4Secondary » A Journey into Darkness
A Journey into Darkness
This is Edith’s story. It is a warning from history that the world is not a safe place when one group of people decides they must murder another merely because they believe they are different and that very difference is a threat to their survival. What is the Holocaust ?
I was born in Vienna in 1924, the only child of parents who were in their forties. My mother, Regina, had been an opera singer in Switzerland, but she gave up her career, as all women were expected to do when she got married to her husband Richard Weiss. My father, who was sub-editor of a newspaper wrote feature articles on the theatre and cinema and it was this shared interest in the arts, I think, that brought them together.
When war broke out in Europe in 1914 my father was called-up to fight for Austria , his place of birth, and that’s how they came to live in Vienna. He came back from the war , physically weakened. But he was also a heavy smoker and this damaged his health still further.
I remember we didn’t have much money. All my parents could afford to rent was a small flat in a block of apartments. A single tap on each landing was the only running water we had for all our cooking, drinking and washing needs.
Despite these shortcomings, I had a happy childhood. While my parents couldn’t afford holidays, we made day trips to the Vienna woods and to the banks of the Danube where we could swim, play and picnic.
My mother wanted to give me a good education and she paid for me to have lessons in French, ballet and the piano. I remember loving school and everyone got on well together. I did not have many friends but they included non-Jewish children too. My favourite secondary school teacher related to us well. She treated us as adults and made us aware of what was happening in the world around us.
Many people were unemployed at the time and a shanty town had sprung up on the outskirts of Vienna and it was these unfortunate people that my teacher tried to help. She even adopted one of these children who had become an orphan. It was for this reason that my favourite teacher turned to the National Socialist Party of Austria. I think she did not mean any harm to come to the Jews and she was perhaps ‘misguided’. To many people at the time, Hitler’s National Socialist Party had done wonders in Germany where unemployment had fallen to an all-time low and I think this is what attracted her to the Nazis.
I don’t remember much anti-Semitism when I was a child. We knew there was a difference but nothing was said openly and my parents weren’t very strictly religious. The only incident I recall was when I caught scarlet fever. It was highly contagious and children were usually sent to an isolation hospital, which is what happened to me. One or two of the other children in the hospital took to calling me a Jew, that I had Jew’s hair, like horse-hair. I was upset, but you just accepted that some children were like that. I just kept my head down and ignored it. After all, if I’d made a fuss, it might have got worse for me.
Austria had begun to drift to the right before Hitler came to power in Germany. The Socialist government had been overthrown by the army and Engelbert Dolfuss had come to power as dictator. I remember hearing the sound of gunshots in the distance and all of the family staying indoors until it felt safe to go out. Dolfuss was a staunch Catholic and the Catholic Church was given more power in the daily life of the country. Girls were expected to dress modestly. Many men and women wore lapel badges showing their allegiance to the Catholic Party. When I was only ten, Dolfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis who didn’t like his independent stand against Germany. But the uprising failed and the Austrian Nazi Party was banned. Despite this Austria remained a deeply conservative society.
But then March 1938 ended everything. The Germany army had invaded and Austria was united with Germany. At school we were told that we could see out the term, but were not to return. The Jewish director of the school was immediately dismissed and replaced by my favourite teacher, a national socialist.
It was not only school that changed. We were banned from taking part in all the normal things of life. We couldn’t use the libraries, swim in the public pools
or walk in the public parks because it was believed that we would ‘pollute’ the non-Jewish races. Friendships with non-Jews came to an abrupt end. I received an unsigned note from a ‘friend’ telling me that she could no longer see me. This hurt me deeply. I thought I knew who it was and many years later when I returned to Vienna, I asked her. She was adamant that she would never have acted so disloyally. But nonetheless, those friendships with non-Jews came to an end. You walked in fear past groups of children in case they jeered and mocked you or worse, attacked you with kicks and punches. It was at this time, a man told me to step off the pavement and I said I did not see why I should. The passer by, with hatred in his eyes, slapped me across the head. I was stunned that a complete stranger should do this to me.
My father was thrown out of work because he was a Jew. This left us with very little money to live on expect for a very small maintenance benefit. Some of our family friends decided that it was time to leave Austria. Some fled to France, Holland and Britain; some to Palestine where Jewish emigrants were seeking to establish a homeland. My parents just couldn’t afford to emigrate so we had to face the rising tide of hatred. I think my mother and father thought the worst might blow over and they could settle down to a normal life again.
But their hopes were to be crushed. Worse was to come. In November, the German attaché in Paris was shot and killed by a young Jewish man outraged at the treatment of his mother and father who had been deported from Germany to the border with Poland. This incident was used by the Nazis as an excuse to attack Jews and their property throughout Germany. Synagogues were attacked and set on fire and allowed to burn on the orders of Heinrich Himmler leader of the S.S. Jews, unlucky enough to be out on the street that night, were beaten up. The next morning, my father ventured out for tobacco. He was surrounded by a mob which, after roughly handling him, began to beat him up. Ironically, he was rescued by a Nazi S. A. man and told to get off the streets as fast as possible. He managed to struggle home, staggering into the flat, bruised and bloodied. I was horrified and immediately busied myself with writing letters to two of my friends, in Paris and New York, describing the terrible events that had taken place. It was at this time, I suffered the first hostile act of Nazi intolerance. As Jews we were meant to step into the road if the pavement was too crowded. I don’t know whether I forgot or was pre-occupied by my own thoughts but I didn’t step aside when a non-Jew was walking toward me. The passer-by, with hatred in his eyes, slapped me across the head. I was stunned that a complete stranger should do this to me.
That evening a posse of vigilantes wearing swastika armbands arrived at our block of flats on the pretext of searching for weapons but in reality wanting to intimidate us and steal our belongings. We turned out the lights as they ransacked a flat opposite. We cowered in silence waiting for the sound of footsteps. When they arrived, they pushed my father aside and forced their way in. Rummaging through the flat, they found little to steal but, to my horror, they discovered the letter I had written. The leader of the group, read the letter and, remarking on ‘how interesting it was’, told me I would have to come with them. I was terrified. My father tried to show them the medals he had won in the war, but they brushed him aside. My mother was distraught. She broke down in tears and begged them to leave me alone. But they insisted I had to go with them. Whether through a guilty conscience or realising that I was no threat to them, one man hung back and, talking quietly to my mother, told her not to worry as I would be released soon afterwards.
I was not quite 14 and was terrified as to what would happen to me. One of the men took me tightly by the arm and marched me down the four flights of stairs where I was pushed amongst a group of about 20 Jewish men who had been rounded up from the other flats. We were then marched to a nearby police building where they began to interview us. I could see some of the men were roughly handled and dreaded the moment they would come to me. When they asked me about the letters, I could only grin in embarrassed silence. I think they took pity on me as a frightened teenage girl and the man who had reassured my mother told me to go home. A different fate befell the men however. They were sent to Dachau concentration camp.
All hope for an improvement in our lives and that of other Jews had now faded and my parents actively began to find a way in which they could get me to safety. They had heard about the ‘Kindertransport’ (Children’s Transports) which had taken hundreds of children to safety in England. My parents decided that they must save me, even if it meant being separated for a while. No one imagined it would be for more than a few months. But by the time they had made up their minds to take action, the system had changed and no child could be considered unless a sponsor in England could be found. The sponsor was required to provide a bond of £50 (about £1000 in today’s money). The sponsors were also required to give an undertaking to be responsible for the child until they were eighteen years old. My parents were in a high state of anxiety. Where were they to find such a person who would provide the money for the bond? Who would be prepared to take a complete stranger into their home?
My father got hold of a copy of the London telephone directory and began to comb the pages for all the Weiss entries. He picked out ten and sent off a flurry of letters begging them to sponsor his daughter. Disappointment followed. All replied that they were not in a position to help. Several weeks passed before a further letter arrived from England. Could this be the one? My father tore open the envelope. It was from a Mr C., a businessman, who was willing to offer his home, as he explained, “to strike a blow against Hitler.’ My father replied immediately thanking him for his kindness and accepting his offer. In all it had taken three anxious months before my turn came for the Kindertransport. I then began a correspondence with my sponsor in French the only common language between us for I could speak no English and he no German.
The rules imposed by the Germans for emigration were strict. I was only allowed to take one suitcase and 10 Reichmarks. My family was not well-off, so friends and family rallied around to fit me out for the long journey ahead. I think we were all convinced that we would be re-united one day.
I was only 14 and although I did not want to leave my parents, I was excited by the prospect of the journey to England. The reality was much harsher. There were tight restrictions on entry to Britain. Women under the age of 45 could get into Britain relatively easily as domestics. My mother was 55 at the time and there was no chance of her being employed and even less so for my father.
On 25 April, I said goodbye to my father in the flat. His eyes brimmed with tears. Only one parent was allowed to say goodbye at the station, so I was accompanied by my mother. I don’t remember much about leaving. I think I was too excited about going to England and I didn’t expect for one moment that I’d be saying goodbye forever.
As the train crossed Austria and Germany, I was seeing a world beyond Vienna for the first time. Some children were upset but for many of us it felt as if we were going on holiday. I remember we and the other children sang scout songs. The excitement made me hungry. Barely two hours into the journey, I unwrapped my favourite food which mother had packed for me. There were one or two scares as the train crossed Germany. Railway officials checked our travel documents and looked us over as if we were criminals. At the border crossing at Aachen, German soldiers and customs officials boarded the train for the last time and inspected our passports. No doubt, in their minds they were glad to be rid of what they regarded as ‘Jewish vermin&
rsqu o;.
Crossing the border into Holland, we felt as if we had been released from prison. We felt so much better. Our spirits lightened, particularly when a group of Dutch women got on board the train, bringing gifts of foo d and drink. We landed at H a rwich in England and were taken by train to Liverpool Street Station. There we were met by our sponsors.
My sponsor greeted me warmly and he took me first to his office in a publishing house in the City, where I met their German correspondent. She lent me some German books two days later. We then went to his house where the children, two girls younger than myself, were very excited and friendly. His wife was more formal and aloof. My sponsor had decided to take a Jewish refugee on impulse as his patriotic duty and a ‘blow against Hitler’ but without discussing it with his wife.
I found a lot of kindness but missed the warmth of my parents who had hugged me and made me the centre of their life. Here I was a stranger. I took refuge in daydreams, thinking up all sorts of impossible plans whereby my parents and I could be re-united.
After the German army defeated France, Britain’s towns and cities were bombed night after night and London was first in the firing line. The C’s decided that it was no longer safe to remain in London and the family left to stay with Mrs C’s sister’s family in Hertfordshire. She mothered me to some extent at the outset and then played a big part in my life until her death in the 1980s. Very soon after the move, Mrs C found me a job as a nursemaid to a nearby family. I was 15 years old and in charge of two young children.
Coming from an enemy country I was classified as an ‘enemy’ alien. I couldn’t go anywhere I wanted. Every so often, I had to report to the police station , but the policemen were kind and friendly.
Meanwhile, I tried to keep in contact with my parents, but it was not easy. There were no postal services between countries at war, so letters had to arrive by long roundabout routes. I received and sent letters to my parents, but replies were infrequent. My mother had traced a distant relative in the United States and had begged him to find a way to get her daughter admitted into America. But I felt safe in England and it was my parents I wanted to get out of Austria. When the United States of America entered the war in December 1941, it put an end to this avenue of escape. Letters still arrived and then they changed to telegram style messages from the holding camp in which my parents had been transported. By 1943, all communication dried up.
At the end of war in 1945, I tried to find out what had happened to my parents. The invasion of Russia in 1941 had accelerated the Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews throughout German occupied Europe. I went to the Red Cross, who were attempting to trace hundreds of thousands of missing people. Later I got a message from the Red Cross that a neighbour of my parents had heard them being taken to a concentration camp where they had died. After I had fled to England, my father and mother, Richard and Regina Weiss, were turned out of their apartment and forced to live in a cold, dank cellar. After eeking out a miserable existence, they were rounded up with other Jews and sent to Theresienstadt a holding camp and finally, in cattle trucks, to Auschwitz. On my visit to Auschwitz in 1996 I was told that, being elderly, it would be likely that they were immediately selected for death in the gas chambers. The Red Cross also notified me of the day of their departure for Auschwitz on the 28 October 1944 – the last transport to the death camp.
At the end of the war leading Nazis were tried for their crimes at Nuremberg.
In 1948 I married a German refugee. He was a research scientist and he was offered a post at the University of Newcastle. Three years later I enrolled as a mature student, gaining a diploma in Social Studies. Thereafter, I worked as a social worker until my retirement in 1986.
Epilogue
Edith’s story is not quite complete. In 1996, she returned to Vienna to trace the last movements of her family. The apartment block where she had lived as a child was still standing and, finding the caretaker, a Yugoslav, she explained how her family had lived here before the war and how her parents had perished at Auschwitz. The caretaker looked sympathetically at Edith. “Well,” she replied, “You can’t help being a Jew, can you?” Edith raised her eyebrows but did not say anything in reply. The caretaker asked her little daughter to take Edith up the winding staircase to the fourth floor. The door was opened by two little Turkish boys and standing behind them the grandmother with a little baby in her arms. The boys explained to their grandmother that Edith had lived here a long time ago.
The Turkish grandmother stepped to one side, smiled gently and with the gesture of her hand invited Edith into the flat.
It was barely recognisable as apartment she had shared with her parents. The flat was bright and full of beds. The bathroom had a shower in it.
“You’re lucky, boys, you know. Having a shower, like this,” smiled Edith.
The boys just grinned, not understanding that it could have been any different all those years ago. Very, very different.