Papa - Vienna

Inert picture of hardware store

The hardware store thrives and life hums along. Papa magnanimously houses some of the family at 17 Breitenseerstrasse…his brothers Max and Marcus, Marcus’s wife, Regina . He and Mela have two maids and never use the Oriental orange furniture in the parlor. At some point, Papa’s younger sister, Berta, comes to stay and feels like a maid too. For a year, they treat her as a servant. She never forgot. Her son Fredi, now in his 80’s, carries her bitterness forward. He was never allowed to sit on that furniture either.

The store provides an upper middle class life. Mela greets Papa in a fancy carriage one day as he comes home. A country boy, he looks at her with disdain.

A snapshot of my grandmother and mother, most likely in their backyard, reveals the fashion of the day, men’s clothing. Mela looks tentatively at the camera, a white blouse with a thin black tie. Perhaps her expression belays a deeper disturbance. The atmosphere starts to slowly change. The stream of customers begins to trickle. Once friendly faces now look away. Papa is very street smart. He ran away to Vienna from the family home in Tsymienica 25 years earlier to apprentice in the hardware store he now owns. He can do it again. He is the oldest and he is a leader. His whole family is now living in Vienna . He brought them there. He made it possible. He must continue taking care of them.

Papa reads the signs. The situation degrades. Grandma Mela is slapped around at a local police station. A German friend tips him off that the Gestapo were after him. Another defining moment. Papa quickly arranges with another friend to change money into gold bars for him. The only plans he can make to emigrate are to the only city in the only country that is still offering visas… Shanghai , China . He prepares the family.

“ China ! What are we going to do in China ?” Mela asks incredulously. “To live! This is the choice. Do you want to stay here or go to conzentration camp?” Leo is happy to spill all the vehemence he feels for the Nazi’s onto his wife. He has no special love for her by this time either, having referred to her as “mein kuh” (a cow) to his male friends many years ago when she was pregnant.