Lukas - 2. Chapter 2

“The first thing that you have to remember,” he started, “is how quickly things changed after the Germans marched into Austria.”

“We didn’t have it as bad as they did in Germany during the previous few years, but they rapidly accelerated the persecution of ‘non-Aryans’ to bring them up to, or should I say down to, their German standards. They did in a few months what it took them five years to do in Germany. For Rena and Fexl this was bad, as they got kicked out of their school within a week. But for me, it was different. Even though it seemed like the attitudes of my classmates and much of the faculty changed overnight, the principal of the school, who was a true liberal and who of course was eventually dismissed, had allowed the continuing enrollment of the few ‘non-Aryan’ kids like me while he was still employed."

“I just had one more year to go, and if I could eke it out and get my Matura, my diploma, I would at least have that credential behind me. As you already know, Oma’s brother had come years before to the United States, and we were fortunate that he could sponsor us. It took a big commitment from him and his family as they had to show they had the money to support us so that we wouldn’t become wards of the state in case we couldn’t make a living.”

“He played a lot of shell games with money to make that happen,” Aunt Rena added, “but that’s a story for another time.”

Hans smiled and continued. “As I said, though not as bad as in Germany, the situation for us had been deteriorating for a long time during the 1930s. It took the Anschluss itself to really wake up Opa and Oma. We couldn’t last much longer – Opa’s business had been pretty good, but after the Anschluss, they actually had Nazi flunkies standing by the door to intimidate customers and drive them away. A few of them risked a lot by coming in the back-alley door, but in the end the harassment really crushed the business.”

“But I digress. As the next school year started up, the Nazi persecution in school had become almost unbearable. No one called me by my name. They called me and the one other Jewish kid names like “Israel” and ‘Isadore’ and other made-up, exotic sounding names to emphasize our ‘racial’ foreignness, at least in their eyes. This was even though Opa’s family had been in Vienna for well over a century.”

“There were several guys in the class who were etched in my memory of this time,” he continued, shifting in his big chair. “One was a really a big but not very bright guy who enthusiastically joined the local Hitler Youth group right after the Nazis marched in. I’ll call him the ‘The Bully.’ He would often bump into me really hard, practically knocking me down, which wasn’t difficult since he was much taller and about 50 pounds heavier. In a normal school, I wouldn’t have had to put up with it, but just about every time it happened, he’d call over his pack of wolves to stare me down and let me know that there was nothing I could do. The fact that his desk was right in front of mine made him hard to avoid, not to mention just his constant, menacing presence.”

“Then there was the pseudo-intellectual - I’ll call him ‘The Brain.’ He was a mousy, sleezy, blond-haired guy but one of the top students in the class and was always seen with one of the German Nazi newspapers, as the Austrian press was not quite yet as transformed as that in the ‘Altreich,’ or the original Germany, itself.”

“The teacher, who was a quick convert to National Socialism to save his job, seemed like an old pro at opportunistic collaboration and allowed ‘The Brain’ to give periodic lectures on National Socialist Ideology to his classmates. He would often tell me, in front of the class, that I didn’t have the racial intelligence to appreciate the sophistication and power of Nazi ideology but that I should sit through the presentations anyway.”

“There was also a good football, or soccer as it’s called here, player. I’ll call him ‘The Jock. He was actually a recent German transplant whose father was a higher-up railroad employee who was ordered into the country to meld together the railroad lines and schedules.”

“Amongst all the hostility in the class, his was almost the worst as he acted like I wasn’t even worthy enough to speak to or interact with him. He even dressed in a fancy way which seemed to emphasize his aloofness. Like all of the boys, except ‘non-Aryans’ like me, of course, he had to join the local Hitler Youth and he quickly showed his talents and became the leading scorer and star of their soccer team. In this guise, I guess that I was even more useless to him. To which, I might add, that I was better than 90% of the players on that team,” he added to smiles and laughs from the family that surrounded him.

“Anyway,” he continued, “these and other guys were my daily life. Back then in Austria the Gymnasia were single sex, so my school was all-boys. It was what we now call a ‘macho’ atmosphere, especially with the Nazi emphasis on fighting and attacking. It was not, of course, what you’d call much of a supportive environment for anyone perceived as an outsider, even before this time.”

“And, by the way,” he added, “someone like me could totally forget about girls at this point, at least the Aryan ones. Before the Anschluss, I went out with all sorts, even gentiles, in spite of the conspicuous fact that my family was Orthodox. ‘We’d sort that out later,’ was what I thought to myself.”

His sister Renate chuckled. “Go on, please,” she ordered.

Hans held up his hands in an ‘I’m Innocent’ kind of gesture, then smiled and started again.

“But after the Germans came in, even a short ‘hello’ from me to a member of the opposite sex could be considered ‘Rassenschande,’ or, ‘race defilement.’ You could go to jail for that, or, like in some parts of Germany, paraded through the town with a sign for the sin of soiling an Aryan girl. It was really depressing how girls who seemed to like me and were glad to be squired to the movies suddenly wouldn’t return a greeting or even look at me on the street.”

“Anyway, the only thing that stopped the Bully and other guys from exercising their rights to push me around was when the Jock came over to talk about the soccer team, as he seemed obsessed with winning and making sure that everyone was always at practice and well-prepared. The Bully was kind of a mediocre player, but would do anything to impress the Jock, who quickly became the coach’s favorite and rose to co-captain. I don’t know what attracted the Jock to The Bully - maybe he just needed extra coaching and encouragement. After class and before they gathered for practice, the Jock would often come over to the Bully’s desk and talk with him, always turning his back on me. It wasn’t all bad, though, as it kept the Bully from his regular rounds of harassment. So, the trade-off was pretty fair as far as I was concerned.”

“There were a few other types, too. I won’t tell you about all of them. But suffice it to say that they all had made it a battle every day. Because of the usual tendency of the mob, the class was now in a lot of ways out of control, which sometimes served me well, too. The Brain would sometime hold Hitler Youth Meetings during what was supposed to be math class with a particularly weak and craven teacher, while the Jock was also a bit of a class clown and entertained everyone with antics and jokes whenever the teacher was out of the room. That was also a convenient distraction as other boys I labeled, like ‘The General’, the’ SS Boy’ and the ‘Aryan God,’ and others who I won’t waste time describing, would then leave me in peace at the back of the room where I was assigned to sit as a ‘non-Aryan.’”

“There were a few chances for me to prove myself, or at least interact and not be just a spectator in the back row of seats. There was a class chess tournament and I got second place to The Brain, whose dad paid for his son’s professional coaching. Pretty good, considering that the entire class seemed to be rooting against me. Surprisingly, the Jock was a pretty good player himself, and he seemed to have some really sophisticated moves, but I beat him in the semi-finals when he made a really dumb error and I was lucky enough to think and take advantage of it.”

“Oh,” Hans added. “I barely got into the class photo. They all kept pushing me off the risers until The Jock happened to stand next to me and seemed so bored that he wouldn’t move so I was inadvertently shielded at the far edge of the group. A very symbolically appropriate place,” he added.

He again shifted in his chair. “I have to say, I really felt alone, and I think Rena and Flexl could share the feeling, especially since they couldn’t even go to school. But none of us had a choice and we just had to survive as best I could until we made it to America.”

“However, one day something happened that I couldn’t explain. A few days before, I had arrived early at school and the Bully and some of his friends beat me up outside the school. I should have known better than to get there early, but I had to help cut some patterns the previous night at Opa’s shop and was hoping to finish studying for an important math test at the end of the week. I made it through the day, bruises and all, but Oma kept me home the next day and didn’t want me to ever go back. However, I was determined to finish.”

“I had missed an entire day, which in math class can be fatal. And the worst part was that there wasn’t really anyone I could turn to for the notes. That other Jewish kid just disappeared one day. This happened a lot, as families would leave in the middle of the night to avoid harassment or suddenly an opportunity came that couldn’t be passed up. I was actually happy for him, hoping that the family had found a refuge someplace. But it left me as the single, lonely, juicy target of the mob’s sadism. Coming in the next day, I dreaded that class, and again risked bodily harm by coming in early to try to go through the book and see if I could catch up. To my surprise, inside of my desk I found a piece of paper with yesterday's date and very clearly written notes and explanations about what had transpired in my absence. It was not signed and was written on the same paper that everyone used so it was impossible to tell who dropped it off. I only noticed that the number 9 was written kind of funny, almost backwards, like these days you might say that someone dyslexic wrote it. I didn’t dare ask around about who might have done it. It could make it such an issue that there would literally be a manhunt for that person and their life could really be in danger. Besides hiding a communist, there was no greater crime than helping a non-Aryan kid. I was even afraid of telling Opa and Oma about it.”

“If that meant that some person was now going to rise up and make a difference, though, it didn’t seem to happen. Things continued on the same. I still had to really watch myself, especially after class if there wasn’t soccer practice and the goons were milling around looking for trouble. Besides Hitler Youth meetings, which often took precedence over school activities, an unthinkable occurrence in pre-Nazi times, I was often saved by soccer practice as I mentioned before. I remember more than a couple times when some of those bastards were ominously hovering around me until The Jock started yelling at everyone about practice, especially if they had a tournament match coming up. Victory in battle was important for Nazis, and there was nothing more important than winning, no matter what you had to do.

“I liked to let everyone get out of the room before I left at the end of the day to avoid getting assaulted in the hallway. But one day The Brain and the Jock were both staying late in the classroom. Eventually the Brain left, and I was alone with the Jock. It was strange, but after The Brain was out of the room, The Jock got up like he was going to leave. He got to the door, but instead of walking right out he poked his head around the thick wooden door frame and looked both ways, then came back in. I thought that he had maybe forgotten something, but instead of going for his desk he started walking toward me. I didn’t know what was going to happen and prepared myself for a fight if he wanted to start one. We were about the same size so I thought in a one-on-one battle that I could fight him off if I had to.”

“I was about to raise my hands in front of me when he bent over and said very quietly but firmly, ‘Hans, listen to me very carefully, please. You and your dad, you need to get out of your house tonight and go hide. Go anywhere, just get out of your house. They’re going to come after you and all the other Jewish men and send you to a ‘KZ.’ PLease, go! I’m trying to help you.’ he pleaded. It looked like he was going to reach for my shoulder but ended up putting his hand on my desk and tapping on it. ‘KZ’ was short for ‘Konzentrationslager’ or concentration camp, and everyone knew those initials. In many cases it was a death sentence.”

“What? Why was this guy trying to help me? I’d never even spoken to him, except very minimally during the chess match. But he said my real name instead of a sarcastic one. I was totally dumfounded. But his advice was entirely consistent with the atmosphere outside. The Nazis were making a huge deal of the shooting by a Jewish kid of a member of the German legation in Paris, and the atmosphere was darkening by the day. If that guy dies, my father said the previous night at dinner, something is bound to happen. He didn’t know what that would be, but The Jock’s comment was consistent with what was going on around us.”

“I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. But when I got home and explained what happened to Opa, he started calling around to some of his gentile friends for guidance and, hopefully, assistance. Except for one old customer who told him that he’d better follow that advice, most of them hung up on him as soon as they knew who was calling them. Opa had his answer,” Hans said, with a sigh.

“But where to go? Many of his so-called friends now seemed to disappear. He couldn’t necessarily blame them, as helping us could put their own families in grave danger. But I think the quickness and finality of their answers really defeated him. Many of these were people whom he had known for decades, and in one instance, a fellow who he had helped set up in business in another part of Vienna. The more he heard ‘nein,’ or nothing at all, the more anxious he became.”

“We used to have a vacation cottage in the mountains, a place that Oma inherited from her parents. Gosh, I loved it there! It was on a lake, with a view of the mountains and was only about half an hour from great skiing. It would have been the perfect place to retreat to: it was isolated, yet very livable. But it was still the Depression, and they had sold it a few years before to make sure that the tailor shop could stay solvent. Besides, it was probably too far away anyway and, to top it off, that rural area was particularly hospitable to Nazi sentiments even when the party was illegal in Austria.”

“How bad it had gotten really hit me when Opa actually asked me if I knew of anyone who could help us. None of Oma’s friends would or could help either, and our relatives were getting the same messages. It was a measure of their desperation that my parents turned to their teenage son for help. It must have been humiliating, especially for Opa, asking for my help rather than providing it himself as the patriarch of the family, a very German feeling. But he’d do whatever he had to do to protect us. But who did I know? The only person who I had a remote chance of asking was The Jock, but I hardly knew him and had no idea whether he’d take such a huge risk. But we had no time to think. We were already hearing rumbles outside that turned out to be shops being destroyed and houses being ransacked and ruined, with gangs driving people out of their houses and tearing the places apart.”

“In desperation, I looked on a class address list and found where he lived. We both said goodbye to Rena and Fexl and Oma and made a point of not telling them where we were going or even the name of the classmate, as it could put them in a bad spot. It was about 4 or 5 kilometers away, and as it was getting dark, we risked trying to walk there and get accosted. So off we went. Luggage or even the smallest sack might make people suspicious, so we brought nothing but the clothes on our back that we needed for chilly November weather.

On the way, we saw smoke coming from buildings in the distance, and in one silhouette Opa recognized the building. “That’s our synagogue,” he said, his head dropping down. And this is after seeing furniture thrown out of windows, hearing glass being smashed in on almost every block, especially in our immediate neighborhood.”

Hans sighed again, then continued. “Finally, we found the house. It was a decent sized place, consistent with what a senior civil servant might own, located on a side street with a gate and a small garden in front. There were lights inside and I gently knocked on the door. It seemed like we waited forever under what felt like a spotlight on the porch, though it was probably only a few seconds under something like a dim 25-watt bulb. Opa and I looked at each other – should we knock again? And then the questions went through my mind – will they help us, or will they turn us in? What will his parents think? Is this a huge mistake?”

We saw the drapes silently move, and then an eye, and then the door flew open. It was The Jock. I started talking, my voice shaking. “I’m so sorry, but we have nowhere else to go. If it’s too dangerous for you we can leave, but…”

‘Come in!” he ordered, his urgency masked by the low volume of his voice. “Follow me!”

“Who is there, son?” his mother asked from a back room.

We followed him. “Mom, Dad, this is the classmate I was telling you about,” he said, motioning to us, his words slightly halting. “I don’t think that they have anywhere else to go. Can we keep them in the basement? I know they will be safe there and will be quiet.” Again, he didn’t even know me, but acted like he did.

His parents came into the hallway and looked at each other. The Jock looked at them both and used a German expression that translates to something like ‘putting your money where your mouth is.’

“Yes, you’re right and there is no time to talk about this, they are here, and we need to help them,” his mother responded.

“Thank you, Mutti, he replied, his voice still low.”

I have to tell you, she was a striking woman, very attractive, clearly younger than her husband and bore no resemblance to what in German would be referred to has a stereotypical dowdy ‘hausfrau.’ She had the same brown hair as her son, but it was stylishly short, not the long, braided hair that you found on the more traditional types of Teutonic women. I’m no expert in women’s clothing but being the son of a tailor I could tell that the cut and styling seemed very modish and contemporary with excellent workmanship. Again, not like the plain, shapeless sacks worn by so many.”

“The father was taller and, as I mentioned, older - maybe as much as fifteen years or so. Even though he was a bureaucrat, he had the size and build of a former athlete, which his son had clearly inherited from him.”

“We all need to be very careful,” she added. “I don’t have to tell you all how dangerous this is. So, let’s all help each other here, yes?” she said to Opa and me, then looking at her son and husband.

Opa replied, “We’ll do whatever you ask. But from my whole heart, thank you all. I hate that we’ve put you in this position, and we’ll try to leave as soon as possible. We will never tell anyone that we were here.”

“She turned out the light in the room while the father and son led us into the semi-darkness of the basement passageway where we all had to feel our way down the steep stairs. The son seemed to have night vision as I could hear him going from one basement window to another to close the drapes before the father turned on a dim light underneath the stair. When the light came on, it looked like we had ended up in a half-storage room half-engineering laboratory. There were the usual sacks of potatoes and flour and dried fruits, not to mention a carefully packed bin of coal that you would find in a typical Austrian cellar. But along one wall a bench was a marvelous display of little engineering inventions, all assembled out of erector set-like pieces of metal, along with small tools and vices for working metal.”

I asked The Jock what all this was about, but his Dad, with considerable pride, answered first

“He’s got a mechanical mind and likes to invent these contraptions. There are lots of ideas in that head of his, but the one that’s really interesting is this one for boring tunnels. Son, show them how it works,” he said, turning to The Jock.

“Well, it’s just a prototype, of course, but what I’m thinking is that this part presses ahead and…” He went on to clearly explain his idea and why his was better than the way that tunnels had previously been bored. He would look often at me, as if he wanted to know what I thought.

“I really didn’t understand the principles involved, of course, but whether I did or not, it was great to just listen to a peer who didn’t call me names.”

In explaining how the drilling head worked, he showed me a sketch with some dimensions, and I immediately recognized the odd way that the number nine was written.

“Could I ask you about something?” I said, holding the sketch.

“Sure,” he answered, tinkering with one of the pieces on his model.

“Did you leave the math notes in my chair, about two weeks ago? Before the calculus exam?”

He stopped and looked at me. “Um…yeah, I did,” he said. “But how did you know?”

“I pointed out the way he wrote numbers, especially the number nine.”

“Huh…” he replied, perplexed. “I just proportion it a little differently. It’s not much … maybe it’s just a more German rather than Austrian way of doing it - I don’t know. I didn’t think it was noticeable to anyone but me,” he said, looking down at the document. “You’ve got a pretty good eye.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

He went back to tinkering with his model. “I really wanted to get the best marks, but it should be a fair fight,” he said, raising his eyebrows and smiling. “Anyway, the way this works…” he answered and just continued on with his demonstration.

“The next thing I said just popped into my head, and I don’t know why I said it. It just seemed like there might be a pattern here. I said to him, ‘Did you throw that Chess match to me?’”

Looking at me out of the corner of his eye, he turned and reached up and took a box off the top of a nearby shelf that was stuffed with machine parts. But this box had something else in it. He dropped the box with a ‘bang’ on the table next to us.

“Of course I let you win! Did you actually think that you could ever beat me without help? Foolish boy!” he proclaimed, smiling again. Out of the box he then pulled out an old, worn-out chess set and placed it on the table next to us. “But I’ll give you another chance to prove yourself, that’s if you don’t want to be humiliated,” he added.

“Opa and I spent the next two weeks there, living in a basement, having mice crawl over us and only seeing glimpses of the sun and then playing chess when he got home from school or practice. Because of the close-by houses, Opa and I could only rarely go upstairs, let alone go outside. Each day The Jock carried down two pails for us to do our business in, and he carried them upstairs every night after dark. He never joked about it or made us feel bad. It was just a matter-of-fact job that someone had to do, and he did it.”

“He also had a huge collection of books by Karl May, who wrote what you’d call here ‘Cowboys and Indian’ stories. They were adventure tales set in the American Old West, even though he hadn’t even been to America when he wrote them. They are more meant for maybe a bit younger kids but were great fantasy literature and I plowed through a big chunk of the collection while I was there.”

“Kind of like the Hardy Boys that I used to read, right?” Lukas asked as his cousins nodded.

“Yes, I think that’s a good analogy, especially how you used to hole up in your room and go through a couple a weekend,” his father answered, smiling.

“Anyway, the mother had some familiarity with Jewish culture, which surprised me. It turns out that she was a former model for the Tietz Department stores - in fact, their head model, and she got to know the Tietz family themselves. She hadn’t modeled in years, giving it up a few years after The Jock was born, but the sense of style and how to carry oneself never left her. I didn’t get her whole story at the time, or the Dad’s background either, though I did understand that he was a former football ‘profi’, or professional. It was too bad that I didn’t become more acquainted with their story because they were clearly interesting people who I would have liked to know better.”

“She apologized for not having kosher food, but that fact was almost comic. We had such bigger issues to worry about. But they cared about us in all ways. And they never left us alone - even on Sunday, when they all were supposed to go to church, the dad would stay behind.

“Oh, and at chess, The Jock really was a good player - we probably split the matches 50-50. And he definitely gave me that victory during the match at school. It was way too easy.”

“I’d like to add something here to Hansl’s story,” Aunt Rena interjected. “It says a bit more about this boy’s family.”

“Oh, yes, please, go ahead.” Hans replied. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”

She nodded at him. “You can’t imagine how things felt back at the shop. Besides the fact that so much had been destroyed, with broken furniture, bookcases pulled down and debris strewn out onto the sidewalk and into the street, we had no idea where Opa and Hansl were, or if they were even alive. There were stories everywhere about the men of the house and even teenage boys being beaten up and then dragged away to jail or to directly loaded onto open cattle cars and taken to Dachau, the concentration camp.”

“Oma being Oma of course, she tried to be brave and calm and not upset Fexl and me even more. We busied ourselves with cleaning up things. We wanted to first get the apartment in order, but the Nazis, in their infinite sadism, demanded that we first clean the public sidewalks in front of our shop after they had the gall to blame us for it. In any case, Oma and I were moving a broken fitting mannequin and a very pretty woman walking down the street stumbled on a piece of debris. Oma got up to help her, knowing that, God forbid, we would be responsible for an Aryan woman being injured on our sidewalk, especially an attractive one. As Oma held to the woman’s arm to steady her, the woman used her free hand to pull Oma closer and whispered in her ear, ‘Samual and Hans are safe. They will come back when things cool down. They send their love.’ Oma had the presence of mind to not give an effusive public ‘thank you,’ but I could see her squeeze the woman’s hand before they both quickly disengaged and she went on her way.”

“After a few minutes of continuing our task, she asked Fexl and me to come into the back sewing room and closed the door, separating us from the customer area and any voyeurs from the public sidewalk. She told us that Opa and Hans were OK and then she couldn’t stop hugging and kissing us. And for the first time ever I saw her cry.”

Aunt Rena then looked at her brother, nodding for him to continue.

He nodded back, giving a small smile to his sister. “There was one more thing that happened. Opa insisted on doing something for the family that was holding and protecting us. None of them would hear of pay back, of course, especially The Jock’s mother. But the time down there in the basement was really hard on Opa. He was used to always being busy and productive, making a suit, measuring a client, ordering material, running a business with Oma. We were safe, and that was a blessing that both of us appreciated. But being sidelined was a real burden for him.”

“Every morning, the mother demanded that both her son and husband stand in front of her for a sartorial inspection before they left the house. We could hear from upstairs The Jock would protest, ‘but Mutti…,’ and Opa and I would smile to ourselves. But it was clear where The Jock’s wardrobe choices were coming from and what was important to her.”

“This gave Opa an idea. He explained to the mom that he was not just any tailor but was, in fact, what you might here call a Master Tailor, qualified to train journeymen and take on apprentice tailors. He had the skills to make her men excellent quality suits, to her design and specification, of course. She would just have to get him some basic supplies and provide the material, and he would make each of them a beautiful new suit. With her background she knew exactly what these qualifications meant, which is just what Opa suspected. After what was clearly some hesitation, the angel on one shoulder telling her that she couldn’t take compensation and the devil on the other shoulder teller her that her men should always look their best, she asked Opa for a list of what he might need to do this. The next day, the fabric, and supplies, were carried down the stairs after school by The Jock.

“For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why this guy did all this for me: we weren’t related and, as I mentioned, we hardly knew each other. But he made this incredible sacrifice and took this huge risk. Why? Was it some religious reason? They were Catholic and going to Mass in those days for a civil servant at least, could be perceived as a minor act of defiance, and for Hitler Youth it was not a good idea, either. But growing up in Vienna, I knew what devout Catholics sounded like and I never heard this family talk about religion or even pray outside of dinner time, and the house had few of the devotional pictures and statues that seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the houses of some of my more pious classmates.”

“In my adolescent - but I’ll claim precocious – mind, the only other thing that I could think of was that it was perhaps political. Maybe he and his parents were, like, very liberal and progressive people, especially after I got to know that she worked for the Tietz family. In Germany, that might have suggested that they could have been maybe Social Democrat types, one of the many outlawed parties that still had sympathetic but only underground supporters. Yes! That was it! I thought to myself. Even though his parents were middle or upper middle class, with, as I mentioned, his father’s job as a higher-level civil servant, the antithesis of the typical Social Democrat and more likely someone who pined for the exiled Kaiser, I had my ‘Eureka!’ moment. That’s why he was helping us! We were the underdogs, and he was fighting for our social rights!” Hans proclaimed, smiling but at the same time shaking his head.

“After a couple of weeks, when the Jock’s parents thought it was safe to leave, we slipped out at two in the morning. Again, at great risk, The Jock insisted on accompanying us the entire way home, to make sure that we got there safely. He also brought along a rucksack full of food since many stores were now off-limits to us. Opa assented to his accompaniment on the walk, but was adamant that he walk on the other side of the street so that he wouldn’t be associated with us if we were confronted by Nazis or the police or even a mob. He understood but insisted on following behind so that he could know if anything happened. The night was cold, and I remember regularly looking over my shoulder to make sure he was there, my face catching the cold wind when I turned my head.”

“When we returned to the apartment, which was above the business, it almost looked like we had already moved out. It was a testament to Oma and Rena and Fexl and their cleaning efforts that the few pieces of surviving furniture had been carefully placed back in their original spots, even though anything made of cloth was ripped and torn and almost shredded. We later saw a couple pictures taken the next day by Fexl with his little Leica camera. He was able to get them developed by the nice camera store guy next door. Words can hardly describe it.”

Aunt Rena added, “It looked like a tornado had torn through the house. In the bedrooms, the eiderdown blankets were sliced open, lights torn from the ceiling and beds overturned. All the books in Opa’s library had been pulled off the shelves and vases busted up. They had even brought axes to chop up the furniture.” She shook her head, running her fingers through her hair as the memory came back.

Fexl added, “The next day, you could tell the apartments where all people had been hauled away. It was November, but the windows would be open, if not smashed out, and the curtains would be blowing outside in the breeze.”

Hans reached over and put his hand on his sister’s and then continued the story.

“It was an awful scene, truly a nightmare, but we had two things going for us: one was that Oma had already hidden some money in balls of yarn that had fortunately not been unraveled. This allowed us to survive for the next few weeks, purchase train tickets to Hamburg, the main point of embarkation for overseas boats, and buy second class tickets on the ship. And those tickets were possible because of the arrival of the affidavit of support from Oma’s brother in New York. Without that, we could not have cracked the almost impenetrable immigration barriers thrown up back in the 1920s by the American congress.”

“Of course, at that point the headmaster was powerless to keep me enrolled and I could not return to school. But I can skip ahead to our trip out of the country, as after I was expelled, the ensuing period was almost totally dedicated to trip preparations,” he continued.

“After buying our tickets for the boat and also paying the extortionist emigration taxes that the Nazis bled out of all the emigrants, we were to be allowed to take only 10 Reichsmarks per person, just a couple bucks, out of the country. This was to ensure that we arrived as paupers. Because of Oma’s forethought, we had some money left over so she bought first class tickets on the train to Hamburg. The only issue was that the compartments fit six people and there were only five of us. Not a big deal in a typical situation, but if the sixth person was a Nazi or even a military person, they could order us out of the cabin. But even with a typical citizen, we’d need to be very careful of what we said to each other. So, it bought us some creature comforts but was not in any way relaxing.

“I couldn’t believe that I was getting kicked out of my own country,” Hans said, sighing again, slumping a bit in the chair as he continued. “But I tried not to dwell on it. Others had it worse than us in that they couldn’t get out at all and had nothing to look forward to, except for the Nazi regime turning the screws tighter and tighter. We had all resigned ourselves to it, and I have to hand it to Rena who was the most relentlessly optimistic amongst us about the possibilities of America,” he added, turning and looking at his sister, who reached and gently took his hand in hers.

“In the end, my only regret on leaving is that I couldn’t say goodbye to my classmate, The Jock as I’ve been calling him. There was no way that I would put him in danger. Maybe I could write to him, but getting a letter from a foreign country was certainly an occasion for suspicion. Maybe someday I’d be able to really thank him for what he’d done for our family. But in the meantime, I could only hope that he’d understand the situation that we were all in.”

“Instead of a train directly to Hamburg, which would have taken us through Czechoslovakia, the ticket we got took us through Salzburg, where we had to change trains. It was indirect, but it looked like the only way to get the private compartment for the bulk of the trip. So, we were in open rows of seating to Salzburg, but then transferred to the direct Hamburg train. Our train had been right on time, but the connecting train didn’t leave for another hour, though it was already sitting at the station. They let us board about 45 minutes before departure, so we loaded our few pieces of luggage on the racks above the seats and waited for the sixth person to fill in the compartment. Fexl said that he crossed his fingers that there wouldn’t be anyone, but the trains were so crowded in those days that I had little hope of that. We counted down the minutes, though, and still no one showed up. We heard the whistle blow, which meant ‘all aboard’ like they do here and thought that we really had the cabin to ourselves.”

“However, just as the train started moving, the door began to slide open. We all kind of held our breath until that last passenger stepped into the cabin. It was The Jock!”

“What are you doing here!?” said Opa as he practically jumped out of his seat and gave him a big bear hug. I, myself, was just as shocked and also got up quickly to greet him, giving him a manly pat on the shoulder and asking the same thing as Opa.”

“I thought that you all could use a guide when you got to Hamburg. I’ve been there lots with my dad on some of his work trips, and I at least know the area around the train station. With my dad’s position in the railroad, he could find out who was going where, and I asked him to look out for you. He saw the empty seat, but knew it might be dangerous for you all and me to travel together from Vienna, so I got on the early morning train and, well, here I am,” he said.

“When I told Oma who he was, she, too, leaped out of the seat herself to hug and kiss him. In the intervening weeks a few of those taken to the camps had been released. Many were bald, emaciated and literally and figuratively scarred for life from the brutality of the experience. Until then, we had no idea of the true scale of the Nazi sadism that Opa and I had been saved from. She was almost breathless as she couldn’t thank him enough and could barely stop kissing him.”

“He smiled and tried to deflect her gratitude as much as he could, saying how brave my dad and I were to even come to his house. I was beginning to learn that it was a classic demonstration of modesty and circumspection by a strong person, one who doesn’t need praise and attention. At the time I was only dimly aware how people could be like that. Anyway, the relief could be felt by all of us in the cabin. Instead of just having a comfortable seat, we had a comfortable space, unlike what a lot of other refugees had, and we were extremely grateful.”

“One humorous incident happened when the ticket agent came by the couchette. I could barely understand the guy, he had some kind of Rheinland or other strange north German accent. As he punched the last ticket, my classmate said something to him in what sounded like a strange dialect that I had never heard before. The agent responded, saying something like, ‘yes, I’m a long way from home, too, but there are staff shortages these days, especially with guys being called up for service,’ or something like that. And they both said good-bye, which I could clearly understand. After the door slid shut, I asked, ‘What was that you were speaking?’”

“’Koelsch,’” my classmate replied. “It’s a dialect from around Cologne. My Grandparents have a farm out in the boondocks, and I went out to there in the summers when I was a kid. It was a bit of a risk in replying to him that way - I wasn’t exactly sure. But he responded immediately, so a lucky guess.”

“I could hardly understand him, but I was with some guys in the war who were from there and then I recognized it,” Opa said.

“You sounded funny,” Felix piped in, looking up at The Jock, who was seated next to him.

My classmate looked at my parents and Rena across the small aisle and subtly smiled.

“Well, you look funny,” he said, staring at Fexl.

“I don’t look funny!” Felix shot back.

“Yes, you do!”

“No, I don’t! Felix again retorted.

This went on for a while until my classmate put his arm around Felix and told him that, ok, he didn’t look funny. But he had on a kind of funny hat. Felix was flustered, but the rest of us had a good laugh and other happy conversations that, on this momentous occasion, got us through the day.

When we arrived at the station, the scene was crazy and would get worse as the hours wore on, as we were certainly not the only desperate people on their way out of Germany that evening. There were lots of families who looked just like us: lives packed away in one bag per person and only the clothes on your back for a new life in some other place far, far away, most never to return.

My classmate grabbed Oma’s luggage without even asking, which took a load off Opa and me. As we walked down the track he looked up at the huge glass-and-metal vaulted ceiling. “I really like looking at that,” he said. “I think that it’s beautiful. This stuff kind of inspires my contraptions that you saw in the basement,” he added before looking down and stepping over a pile of bags that were just pulled off the train.

“I had never noticed that kind of thing myself, but I could make the connection once he pointed it out. It really was kind of a remarkable structure, a huge steel vault spanning over all the train tracks without any support underneath. At another time I might even had been inspired myself.”

“In any case, after winding our way through the hustle and bustle of the city, reaching the port and watching my parents complete all the final paperwork and emigration fees, which, as I mentioned, were meant to take virtually all of the rest of our money, we waited anxiously near the bottom of the huge gangplank. When it was finally our time, my parents and Fexl and Rena said goodbye to The Jock and went on ahead while I stayed to say goodbye to my classmate. Like a true, masculine guy of the time, I was going to shake his hand and maybe pat him on the shoulder. He really had, surprisingly, been a good friend. About the only one I still had, and I was truly sorry to be leaving him. Contrary to that, however, and very un-German, he came over and gave me a completely enveloping hug. It was not what I was expecting, but he had sacrificed and risked so much that of course I would respond in kind and put my arms around him. First, I felt moisture on my neck. I had no idea what it was, there was no rain. Then as he slowly pulled away, his cheek grazed against mine before he moved his head.”

“And then, he tried to kiss me. It was then like a flash. I understood everything. I halted, stunned, and just looked at him. I didn’t know how to respond. He saw me and then froze himself, and we stared at each other. And then he backed off, and I noticed the tears in his eyes.”

“I have… to.. go,” he said, stuttering, which was very unusual for him. He then stepped back, slowly at first, then turned and then ran off of the dock.

I called after him and ran to the corner of the building to see where he had gone. but it was too late. I had to go back and get on the boat.

And I never saw or heard from him again.