Born Survivors (3 page)

Ration cards and food stamps were issued but Jews were allocated half of the Aryan allowance. They were also permitted to shop only in designated places between 3 and 5 p.m., by which time most fresh goods had been sold. They were forbidden to enter cinemas and theatres and to travel in the front carriages of trams, only being allowed in the back where it was often crowded and hot. All radios belonging to Jews had to be surrendered at the police station and curfews between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. were strictly enforced.

Fearful of the new policies, thousands fled to France, Holland and Belgium seeking asylum. The nation that had been named Czechoslovakia since 1918 became another popular refuge. It not only enjoyed strong frontiers but powerful allies – including France, Britain and Russia – and Priska’s family would have been among the majority who felt safe there.

Then in March 1938, as Europe trembled, Hitler annexed Austria in what was known as the Anschluss. Declaring German self-determination he demanded Lebensraum or greater ‘living space’ for his people. Later that year, residency permits for all foreigners living within the Reich were revoked. Then the Polish government unexpectedly declared that it would invalidate the passports of its citizens unless they returned to Poland to have them renewed. To facilitate this, the Nazis ordered that some 12,000
Polish-born Jews be rounded up and expelled. The Poles refused to accept them, leaving them in an unenviable limbo at the border.

Keen to negotiate peace so soon after a world war, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain led international talks that concluded with the Munich Agreement in September of that year. Without Russian or Czech involvement, the major European powers effectively gave Hitler permission to occupy the regions in the north, south and west of Czechoslovakia collectively known as the Sudetenland, and chiefly inhabited by German-speakers. In what many Czechs dubbed ‘The Munich Betrayal’, their country was left without strategic borders.

In November 1938, the vengeful teenage son of a family of Polish Jews who’d been forced from their home assassinated a German official in Paris. Exacting revenge, the Nazi high command ordered Reichspogromnacht, better known as Kristallnacht – ‘Crystal Night’ or ‘The Night of Broken Glass’. In a single night thousands of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses in Germany were targeted, at least ninety people murdered, and 30,000 arrested. In the ensuing months, Hitler’s supporters continued to instigate anti-Semitic riots but in March 1939 the Führer invited Monsignor Jozef Tiso (the deposed Catholic leader of the Slovak people) to Berlin. Soon afterwards, Emil Hácha (the Catholic president of Czechoslovakia) also arrived. Both were given an ultimatum. They could either voluntarily place their people under Germany’s ‘protection’ – they were also under threat from Hungary’s claims to their border territories – or be forcibly invaded by the Nazis.

Tiso and his collaborationist government agreed to Hitler’s demands almost immediately, and Tiso was installed as president of the newly minted and nominally independent Slovak State without further Nazi intervention, after collapsing from a suspected heart attack, President Hácha, sixty-six, agreed to the German terms the following day. There was, however, widespread resistance from his people; so, on 15 March 1939, German troops marched in and the Czech nation was declared the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia. Hitler invaded Poland six months later. Then the Soviets invaded from the east a few weeks later, revealing their secret pact with the Germans. Britain and France declared war. Life for the people of Europe would never be the same.

Jews in the new Nazi ‘client states’ became outcasts overnight.
Juden nicht zugänglich
(No Jews allowed) was a common sign on many public buildings. Sometimes the signs read,
No dogs or Jews allowed
. When people learned of atrocities committed against those of their faith in Germany, Austria and Poland, they stormed the foreign embassies begging for visas, only to be turned away. Faced with a future that seemed inescapable, some committed suicide.

Priska and her family had no choice but to comply with the new regime and each new decree it implemented. It was the little things that hurt the most. The professor no longer called to take her dancing; the people who’d once greeted her first in the street stopped saying hello altogether or looked the other way when she passed. ‘There were so many unpleasantries but one had to accept it automatically if you wanted to live.’ Other friends, such as Gizka and another classmate whose family were farmers and continued to provide the Rona family with fresh milk, remained fiercely loyal. Some went out of their way to publicly greet their Jewish acquaintances and offer them every assistance.

With rumours of Jews being ‘resettled’ elsewhere against their will, people began to hoard food and other goods. They buried their valuables or asked friends to hide them, even though to be caught doing so carried a sentence of death. Those Jews who could, fled to the British-controlled Mandatory Palestine where there were hopes of establishing a future Zionist state. Priska’s brother Bandi was amongst them and he went alone in 1939, claiming to have seen the ‘writing on the wall’. Without even telling her, an early boyfriend of Priska’s emigrated to Belgium and then on to Chile. He was wealthy and young and the couple had recently become engaged in preparation for an arranged marriage, but he simply disappeared.

The rest of Priska’s family did whatever they could to get by. Her sister Anička had married aged nineteen in 1932 in the hope of avoiding a life of servitude in the family café. She and her husband had a son, Otto, but the marriage didn’t last. After her divorce, Anna changed her name to the more Aryan-sounding Helena Hrubá and found a job working in someone else’s coffee shop. Priska’s brother Janko, who’d trained as an electrical engineer, was drafted into a Jewish labour battalion to become a ‘
Robotnik Zid
’ or ‘work Jew’, wearing a distinctive blue uniform and given the dirtiest jobs. Boežka, a spinster in her thirties, stayed home sewing clothes for family and friends.

Priska, who was always proud of her Jewish nose – or ‘nice proboscis’ as she jokingly called it – was delighted to have Boežka’s creations to wear, which made her feel less of a social pariah. ‘I have never been a beauty but I took care to look good,’ she said. ‘I was always treated well by the people of my town, who liked that I was the honoured daughter of the coffee house.’

That honour was soon denied her. In 1940, her parents were banned from running the café they had carefully built up over sixteen years. With limited education and few other talents, they had nothing to fall back on. ‘They lost everything,’ Priska said. ‘They were good people.’ An Aryan or
Treuhänder
(trustee) who was put in charge of their business was unexpectedly kind to Priska and appreciated that she spoke English, French, Hungarian and German. ‘It was important and valued that I could speak those languages,’ she said.

Having been prevented from working, Priska and what was left of her immediate family decided to move to Bratislava, the new capital of the Slovak State on the banks of the River Danube. Priska’s grandfather David Friedman, robbed of his family inn, fled his hometown of Stropkov and joined them. They had managed to hold on to a little money and hoped it might be easier for Jews to pass unnoticed in a large city, and they were right. At the time of the Nazi invasion an estimated 15,000 Jews lived in Bratislava,
comprising twelve per cent of the population, and they had assimilated well and encountered little anti-Semitism.

Although everything had changed under Nazi rule, Priska’s family found an apartment on Špitálska Street and, by working privately as a teacher, she was able to once again enjoy the café life she’d known since childhood. She especially favoured the Astorka coffee shop where she rubbed shoulders with the intelligentsia, with whom she could chat in numerous languages. It was in Astorka one day in October 1940 that she spotted a slender man with a moustache sitting at an adjacent table. He was chatting to some friends of hers.

‘He was talking very deeply and animatedly to my friend Mimi, who was a pharmacist. Suddenly she got up and came to tell me that he found me attractive.’ Priska’s bold admirer walked over and introduced himself. Tibor Löwenbein was a Jewish journalist of Polish extraction, fluent in German and French, who came from the town of Púchov in northwestern Slovakia. She always maintained that he was a little tipsy when they met so she told him she didn’t like men who drank. Keen to impress her, Tibor promised never to touch alcohol again. He was true to his word.

He did however smoke a pipe and had a collection of forty, none of which Priska was allowed to touch. A meticulous dresser, her handsome suitor also owned forty shirts. As an aspiring author, Tibor was often to be found scribbling in little notebooks he carried. And he collected stamps – although Priska always said with a wry smile that after he met her, she became his only hobby.

Tibor was the only child of Heinrich Löwenbein and his wife Elizabeth, known as ‘Berta’. Tibor’s father owned a small farm. Wanting more than a farmer’s life, Tibor moved to Bratislava and became a writer for the
Allgemeine Jüdische Zeitung
newspaper, covering sport and local politics. He also wrote a slim book entitled
Slovensko-Židovské hnutie a jeho poslanie
(The Slovak-Jewish Movement and its Mission), about being fully assimilated into Slovak life as a Jew.

Priska’s husband, the journalist and author Tibor Löwenbein

When the Nuremberg Laws prevented him from remaining at the newspaper, the kindly Greek owner of the Dunajská Bank in Bratislava offered him a job as a clerk. Slender and well-groomed, with a pleasant way about him, Tibor had fairish hair and a pale complexion. He didn’t look especially Jewish – which, Priska said, mattered then. He was so well regarded at the bank that he was sent to Prague and Brno on business, something that should have been impossible under Jewish travel restrictions. But his employer had important connections and Tibor seemed to be able to get away with almost anything. Being a journalist, he seemed to know everyone and people were always polite to him, a courtesy extended to the striking young lady on his arm.

Every morning on his way to work Tibor would walk Priska to the Astorka café where she enjoyed her morning coffee and cake. As he left he would stop and salute her, which always made her laugh. In the evenings after work they’d stroll along the banks of the
Danube, a popular spot for courting couples. There they would listen to the music being played on the street and watch the moonlight rippling on the water as barges, riverboats and ferries chugged slowly past.

For the first six months of their courtship Tibor wrote to Priska every day. He dubbed her his ‘
Pirečka Zlaticko
’ (Golden One) and she called him ‘Tibko’, or more commonly ‘Tiborko’. Smitten, she kept every one of his notes, some of which were brief but all were warm. Almost all of them survived the war. In one letter dated 10 March 1941, Priska wrote:

My Tibko, I am so happy when I receive your letters, especially the long ones … Am in a hurry to let you know my great news! Namely, that I will have free time starting Thursday – so we will see each other four days in a row. What a luxury in this time of squeezed availability … You wished to know what I think of your letters. They are wonderful. I am amazed that you, who are so serious and nowadays pessimistic and seeing the current situation so dark, write such wonderful lines as you do … I think about you so much and know that you find solace in your books. I am a little jealous of their presence in your life while I am away – though I promise that it is temporary – please say hello to your books, which keep you valuable company without me. I am sending you a million kisses – Your Pira.

And in his reply, dated 12 March, Tibor wrote,

My Golden Pirečka, I was extremely happy to read your letter. What happiness. In the dreary reality of everyday your words were like a ray of sunshine piercing the dark clouds. I am trying to express my thanks and joy … Probably am not able to do justice …! As I am expecting to see you tomorrow at 4.30 p.m., at my place, and as I think about this joyous occasion, I am also faced with thoughts of how destiny plays with us. This thought came to me as I realised that on our five months’ anniversary we cannot be together. Thus I will need to leave the words I wish to share with you for the afternoon when I will finally see you … I cannot wait to hold you in my arms … see you tomorrow my darling … and till then I send you many kisses, Yours, Tibor.