Let me stop this painful diatribe. My brother was worthy of my love. He looked up to me, which seemed impossible. Once I caught him crying. He asked me not to mention it. He put forth a brave face. As boys we weren’t supposed to show emotion, nor were we supposed to have negative feelings. We had to be perfect, matchless, and characteristically and deliberately serious (a word too often associated with intelligence). So in reality I suspect my brother too often concealed his true feelings. Hardly could one expect anything else, having grown up in a home where crying wasn’t allowed.
Bright and with features that were absolutely flawless, he seemed to have come from a perfect mold. There also was about him a shade of a dreamer, and that was the heart of the matter, and why we should’ve traded places. What happened to him was incomprehensible. His very nature plus his attachment to Eva should’ve given him reason enough to resist the Nazis. Consider this handsome creature, as dressed for a fancy-dress ball, with sudden headlong ecstasy singing phrases from Mozart’s “Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio!” You might’ve thought that he was some swain or lovesick puppy. You might’ve thought his brain was only full of wanton ideas. Not so! He was a man, filled with ideals. Yes!
But you’d have to take a closer look. Notice the furrows in his forehead. Forget the song and dance side of him, which was as polished and admired as the popular image of the Viennese. “Vienna’s tramps, Vienna sausage, Viennese Girls, everything is strewn around in confusion. The growing coal shortage appears, and once again Dr. Kortschoner comes parading by with song and dance.” – Karl Kraus, Satirist.
To my younger brother, as I remembered him, I sent my love. But to remember how things were, pretension was required. It was important for me to hold onto my love of him and not to images of a world constructed of evil. What the Nazis did to my brother was totally inhuman.
Oh, what a lovely Anschluss! Gemutlichkeit and hatred, pain, and despair: how could we have avoided the tears? How anguish ruined my memories. And as the mighty Danube flows the bitterness shall flow forever.
On my twenty-eighth birthday I left Vienna. Right then I was only thinking of my future and hadn’t given any thought about the fact that there wasn’t any place left in world for a European Jew. As for me I had a German passport, which didn’t have the dreaded “J” neatly and carefully stamped in it. Without this precious document I would’ve ended up in Dachau. Instead, as an ordinary passenger, I crossed Hitler’s Germany without being harassed.
With the same attention to details that I’d always known, my father arranged for my passport and filled my pockets with money. Even my ticket he booked. He had it all worked out. If I had a ticket to Riga, he knew that the Lithuanians would let me go through their country. No special permit was required.
As I grew to appreciate what he did for me my empathy for him deepened. It was better to think of him in that way than as one of Hitler’s henchmen. I wish so much that I could’ve gotten my family out of Austria. With respect to my brother, to this day I can’t picture him wearing a Nazi uniform. He really was just an overgrown kid.
But before I leave this chapter let me say a word or two more about my state of mind then. “Happy is he who forgets what can not be changed” is the theme song of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. I couldn’t change Vienna.
Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I’d get to emigrate. My guilt was allayed somewhat by the argument that it was very important for at least one of us to get to safety. In any case we didn’t think the separation would be long. No doubt upset over the German menace, nevertheless mother’s confidence in me never wavered. A son naturally feels obligated.
As the national crises worsened the ability to act decreased. A spirit of distrust emerged, which seemed natural considering how friends changed over night. Many of them tried to win favor by wearing swastika pins. Some turned on other friends perhaps thinking that would prove something. It was this that helped Eichmann and helped me realize that I could never live in Vienna.
It’s hard to say what awaken within me the profound need to serve God, and whether the total collapse of the world as I knew it had anything to do with my becoming a minister. In this dark world of sin the blood of Jesus offered me peace, or did it all come from my mother?
Human suffering molded my character. I don’t think I’ll ever get over my feelings of guilt. Terrible prejudice was at the root of anti-Semitism, but it was not always blatant, though there’d been an undercurrent of it all the time I was growing up. These feelings I had to hide. I never wanted to share the prejudice taught to me as a child.
Therefore it’s with pain that I relate the following incident. I’ll try to make it short. Mobs of teenage boys and girls roamed the streets threatening anyone who looked the least bit Jewish. This included many people who were wrongly identified. To show their political affiliation these close-knit Nazi groups all wore knee-length socks. Otherwise they established a reputation by bullying. Synagogues became targets, which frightened whole congregations. So frequently was this nastiness that others felt free to let loose their hatred on defenseless people. Caught in the middle of all of that seemed so different from the feeling of security that we’d known. We’d lived for so many years in comfort. So much of the time most of our arguments and conflict centered on nothing more than how to share the water closet.
On my way home after an enjoyable evening at the Cafe Zauner I suddenly found myself surrounded by Nazis shouting “Juda verrecke! It didn’t take a brain to know what they had in mind. To me by then they acted like caricatures that anyone would’ve recognized. But this time they were aiming their slurs directly at me.
Couldn’t they see that I wasn’t a Jew? I remember blurting out “Heil Hitler!” I had enough sense to click my heels, extend my arm in the Nazi salute, and shout, “Heil Hitler!” Thank goodness the mob responded in the same manner but much more enthusiastically. I could only guess what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been quick on my feet.
No one in my family was an observant Jew, which suggested that we either converted or weren’t Jewish at all. I don’t remember ever celebrating a single Jewish holiday. But I can’t believe that I even pretended to offer my heart and soul to Hitler.
Afterwards I shook so much that thankfully I didn’t have to go straight home. After that incident I swore that from then on I’d resist manipulation. Interesting enough I meant it, and I did my best.
I was impressed by how I described myself as an idealist. I liked the strident ring of the word militant, but honestly I don’t think I could’ve stood up to the Nazis. It was a good thing that I left Vienna when I did.
Randy Ford
