Eva's Story (2 page)

‘You are the practical one, Evi,' Mutti would say fondly, ‘but Heinz is the clever one.'

He read voraciously and had a vivid imagination. He would intrigue me with tales of his favourite author of Westerns, Karl May. He would pretend to be Winnetou, a Red Indian, while I would imagine I was his old partner, Shatterhand. Sometimes when we were alone together in our bedroom he would make up ghost stories and whisper them in low, mysterious tones that terrified and excited me at the same time. He would play the beam of his torch on to the ceiling: red, green, yellow – dancing in patterns that made me think there really was a ghost in the room.

Heinz found a way to make me cry simply by telling me a story in which he was an old man, alone, deserted and about to die with no one in the world to grieve for him. His voice would become cracked and aged and I became so involved that I would sob my heart out. We made a pact to use this trick when there were visitors in our house. Heinz would say, ‘I bet I can make Eva cry in three minutes without touching her!'

Sure enough, as he began to recount the story I would burst into tears. I could not bear to think of him dying.

When he was seven Heinz developed an eye infection which was incorrectly diagnosed and, as a result, his condition became chronic. My parents were very worried about him. When he was nine, despite countless visits to specialists and hospitals, he eventually went blind in one eye. He accepted this stoically and did not allow it to spoil his childhood.

My brother and I were part of a happy and close-knit family, with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who enjoyed each other's company. In those early years we had little suspicion that Jews in Vienna, whether religious or not, were about to come under an evil threat. Hitler and the Nazis had come to power in Germany in 1933, when I was four years old, bringing waves of anti-Semitic demonstrations.

In Germany attacks on Jews and their property were actively encouraged. On 12 March 1938, amid great rejoicing by the Austrians, the Germans marched into Austria and the atmosphere in Vienna changed overnight. Non-Jewish acquaintances suddenly became openly hostile to us. Many Jews now realized the danger they were in and hurriedly left for Holland, Britain or the USA.

Of the people in our family, Mutti's younger sister, Sylvi, together with her husband, Otto Grunwald and baby son Tom, left for England in August 1938. They settled in Darwen, Lancashire, where there was much unemployment. As an expert in the Bakelite process (a forerunner of modern plastics), the British government had given Otto permission to go into business as a consultant to a manufacturer of umbrella handles. One year later he sent for Mutti's parents, who were able to join him just before the outbreak of war.

Pappy's sister, Blanca, had married an art historian, Ludwig Goldscheider. Their daughter, Gaby, was a month older than me and my best friend. They immediately fled to London. Phaedon Press, the art publishing house for which Uncle Ludwig worked, later transferred its business from Vienna to England and remained a successful publisher of art books.

My father, too, decided to make plans for emigration to a safer country. He thought of moving his shoe business to the south of Holland where this industry was concentrated. Thus we would have a choice of living either in Brussels or Amsterdam. Mutti wanted to re-establish the family in a cosmopolitan city which in many respects would be similar to Vienna and she favoured Brussels, mainly because of the language. All of the family spoke good French except me as I was too young to have been taught any languages except my native German.

Pappy had always manufactured shoes. He had inherited his first factory from his father but that had failed in the economic depression of 1933. After that he had the idea of creating a cottage industry to make moccasins. He employed women in their homes to knit the multi-coloured tops which were sewn onto leather soles by a group of shoemakers from his old factory. This enterprise proved so successful that Pappy was soon exporting moccasins to the USA and Holland and aiming to build up a reserve of capital in a Dutch bank. In May 1938 he left us in Vienna while he took his manufacturing technique to Holland and went into partnership with the owner of a failing shoe factory. Soon his flair began to turn the losses into profits.

His determination to send for us as soon as possible was strengthened when Heinz returned from school one afternoon with blood streaming down his face from a cut eye. He had been bullied and thoroughly beaten up by the other boys in his class simply because he was a Jew. Mob rule was beginning to take over and we had no defence against that.

After this attack my parents decided to send Heinz on alone to stay with Pappy in Brabant for the time being. Mutti was left behind with me to sell as many of our possessions as possible. She knew that we would not be allowed to take much money out of Austria so she decided to equip me for the next two years. We went on a shopping trip around Bitman, a large children's store in the centre of Vienna, where she spent a great deal of money buying me clothes, most of which I liked. She bustled into the coat department.

‘We are going to live in Brussels,' Mutti confided to the eager sales assistant, ‘and I want a very smart coat and hat for my daughter.'

‘I have the very thing,' she said and, to my horror, she reappeared holding a bright orange woollen coat with a Scottish tartan hat to match the collar. I thought it was hideous.

‘I am not going to wear that!' I exclaimed.

‘Of course you will,' said Mutti, ‘all the little Belgian girls are wearing smart coats like this.'

She looked at the assistant who nodded with approval. I hoped it wouldn't fit me.

‘A fraction too large,' said Mutti. ‘Very satisfactory, there's just enough room for you to grow into it.'

In spite of my protests she bought the coat but, I thought stubbornly, not even Mutti could make me wear it.

When we arrived home that evening there was a letter from Pappy urging us to join him in Breda, Brabant. A week later, in June 1938, we left Austria for good to stay with Pappy and Heinz in a private house as paying guests.

Breda was a small provincial Dutch town in the southern part of Holland near the Belgian border. It was different in every way from the metropolitan life of Vienna and to me it was like a holiday in the country. The last few weeks had been a great strain on us all. Just for the moment at least we were together again and away from the threatening atmosphere of Vienna. In contrast to the Austrians, the Dutch were homely, friendly people who made us feel very welcome.

Everyone in Holland seemed to own a bicycle and one sunny Sunday, as a special treat, we hired four bicycles for a day out. We had a picnic in the warm peaceful countryside and as I lay on the grass gazing at clouds I thought how lucky I was not to be going to school the next day. I knew that when I joined a school in Brussels the lessons would be in French and I could not imagine how I was going to cope.

It was a short respite before the upheavals that were to come. By the end of July arrangements had been made for me and Heinz to go to schools in Belgium. Mutti, Heinz and I moved to a boarding house on the outskirts of Brussels and Pappy promised to visit us every weekend. Almost overnight we had become refugees.

The owner of the boarding house was Belgian, a M. LeBlanc, who had married a French widow with a son called Jacky. He was nine, the same age as me, and we struck up a friendship. He taught me that people can be friends without understanding each other's language. We played together, becoming good companions and all the time I was picking up French without realizing it.

Our family slept in two rooms. I shared one with Heinz, and Mutti shared her tiny double bedroom with Pappy at weekends. We ate our meals in a large communal dining room with other families, German and Czechoslovakian Jews, in the same predicament as ourselves. An elderly French dowager sat in one corner and in the other a middle-aged bachelor retired from the civil service in the Belgian Congo. He was a sinister man who made me very frightened.

One day Jacky and I went into his room when he was out and saw a dangerous looking collection of weapons, spears and lances, hanging on his wall. We were examining them with great curiosity when we heard him coming. As a joke, just to frighten him we jumped up and screamed. Without hesitation he tore a Congolese spear from the wall and lunged towards us.

We rushed out of the room in panic and after that made sure we kept out of his way!

Some afternoons I accompanied Mutti to the centre for refugees where people could make contact with one another, getting advice and assistance with all kinds of practical problems: where adults could go for French lessons; how to report to the police; how to get some financial help. There was endless filling in of forms. It was a transit centre for many on their way out to Britain and America and one day my grandparents even arrived to stay at our boarding house for a few days before they went on to England.

In the evenings we had nowhere to sit except in our bedrooms. I would lie on my bed watching disconsolately as Heinz conscientiously studied his Latin and French homework. He had no time for me so I would eventually go down to the courtyard to play with Jacky. There was a case that was full of his mother's old clothes and we would dress ourselves up and pretend to be grown-ups until Mutti called me to bed.

Even in ‘digs' Mutti tried to keep my life as normal as possible by sending me to the local school. How could it be normal for me? For eight years I'd heard and spoken only German and suddenly all the lessons were in French. I was in despair. I couldn't understand even the simplest instruction. Other children tried to help me but soon gave up when they realized I hadn't understood one word. The lessons were quite different from my old school where we had worked out simple sums on paper. Here the children seemed to know it in their heads so when the teacher called out what sounded like multiplication tables they would immediately shout out the answers. I could only sit there, dumb and miserable.

The pretty young teacher did her best to encourage me but I was desperately unhappy. After a month she tried to involve me in the lessons. One day she dictated a short story in French and all the children, including me, had to write it down in their exercise books with the correct spelling. Next day, when the work was handed back marked, everybody had to call out the number of their mistakes. My page was covered in red; my mistakes as many as the words in the story. I felt so humiliated that I ran home to Mutti in tears.

Mutti decided that I should learn twenty words every day: she would teach me the French words for familiar objects and make me repeat them after her. Then I would write them down and try to learn them. There were so many new words that by Friday I had forgotten what I'd learnt on Monday, which made Mutti so frustrated with me (on top of all her other worries) that she would slap me hard. So there were even more tears at the end of those lessons.

‘You're such a stubborn child,' Mutti would say in exasperation – which was quite true since by then I had refused to wear the orange coat and Mutti had had to dye it navy.

9 November 1938 Krystal Nacht, the burning of 7,500 Jewish shops and synagogues in Germany

Gradually the dense fog of a new language began to lift. Towards Christmas there was an Open Evening for the class. All parents, including Mutti and Pappy, came to sit at the side of the classroom whilst each of us had some poetry to recite. Our teacher introduced us as, one by one, we stood at the front of the class to say our piece. She had given me a fable of La Fontaine – it was quite long but I was determined to do my best to learn it off by heart in fluent French. When it was my turn she introduced me as ‘a little Austrian Jewish girl who has worked very hard'. This was quite true, but as I walked nervously to the front the poem went quite out of my head. I stood there, dumbly looking at the rows of faces.

‘Come on, Eva, it's your turn now,' she said.

I opened my mouth and to my astonishment all the words came flooding out as if I'd known them all my life and when I came to the end everyone applauded. As I looked at my parents and Heinz who were smiling proudly, I felt really pleased with myself.

15 March 1939 Germany invades Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia)

After my Open Evening success I felt part of the class and began to enjoy school. I would skip back to Mutti after school to tell her my news, but for her life was far less simple and carefree. She missed being in charge of her own home and she was more aware of the danger of our position as stateless refugees. She missed grandmother very much, with all her dominating advice on how to bring us up, and the companionship of Auntie Silvi and Auntie Blanca. Although there were one or two friends she had met at the centre for refugees there were no lighthearted get-togethers any more. Pappy would try to commute from the factory in Brabant most weekends but we all missed the security of our own home.

At the beginning of May, close to my ninth birthday, I longed to have a party and ask friends from school.

‘Oh please, Mutti,' I nagged. ‘I do so want a party and to blow out my candles on a cake!'

‘Well, alright, Eva,' she said reluctantly, ‘but we will have to ask Madame LeBlanc first.'

To my delight she agreed.

‘Only a small party of six, mind, in my dining room,' she said. ‘But I will make a cake especially for you.'

I was so happy! I eagerly wrote the invitations to hand out to my three special friends in class. At breaktime they asked me what presents I would like and we excitedly decided together what games we would play. But the following morning all three told me that their parents would not allow them to come. I could not believe it. Why? I was bewildered and very hurt. I think that it was then that I began to realize what it meant to be Jewish at that time. It hit me hard and I felt like an outcast.

23 August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non Aggression Pact