A Gift from The Enemy

By Enrico Lamet

By Enrico Lamet an 81-year-old retiree living in Florida. How he got there is an amazing tale. Born in Vienna as Erich Lifshütz, an upper middle class Jew with Polish roots, he left Austria with his parents in 1938, at the age of 8. As Jews, they were not permitted to take much money out of the country as they shuffled across France and came to settle in Italy, as the Nazis marched across borders. You would expect such an account to be filled with the horrors of war. But it is not.

Lamet is a natural storyteller. When he identifies himself as al confino, he is referring to the system of enforced exile, or confinement of untrustworthy elements, which was put in place by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini after allying with Hitler. The author’s father made the fateful choice of returning to Poland to see family, leaving his wife and son on their own for the duration of the war. The author and his mother, whom he calls “Mutti,” are affectionate, yet she is as willful and worry-prone as he is active and adventure-prone.

They know as much freedom as one can, living al confino, in the backward, bug-infested mountain village of Ospedaletto, outside Naples. The others in their cohort of undesirables - which include a former Oxford professor, Eastern Europeans, and Italians - must check in with the police on a regular basis. But the local enforcers, it turns out, have no interest in strictly monitoring them or in bowing to Mussolini. Here are your orders, the man in charge recites, and then in an aside: “I am embarrassed to have to read this to you.”

What makes this book so animated are the cast of characters as they survive in the mind of Erich (Enrico, in his Italian incarnation). A shoemaker, young priests, teachers, neighbors - they are his extended family in times of trial and confusion, as the outsiders adapt to a colorless townscape of steep, dusty, narrow streets, a place without running water. Money is scarce, food not always plentiful, and when winter blows in, young Enrico “combed the woods for the scraps left behind by some careless woodsman” to keep the fire going. He lives by his wits.

“Mutti” falls in love with a Sicilian, Pietro, who becomes the boy’s stepfather. Seeing the three-way relationship develop through Enrico’s eyes is deeply real and touching. What might have turned out bad becomes a lesson in how human beings sometimes find happiness despite overwhelming odds. Separations are sutured back together through the poetry Pietro conveys. To the multilingual Enrico he once quoted at length from Dante’s Inferno, in Italian. The boy was struck that he could retain so much literature in his head. “All beautiful things are worth remembering,” Pietro explains. A certain radiance comes from Pietro that makes his generosity all the more enduring.

During their two and a half years in Ospedaletto, this patchwork family could only assume that Enrico’s father was dead. But before any news from Poland arrives, the war closes in on them. German troops ominously enter the town, and when one of the soldiers tries to communicate with the locals, Enrico, disobeying his mother’s warnings, blurts out something in German. Overcoming moments of palpitation, he and Gerhard became fast friends. It seems that Enrico (now “Erich” again) reminds the soldier of his 11-year-old back in Germany. Away from his men, he whispers to the lad: “I know you are Jewish, but you have nothing to fear.”

Not very long after this episode, the Americans liberate the town, and the confinati are finally allowed to leave. The author rides to Naples in an American jeep. Resettled there, he receives a high school and college education. Word from Poland arrives, past and present merge for the teenager on a train platform, and the fears he had contended with through a wandering childhood gradually melt away.

In 1950, he reaches America, where this tale of running, hiding, and surviving ends with a thoroughly uplifting epi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enrico Lamet
• Release date: Nov 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301642816

Enrico Lamet

Born in Vienna on May 27, 1930, Enrico Lamet, whose name at birth was Lifschütz, for the first seven years of his life enjoyed the comforts of an upper middle class family. Forced to flee Austria after the annexation to Germany, the family found refuge in Italy first, then France and Italy once again. With little formal schooling during the war years, Mr. Lamet was able to graduate high school among the top of the class of 1949, after which he emigrated to the United States. Disenchanted with academic studies, Mr. Lamet entered the business world in his early twenties and eventually worked his way up to top executive position, from which he retired in the late 1980s. Prompted by friends, who had learned of his past, to write his memoirs, Eric Lamet began his work in 1991 and after a total of twenty-six drafts completed it in 2003. The book has been published twice in the US and once in Italy, by the publisher of Schindler’s List. The American titles are: A GIFT FROM THE ENEMY and A CHILD AL CONFINO. Mister Lamet received an honorary citizenship from the Italian town in which his story takes place.

Book preview

These memoirs were inspired by a compulsion to give my children a glimpse of how their father grew up in what were arduous times, especially for European Jews. They were also written before the memory fades and the experiences endured by me and many others like me are forever lost to future generations. I have not attempted to gain the reader's sympathy, for none is deserved. I did, however, make a diligent attempt to depict, as objectively as I could, the lifestyle we experienced in Italy during the Fascist regime.

Not all that I have written addresses itself to the ugliness of mankind and for that I am happy. In the midst of all the horror of the period, there were glimmers of human goodness. Some even touched me personally.

Observations by a number of reviewers, remarking about the lack of hate or a call for revenge, have given me great gratification. Hate only generates more negative responses. As for revenge, whom shall I blame for murdering close to eighty of my family members?

I do not call myself a survivor, for this term rightly belongs to those brave and remarkable individuals who endured the brutalities of the German death camps. I do consider myself a remnant of what once had been the large, culturally rich Jewish community of Europe.

My odyssey lasted sixty-seven months and represents a period in my life I would not want to relive for all the fortunes in the world. Yet, sixty years later, I so much cherish the memories.

As I began writing this memoir I did not have a specific goal other than to allow my memory to empty itself in the most honest and truthful way. That I succeeded in the task is indeed a great source of pride.

What are even greater sources of pride, are the comments and accolades from readers and publishers alike telling me what a unique and talented woman my mother was and this book stands as a great memorial to her life and her talents.

How gratifying the comments from my parents’ few surviving friends and acquaintances who have confirmed the faithfulness of my portrayal of both my mother and father.

Writing the details of this memoir was a bitter-sweet labor of love. Every time I go back to read my writings, I find myself seeing each of the people whom I depicted but, most of all, the scenes where my mother and/or my step-dad appear they are the most painful ones. More than three decades have elapsed since their passing, yet my memory of them has hardly faded and I rejoice in reliving the many wonderful moments we journeyed together.

All individuals portrayed herein are real persons. Only in a few instances, mostly because of memory lapses, have their names been changed or omitted.

This book was originally published by Syracuse University Press and subsequently, by Adams Media, of Avon, Massachusetts. This third edition has been reviewed and, abiding to the request of several readers, enlarged to include the magnificent people who enriched my parents’ final years and the wonderfully rich existence they enjoyed during the autumn of their lives.

Further you may find some spellings which do not agree with English grammar. Such as papà, that is Italian and is never in upper case except at the beginning of a sentence, while Papa, German, is always in upper case. For mamma the same rule applies.

Revised in Pittsfield Mass. July 10, 2013

Exclusive New Feature

In addition to providing you with great reading material, this book offers you an exclusive new feature that will enrich you through a pictorial and historical world. Whenever you choose to view pictures of venues you read about or learn historical facts about interesting personages, a simple click will do. To that end, I have tried to locate the best period photographs so as to provide you with a more correct historical portrait. Be aware this information is hidden outside the book and will only appear when you choose to click on the underlined word in color. See example below.

Example: click on word or words in color and underscored >>> Ospedaletto. When finished, click back on the book and continue reading. IMPORTANT: you will need to be connected to the Internet for this feature to function and some readers will not be suited.

Further, because I have interspersed three languages throughout the book, one or two words will help you identify what language is being used in the dialog at that point. You will also find a complete Glossary at the end of the Book in case you wish to see a translation of any of the foreign sentences.

If you are wondering why Enrico never had any siblings, then you must read this book.

Foreword by Professor Risa Sodi, PhD

Yale University

If you travel today to the southern Italian village of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo in the Apennine Alps south-east of Naples, you’ll find a village perched 2400 feet above sea level and ranging over 1400 acres, half of them rocky cliffs. Its 1639 residents make a living today as they have for centuries, from the hazelnut and chestnut forests surrounding the town. Its 643 dwellings are interspersed with pizzerias, restaurants, hotels and shops that provide the amenities of modern life (including internet access, as evidenced by the town’s practical web site). In contrast, life in Ospedaletto was radically different sixty-five years ago when young Enrico Lamet and his mother, Carlotte Szyfra Brandwein, were forced into three years of compulsory internal exile. Surely, the terrain and the surrounding forests were the same, the population was roughly the same—slightly larger, at 1800 inhabitants than it is now and State Road No. 374 also traversed the town before branching off towards the Montevergine sanctuary nestled in the cliffs overhanging the village. In 1941, however, Ospedaletto was governed by a Fascist mayor, il podestà Modestino Di Pietro, and the fascist system of il confino (from the Italian verb confinare, to confine, to relegate) had transformed the village by relocating to within its borders scores of suspect foreigners, political activists, Jews and other sundry potential enemies of the state.

Il confino was an enforced internal exile system excogitated by Mussolini quite early in his regime in order to marginalize those who could potentially cause it harm. Conceived as a measure halfway between a warning and incarceration, il confino was a police procedure requiring no actual trial but rather mere denunciation by local authorities. In the years preceding 1938, the confinati were usually vocal political opponents of Fascism and, indeed, the most prominent antifascist thinkers of the day ended up in internal exile, mainly on Italy’s countless small islands. There, they were divorced from political events, deprived of a means to communicate with the mainland settled among generally indifferent or non-politicized local populations. The communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, the socialist leader Pietro Nenni and the liberal thinkers Giovanni Amendola and Piero Gobetti all were sent into internal (island) exile during this pre-1938 period.

The mechanism of il confino was quite simple: those affected were required to remain within a certain area (usually within the town limits) and to sign in daily at the local police station. They were responsible for finding their own housing and providing their own means of support. Correspondence was censored and in many locales, gatherings of confinati were banned. Sentences could run as long as five years (renewable) though, in practice, many were commuted before their end dates.

In 1938, in an effort to appease Hitler and keep pace with his German ally, Mussolini promulgated a series of racial laws, applied specifically to Italy’s Jewish population. Nearly 47,000 strong, it also included roughly 7,000 foreign Jews most, like Enrico and his mother, refugees from Nazi-ravaged Europe. The native-born Italian Jews, spread among several dozen central and northern Italian communities, worshipped in either the Italian or the Sephardic rite, fell mostly into the middle class (though there were notable wealthy families, such as the Olivetti of Ivrea and pockets of desperate poverty, especially in and around Rome) and were extraordinarily assimilated into Italian political, cultural and everyday life. The Fascist racial laws directed at them were at once overarching and picayune, vexatious and devastating. For example, as of autumn 1938, marriages between Jews and Aryans (non-Jewish Italians) were forbidden, as was holding any sort of state job, serving in the military, employing an Aryan domestic, or owning land over a certain value or a factory with more than a certain number of workers. Jews could not list obituaries in their local newspapers or own a radio. Jewish students were banned from public schools, including the universities and Jewish teachers, attorneys, doctors and other professionals were banned from their professions. Exemptions were allowed within certain limitations; nonetheless, the impact on the Italian JewsCboth psychological and materialCwas crushing.

Foreign Jews suffered to an even greater extent when Italy entered World War II, in June 1940. Because of a previous September 1938 law had required them to leave the country (a provision mostly observed in the breach), those remaining were subject to internment camps or il confino. Thus, in 1940, Enrico and his mother, like thousands of Jews who had left Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Romania for the relative safety of Italy, were caught up in the Fascist regime’s new policies. Lamet and his mother’s peregrinations thus far had kept them one step ahead of the authorities and had taken them from Vienna to Milan, to Paris, Nice and San Remo. Yet all ended in June 1940 with Italy’s entry into World War II and their relegation to confinement in Ospedaletto. As we shall see, such a fate C unbeknownst to them C likely saved their lives.

The crux of A Gift from the Enemy centers on young Lamet’s and his mother’s struggles in backward Ospedaletto. Urbane intellectuals, they faced often-arduous adjustments to new, harsh climes, new customs and cultures and new language systems (the often impenetrable dialects of the Italian mountain communities). Once residents of a premier Viennese hotel, they were now straining to find suitable housing, to scrounge for food and to procure some sort of education for ten-year-old Enrico (all futile searches, as it turned out). Lamet’s memoir echoes with observations also found in Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli or Natalia Ginzburg’s It’s Hard to Talk about Yourself C both penned by Italian-Jewish authors and former confinati C i.e., that relegation to the primitive mountain confino villages was akin stepping back in time.

Just as mother and son struggled, however, they were also favored with new friendships and new ties. Lamet’s portrayal of the rag-tag group of Ospedaletto confinati contains sketches of characters at turns amusing, endearing and maddening. It also includes the introduction of Pietro Russo, a fellow exile who was so to change Lamet’s life he dedicated this memoir to him.

In the fall of 1943, General Mark W. Clark and his Allied troops began the long slog up the Salerno coast known as Operation Avalanche and eventually liberated southern Italy. Enrico and his mother rejoiced at their liberation by American soldiers in October of the same year. At that time they could not have known il confino, in a strange twist of fate, had saved their lives, for had they been interned in northern Italy instead of sent into internal exile in southern Italy, they would have come under the jurisdiction of Nazi troops and most likely would have found themselves among the 7,000 Italian and foreign Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and other Nazi lagers. Of those deported, only 300 Italian Jews and 500 foreign Jews survived.

Enrico’s saga continued in Italy for several more years, until 1950 when he, his mother and her second husband the same Pietro Russo settled in the United States. His memoir traces a little-told story: of child refugees in Italy, of foreign Jews in Italy during World War II, of the hardships imposed by the confino system, of the southern Italy mountain villages, of the mutual respect often developed among confinati and between unsophisticated peasants and urbane intellectuals both struggling under adversity.

Contents

Author’s Note

Preface

Foreword by Risa Sodi

Volume I: Escape and Internment

Chapter One: Escape from Vienna

Chapter Two: Poland - My Extended Family

Chapter Three: Milan

Chapter Four: Settling Down

Chapter Five: Paris

Chapter Six: Nice

Chapter Seven: San Remo

Chapter Eight: Mother Goes to the Hospital

Chapter Nine: Our New Home on the Hill

Chapter Ten: Internment

Chapter Eleven: Getting Settled

Chapter Twelve: Religion in Our Lives

Chapter Thirteen: Moving to Our Apartment

Chapter Fourteen: New Internees Arrive

Chapter Fifteen: Our First Winter

Chapter Sixteen: Pietro Russo and Ettore Costa

Chapter Seventeen: A Letter from Omama

Chapter Eighteen: Keeping Myself Occupied

Chapter Nineteen: A New Suit

Chapter Twenty: Don Antonio

Chapter Twenty-One: Pietro Russo Is Freed

Chapter Twenty-Two: Tragedies and Grief

Chapter Twenty-Three: Lello Is Born

Chapter Twenty-Four: Pierce’s Betrayal

Chapter Twenty-Five: The German Occupation

Chapter Twenty-Six: Montevergine

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Battle for Salerno

Epilogue

Finding Grand-Mama’s Home

Finding My Aunt Steffi

Glossary

Illustrations

A Gift from the Enemy

Chapter One

Escape from Vienna

Stunned, peeking from behind the hallway wall for the longest moment, I watched my father rapidly pacing the four corners of the living room floor. I could tell he was very tense. Never changing his fast rhythm, he was mumbling in such a low tone I couldn’t tell whether he spoke German or his native Polish.

We had eaten our breakfast hours before, yet my mother was still in her silk robe. Mutti’s hair lacked its usual neatness and her face was drawn and without makeup. She sat stiffly against the wall on one of the dining room chairs. While her eyes followed my father’s every step, I could tell her mind was far away, immersed in other thoughts. Never, until that awful morning, had there been such an upheaval in my well-ordered carefree life of eight years. ‘What did I do?’ was the only thought that churned my mind. I was scared. Did my teacher send home a bad report? Or what? I was certain they were discussing what punishment I deserved, something they had never done before.

What happened? I asked, meekly voicing words that had crossed my mind moments before, instantly sorry to have said anything and hoping no one had heard me.

Neither of my parents answered. Many times I had felt bothered by how often they had not noticed my presence but this was one time I was glad they didn’t. In my frightened state, I felt relieved not to be facing their answers.

Earlier that morning, for the first time, Mutti had not helped me to get dressed. She had come to my room at the usual time and sat on the bed.

You’re not going to school today.

Why not?

Please, don’t ask questions.

My mother’s nervousness of earlier was now more intense. I watched as her foot delicately tapped the parquet floor. Her hands tightly clenched her knees, showing the white outline on her fair skin.

When Millie, our housekeeper as well as my governess, walked into the dining room to set the table for the midday meal, my father stopped his pacing. What Millie had always done while humming some Austrian folk tune and with a bounce to her step, she was now doing in silence. The sight resembled a movie scene in slow motion. Mutti was sitting motionless staring into space and Papa was awkwardly standing on the spot where he had last placed his foot while Millie moved about as if unaware of our presence.

Although not quite eight I had already learned to stay out of my parents’ way when something unusual was going on and what I saw happening was more than unusual, it was downright scary and weird. Perhaps it would be best to make myself invisible. Creeping backward, I was halfway through the doorway to my room, all the while trying to guess what could possibly have happened to cause such gloom, when a bizarre thought crossed my mind: I wished to be in school, with the teacher I detested, doing assignments I liked even less.

From my doorway I watched as Millie left the room and Papa resumed his pacing. I, hoping to escape the mysterious tension, quietly finished slipping back into my room. Cuddling my teddy bear, I lay on my bed and cried.

Through the sound of my sobs, I heard my parents’ loud exchange. Driven more by curiosity than fear, I walked back to the living room. They were shouting in Polish, a language I could understand when spoken slowly and with calm but, as they did neither, I understood nothing. I felt relief that they were not fighting with one another, as they had done many times.

I’m glad you’re here, Mutti said. I was just going to call you. Come Schatzele. Lunch is ready."

Her tone lacked the pleasantness I so loved.

As though nothing had happened to give rise to the strange behavior I had witnessed all morning, we sat at the table to eat the main meal of the day.

Millie, Mutti called in her gentle voice. You may start serving.

Sullen, the maid entered and placed a silver-plated soup tureen on the table, turned on her heels like a ballerina and left. Never. Never did she act like this before. My ever-smiling Millie always served each of us. No one ever needed to ask her. She had loved doing it. Papa was about to say something to the woman but my mother looked at him and, with one finger across her lips, motioned for him to be silent. Then she shrugged her shoulders and, reaching for the ladle, did the serving herself.

We sat in silence. I waited for the storm certain about to come. Why aren’t you eating? Mutti asked. Her words caught me off guard and trembling, I started to cry.

"I’m scared, Mutti. I don’t know what’s happening."

She placed her arms around me, pulled me close and stroked my hair.

Erich, one day you’ll understand. As she spoke, I saw tears well in her eyes. Yesterday German soldiers invaded Vienna.

It was Monday, March 14, 1938.

*

My mother was right. I did not know what it all meant. I felt threatened. What did it mean German soldiers invaded Vienna? Who were these German soldiers? I wanted to ask these questions and more but, somehow did not dare.

We had just finished lunch when Mutti suggested I take my daily rest.

"Go, Erichl!"

I usually loved it when she used the pet name Erichl but this time it did not seem to matter much.

A radio’s blaring jolted me out of my nap. The noise had to be coming from neighbors across the courtyard. No one in our home would turn on the radio right after lunch when we were habitually taking our afternoon nap. Nor would my parents, out of concern for the other tenants, allow the volume to be so loud. Strange music screeched from the speaker, mixed with a man‘s voice more loud than understandable. Crowds screamed in the background. Slowly I got up to see where the sound was coming from.

In her colorful Austrian dirndl, the costume she wore only for special occasions, Millie sat transfixed in front of our radio. She had pulled a dining room chair into the antechamber, next to the small table on which she had placed the much too large receiver. It looked dangerously close to the edge and almost ready to fall. And that chair? No one had ever moved those chairs out of the dining room. Millie knew it wasn’t allowed. What was going on? She seemed hypnotized and unaware of my presence. I walked up to her and placed two fingers on the volume knob when, without a glance, she grabbed and pushed them away with such force to crack the small bones and make my hand go numb. I was in shock. Was this the gentle and loving Millie in whose bed I had cuddled many mornings before going off to school, preferring hers to my mother’s bed? I wanted to cry out but her meanness made me run away and look for protection inside my room instead, where I buried my face in the soft down pillow.

That evening the situation grew more troubling. Millie was nowhere to be seen and my mother was left to bring dinner to the table herself. My parents hardly spoke and I, grasped by the fear of the unknown, did not dare utter a sound. After dinner, Mutti moved our dishes to one corner and pulled her chair next to mine. She cleared her throat and, although looking at my father, spoke to me.

Listen to me carefully, Erich. I don’t want you to go out of the house. I don’t want you to speak to Millie or anyone in the building. I don’t want you to listen to the radio and you will not be going to school for the next few days.

From her tone of voice and my father’s nodding approval, I knew none of this was open for discussion.

Between 1930, the year I was born and 1938, my family had enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. Papa, with his younger brother, Oswald, my Uncle Osi, managed the Hotel Continental. It must have been a first class hotel since so many rich and elegant foreigners came to stay there. I thought the hotel was ours but later learned it was owned by my granduncle Maximilian, who had made a small fortune when oil was discovered on his land in the Ukraine. From my parents I learned Uncle Max, who was my grandpa’s brother, was a generous man who shared his good fortune with members of his family. With the proceeds of the sale of his oil fields, he purchased real estate in several European countries then let a number of his relatives benefit from some of the revenues these investments generated.

Enrico’s father, Markus Lifschütz, 1928

After my parents married and for the first four years of my life, we lived at the hotel, where my mother enjoyed many comforts: built in baby-sitters, daily maid assistance, two restaurants with room service and laundry. Well-to-do families, without children, found it convenient to live in a hotel in those days. The Continental had suites with kitchenettes and living rooms, offering services and comforts not found in private homes and a number of my parents’ friends had taken up residence at the hotel.

Cooking and baking were my mother’s loves and, since living in the hotel made it difficult to satisfy her longing for those passions, in 1934 we moved to our own apartment. I liked living in the hotel. It was the only home I had ever known. My friends were the bell captain, the concierge, the waiters, the chamber maids and some of the regular guests and I was not at all anxious to change. So I asked Mutti why we needed to move.

Growing up in a hotel is not good for a child, was her answer.

Did my Mutti always know what was best for me?

We stayed in our first apartment for the year I attended kindergarten but, as soon as I was ready to start first grade, we moved again, this time to larger quarters on the Tabor Strasse. The hotel was on the same street, right on the corner with the Prater Strasse no more than two hundred yards away. For Papa this was very convenient. He could walk to work, come home for lunch, take a short nap and be back at the hotel for the remainder of the day.

Mother’s lifestyle was typical Viennese. In the afternoon, almost ritually, she met her friends at the Kaffee Fetzer where, after an exchange of gossip, she played bridge until evening. After dinner at home, many of these same women met again, this time accompanied by their husbands, to socialize in one of the many coffee houses for which Vienna was famous. How did I know all this? Because I was nosy and some days went with Mutti to her ladies get-together.

Our first apartment was across the narrow street of the Kaffee Fetzer. Often I walked over to see Mutti, not out of any interest in her friends or the coffee house but because I liked the candies one of her lady friends frequently brought with her. Once, the same friend sent me to the candy store around the corner.

Please get one quarter pound of chocolate covered orange peels, she said.

Convinced the woman intended the candies for me, I asked the clerk to let me taste one before placing the order. I cringed.

Too bitter.

Carlotte Szyfra Brandwein, 1928

May I get you something else? The clerk asked.

Yes, I’ll take those, I said, pointing at the pralines.

When I returned with the wrong candies, the ladies looked amused and I did not get scolded. Not even my sweet Mutti was annoyed. The lady, who had given me the money, took her change and said, It’s perfectly all right. You may keep the candies for yourself.

Mine was a happy, orderly life, a life that revolved around my Millie, the two-month Alpine summer vacation when Mutti took me on the Semmering until I was about four, the yearly visits with my grandparents in Poland and the weekly afternoons with Omama, my maternal grandmother. I also had many friends with Enrico’s mother, whom I played in our courtyard and shared our mutual birthdays. Oh, how I loved the chocolate pudding with sliced bananas, a favorite at any birthday party. Then there were our relatives, cousins, uncles, distant cousins, who made such a fuss over me for I was the only child in the immediate family’s Viennese contingent.

During the next four days following March 14, our lives changed dramatically. I stayed home with Mutti, while Papa came and went more often than usual. My parents endured Millie’s many disrespectful actions. Because of the disturbances on the streets, on Monday no one shopped for groceries and, since we had no means to keep food cold, by Tuesday we had little in the house to prepare a meal.

Erich at 11 days in Vienna, 1930

Millie, would you do the shopping? Mutti asked.

I’m busy right now. I’ll do it when I can. Millie’s tone was insolent.

I could not believe my ears. What had happened to her respectful of course madam, right away? At twenty-two she had lost all her good manners. Mother would never have tolerated such a tone from me.

The radio, with volume turned up high, blatantly showing Millie’s new asserted independence, blared through the house. In the streets people were chanting and marching but I had no way of knowing what was happening thanks to my ever-alert Mother who made sure I would not look out the window.

Millie was allowed to take off more time than ever before. Well, not really allowed. She just did not ask, merely announced, I will be going out for the day.

When will you be back? Mutti asked.

Whenever I get back.

Mother never asked the question again.

Millie’s absence gave my parents the freedom to talk openly. They would ask me to leave the room and, even though I did, I could not help but overhear when their voices rose. In their eyes I was not old enough to be trusted with the gravity of our situation, yet I was old enough to sense it was really serious.

They’re rounding up Jews and taking them into cellars, my father said. I don’t know what they are doing, no one knows but I hear horrible stories. Someone said they stopped Jewish women on the streets and forced them to use their fur coats to wash the sidewalks.

I thought of my mother and could not imagine her obeying such an order.

We must leave! Mutti said, leaving no doubt about what was about to happen. Mutti was a woman of action, always in charge of our family.

With our Polish passports, we’ll be able to leave Austria without any trouble.

Enrico with his mother in Semmering, 1931

In spite of living in Vienna for more than twenty years, my parents had never given up their Polish citizenship.

We must leave? I repeated to myself. Everything during those days was terrifying. What did it mean and where would we be going?

I spent most of the next four days in my bed whispering to my teddy bear and trying to read. The fear of the first day mounted with every passing hour. I felt like a prisoner having been found guilty and now dreading to hear the sentence. On March 18, five days after the German troops had marched into Vienna, Mother came to my room to tell me we were going to Poland. Her face was pale, her eyes swollen and red.

Do we have to? I asked.

With a forefinger placed on her lips, she signaled for me to remain silent.

"Opapa is ill and has asked us to come visit him."

Her voice was unnaturally loud. I couldn’t understand why she had raised her voice so much when I was standing next to her in the same room. Even the information was odd since we returned from Lwow not long before.

We were . . . , I started but Mother placed her full hand over my mouth.

I had always looked forward to visiting my grandparents but this time was different. The brand-new sleigh I h ad craved for so long was finally mine, a surprise gift from my parents on Saint Nicholas day. It was leaning against the wall in one corner of my room. Every morning there it was where I could see the shiny wooden slats and bright runners. I had used it only twice. Going meant I would not be able to use it and the parks were covered with fresh snow. Nor would my teddy bear be allowed to come with me. Mutti never allowed me to take him on previous trips. A family friend had bought the stuffed toy before my first birthday. The docile bear, larger than I, when placed into my crib for the first time provoked such screaming my parents stored him in an armoire and out of sight for months. Now however, having to leave Teddy behind was the one thing I disliked about our trips to Poland.

Through free flowing tears, I tried to cajole my mother into relenting.

"Just this time. Please, Mutti."

The answer is no.

Although her voice had a determined tone, I was not deterred.

Why not?

She looked tired, drawn and annoyed at my persistence.

Just do as I tell you. Please.

Dashing from the room to get away from her, I shouted, I hate you!

Millie kept sitting in the anteroom. In those last four days she had spent so much time listening to the radio, she had done nothing else around the house. Worse yet, she, who for the past three years had been my solace and comfort, was now coldly indifferent to my pain. Two months and thirteen days from my eighth birthday, in our own home, surrounded by the people I loved, I felt alone and abandoned.

*

Later on that fourth afternoon, my parents rushed from their bedroom. Father, in his fur-lined overcoat, carried two suitcases. Mother, wearing not her fur coat but her cloth overcoat, tried to be warm and friendly.

Millie, she said. We will be gone for only a few days.

The young servant never looked up. She seemed to ignore what Mutti said. My mother stood silently for more than a moment.

Here is money in case you need to buy something for the house. If you need anything else, you know you can call the hotel.

The woman made no attempt at reaching for the money. Mother placed it on the table, near the radio. As she did, I noticed her spotting the daily paper lying on the floor. Staring at her was a full-page picture of Adolf Hitler. Abruptly my mother turned to my father.

Get a taxi and make sure you find one flying the Nazi flag. Her voice had a slight quiver.

Papa was back a few minutes later. We were ready to leave and, as I walked backwards toward the door, my eyes remained focused on Millie. Oh, how I loved her and was so certain she loved me. Why else would she have taken me to spend the past two summers at her parents’ farm? I stopped and waited near her chair.

Then softly, hesitantly, I called, Millie.

She never raised her head to look at me.

Mutti abruptly grabbed me by the arm.

Let’s go!

Life was so cruel! Cruel! Cruel! I was leaving behind my Millie and my Teddy. I didn’t know one could hurt so much inside.

The taxi was waiting. Its front fenders flew two small red flags with a strange black cross similar to the Austrian cross. Once we were in the car, Mutti told me it was a swastika. The driver held the door for my mother. She stepped in and immediately lowered the side curtain and fell back onto the seat. I didn’t know whether she did not want to see what was going on outside or prevent anyone else from seeing us inside.

During the ride, I stole some glimpses of the outside world. A circle of agitated people surrounded two kneeling well-dressed women washing the sidewalk.

What are they doing? I asked.

My father made a small opening in the curtain and glanced out. He leaned over to Mother and, with a hand cupped over his mouth, whispered, Just what I was telling you. They want these poor women to rub off the oil-painted Austrian symbols with their furs.

I remembered the day when I was out with my father having asked him why all those Austrian emblems had been painted on sidewalks and bridges.

To celebrate the New Year, he said.

The cab dropped us off at the main entrance of Südbahnhof, one of the city’s train terminals. The driver lifted our two suitcases from the luggage rack and placed them on the curb. Papa looked around for a porter but none was in sight.

Take the bags and let’s go! Mutti said, nervously.

The railroad station, with its hollow sounding interior, was not as I remembered it from our previous trips. Now soldiers were everywhere