Under Swastika and the French Flag

This diary contains my experiences as an eighteen year old in Vienna, Austria from the time of Hitler’s invasion in 1938, and my life in Paris as an illegal immigrant. I am taking the liberty to briefly sketch my young life up to the point of the “Anschluss” on March 12 1938.

I was born in Hamburg, Germany on Dec.31, 1919.   My parents were born in Poland where they attended public schools and then a Gymnasium from which both of them graduated. Shortly after their engagement, my father was drafted into the Austrian army.   He served for four years up to the end of World War 1, became a noncommissioned officer and earned the Iron Cross with the Medal of Fortitude. After their marriage in Vienna, they moved to Hamburg where my father opened a small art gallery and picture framing store.

When I was two years old my parents returned to Vienna, where my maternal grandmother and three of my mother’s brothers were well established. Uncle David and Uncle Josef were attorneys and my Uncle Mendel was a tailor and designer of men’s clothing. My father opened a men’s haberdashery store on Vienna’s Praterstrasse 51 and called it “Waeschehaus Clarotti” combining part of my mother’s and my name(Clara and Otto)

When I reached five years and nine months I entered the Volksschule at Cherningasse in the second district, also known as Leopoldsstadt. According to my report cards I was a very good student.

My father, I had been told, was also a good student but, evidently, not a very good business man. He looked for greener pastures and we moved to Germany. He had three brothers who had branch stores in various cities, and they suggested that he open a little department store in Elbing, East Prussia. Uncle Max guaranteed credit for my father’s purchases and this time he was quite successful. Elbing was a very picturesque city of 80,000 inhabitants, located close to the Baltic Sea in the north, south of Koenigsberg and not far from the city of Danzig. Elbing had a theater, several movies, was known as a shipbuilding city and had a Gymnasium where Latin and Greek were taught. It also had a synagogue serving its 500 Jewish souls.

When I was ten years old, after having passed an entrance exam, I entered the Humanistische Gymnasium. I proudly wore the blue cloth cap which identified me as a student of that well respected school. Students of the fourth, fifth and sixth grades wore velvet caps and those in the seventh to ninth grade were honored to wear a blue silk cap. Languages were my favorite subjects with the exception of Greek which I started in the fourth grade.

Laufer and I were the only Jews in my class. My friends defended me against a few anti-Semites telling them that Jews  were human beings just as they were.

I almost forgot to mention that I had a sister who was five years younger than I.  Cecile was born with a heart defect and doctors told my parents that she had a maximum of twenty years to live. She was always the beloved child. My parents referred to her as “das Kind”

the child. Naturally, she always got what she wanted.

Although I don’t remember ever having believed in the stork, up to the age of eleven I didn’t know how children were born until our sleep-in maid Minna told me the story of the birds and bees in detail. Her boyfriend was a sailor and, whenever he was in port, she was allowed to take a day and night off so that she could fully enjoy Albert’s presence. One day she found out that he was married and she became very depressed. She liked to hold me on her lap and I enjoyed leaning against her ample bosom. My mother came home unexpectedly one day and Minna was let go the following week.

The best two students in my class were also my best friends. Both of their fathers were teachers. Kurt Krueger instilled in me the love for movies and the theater and Hans Nagel enticed me into collecting stamps. The three of us formed a Theater Club and put on shows for children our age. I remember that we were quite successful and that I usually had the leading role. If I ever forgot my lines, I was able to make up appropriate words and save myself from embarrassment.

I was less than twelve years old when I met Ursula. It was during our vacation in Kahlberg, a summer resort on the Baltic. She was two years older than I, and she liked to smoke. She also liked my bicycle and the fact that I often treated her to strawberry malteds.

Ursula was my first girlfriend.

Although my mother had been a student at the Conservatory of Music in Vienna and a good pianist, my parents thought it would be better if I had a private piano teacher. When practicing every afternoon, after I had finished my homework, pretty Trautchen, who lived across the hallway, would open up her window and listen to my playing. She especially liked to hear Franz Supee’s overture to Poet And Peasant. She would clap her hands and say: “bravo, Oscar, bravo,” and she would send me kisses through the air. This scene was repeated almost every afternoon. But then the Reichstag building went up in flames and Adolf Hitler became the Fuehrer. And I continued playing but Trautchen did not open her window. And I started playing louder and louder. Finally she yelled: “my father has forbidden me to talk to you because you are not an Aryan. Do you know what this means?” “Yes, Trautchen, I know what this means,” I answered.

One of my father’s good customers, who had been a socialist and now belonged to the S.A. told him, very confidentially, that the Nazis had a list of  Jews who would be picked up on Wednesday and would be severely beaten or even worse. My parents decided to stay in a hotel that night. Sure enough, over one hundred Jewish men were dragged from their homes, taken to what had been known as the slaughterhouse and beaten to a po