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7A 23 1 ANSCHLUSS Walking to school onHitler’sbirthday,iveweeksaftertheAnschluss, I got a grim visual reminder that times had changed. Until only recently, the Nazis had been a clandestine, illegal movement, but now practically every shop window along my route displayed Hitler’s portrait, decorated with wreaths and ribbons. Austria’s favourite son had come home. I was only thirteen and did not yet know much about politics, but I could sense how dangerous it had become just to walk the streets; for the irsttimeinmylife,Iwasafraid.Oneday,Maxtoldmethatagangofbullies had cornered him on his way home from school, taunting him for being Jewish. They were about to beat him up, but let him go when he convinced them he was not Jewish but Hungarian. Everyone now wore an insignia in their lapel that deined their identity: most Austrians wore a swastika and foreign citizens displayed the colours of their own country. The only segment of the population not entitled to wear any insignia at all were the AustrianJews,whichmadethemstandoutasglaringlyasiftheyhadbeen wearing the yellow star. This was a curious reversal from the pre-Anschluss days, when the great majority wore no special sign of identity, while the Nazis wore knee-high white stockings as a means of mutual recognition and an expression of deiance of the authorities. Although our claim to Hungarian nationality was tenuous, my mother, brother, and I wore little Hungarian lags in our lapels. We knew this could at best provide only temporary and uncertain protection; it might have dissuaded Nazis on the street, but the Hungarian authorities would certainly not have intervened on our behalf had we been attacked or arrested. Few of the nearly 200,000 Jews living in Vienna had tried to emigrate before1938;andapartfromUncleRobert,AuntCamilla,andGrandmother Fanny, who had moved to Zagreb for economic reasons, none of our other 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 23 FI 24 1 ANSCHLUSS relatives or close friends had done so. Now that it had become clear that we had to leave—and the sooner the better—a host of practical questions arose: where could we go, and how? Like many other Jewish families with limited means, we had practically no options. Most countries, even those in the West with no oicial anti–Semitic policies, severely restricted the admission of Jews from German-controlled areas. Our irst choice would have been to immigrate to the United States. Unfortunately we had no relatives there, and the quota system then in force would have meant waiting for several years at the very least before obtaining visas. The Americans allocated a ixed annual immigration quota to every country, which in the case of most central European countries was very small and vastly oversubscribed. Complicating matters for us, this quota system was based on the applicant’s country of birth, not of residence or nationality. This would have placed my mother, brother, and me on three separate waiting lists: she had been born in Slovakia, which was now part of Czechoslovakia; Max had been born in Austria and I in Hungary. Moreover, we would have required an aidavit of support from a well-todo resident of the United States, a document we had no way of obtaining. Had Uncle Ferdinand overcome his qualms and returned to the United States after the last war, he could have sponsored our immigration and saved us (and himself) from the horrors awaiting us. But with no one in America, there was no sense in even attempting this route. Great Britain was also a very desirable destination, but it was practically impossible for people like us, with no relations or connections there, to obtain a visa. However, our local vinegar peddler, who was Jewish, one day astonished the entire neighbourhood. I knew him as the shabbily dressed man who pushed his cart down our street, making a meagre living by ladling vinegar out of foul-smelling bottles. A short time after the Anschluss, it emerged that by some quirk of fate he had been born in London. He told us that he had taken his birth certiicate to the British Consulate, where his claim to become a subject of His Majesty King George V had been recognized. He was issued a British passport, and within a few weeks he and his family emigrated to England—and safety. Another possible destination was Palestine, then under British mandate. But there were severe restrictions on Jewish immigration, and we had no relatives there either. Even if this option...

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