When the Nazis entered Vienna, my father was killed, my brother Manfred was sent to England on a Kindertransport, and my mother and I fled to the United States in early 1941. My aunt Franzi took refuge in Hungary, her husband Joszi’s birthplace.
Two decades later, while working for an international company, I had many opportunities to travel to Europe. I always stopped in London to see Manfred, building a relationship with the brother I had not met until I was 21. I often went to Vienna as well, despite having no desire to revisit the city my mother struggled so much for us to escape. However, Vienna is where my Aunt Franzi and Uncle Joszi lived.
Franzi, nine years younger than my mother, had been spoiled by her house maids, her older sisters, and her father—especially after her mother died. In her youth, she was blond, attractive, and flirty, and had many suitors.
Joszi was from a modest Hungarian family. He had little formal education, but was clever in business. He had the build of a boxer, and reminded me of the actors who played the bad guys in old movies. Grandfather initially opposed their marriage, considering him a “peasant.”
Franzi survived the war in Hungary and provided some help to my mother in coping with the horrors of Vienna before we were able to get out. She often passed as Aryan, and had a number of adventures that resulted in near-death experiences.
Meanwhile, Joszi was conscripted into the Soviet army. There was no word from him for two years and he was presumed dead. Then one day Joszi miraculously appeared. Franzi said he doesn’t talk about it, but it appears he walked across half of Europe.
After the war, Franzi and Joszi were among the handful of Jews who decided to return to Vienna to live. Joszi had grown up in the business of importing and exporting cattle between Italy, Hungary, and Austria. He said, “I know how to make a living in Vienna. I don’t know how to make a living in America or Palestine.” He became a successful businessman and enjoyed visiting the casinos in Monaco. Franzi told me he made and gambled away several fortunes there.
The first time I visited them, in 1960, they drove me around the city, occasionally slowing down to point to a first- or second-floor window, saying, “There lives a Jew. There lives another Jew … ”
The sights were beautiful, but the people—speaking their German language—made me uncomfortable. The atmosphere crackled with antisemitism.
At a time when American Jews still shunned German products—especially cars—Joszi was very attached to his Mercedes, which he drove—not surprisingly for a cattle dealer—like a cowboy. One day he took me out for a drive on the autobahn, which had no speed limit. In that pre-seatbelt era, I watched with horror as the speedometer climbed to 180. I felt only slightly comforted when I realized it was kilometers per hour.
On the last day of one visit, we set out on a drive to visit a famous castle in the hills of northern Vienna. We arrived to find that the castle had closed early that day. In talking about our misfortune, my mind did what it does with words (although usually in English): I associated “Schloss,” which means castle, with “geschlossen,” which means closed, and proclaimed, “Das Schloss is geschlossen.” My aunt suddenly started to cry. “Aunt Franzi, why are you crying?” I said. “That is exactly like your father. He constantly made ‘Wortwitze,’” she said (meaning wordplay or puns). Now I started to cry, understanding my compulsion to see word associations and make puns as a connection to the father I never knew—buried in a cemetery in Vienna.