I was born in a cold month in Vienna, called the most beautiful city in Europe. To me it meant very little at the time. When my mother brought me home, her dog ran away and never returned. According to my mother, he was unhappy about being relegated to second fiddle.
My childhood was a very lonely one, without much affection. If my parents loved me, I never knew. They never told me so. They must have just the same; they gave me what they could in material things. We had two live-in maids from the time I was born till the time we left Vienna. I remember these women with a feeling of friendship and affection. I was thoughtful to share my good fortune and never had chocolate or candies alone.
Was not allowed to have friends in the house, besides I never had any. In our district, which was the 13th called Hitzing, not many Jews lived. My first crush was a cousin of mine, blond and blue-eyed who later perished in the Holocaust. My first love letter was written to that cousin. Aunt Trude discovered it and told my parents and I was derided and chastised for many days after that. Not that it was such a terrible letter, what does a 14 year old know about such things, and I was very naive for many years after that. By the way, I never had the intention of sending that letter.
I went to school, played my piano, which was a black baby grand. I wish I had it now. Summers were spent with my father on a bicycle sidecar. Many memories come to mind about these travels and I still roam in my dreams. I remember the sights and the glowing landscapes, some of which I painted in 1963.
We lived in a part of my father’s house and had tenants in the other part of it. On the main level my father had his hardware store, which had 17 show windows, so it was a fairly large house. I had my own room by the time my mother gave birth to a son five years later. My childhood was neither happy nor unhappy. I was a dreamer and lived in a fantasy world of my own.
I strove with none
For none was worth my strife
Nature I loved and
Next to nature, art.
I warmed both hands
Before the fire of life
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
1960's
A small girl in Vienna suddenly sees a ghost glide across her room and is terrified. No one believes her. Later she can see it through the window from outside.
My mother is a lonely girl who has no friends except those she finds in books. Is it any wonder she sees things. Books become a welcome escape for all her life. Raised by a nanny, a strict, distant, critical father, and a materialistic, socially preoccupied mother, she lives on the top floor of the family owned hardware store. The family is well-respected and well-to-do. A maid takes care of the housework. A younger brother by five years, Egon, is a rambunctious child who is not given boundaries and is instead praised for not following the rules. He grows up resentful, with a superior attitude. The pain he causes others as an adult I will not document here.
She feels estranged from him, from everyone. She leads a sheltered existence. As a child she almost drowns, almost goes unnoticed, except someone spots the large bow in her hair sticking out of the water and pulls her out. She never puts her head under water again. She becomes deaf in one ear. Her mother doesn’t even tell her about how babies are made. When she gets her period, she is scared. No one prepares her for life. Betrayal at an early age.
At five, my grandfather takes her on a trip in his India black motorcycle with a dusty side car. The picture shows her, chubby-faced, smiling, offering a bunch of wild flowers triumphantly to the camera as they are about to ride off. My grandfather peers out and scowls, but looks very handsome in soft leather helmet and goggles.
Among other places, they visit Rome. They feed pigeons on the piazza, her with outstretched arms, knock knees below a pretty print dress, and dark, short, straight pageboy, again smiling dutifully. Papa and perhaps Uncle Max also appear, but are more interested in who is taking the picture.
During this trip, my grandfather cheats on my grandmother. My mother’s intuition serves her well again. She knows that his mind is elsewhere and that this trip was not all about her. Fifty years later, she finally confronts him with this knowledge. He pretends not to hear her. Somewhere, I know this is not the first time he has done this. I am in my 20's at this time.
Mom was 14 when when she fled Austria. At 17 she was married in Shanghai to a Russian painter, Fima (Ephraim) Roeytenberg, whose family had already emigrated to Harbin, China from Russia awhile back. She wrote, "I wondered what I was doing there under the chupa." She was in a coffee shop with her mother when Fima walked in. he was over 10 years her senior. Sparks flew and my grandmother approved.
The marriage did not last long, but they remained friends. She recalled cooking on a hibachi stove.
She sold baby clothes (or pearls) at a commissary with her friend Margo, my father's best friend, Dick Shafran, a 19 year old American soldier, walked through the door, pointed to Margo, and said, "I'm going to marry that girtl!" And he did. He was too young to get married without permission from his commanding officer/parents. So my father posed as his mother and wrote the letter. (My father had beautiful handwriting.)
The family began to migrate to the US. It was arranged that my mother sign a marriage certificate to a Russian tailor so that she could travel from Shanghai to San Francisco. She said the man wanted to consummate the marriage, but she held onto the bedpost all night. It must have been for quite a few nights by boat.
When Dick and Margo got married, and he brought her back to Poughkeepsie, NY, they introduced my parents when mom visited. When my father proposed, she said she was still married, so she had to get a Jewish divorce from Fima.
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