In the tiny western Austrian border town of Landek, Sidney and I boarded a sleek train painted with the red and white colors of Austria’s flag. We had spent several days hiking and relaxing in Switzerland and looked forward to seeing the scenic Austrian countryside whirl past our window as we rolled the 350 or so miles east to Vienna. I had tensed as I presented my ticket and identification to enter the train, unable to prevent myself from envisioning the documents required for Jews in 1939—not so long ago, really—stamped with a large red “J.” Had we lived here then, Sidney’s passport would have carried that damning mark. Without the crucial papers to prove we were emigrating, we would have been pulled off the train and arrested.
We left the station and history streamed past our window like a silent film, marring my enjoyment of the spectacular Alpine views. Austria was a major power in Western history for over five hundred years, with Vienna reigning as capital of an empire that at its greatest extent reached from Spain to Romania. Now, after its defeat in two world wars, the shrunken nation looks squashed and distorted in the slim corridor between its former allies, Italy and Germany. Modern Austria is smaller than the state of Maine.
For a time our train followed Austria’s border with Bavaria, Germany’s southern state, known as the birthplace of the Nazi Party. Hitler had loved this scenic area where few Jews or immigrants resided. He had completed his venomous Mein Kampf manifesto in Berchtesgaden, just across this border from here.
And as Führer he had built a luxurious mountaintop retreat on the ridgetops above Berchtesgaden. But this Austrian and German countryside had been antisemitic long before Hitler. During the fifteenth century, Jews were burned here. Few Jews lived in rural Austria in the succeeding centuries. As late as the 1930s many locals had never seen a Jew. Some actually believed the medieval superstition that Jews had tails. Others believed they had horns.
Like many Viennese, the Bergers had loved Austria’s mountains. Alfred and Hedwig brought their family to mountain resorts in Austria for holidays and for Martha’s recuperation from childhood pneumonia. Both Hermann and Mathilde returned every year to favorite mountain spa hotels. Ani and Loli hiked and skied in Austria’s mountains. Loli was a mountaineering guide. In the gathering storm of 1930s antisemitism, Jews were excluded from Austrian outdoor clubs, encountering jeers like “Keep our mountains pure! No Jews!” Jews formed their own clubs in response, but Loli’s club discontinued outings when its members were shoved out of mountain huts.
We rode smoothly and almost silently past Salzburg’s quaint pointed steeples. Jews were central in creating the celebrated Salzburg Music Festival, and “Max,” the impresario character in The Sound of Music, was Jewish: the real-life Max Reinhardt had been born to an Austrian Jewish merchant family. A creative genius, Reinhardt was a major force in Berlin and Vienna theater and is credited—along with Richard Strauss and a librettist of Jewish descent—with founding the festival in 1920. After the Anschluss, Reinhardt fled Austria and immigrated to the United States.
Past Salzburg, we stopped at Linz, the Danube port where Hitler’s father had been a customs inspector. As Führer, Hitler was determined to remake this city into a major economic and cultural center. Germany dismantled countless factories in conquered Czechoslovakia and re-assembled them here. That may have included the Czech textile factory connected to Hedwig’s family. Honig, the Jewish-owned textile company where Hermann, Alfred, Arnold, and Willi once worked, was aryanized after the Anschluss. Because the factory was located in the Reich, it wasn’t moved, but the Jewish owners and workers were thrown out. With Hitler obsessed with expanding Linz, inmates of the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp were forced to quarry stone for an extravagant new Führermuseum to hold artwork stolen from enemies, especially Jews and conquered peoples. I was thankful our stop there was brief.
We glided over verdant hills, past towns and villages surrounded by expanses of forests and fields. A scattering of modern buildings blended smoothly into the idyllic traditional countryside, but I remained uneasy.
The insistent clacking of wheels quieted to a soft hum as we eased toward Vienna’s Westbahnhof, West Rail Station. Window boxes displaying red flowers like those we’d noticed across the countryside passed by our window. I had read that Austrians love their traditions, but this level of uniformity—even in their flowers—was remarkable. Americans are accustomed to wild cacophonies of styles, colors, patterns—and ideas. Austrians did not appear to value diversity—something that I thought might help explain their mass embrace of the Nazi movement.
Through a fringe of trees lining the tracks were tantalizing glimpses of Vienna, including the now familiar red and grey tiled roofs we had seen all across the country. The city has a surprisingly low skyline for a major national capital. Few buildings have more than five or six stories, allowing Vienna’s church domes, towers, and spires to rise over the city as if keeping watch.
We jerked to a stop and Sidney and I easily passed from the train through a maze of modern pedestrian tunnels to the Underground, where more tracks and trains awaited. Fifteen minutes later we were climbing a staircase to Mariahilferstrasse, the famous Vienna shopping avenue I had traced many times with my fingertips on maps, locating landmarks of the Bergers’ lives.
We emerged into a thin, brittle afternoon light that illuminated the city but did not warm it. Dazzled, we pulled on light jackets as we looked around.
History surrounded us here. The four- to seven-story thick-walled plaster buildings were mostly very old, with dormer windows opening onto steeply pitched roofs. Eggshell colored designs—gargoyles, women’s profiles, faux balustrades—ornamented upper floors. Shops ranged from pricey to touristy, local to international chains. Signs, old and simple, neon and blinking, hung above the sidewalk. On one building a cutout picture of a referee extended from the first floor to the roof, advertising an American sportswear chain. Churning with mixed feelings, enthralled to be in this famous city, we made our way to our hotel.
A block from the U-Bahn stop, near the intersection of Kirchengasse, Church Street, and Mariahilferstrasse, Mary Our Helper Street, we found the sign for the Continental Hotel-Pension above a single door along the sidewalk. The modest hotel stood a convenient fifteen-minute walk from the Ringstrasse, Vienna’s famous half-circle ring road around the city center—and from Alfred and Hedwig’s Schmalzhofgasse apartment. I stopped a minute to collect myself. Reaching this place had been a long journey. I was eager to begin my work, but nervous about how it would go. What could I learn? Would the eight of us, strangers and family meeting here, work well together? Sidney gave me a reassuring smile and pushed the doorbell.
Following signs that pointed us higher, we ascended a dark spiral stairway where lights popped on as we moved upward. On the second floor, Celia rushed to greet us. She called a cheery welcome to Sidney and threw her arms around me as if I, too, were her family. It had been just six weeks since I’d visited her in New York, but this trip stirred heartfelt emotions for her and, I guessed, for all the Bergers.
The rest of the family had already arrived, she told us and then disappeared to alert them that we’d come. Chatting and laughing, Micha and his wife Chava, Judith and her husband Avraham trailed Celia down the short hallway to meet us. We introduced ourselves, and Judith explained that the elderly Herta Berger—widow of Ernst, who was the younger son of Alfred’s brother Arnold—had arrived the day before but was staying at a different hotel not far from ours. She would meet us the next day.
Sidney and I registered and dropped our bags, and we all set out for dinner a block away at a three-generation family restaurant our hotel manager had recommended. Servus Café, with its large 1950s-era neon sign, sat at the edge of a plaza dominated by the three-hundred-year-old Mariahilferkirche, Mary Our Helper Church, that gave the plaza and both cross streets their names. From the roof some forty feet above us a large statue of Mary with a spiky golden halo over her head, baby Jesus in her arms, and an enigmatic expression gazed down over a statue of Haydn, a clutch of market stands, hordes of passing shoppers, and us. Coming from Oregon, I was not accustomed to seeing history at every turn; in Vienna, the enveloping arms of history and religion were omnipresent.
The Servus Café itself had seen much history, but dark wooden ceiling fans turning slowly overhead were the only remnants of an earlier decor. Pink upholstered booths had a 1950s feel. I reflected that during the Nazi era even Jewish neighbors who had once been regulars here, were not permitted to walk through the café’s doors.
Micha, who spoke fluent German, helped us translate the menu, which featured traditional Viennese cuisine, a mix of influences from across the Empire: wiener schnitzel, Hungarian goulash, Serbian-style pike, Carinthian cheese noodles, roasted pork leg with crackling crust, blood sausage, liver noodle soup, dumplings of many varieties. Hamburgers and apple pie back home seemed provincial by comparison. For dessert, Servus promoted Mohr im hemd (Moor in a Shirt). We learned that these were small individual chocolate bundt cakes with chocolate sauce, and a name that held racist overtones.
The waiter described an Austrian fall specialty, eiswein, a light sweet “ice wine” made from partially frozen grapes. He explained that this seasonal specialty is served from large barrels at autumn festivals around the city. The café also featured sturm, Austria’s pale golden wine made from the fermenting, freshly pressed grape juice of the first harvest and served in thick beer glasses. For the Viennese, he told us, smiling, sturm marks the beginning of the harvest season. Soon we were clinking mugs with a hearty Prost, cheers, like the others around us, and the more serious l’chaim: to life.
Over the next ten days, we would meet regularly for dinner at the Servus Café. We adopted our own favorite foods, served by the same waiter who greeted us and led us to “our table.” The Viennese have a word for one’s own table—stammtisch. I began to understand how easily life in this city could become—as the Viennese say—gemütlich, charming.
In the morning we straggled into the hotel’s breakfast room before gathering in Micha and Chava’s room. Judith and Celia perched side by side on the bed. Micha and Chava pulled chairs up to a small table. Sidney and Avraham leaned against the back wall. Setting my satchel of documents on the floor, I stood by the door, watching as the family settled in. Micha wasted no time. He turned to me and said, “Well, tell us what you propose.”
As the outsider in this family group, I was eager to begin but felt awkward directing their exploration into their family roots. Still, I had done the research and organized this gathering. For the moment, this was my show.
To be certain that everyone had the same information, I reviewed my quest since receiving Alfred’s letter—the archival research that had led me to Celia; our meetings in New York; the emails, phone calls, and conversations that had led me to Peter, the Vienna Room, Celia’s apartment, and now here.
As I spoke I scanned their faces. Each of them already knew most of what I was saying, but they listened intently, nodding, leaning forward as if I were the finest storyteller they’d heard. I knew this was an extraordinary, curious moment for them—that anyone would make a significant effort to discover their family’s hidden story was still somewhat astonishing to them, and now they, too, had become part of the search and the story.
We had a lot of ground to cover, and I needed to propose a framework for our joint effort. I explained the chronology. Whenever I had uncovered information over the past seven months, I told them, I’d added it. I gave each family a copy of the time line, plus the genealogy I had created. They were rapt. I had some experience addressing groups, but never one so intense—or in a small bedroom.
I suggested that we meet each morning to coordinate plans and read the chronology together, a section at a time, filling in voids when possible, identifying discrepancies and mistakes.
“Mistakes?” Micha interrupted.
“It’s a work in progress.” Celia leapt to my defense.
I explained. “For instance, I’ve found different birthdates for Mathilde in family records. And we’ve learned that Hedwig did not go to Theresienstadt, as Judith and Celia once believed. Talking through the information, we can compare different stories we’ve heard, and sort soft information from what can be verified.”
Micha gave a single definitive nod.
I proposed interviewing each family member during the week and invited everyone to join me at my appointments at various archives. I suggested, too, that we go together to places in the timeline, starting that morning with Alfred and Hedwig’s Schmalzhofgasse apartment. “Later, we can go to their second and third apartments, and the site of Alfred’s accident.”
“What do you mean, second and third apartments?” Judith shook her head, puzzled.
Our discussion was revealing important gaps in her knowledge. “Nazi Party members, the Germans, and ordinary Viennese pushed Jews from their apartments after the Anschluss. Germany took control of that process, which continued throughout the Holocaust, compressing Jews into a few areas. Jews had to find new apartments but weren’t allowed to rent. They moved in with other Jews. Your grandparents were evicted twice.”
Judith closed her eyes and shook her head.
I asked for everyone’s hopes for our time in Vienna. Micha smiled, his voice businesslike. “I’m ready to begin.” He began skimming the chronology. Judith said that the family wanted to visit Alfred’s grave and arrange for its repair and care. Celia wanted to attend a concert in the Musikverein, the renowned concert hall where her mother had once performed, and maybe take a day trip on the Danube, as she’d done once with her parents.
Judith stood up. “We’re here to learn about our grandparents. Tell us if we can help.” She excused herself to phone Herta. Chava rummaged in her satchel and pulled out a large envelope. She explained that she had interviewed Ani for me, and brought the DVD of it and a transcript.
I was deeply moved. This family had done everything they could to contribute to this quest. They’d all been extraordinarily generous and were deeply involved, but for me roles were blurring. Were they story sources, associates, or friends? I felt wary that the multiple roles might collide.
Judith returned and sat down. With a puzzled voice, she said, “Herta didn’t answer. Uh… it’s early, but maybe she’s visiting friends.”
I proposed that we begin that morning by reading the chronology, with everyone chiming in with questions and thoughts. Papers rattled. We turned to page 1. The family story began, unfolding with events large and small—births, jobs, marriages, moves, deaths. Everything I had discovered was there, line by line:
“Wait,” Micha called out. “How do you know he had macular degeneration?”
“I told her,” Celia said. “My mother was diagnosed with it, and so was Arnold. It’s often genetic.”
“But we don’t know that’s what he had,” Micha interjected.
The scientist and storyteller debated, and others jumped in with opinions until we all agreed that we would never know what caused Alfred’s increasing blindness, but we could make a logical conjecture. We moved on.
Questions, suggestions, laughter, silence. I took a breath and watched, my anxiety about the trip beginning to ease. The room rang with the voices of the Berger family together again in Vienna. The chronology had provided the structure we needed to move forward, triggering memories and emotions, giving depth to one-dimensional facts that so recently had been only shards and shadows.