Exodus From Vienna

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My father was called before the gestapo persuant to a remark, overheard by an accuser ("I will be glad when the first Nazi is hanging“), and our family was ordered expelled from the country. When father came home, white as a sheet,  my mother clapped her hands and said "Gott sei Dank!“ It was just one of the early instances in my memory when her intuition ran well ahead of anyone else’s perceptions. There were, however,  obstacles and complications. It had been customary for custodians of  families such as ours to defer paying, for years, any taxes due and no one was allowed to leave the country before paying up. Not only  was  there no money, but there was no place to go...no country ready to accept the sudden surfeit of refugees trying to escape the developing Holocaust.  We were expelled, and trapped, in one contracted paragraph.  In our (father and son) first failed nocturnal attempt to escape across the border, we were captured and held in a provincial jail where I saw my father's face slapped. After my mother’s intervention and intercession with  the assigned top-administrator over Austria - one Gauleiter Burckel, we were finally released and able, as well, to secure a release of our tax liability...another  unsung tale of glory our mother would create. Well into the future, our salvation would be secured by her sheer devotion, prompting, daring, creativity,  and the labors and drudgery she would submit to on our behalf.

Our second escape attempt involved a person beloved by me. My boy scout leader,  soon to be husband to my sister Edith, and a non Jewish sports figure highly regarded by the authorities, Otto Schonwalder took high risks to help us and others to escape.   We ended up in Brussels, Belgium - where all refugees were handed Expulsion orders - called Feuilles-de-Route. Effectively, these were permits to remain for a period of six months. At the end of that term, we would be subject to being rounded up and put back across the border...into the arms of the exterminators!