EXILE: A MEMOIR OF 1939
164
EXILE: A MEMOIR OF 1939
164Paperback
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Overview
Schneider tells of daily encounters—with her employers, the English lady and her husband, a retired British civil servant who had spent many years in India; the village locals; other refugees; and a family of evacuees from the slums of Glasgow. The editors have divided this memoir into chapters, adding headlines from the London Times as epigraphs. These headlines, reporting the escalating events of World War II, are in stark contrast to daily activities of the residents of this isolated region of Scotland. A commentary by Erika Bourguignon provides historical, political, and cultural background of this period.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780814250082 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Ohio State University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/29/2021 |
| Pages: | 164 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
I shall sever forget the moment we received our permit enabling us to go to Britain into domestic service. Not that we were anxious to be domestic servants; we never held that kind of job before, but it was the only possibility of getting out of Austria.
It was February 1939, almost a year since the German Nazis invaded our country, and aided by a considerable number of Austrian Nazis, continued the murder of innocent people. There was terrible fear: concentration camps, people picked up off the street never to see their families again. Women were taken from their homes to wash the sidewalks; no means of persecution were low enough to break our spirits. I myself was hit by a woman, spat on by a man for no reason whatever, and no one could do anything about it. We were without rights, without any kind of protection; no court or judge would have taken our case.
It was time to get out of the country, but where to go. The United States had a quota system, and the country where my husband was born had such a low immigration quota that it would have taken years of waiting. Other countries allowed some refugees to enter; a number of people tried, in order to save their lives, to go to neighboring countries without a permit or visa. A few of them managed to stay, but many were turned back right into the arms of the Gestapo.
Then one day I heard from a friend that there existed a possibility to go to England if one found a job as a cook or maid or as any kind of domestic servant and if the people who were providing the job would be willing to apply forthe permit.
It was a long drawn out procedure, and not everybody was willing to go to all that trouble, especially when they didn't know what kind of people we were and whether we would be able to do the job. Once they applied for the permit they had the responsibility to provide the work whether they liked us or not. There was a risk involved, and one could hardly blame anybody if he didn't feel up to it.
There were also much greater difficulties in finding a job for a couple; a single girl or woman could get a job much easier. But we were determined to try. We sent in ads to the English papers and took a course in a special school for domestic servants. My husband learned how to become a butler, and I tried to improve my cooking.
There was no response from the English papers that would amount to anything, but we did not and could not give up. It was our only possibility to escape the Nazis. We felt there was no other way out. We talked and asked friends and anybody we knew who also was trying to find some means of escape, what to do and where to go. One day a friend, who explored different English agencies, gave us an address of a person in Scotland who was in contact with an agency for domestic help in Edinburgh. Even though she knew we had never been domestic servants and did not know whether we would be able to work in an English household, she was willing to help.
And so we wrote to that person, not knowing whether it was a man or a woman. We knew so very little English then that by the name alone we could not tell whether it was a man's or a woman's name. We addressed the letter: Dear Sir, and with the help of a dictionary and some friends, we asked her help in finding a job. The Sir was not a Sir but a woman; she wrote a very friendly but not very encouraging letter that it would be extremely difficult to find a job for a couple and advised me to try to find a job for myself. Once I had a place, it might be easier to get my husband out too.
She enclosed the name and address of the agency in Edinburgh and told us to get in touch with her. I could not decide to ask for a job for myself, as the men were in much greater danger. We decided to ask her to help us both and assured her how hard we would try to do our best in these strange circumstances if we could only have the chance. We waited and prayed and hoped for an answer, but none came for a long, long time.
And then came the 10th of November, a day that none of us should ever forget, the day the Nazi party officially dedicated itself to murder and Synagogue burning, to dragging defenseless men out of their homes, taking all their possessions away. Most of our friends were picked up, put on trucks like cattle, and driven off to concentration camps. Any minute now we expected the S.A. man to come to our apartment and get my husband. He waited for them, put even his old coat on, but nobody came. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the atrocities that were going on since early morning were called off; the men who were on the truck already were sent home, and it seemed just like a miracle was happening.
For the time being my husband was safe, but who could tell for how long. We had lost, like all the others, the means to make a living; everything seemed to close in on us, no place to go and no hope to stay and stay alive. In our despair we wrote again to Mrs. Gilbert who gave us the address of the employment agency. We let her know what was really going on and asked her again to explain to the agency our urgent need for help.
About two weeks later came a postcard which looked like insignificant printed matter that my husband almost disposed of. But looking at it again, he decided to show it to me. And there it was, the unbelievable, wonderful news that a job had been found for the two of us. That was all the card said, no name of our employer, no sign when we could expect the permit; but just the same it was wonderful to know that there was hope. After the first excitement subsided, we got very anxious to know more about our job and wrote again to the agency asking for more details. No response.
My brother and his family managed to go to Switzerland, where they were awaiting their visa for the U.S.A. We asked him to write to the agency, hoping he could find out what we could not. And it really worked. We received an answer from Edinburgh advising us that the job as butler and cook had been secured for us with a Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. But Mr. and Mrs. Harrington, though they had applied for our permit, were now on vacation, and the matter would be somehow delayed. Now was the time to be patient and wait for some news from our future employers. We waited in constant fear, and as it seemed that we waited long enough and heard nothing from them, we decided to write to Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. Again, with the help of one of our friends, we wrote a letter asking for an answer as to whether there was any hope of getting the permit in the near future.
Within ten days came a very short and matter of fact letter saying only that all the necessary steps have been taken to obtain a permit. That letter in our state of mind gave us quite a scare; it was so cold and without any personal approach. But that feeling only stayed with us a short while, and then all we saw was freedom.
That freedom was not quite at hand yet. We still had to wait. It seemed that all we did was wait from one day to another, and these days seemed more like years. Though we realized we were better off than most of the others, having at least the promise of a job and a permit, our nerves were still very much on edge. Every time the mailman came, we would run to the door hoping that it might be the day for the permit to arrive.
In order to make some preparations for our future jobs, we took English lessons. I had some advantage over my husband as I had English lessons before, while my husband didn't know a word of English. As we could not afford to pay for lessons, a very good friend of ours who spoke English well was willing to make him familiar with at least some sentences which might be of help to him to get along at first. It was very difficult for him to study because he was in such a tense state of mind, though he tried very hard. We even managed to get a few laughs when we compared our English with some friends who knew as much or as little as we did. There were sentences like: The lady is good, The lion is strong, The picture hangs on the wall, sentences which would not be of great help in our new surroundings, but we tried not to worry too much about that. Somehow we would manage if we only had the permit and could get out.
Chapter Two
And then the day came. It was six months since we tried to find a job in England. Six months of hoping, fear and waiting. It was one afternoon when our mailman brought a registered letter, and we knew right away that was it. Later on one of our neighbors remarked to us: "You must have received wonderful news; the mailman told us that when he gave you the mail today, your face was radiant." Indeed it was wonderful news for us.
We carried the permit around with us showing it to our friends, and we noticed how happy they were for us as they did not quite believe that this dream of ours would ever come true but never tried to discourage our hopes.
There was still a great deal of endurance in front of us before we could leave; now that we had the permit we had to have the passport. In order to get a passport, we had to prove that we paid our taxes and did not owe anything to anybody. That in itself would not have been difficult to prove, but the procedure in which it had to be done was meant to persecute and humiliate us. We were not treated like citizens who only a few months ago were just ordinary people with the same rights, but as outcasts who ought to be glad if they were only allowed to walk the streets. We had to stand in line for hours in order to obtain the necessary papers; every day were new decrees. When we thought that we had satisfied every and each of their moods, here it was again: new photos showing a particular side of one's face, and a great big J. on the passport signifying that one was a Jew.
All these sadistic wishes of theirs took days and days of lining up. Once I came as far as the door of the Internal Revenue Office after hours of waiting, the doorman shut the door in my face saying: "It's lunch time, come back tomorrow morning." And the next day I had to stand in line all over again. The waiting and the lining up we took in stride; we even had enough sense of humor to smile about these mean ways of our enemies. But what was connected with it was the way they treated us once we were inside the office: the questions, the remarks. One never knew what would happen next, and that part was hard to take. But we took that ordeal too, and when we look back and know what had happened later, how our people who could not leave the country were massacred, we realized that these persecutions we suffered were little and were meant to satisfy the ambitions of small and insignificant people who thought it was their chance now to show us who the master really was.
The day finally came when we had everything ready; our passports and visas were in order. We sold our furniture for almost nothing, and some of our belongings we sent away, but these were later confiscated by the Nazis. All we could take with us were our personal belongings and ten Austrian shillings each. Now came the sad part. As much as we were longing for the day to leave and were busy preparing for our departure, now we were all ready to go, but the thought of having to do so and leave our friends and relatives behind came to us with such a clarity that all of a sudden the joy of being able to save ourselves from the murderous hands of the Nazis was gone. We were going to try to help our loved ones escape; once we were in England, though, we knew there was little hope. But even if they had to stay, we could not imagine that the Nazis would do to them what they did. Nobody could have thought of the horrible cruelties committed on the old folks and children which were to come, those which left the inhuman mark forever on humanity.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations |
| Foreword by Erika Bourguignon |
| Foreword by Barbara Hill Rigney |
| Acknowledgments |
| The other side of the fence |
| Some Thoughts on Context and Meaning; |
| or, How to Read an Old Memoir: A Commentary by Erika Bourguignon |