Falling Uphill

The war ended and church bells were ringing. It should have been a happy time, but the old Emperor was dead, the Empire was dissolved, and the influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the war. My nanny Resi died of the coughing sickness and I was a very sick child. After the armistice of November 11, the prisoners of war were released from a nearby camp. Our home became a haven for several young Jewish men who were stranded far from their homes. My father was not religious. On the contrary, until he found God in the last years of his life, he called himself an atheist. We were Jewish by descent and history rather than dogma and religion. But when he was faced with the physical, mental and spiritual needs of our houseguests, he went to the temple in Wiener Neustadt and asked the rabbi to lend him a Torah. He took it home. Our dining room and living room were cleared of our furniture except for the chairs. For the holiday our house became a temple. Still sick, I was banished from the ceremonies. The flu seemed to get better, but the following summer I was still coughing. Finally my father had time to examine me. I had tuberculosis and spent the next year in isolation. My father built a separate shed for me, open to the south. I spent sunny summer days there, accompanied by my cat and some books. Only my mother was allowed to be near me. Not a single playmate could approach. My father painted a diagram on my back to show how my lungs were healing. Two mirrors let me watch the progress. Finally, when my lungs were healed and I no longer coughed, I was let out of the shed. To prevent the spread of any remaining germs, my parents set a huge bonfire in the backyard to destroy all the items of my convalescence, my books and toys, and everything else that I had handled. My captivity and the final conflagration comprise my earliest memory. The months were sad and lonely, but I survived the terrible plague. With the end of the war and the fragmentation of the Empire, small mountainous Austria was left with its huge capital, Vienna, but its breadbasket in Hungary was cut off. There was hunger in the city. We had an acre of land planted with potatoes, turnips, carrots, and cabbages. Also my parents were paid in chickens, eggs, flour, and enough other victuals to supply us. My father saw the pale and undernourished children of the factory workers and wrote to the American Red Cross for help. Soon came cartons of flour, beans, powdered milk, cocoa, and a barrel of cod liver oil. Our school gym was fixed up into a mess hall with tables and benches. Some mothers cooked the supplies into nourishing meals. We had to bring tin plates, cups, and a spoon. At the door by the cod-liver oil barrel stood a teacher. She filled our spoons with cod-liver oil and made sure we swallowed it. To save the starving children, Sweden and Denmark offered to give them a holiday in their countries. My father got a group of children between the ages of 12 and 14 together. He wanted younger children to go also, but their parents refused. To assure parents that it was a good thing, he signed me on. That left me at age seven with a bunch of rowdy teenagers. I was a scrawny little girl and the older children tormented me and stole my luggage. An older person was supposed to supervise the group, but I was not aware that anyone took care of us. By the time I arrived in Goteborg, the other children had stolen everything I had. In Goteborg we were herded into a great hall festooned with the letters of the alphabet fastened to the wall. I stood under the letter B with several other children. My father had been promised that people had been assigned to wait for us at the train station, and would provide a home for the two-week stay. One by one the children were collected. Nobody expected a seven-year-old girl, and nobody came to pick me up. It got dark and I was the only child left standing all by myself in the big hall. I felt abandoned, with no place to go, despairing about what would become of me. I thought my life was over.