Memory of Kindness: Growing up in War Torn Europe

By Gertrude Goetz

This personal account chronicles the story of a young Jewish girl growing up in Fascist- and, later on, Nazi-occupied Italy. More than a personal account, it is a testimony that amidst the horror and the deprivations of war kindness and humanity could prevail.

As seen through the eyes of a young child, the book gives a brief account of the Nazi annexation of Austria, the ensuing drastic measures undertaken against the Jewish community in Vienna, and, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the fathers deportation to Dachau Concentration Camp. In February 1939, armed with temporary entry permits to Italy, and having obtained the fathers release from Dachau, young Gerti and her family leave Austria, giving up all their possessions, and make their way to Italy and an uncertain future.

As foreign Jews and political refugees, the family settles in Milan as wards of the Jewish community. In June 1940, with Italys entry into war, Gertis father is imprisoned once again and, two months later, interned in a remote and isolated village in central Italy. It is not until 1942 that Gerti and her mother are also interned in the same rural community and reunited with their father and husband. It is in this little village, Castilenti, where eight-year old Gerti finds, for the first time in her young life, acceptance, kindness, and gestures of humanity. Notwithstanding the many deprivations, lack of food, her mothers near fatal illness, and insecurity about the familys ultimate fate, Gerti finds a haven, not only among the humble farmers, but also among the leading fascist families in the village.

With the 1943 Armistice and in the wake of German occupation, Gertis family is alerted by the village fascist secretary that orders had been received to have the family transferred to a collection camp in Modena for a final resettlement in Poland. Aware of the dangers and the tragic fate awaiting them, Gerti and her family, with the fascist secretarys blessing, go into hiding in the forested and mountainous areas of central Italy. Living in stables, suffering from the inclement weather and malnutrition, the family makes its way into hiding, under threat of being apprehended by the German occupying forces.

Liberation comes in June 1944; Gerti, by now eleven-years-old, spends the next four years in various displaced persons camps. By 1949 the family had to separate once again as Gerti and her mother obtain permission to come to the United States. Her father must wait another two-and-a-half years before being able to rejoin the family in the United States.

Gertis first years in her new homeland were years of adjustment and hard work, but they also offered the opportunity to resume a normal life and obtain an education. Reminiscences of hardship and deprivations suffered while growing up, are always tempered by the benevolence and compassion extended to Gerti and her family by the Italian people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462818990

Gertrude Goetz

Gertrude Goetz, born in Vienna, spent most of her formative years in wartime Italy. Admitted to the United States in 1949 and settling in Los Angeles, the author pursued her academic education earning several graduate degrees and a doctorate in Germanic Languages. Professionally Gertrude Goetz served as a high school librarian and teacher. Retired, she lives now with her family in Los Angeles.

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Copyright © 2000 by Gertrude Goetz.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2001116391

ISBN:         Hardcover                               0-7388-6259-2

                  Softcover                                 0-7388-6260-6

                  Ebook                                     9781462818990

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PREFACE

THE FIRST YEARS OF MY CHILDHOOD

THE EARLY WAR YEARS

YEARS OF FORCED CONFINEMENT

TRANSFORMATION TO A STATELESS DISPLACED PERSON

BEGINNING A NEW LIFE

DEDICATED TO:

My Husband Sam

My children: Joseph, Eugenia and Steven

My grandchildren: Aaron, Alexa, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Justin and Nathaniel

And In Memory of my beloved parents Alfred and Emily

PREFACE

For many years I had looked forward to revisiting the city where I was born and where I had spent the first few years of my life—a city I had to leave with my parents in 1939. Returning to Vienna for the first time after the war, I tried to retrace the places where I had spent many happy days with my parents. But soon repressed, painful memories surfaced, of persecution and discrimination, and our final ousting from Austria as stateless emigrants.

On this same trip to I also returned to Italy and to the small village to which my family had been confined at the height of the war. I was able to meet once again the many people who had helped us survive. Invariably, the response of these humble people to my expression of appreciation was, «it did not matter to us who you were, foreigners or of a different faith. What mattered was that you and your family were fellow human beings. « These responses were both touching and revealing at the same time, words spoken with a clear conscience and proof of a basic human decency. I felt that not many countries or people could speak with such pride and such a clear conscience about how they had behaved during the tragic years of World War II.

It was statements like these that made me realize that mere expressions of gratitude on my part did not do justice to the decency and kindness shown to my family during the war years. I understood then and there that I must bear witness to the humanity extended by many Italians to the persecuted Jews in their midst.

THE FIRST YEARS OF MY CHILDHOOD

1931—1939

It seems like yesterday when, on November 5, 1955, I watched on television a gala presentation of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio in honor of the postwar reopening of Vienna’s stately opera house. This solemn celebration rekindled in me a longing to visit the city where I was born. I fantasized for many years after that of returning one day to Europe with my family and being able to share with them the places where I had spent my youth.

It was not, however, until 1969 that, with my children and husband, I was finally able to set foot once again on European soil. I looked forward with mixed feelings to visiting Austria, a country I had to leave with my parents in 1939, a country that had literally taken away our citizenship, expelled us from its fold and threatened my family’s very existence.

As much as I wanted to visit Austria once again, the prospect that I would be returning to Italy a few days later, a country that in 1939 had offered my family temporary asylum and whose kind people helped us survive the war, was far more exciting.

As our train sped from Zurich to Vienna many repressed memories and feelings surfaced, adding greatly to my state of excitement. I had determined to return to Vienna free of antagonism and with an open mind. My resolve was made easier in that I had been a young child in the years leading up to World War II and had been sheltered, to a certain degree, by my parents from the storm that was gathering around us and the persecution that followed.

Having left Vienna as a seven-year-old child and returning now thirty years later as an adult, I was impressed by the magnificent buildings, the many parks, and historic landmarks of a former glory. In a certain sense, I was seeing the city through the eyes of my parents; in their daily conversations I had often heard them alluding to Viennese names, mentioning specific areas and streets. My father had crisscrossed Vienna on foot since early childhood and seemed familiar not only with each major street, but even with the location of many business establishments and the exact means of transportation one had to take to get to various points in the city. As a young child I often accompanied my father on various errands and so, even after thirty years, many of the city’s landmarks and streets were familiar to me. Strolling through the streets of Vienna, memories of happy days spent with my parents came rushing into my mind.

Soon, my resolve to return to Vienna without antagonism towards its inhabitants gave way upon seeing many Viennese dressed in native attire, sporting loden jackets and coats, possibly a reaffirmation of neo-conservative or nationalistic feelings. I remembered similar attire at the height of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, when people, wanting to express their identification with a pan-Germanic nation, would sport similar outfits. On this, my first visit to the city twenty years after the end of World War II, I had the impression that an entire generation of men was missing. One could only see young people or older men; the generation between these two groups had apparently lost their lives in the war. My son observed that the elderly Viennese men he met in the streets looked very much like his own grandfather. It was an observation that made me reflect on the fact that even if my father resembled many of his fellow Viennese, nevertheless, he had been rejected by them and expelled from their midst only because he was of Jewish descent.

While growing up and in later years pursuing an education and tending to my children, I had paid little attention to my family’s history, but now returning for the first of many visits to my native city, I was very eager to piece together my family roots. Unfortunately, by this time my parents and my aunt were no longer alive and able to help me in my quest. By piecing together the little information I had, I ascertained that my paternal family hailed from Burgenland, the south east region of Austria where Jews had lived in the l8th and l9th century under the protection of the Dukes of Esterhazys. My maternal family, on the other hand, lived in Moravia, a region in what is now the Czech Republic.

My paternal grandfather, born in Lackenbach, Austria, after attaining doctorates in law and philology made his way to Vienna in the mid 1880’s where he opened a legal practice. To supplement his income he put his degree in philology to work by contributing many literary essays (feuilletons) to Vienna’s leading newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse. In course of his literary career, my grandfather authored two books on the Hapsburg Monarchy and a monograph dealing with an aristocratic Jewish family, the Koenigswerther. As a literary contributor to the Neue Freie Presse, my grandfather must have been acquainted with Theodor Herzl when he too was writing for this paper and contributing literary essays. I know very little of my paternal grandmother’s background and can only surmise that she was born in Budapest where her own mother resided until 1939.

I never knew my maternal grandparents, Katherine and Julius Jellinek, who lived in a small village in Moravia, the Czech Republic now, where they owned a general merchandising store supplying farmers with food, clothing and agricultural implements. My grandparents were the only Jews in town and had to fend themselves and their children from frequent anti-Semitic outbursts. I was told that the farmers would patronize my grandparents store by making purchases on credit during weekdays, and on weekends after several glasses of Slivovitz and not wanting to pay their debts, they would pelt my grandparents home with stones accompanied by offending anti-Semitic slogans.

My maternal grandfather, Julius Jellinek, shortly after the death of his wife Katherine, left the family and was never heard from. My mother Emily and her brother Emil, eight and seven years old respectively, were placed in the care of their maternal grandparents who tended to the two orphans with great love and care.

My father Alfred Kopfstein, born in Vienna 1897, the oldest of three siblings, grew up in a traditional Jewish home where Jewish rituals were observed and received a good religious education guided not only by his father, but also by his two uncles who were professors of religion. After completion of his secondary education, my father went on to business school to obtain a degree in business management. Upon graduation and after having served in the Austrian Army during World War I, my father went to work for a large knitting enterprise, the Bernard Altman Company, and soon became its general business manager. He was a typical Viennese, if I may generalize, be it in appearance, mannerism and even in his slight Viennese dialect. He was basically a very shy and mild man, a very dedicated husband and father, always considerate and willing to help others. His kindness and good natured temperament brought him the friendship of many people.

My mother Emilie Jellinek, was born in 1899, in Bilovice, Czech Republic, the older of two siblings. She attended German speaking schools in Bilovice and in Hodonin. Upon the death of her mother and having been deserted by her father, she and her younger brother went to live with their maternal grandparents. At the age of fifteen my mother came to Vienna with her fourteen year old brother at the beginning of World War I in search of employment opportunities The war years and the immediate postwar years were difficult ones in Austria, and my mother had to overcome many adversities trying to fend for herself and her younger brother. Eventually, she found a position as a bookkeeper for a lumber company.

My mother was a strong willed, outspoken woman with a keen mind, who sought to self educate herself all her life. She regretted that circumstances had not permitted her to obtain a university education, but compensated by immersing herself in reading, study of German literature and Latin. She was always interested in political and social issues and never failed to participate in political and other current debates. Not having been able to continue her own formal higher education, she tried to impart to me the importance and the joys of acquiring knowledge. Even in the last few years of her life, my mother would take a variety of classes ranging from world politics to public speaking and writing for publication. She would sit every evening at her typewriter writing essays, composing stories and poems, all undertaken to keep her mind alert even while her physical condition deteriorated.

My parents shortly after their marriage in 1924, bought an apartment in a new residential complex erected by the city of Vienna. Our residence, located in the tenth district of Vienna or Favoriten, was then considered a working class and predominantly gentile section of Vienna. My parents chose to live in that district as they wanted to open their own business there. In 1926, my father resigned his managerial position and opened his own retail store carrying variety of notions, wool, yarns, buttons, etc. right across from our apartment house.

The years my parents decided to go into business were difficult years in Austria as the country was still trying to recover from the effect of the war and was in throe of great political and economic upheavals. Years of unemployment and poverty gripped Austria in the late 1920’s and 1930’s and an air of hopelessness hung over the country. My