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Michael Zimmermann
How I Survived the Wars and
Peace:
My Life in the Gulag
Chapter VI. First Step into the Wide Wide World
I don’t think I can find proper words in my vocabulary to describe
the feeling at the moment I left behind the soil of the country where
I was born and spent almost my entire childhood and youth. One would
expect a person in a situation like this to have a feeling of entering
an exile, a strange world, of a deep grief. I felt like escaping a fire,
leaving behind the place of disaster and pestilence, reaching safety
and freedom at last. I looked around at people stopping in the streets
and watching us with curiosity, and compared it with the scene when
we arrived in Poland after having crossed the Soviet border, when every
onlooker hated me and expressed it with hostile words. Was my feeling
typical to everybody in our marching column? I would answer: emphatically
yes!
Women and children in our group were provided with transportation, we men were marching through the town to the temporary shelter provided by our hosts. I did not see any police escort making sure that we do not scatter within their country, a solitary non-uniformed man on a motorcycle was following our column as an observer delegated by the city authorities. Naturally, we were not the first to pass the place and the facilities provided for us, everything was working smoothly like clockwork.
Our guides told us to discard all documents stating our national status, hence we are going to be presented as Greek nationals who are returning home after having survived deportation and the German concentration camps. Some of the documents on me I considered irreplaceable and I hid them in places I considered safe. Oh, yes, I still have them. Trucks covered with canvas hoods were provided and we mounted them. Hours later, we arrived in Vienna, capital of Austria. Again, women with children were taken to a building which formerly housed a hospital, all the others found shelter in an empty building which used to house a school. Bronka joined Gena and Steven in the more comfortable facilities. For me the fact alone that I am in Vienna, in the heart of Europe was a thrill which kept me elated. Born in Poland and living there most of my life, I had never before been abroad, and I don’t consider the Soviet Union as a place to be called "Europe". Beno contacted an Austrian who was his boss in the concentration camp, a man who treated the Jewish inmates benevolently. He visited us and provided some money for the Goldsteins to buy the essentials. Soon after we were transported to one of the existing DP ("Displaced Persons") camps scattered all over Austria. The Displaced Persons were people who, after the war ended, did not return to their respective native lands on the plea that they did not recognise the present regimes by which they may be prosecuted. The majority of them were of Jewish faith because for them there was no place to go back to. The camp to which we were taken was a former Nazi concentration camp, there still were remnants of barbed wires surrounding several primitive barracks. Gena, with her recent memories of being an inmate of one of the most notorious death camps, called Auschwitz, felt most unhappy. We heard that some DP camps were located inside big cities, and Beno and myself travelled to the city of Salzburg to explore. The information turned out to be true, there were three DP camps situated in the former military barracks, all run by Jewish organizations. To one of them, called Riedenburg, we brought our wives and Steven. We were given a separate room. Food was provided from a central kitchen and it was plentiful. We were allowed the full freedom of leaving our camp at any time, and we felt like tourists in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The economy of the country was devastated by the war, stores were empty of merchandise, food was scarce. The city population, for years exposed to Nazi propaganda, hated the fact of having Jews walking their streets. They knew about the abundance of food within the DP camps while they were going hungry. The camp inhabitants were running a very profitable black market, exchanging canned food, or cigarettes for jewelry or other valuables.
Austria was occupied by the American army and thus accessible to various American-Jewish charitable organizations. I approached appropriate personages suggesting the establishment of vocational schools similar to those initiated in Poland prior to my departure. Apparently, the American headquarters of the ORT organization had similar plans because very soon I was called by visiting representatives in order to discuss the formation of a serious trade school. We started with four classes: metal working, wood working, electrical for men, dress-making for women. A former brewery building was offered for our use, equipment and tools sent from the States or purchased locally. Right from the start we had about 100 students, roughly 25 per class. I was in charge of the electrical section, an assistant attached to the class was a licensed electrician. The school’s students consisted of men and women aged from 13 till 60. These people were planning emigration to various countries and knew that the chances of obtaining a visa would be enhanced if they proved to have a certain trade skill. The future proved that they were right in their surmise. Many consulates in Austria were accepting the ORT diploma as a proof of the visa-petitioner’s trade. Considering that the younger students missed their schooling for the duration of the war, we introduced classes of basic mathematics, as well as some theoretical instruction for the electricians.
A villa belonging to a former Nazi sympathizer was offered to us employed by the ORT school. Each family got a single room, the kitchen was for common use. Beno Goldstein got a job as stock-keeper in our school and, thus, his family moved to the villa too. Apart from free lodging, the school staff got special food rations and salaries in Austrian currency. On top of this, a sum of $5.00 was put aside for each month of work to be paid to the ORT employee who emigrated to the United States or Canada.
I would venture a statement that we had a really pleasant life in this period of time. We had many friends, rich social activities, abundant cultural diversions like theaters, concerts, festivals (the world-famous "Salzburg Festspielen"), cinemas, etc. Moreover, Salzburg is situated in a scenic part of the country and, every Sunday, we made excursions to localities that attract tourists from all over the world.
On January 27, 1949, our son was born. It was a difficult child-birth because he came out a size nearly one-half of what he is now. And with the amount of hair on his head he was immediately ready for a visit to a barber. Actually, Bronka expected a girl, and a name was even prepared for our expected daughter. She was supposed to bear a name after my mother and that of Bronka’s: Maria Anna. If our son blames his parents for choosing his name: Marian, it is partly his fault. If he had been a girl everything would be OK. As to Ludwig, he has to ask his mother.
Now, the Austrian government became bolder and asked the American occupation authorities to return the brewery that housed our ORT school. Also, a large percentage of inhabitants of the Salzburg DP camps emigrated to the countries of their choice. Consequently, the school was transferred to a DP camp in the small town of Hallein, about 20 miles distant from Salzburg. The vast majority of its inhabitants were Hungarian Jews. We were given two huge barracks and added many new classes, like millinery, upholstery, cosmeticians, confectionery baking. Altogether about 250 students. Besides having my class of electricians, I was also the school’s principal.
The status of a "displaced person" was meant to be temporary, and the Austrian government demanded that we leave the country. For a time, we were planning to go to the newly established country of Israel where the huge wave of immigrants lived in tents due to the shortage of housing and other facilities. However, Bronka’s elder sister, Hela, who lived in Germany and visited us in Salzburg, strongly advised us not to follow that plan on account of the two babies in our families. No country anywhere was ready to open their doors to the multitude of the DPs.
And then two possibilities opened: Australia and Canada. Our wives eliminated Australia because of its remoteness, so we settled on Canada. This country was offering immigration to milliners and our ladies applied as such, knowing that they would able to cope with this trade with their skill in a related profession. At the medical examination obligatory prior to the visa granting, Gena passed the vision test, Bronka was rejected. We all decided that the Goldsteins would go to Canada and, after one year, would bring us as their family. And so it happened. In mid 1949, they departed for their new life in Montreal, Canada.
The next year was quite uneventful. In due time we received our Canadian visas and started preparations for the important journey to a better tomorrow. To fulfill their obligations towards the millinery industry, their sponsors, Beno took a job of a stock-keeper in a hat factory. On account of her small child, Gena was released from her commitment. They lived in a rented room, plans for a permanent residence were delayed until our arrival.
Even in the last days of our life in the rotten Europe we encountered human greed and corruption. The medical examination that was required by the Canadian consulate prior to granting us the visa encompassed X-rays for Bronka and myself. When I came to pick up the results, the X-ray operator took me aside and informed me that Bronka’s negative is fine but mine shows some shadow on my lungs. Apparently, he continued, I had some problem in the past. With a result like this I will definitely be rejected and the visa will be denied to me. However, he understands my position and he may be willing to help. He is ready to substitute my X-ray negative with another one, clear of any smudges, and nobody will be the wiser. Naturally, he expects some compensation for himself and his assistant who has to be taken into the secret. The compensation has to be in the form of cash - one hundred American dollars - but they might be willing to accept another form of reward, like an expensive camera, or jewelry. The extortion was so shameless that I had to control my urge to choke the scoundrel to death on the spot. I knew perfectly well that I never had any problem with my lungs, on the contrary, they were like those of a long distance runner. I told the man that I am the wrong man to start this kind of game with, I will prove that my lungs are OK and he is going to be sorry he ever started this business with me. I went directly to the American-Jewish organization dealing with emigration, where a friend of mine was working, and told him the story. He did not look surprised. His answer was: "What do you want? To raise a stink or to go to Canada? Try to bargain and save youself aggravation." Eventually, I paid ten dollars and my own X-ray negative, I am sure, joined the documentation required.
On June 10, we said good-bye to Salzburg, and a train took us to the German port called Bremen. We stayed there 4 or 5 days, and embarked on a small vessel named "Gen. Stewart Heinzelman", a Liberty type of ship built in wartime for troop transportation, which was to take us across the Atlantic.
Bye, bye Europe. We were on our way to build our life in the New World. How well were we prepared to meet the new situation? Let me express it in figures:
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42
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30
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16
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250 |
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