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2-Secret Secular Life in Austria

During the pre-interview last year, you mentioned that your family was dysfunctional. Can you tell us what you meant by this?

Yes well, actually that happened in the United States. It fell apart, the whole family fell apart. And usually that starts off with parents. They were both broken in spirit. My father had experienced the cruelty of Nazis. He had personally experienced it, during especially Kristallnacht, and being arrested. He was broken hearted by what was happening to Jews all over Europe. That they were being sent away, they didn't know about his right away, but they arrived, deeply worried, I think it was already an intuition that Jews were going to be wiped out. Because it was already happening in 1938, it was already happening in 1933. So, they could only expect the worse as this was progressing.

So, my parents were broken hearted. My mother couldn't stop mourning for the loss of her entire family, everyone gone. She had a special love for her father who was - unlike my father - a very playful man. He took care of his five daughters, more than my grandmother did, because in that family, the grandmother took care of a liquor store. I think these grandparents had an arrangement, that she would run the liquor store, he would bring up the children and he was an entrepreneur, he would wheel and deal, in little business deals. Because she only spoke about her father and my guess is not because the mother was mean, but because she wasn't present. She would talk endlessly how he would take the children - the girls - to Krakow and have them go to a tailor and clothes would be made for them and shoes would be made for them. He had such good taste, he would look for the best designs and tremendous attention was paid to her and her sisters.

So she could not get him out of her mind, so she never stopped mourning. He was totally broken up too. So therefore, there was no coherence, there was no - a family that stuck together, and did things together, children being brought up, children being read to, or sent to school or being accompanied. I especially as the middle child, brought myself up, because I was considered the best of the three, meaning that I didn't raise any opposition, I didn't question, I just took the authority, the laws, and just obeyed. I was this goody-good child. But because I was a goody-good child, the parents didn't worry about me, the other two, they worried, because the older sister would disobey and question everything and fight about everything with my father. These battles were terrible, but they watched her, and there was a relationship, but it was a negative one.

My mother may have felt differently about things she might have wanted to treat my older sister differently, but she was brought up to obey her husband, so my father was in control. Then, the younger sister was also a feisty little one. She didn't like being sent to a parochial school, she hated it. But nobody told me what to do, so I just lead my own life. I brought myself up. It got me into a lot of trouble, so it was dysfunctional family.

What do you mean, "It got you into a lot of trouble?"

It's a very good question actually, I could go on for hours. I was very unhappy being in the family, and one day - oh, the first thing - here's the first thing I did - I entered public school and I was in second grade and I was tall and absolutely skinny like a bone. There was all these cute little kids, they were like half my size, and they were filled, you know, nice full faces, and smiling and happy. I felt so self conscious, but pretty soon I was advanced to the third grade. Then I said to myself, "they're all so little, and they’re going to graduate before I do, high school, and I don't want that to happen to me." So I went to the teacher and I said to her, "How old are American students when they graduate high school?" And she said "Typically they're seventeen years old."

So I made a vow to myself, which was a very serious thing to do, because I was brought up to believe that vows and curses were very serious because they were going to come true. If you didn't fulfill your vow, bad luck would strike you. So I vowed to myself that I was going to graduate at seventeen. What I did is, when I was - at the end of the third grade, my father informed me that I was going to be sent to a parochial school the following year. I was totally heartbroken, because at first all the kids made fun of me. I couldn't understand them, but then they spoke in pantomime, and I understood. They motioned with their hands, like when I was in the second grade, they first said, "Did you come from a country where they ate with their hands?" or "did you come from a place where people didn't where shoes?" So I was very unhappy about that.

Then I got these weird sandwiches for lunch, black bread with pickled herring inside. The kids would come around and look at me, and they would hold their nose and run away and so after a while I started throwing my mother's sandwich away. I didn't want to eat, you know, so then I spied on them, I started walking around, looking at what they were eating. I saw they all had this white bread and it looked soft. I wished so much to be an American, I wanted so much to be with my peers and all that.

After I went into the third grade, I did meet children that liked me. I started making friends, I was just so happy about it, and suddenly my father announces that I'm going to be removed from the school and put into another school. I was devastated, absolutely devastated, weeping, and you know, like that. He said, "Never mind, you kid, your tears, I don't care about your friends, you'll get friends there, you have to have a Jewish education. Never mind going there with non-Jews."

So, then I went to my third grade teacher, who was going to promote me to this new school. And asked her did she think that I could skip a grade and be put into the fifth grade. She said, "Well, I don't see why not, sure." So I was put into the fifth grade, and I went to Animosities Parochial School. I wasn't prepared for the fifth grade and there were boys that were teasing me endlessly and I was the most unhappy child in the world. I was afraid to go to the teacher to say, "I've been double promoted and I don't know what's going on and could you help me?" Because I was afraid then she would send me back to the other school where I would have friends but I’d be going back to the fourth grade but I had made a vow, and I had to keep it and I had an agenda to follow.

It turns out I really wasn't such a little Mickey Mouse. I turned into somebody who was very secretive, and began to live my own life outside. So I went to the fifth grade and through the sixth grade in this parochial school and I was totally confused and I never knew anything, I don't know how on Earth I was promoted the sixth grade. I didn't understand the homework; there was no one to ask at home.

So that was the end of the parochial school, sixth grade. Then I arrived to a junior high school in the seventh grade. I didn't know what they were doing because they had a different curriculum than the parochial school. So that's when my life really took off in a strange secretive way. I met this girl and I saw this girl, she was in the eighth grade. The family was very poor and I had to work. I was sent out to work; I had to work afternoons and on Sundays. So there wouldn't be time to do homework anyway, but they didn't care about that because I was going to grow up and they were going to find a husband for me and marry me off. So, nobody cared about homework or if that even existed.

Anyway, when I was in the eighth grade I met this young student. I kept watching her because her eyelashes were all painted up and curled and she had lipstick on. And I couldn't believe what I was seeing so I would stare at her. One day she turned around, she said, "Freda would you like me to teach you how to put my makeup on?" She guessed it, you know, it was easy enough. So I said, "Oh yes, would you?" And she taught me. One day she asked me if I'd like to go roller-skating with her, in a roller-skating rink. And I said, I didn't know what that was and she said she would take me. So she took me to this roller-skating rink and I had to rent white, fitted roller skates and I fell madly in love with them, they were like magic to me. I thought it was the most remarkable thing I had ever seen. She taught me to skate and this was during World War II and we lived in Boston, which was a port city and the place was full of sailors.

Here I'm thirteen year old, you know, and sailors ask us to skate, and I'm terrified. I hold on to her and I said, "I don't know what you're doing, I don't want to do anything, I don't want to skate with them." Anyway, she taught me how to skate, and then I decided that I had to buy a pair of skates like that. Now, the system was, that whatever money I earned, I had to give half of that to the family and I could keep the other half. In the beginning I was only baby-sitting. I got paid a dollar an hour for baby-sitting or 75 cents and hour, I forget, or 50 cents maybe in the beginning. The roller skates cost sixteen dollars and I could never put anything away.

So I asked the women who I was baby-sitting, if she, instead of paying me that half, if she would hold on to that half, so I wouldn't be tempted to buy anything. I would give my mother the half and she was saving that. Eventually she said, you know, "Let me give you the rest of the money, you're such a good baby-sitter, and I don't think you'll ever get what you want." So she gave me the rest of the money, and I went out and bought these white roller skates, and nobody knew about it. I decided to go roller-skating by myself, to this rink. I bought all kinds of things, I bought the makeup, I bought an eyelash curler and mascara and lipstick. Then I decided I didn't think I was very pretty so I decided to buy silk flowers.

So there I went to the roller-skating rink. I put my skates on and I fixed my face up, lipstick - heavy lipstick, heavy eyelashes, and then I put the flowers on top of my head, and I went out. I'm skating and pretty soon a sailor comes up, skates up to me and he says, "May I skate with you?" And I was horrified, you know, I forgot about it, but of course I didn't, you know that part of the mind that thinks that way. I got flushed and I was red and I said, "Well, okay." So, the roller-skating rink had a live Wurlitzer organist and he was playing - I remember this so well, I can see it right now - he was playing this "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and it was done as a waltz. You know, Take me out to the ball game, you know like that, and he was waltzing with me, teaching me how to waltz. I remember that in my head, I suddenly thought of my father. You know, here I'm this little goody-good two-shoes, and in my head I screamed, you know, out loud, like, "Look at me, Papa!" that kind of, you know, vengeance.

Then, I had also - I was already so - becoming wise and tricky. I made my mind up I had to leave that skating rink, an hour before sundown. So I would come home when the sun was still up, I could hide all of my secrets, and I did. I took all of that and had it in a brown bag, headed for the cellar, we called it, not a basement. It was deep down, where the furnace was. I found a dark nook and hid that, and I did that for a whole year. I would come into the house, this goody-good little obedient child who would - "We'll take care of her and find a nice Jewish husband for her, an Orthodox man, be just like the father." And more and more, more and more tricks. They never found out anything, I was a total, absolute master of deceit.

Did anyone find out about your tricks?

No one knew, and the homework continued. Then, at the end of the eighth grade, I said to my teacher, "do you think I could be transferred and skip the ninth grade and go right into the tenth grade?" So she said, "Well, I have to speak to the principal." She came back and said to me - and I had this goal to ask a question like that, when I was just guessing on everything, you know, the work, just taking chances. So, she came back and said I had to pass two language tests, so I picked English and German. I passed and I was double promoted again. So, I was absolutely wild with excitement and happiness, I was going to make it! I was going to graduate at seventeen! That was the most important thing in my life.

Once I was in the high school, things turned for me. The high school had a track system; I didn't know anything about that. They put me in the college track, I don't know, I must have had some good grades, I guess, but it didn't take long, it took about two weeks, when I was called into the principle’s office. They said that, "You don't belong in this track, you have to be put into the business track." I said, "What's that?" They said, "Well, the other track, the children will all go to college and you don't know how to do your work." I felt absolutely devastated. "What? And what am I going to do there?" "Well you're going to learn how to do typing, and bookkeeping and shorthand and you go out and work."

Oh my God, that was just the worst thing that could've happen to me. Then I decided I better stop all this nonsense because if I didn't learn something I wouldn't be able to get a job, I would get a job maybe selling produce, which was one of the many jobs I had after school, selling produce on the street, selling green peppers. So that's when I sort of buckled down, and learned a little bit of bookkeeping and got a job as bookkeeper when I graduated at the age of seventeen. I was totally devastated.

It was a dysfunctional family. My bigger sister didn't know about what I was doing and she wasn't very friendly, she was very uppity. She was so brilliant and so gorgeous; she didn't care about her brats of girls. My parents were worried and weeping all the time, and I just took off on my own, so, a long story.