and down as if to say hello.

I unlock the door to our store and go in. The display cases are covered in white sheets each night to keep out the dust and have to be uncovered in the morning. I turn on the lights and get myself situated behind the counter to welcome customers as they come in. Our store sells many types of dry goods. Rows of fabric are stacked on shelves, wrapped tightly around bolts; all types of clothing are displayed on mannequins and racks. One day, when I’m working there with Mama, a handsome young salesman comes to the counter with a sample case of gloves and stockings. He’s wearing a fashionably fitted double-breasted suit, starched white shirt, and wide silk tie. He’s bronze-tanned with black wavy hair, beaming with a contagious smile that lights his shining brown eyes. Before long he is telling us about his travels, for he has only recently arrived in Vienna. In fluent German he describes his journey from his native Poland, holding us spellbound with wonderful stories about the places he has been and the sights he has seen. From his suit pocket he takes a slim silver case and offers me one of his cigarettes. When his lighter ignites the narrow cigarette I’m holding delicately between my index and middle finger, I feel very sophisticated and mature, like Claudette Colbert in the movies.

Day after day he returns to talk, and I’m glad to see him when he comes through the door. His name is Leopold, but his nickname is Poldi, which suits him better. He and his older brother, Adolf, who is called Dolu, left Lemberg, a city in Poland, when they were about to be conscripted into the army. As Jews, his family had already experienced the anti-Semitic turbulence of the Cossacks destroying property and lives in vicious purges. I am fascinated to learn that he has experienced the unbelievable stories described by my relatives. His ambition had been to become an engineer but the universities refused entry to Jews. This year, 1936, has been especially cruel to the Jews of Poland and so Poldi’s parents insisted that their sons flee to some safer haven, such as Vienna. I ask him about the circumstances that drove him and Dolu from their home.

“Things were growing more precarious each day. You must understand the nature of the Polish government and the general mood of the population. Pogroms have been common for years. The cardinal of the Polish Catholic Church spoke against us just this past February. He made it clear that conversion to Christianity would be acceptable for us, nothing less.”

“And if you refused?”

“Refused?” Poldi looks at me with amazement. “You have no idea to what extent the violence of hatred can grow. Beatings and murder, of course, but the sheer brutality of it, the boiling madness cannot be explained. No, there was no way to refuse. We had to leave.”

He talks in animated detail, conjuring vivid word pictures, drawing me into his mind and sweeping me along on the journey he has travelled. Having never ventured beyond the Austrian boundaries, I’m enraptured and soon lost in his images and feel that I, too, have seen all the marvels he has experienced.

Poldi has told me that his parents hold faithfully to Orthodox Jewry, observing laws of Kashruth, cooking the traditional foods of the Eastern European Jews, foods that are foreign to us. I sympathize with his stories of persecution and dislocation, but I am adamant that this could never happen here. “In Vienna, Jews and Gentiles share life without conflict. We eat the same foods as other Austrians. It is our differences that brought suffering to our people before but now we are the same as the rest so it would be foolish to worry about persecution where there is no cause. The current waves of anti-Semitism in Vienna are only due to the temporary state of the government. Jews always suffer in unstable times, but we’re sure it will pass as it has before and allow us to return to the normal life we’ve known.” I pause, then add, “I will admit that my mother seems particularly concerned this time.”

Poldi recounts his memories of home, his eyes revealing pangs of nostalgia. He describes his mother preparing the Sabbath dinner by making her own challah bread, kneading the dough and braiding it into shiny loaves to be baked brown in their wood-burning stove. She used to make her special gefilte fish, using a plump whole carp that was stuffed with a mixture of chopped whitefish and carp with her special ingredient, sweet almonds, ground finely and blended into the filling. Candles were lit and blessed in the ancient way, her head covered with a lace shawl, circling her hands three times around the glowing flames. She closed her eyes and whispered the prayer for peace, but at night, when the house was still, she went to bed with a butcher knife tucked safely under her pillow in case the Cossacks attacked while they were asleep.

I tremble when he tells this story and my eyes fill with tears for the pain they all have endured. He must bring his parents to Vienna, I insist, where they will live in peace and freedom. He is already working on this plan and hopes to bring them soon although he is concerned for their well-being. They will be displaced, with no landed status, strangers to a foreign place and new language. I know that Papa used to help Jewish refugees from Poland settle in Vienna. Were he alive today, I know he would have urged me to do all that I could to help Poldi reunite with his family.