by Tim Bonyhady
It did not last. Her dissatisfaction with the Church was patent in May 1942 when she went to mass on Ascension Thursday and found the priest repeating his sermon from the previous weekend. His exhortation the following Sunday, “We all know that we must love God because we learned it in our catechism,” prompted her to exclaim, “Holy Aristotle, what logic.” The fourth anniversary of her conversion by Father Elzear in Vienna led her to reflect on how she had become restless in the Church as she continued to seek truth. When she attended the Grail’s annual play, which she had appeared in with delight the year before, she dismissed it as “propaganda.”
She soon was reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which the Church in Australia wanted banned, and Nietzsche on the Übermensch and the death of God. She also resumed dancing. As she described it at the time, she had stopped dancing after fleeing Vienna because she “considered it a bit frivolous and too gay but in the end came to the decision that one is young only once and that there is no harm in enjoying oneself.” Before long, twenty-year-old Anne was out most Saturday nights, buying new dresses and even going to the Trocadero, a nightclub in the city for Australian and American servicemen featuring a full orchestra.
Sunday, November 8, 1942, was a turning point. While she went to mass as usual with Kathe, she observed that their roles had been reversed so that instead of Anne urging Kathe to accompany her, Kathe had pressed Anne to go. A passage in Felix Dahn’s A Fight for Rome, which so impressed her before her conversion in Vienna, encapsulated what she felt: “To believe in God is childish. To deny the existence of God is madness. To search for God is the answer.” After four years of the most intense faith, Anne saw herself as being back where she had started. “I now again finally understand,” she observed, “what I already understood as a child.”
The Grail, including Anne, performing in Sydney in 1941. (Illustration Credits ill.46)
Sunday, November 15, 1942, was even more momentous. She did not attend mass. Nor did she go again and, while she accompanied Kathe to church on Christmas Day, she did not follow her usual habit of recording the sermon at length. Instead, she transcribed two passages from This Believing World, a study of comparative religion by an American former rabbi, Lewis Browne, which she had borrowed from the library. The first passage was, “Theology very frequently is not more than an effort to prolong the life of moribund ideas by interpreting words which no longer mean what they say—and when theology is that it is invariably a confession of secret distrust and skepticism.” The second passage started, “Only the great souls, the sages and prophets have ever been able to find salvation in a religion naked of ceremonial adornment. Ordinary men, even today, are incapable of comprehending abstract ideas.”
Her distance from Judaism was a constant. If it seems bizarre that at twenty-two I had never heard of a shiksa, the copy of This Believing World that Anne bought and reread in 1943 at the age of twenty-one reveals that I was just like her. After four years in Australia, Anne’s English was so good that she did not annotate any of the first 250 pages with the meaning of words, in marked contrast to the anthology of British essays she had read for the Leaving. Then, on page 251, she came across this passage: “The Jew clings to his ritual law largely because he senses subconsciously that otherwise he will lose his identity among the non-Jews. In other words, he is god-fearing largely because he is Goy-fearing.” Having been formally identified as a Jew for most of her life and gone to Jewish religious instruction classes for ten years, Anne did not know the meaning of the word “Goy.” She annotated it “Gentile.”
3
Correspondence
The genocide of Europe’s Jews is often written about as if those who escaped knew nothing of what was happening during the war. It was not so. Although there was no direct postal service from Nazi-occupied Europe to countries fighting Hitler after mid-1940, there was occasional mail to neutral countries that conveyed some news despite German censorship, and this news eventually reached friends and family elsewhere. The letters that Anne received in Sydney illustrate what was known about the mass murder of Jews, which was widely reported around the world in late 1942, and the fate of individuals. This correspondence also reveals the different ways in which refugees lived with what they knew and what they did not know.
The first of these letters came from Georg Schidlof when he reestablished contact with Anne in 1943, in his new guise as George Turner. While George’s sister had escaped to Palestine, his parents had not. One of George’s aunts had stayed in touch with them through neutral Sweden until the end of 1940, if not 1941, when they remained in Vienna. While George had since learned that his parents had been “dragged away into Poland,” that was it. Despite repeated attempts, George had been unable to make contact with them. He also had been unable to find out exactly where the Nazis had transported them, which was in fact to Riga in the Soviet Union.
George assumed correctly that the Nazis had killed his parents. He wrote: “Of course I know that their fate is the fate of millions but this knowledge does not help.” His only solace was that, having been freed from internment in Australia on condition that he enlist—and having opted to join the English rather than the Australian army because he wanted to fight the Germans, not the Japanese—he was “working entirely toward the destruction of Nazism” and would soon be “driving a tank into Austria or Germany.” He declared he would “not be satisfied until the people responsible for this mass murder received the proper punishment for their crimes.” It was “queer,” he concluded, “when I received the news about the fate of my parents I did not feel the sorrow one would expect to feel, but I felt such a hatred, such a desire to kill those inhuman monsters with my own hands.”
Another letter came early in 1945, this time from Anne’s Czech cousin, Hans Troller, who had inspired her to learn the cello when he had visited Alt Aussee a decade before. Hans wrote that he had left Prague for England in 1939—seen off at the station by his mother under strict orders to keep smiling or at least not to cry as they parted. His grandmother Fanny, the last surviving sister of Anne’s grandfather Moriz, had died in 1942. Hans’s father, Ernst, had died soon thereafter. He had not heard from his mother since 1944, and not from his two brothers for much longer. Hans observed: “I am afraid that is not cheerful, but I stopped worrying, as with all my worrying I cannot help them under the present circumstances and I really find that the British attitude of ‘don’t worry’ and ‘don’t show your feelings’ is most sensible and makes life a lot easier.”
Anne discovered much more once the war in Europe ended in 1945. Before long, Gretl, Kathe, and she were receiving one letter after another about the fate of family and friends. Every time a letter arrived from Europe they wondered what news it would bring. Their excitement at getting mail—so patent in Anne’s diaries during the war—became mixed with dread. But particularly when the news was bad, these letters communicated just a sliver of what had occurred, as those who wrote either were in no state to describe in detail what had happened or wanted to spare others from the horror.
Several of these letters came from the Hamburgers. They started miraculously with one from Guido Junior announcing that he had found his brother Friedrich, sister-in-law Helene, and niece Jana all alive. The next was from Gudrun, who reported that her father, Otto, was dead, while her uncle and aunt Guido Senior and Nelly were not to be found. The one after was again from Guido Junior, informing them that Paul and Fely’s daughter Lizzi had lived out the war in Vienna only to die of tuberculosis a month after the city fell to the Russians. Before long, I imagine, came another from Fely that Paul, too, had died.
Anne’s friend Erika, who married another refugee in England in 1945, evoked what it was like to be searching for family five months after the war in Europe ended without being able to discover their fate. “Otto left his parents, two brothers, and two sisters in Germany and has not been able to find out anything about them so far,” she explained to Anne that September. “So, as with him, wi
th thousands of others, hope slowly dies; it is terrible to watch it.” A month later Erika reported: “His mother, two brothers, and two sisters are alive and well. His father lost his life in Auschwitz.” Her assessment was pragmatic. “As terrible as the point of his father’s end is, he is still lucky to know the rest of his family has been saved.”
Hans Troller wrote again at the end of 1945, after being reunited with his uncle Norbert, who had been in Theresienstadt with his father, mother, and brothers, and knew more than anyone about their deaths. “I am afraid,” Hans wrote, “according to the more detailed information I received from Norbert, there is absolutely no hope at all. I am the only survivor of our family circle. Of about twenty persons of the near family in Czechoslovakia, only three have returned.” Hans found it impossible to recount what Norbert had told him: “The stories he told me were absolutely unbelievably horrible and I don’t want to think of it if I can help it.” He concluded: “Maybe when I am going to meet you one of these days, I will tell you something about the ‘Fall of the House of Troller.’ ” But Anne did not see Hans again before he became one of many refugees to commit suicide.
The end of the war allowed Gretl, Kathe, and Anne to reestablish contact with the few Viennese friends who had remained true to them after the Anschluss. Having heard nothing for five years, they were anxious to discover whether these friends had survived and whether they could do anything for them, as Vienna was a city in chaos, devoid of most services and short of food. The most important for Gretl and Kathe were the Moll sisters, who had hidden Gretl’s jewelry, gone to the station to say farewell to Gretl and Anne when they left for Switzerland, and written repeatedly to all three of them as they sailed to Sydney. The most important for Anne was her lace-cleaning teacher, Anni Wiesbauer. When Anne first wrote to her, asking if she needed help, Anni replied that after being caught in fighting on the edge of Vienna for a fortnight as the Russians took the city, she had suffered a nervous breakdown that left her crying for months and unable to work. While she had regained her equilibrium and felt as if she had recovered from a bad dream, she described Vienna as a city where things had never been so difficult—not even at the end of World War I, which Anni had experienced as a girl. She asked Anne to send her tins and tea. While she was five feet seven inches tall, she weighed just 108 pounds.
Anni sometimes wrote over the following year as if she were still no better. She was unable to find peace, doubted whether she would be happy again, could see no ray of light, thought human beings had changed for the worse, doubted the value of life, and imagined it would be beautiful not to wake up in the morning. At other times, she declared that she had found her bearings and was happy—at least, when she worked day and night, and never read a newspaper, so she remained as oblivious as possible to the world around her. Time and again she expressed her shame at asking like a beggar for fat and meat, cocoa and marmalade, despite Anne’s obvious delight in being able to reciprocate for what Anni had done for her before the war. In all, Anne sent nineteen fortnightly food parcels that left Anni crying with happiness and gave her renewed hope and confidence.
What of Paul Herschmann? Anne and Gretl must have wondered about him. When Gretl was interviewed by Australia’s security services in 1940, she described Paul as “present whereabouts unknown.” Once the war ended, Anne and Gretl had the opportunity to search for him through one of the agencies that brought together members of families separated during the war, just as he could have searched for them. Until Anne reread the letters that Paul sent to her after they reestablished contact, she thought he had been the one to seek her out. After rereading these letters, she thought it “most likely” that Gretl, who always retained some attachment to Paul, set out to find him. That it was Anne who did so, as clearly revealed by Paul’s letters, made no sense to her when she had always felt she had “a childhood without a father.”
Paul’s first letter came in January 1948, from the French city of Toulouse, where he had moved after surviving the war in the convent in Graulhet. He wrote that he had been “completely shaken” on discovering her whereabouts the day before. “Still today,” he continued, “I am so overcome by joy that I can hardly grasp it as I had given up hope of hearing news of you.” Paul went on to report that his brother Franz had been gassed in Auschwitz, his brother Gustav had been killed in Minsk, his aunt Elizabeth had died in Theresienstadt, his brother Otto was alive in South America, and his own survival was the result of “a remarkable chain of extraordinary circumstances.” He asked Anne to give Gretl his warmest greetings, write at length to him soon, and send him a photograph. He concluded, “You are embraced by your father.”
Anne responded as if Paul was imposing himself on her. While his letter was not “theatrical,” that was how Anne described it in her diary. She still replied immediately, as did Gretl from Armidale. But while Gretl conveyed affection and compassion, so that her letter affected Paul more than any other since the war, he was shocked by Anne’s impersonal report, devoid of affection, giving no hint of the relationship of daughter and father. While Paul acknowledged that he was in no position to reprimand Anne because they “had never totally possessed each other,” he desperately wanted her to confide in him.
She refused and explained why—accusing him of seeing little of her during her last years in Vienna, and probably much else—which left him struggling to know how to respond. While he declared that he did not want to engage in accusations or defenses, he did. He wrote that he had come to see her often and happily while she was little, even though it sometimes was not easy, but that later he had the feeling that she no longer needed him and he would never force himself on his own dear child. He wanted her to see that they were both very different people. He encouraged her to write again and get to know him because he was part of the puzzle of her life and, if she looked inside herself, would find him.
He could not persuade her and by September was so distraught that he put his grievance to Gretl, prompted by a letter from Anne in which she declared, “I do not have the feeling that I am writing to my father.” Paul’s hurt was palpable as he asked Gretl, “If that is the case, why did she seek me out?” He concluded, “If I also have made mistakes, I was of the opinion that after such infinite suffering, after the loss of my dearest brother and friend Franz, one must reach out one’s hand.”
Paul explained in these letters that he had lost an average of six and a half pounds a year since leaving Vienna, or fifty-nine pounds in all. He disclosed that in addition to being given injections—the nature of which he did not specify—he had received electric shock treatment. He revealed that he could not stop thinking about the last time he saw Franz and that he dreamed almost every night about Franz’s death in Auschwitz. While Paul thought Gretl looked the same as ever when she sent him a photograph of her in Sydney, she must have been shocked when he reciprocated with a photograph of his shrunken, hollow face. When Gretl asked him to write more personally, Paul responded that he had no personal life.
Paul, Toulouse, February 1948. (Illustration Credits ill.47)
The survival of Paul’s youngest brother, Otto, in Argentina did little to alleviate the sense of loss and isolation that came with being the only member of his family left in Europe. When Paul did not hear from Otto for a long time, he could not bring himself to write because he feared another blow of fate. While he was able to forget himself occasionally by attending lectures and operas, this respite was short-lived. Although Paul initially reported that he had many French and Austrian friends, he still described himself as very lonely, and his circle soon shrank when several of his friends moved to Paris. The closest to remain in Toulouse was another Austrian who taught human rights. Paul was surprised when, one evening in 1948, his friend unexpectedly talked about his relationship to God. He killed himself later that night. When Paul tried to deliver the eulogy at his funeral, it proved beyond him.
Paul collapsed on a street in Toulouse in 1950 and was taken to the hospital unconscious
. When he recovered sufficiently to write to Gretl a fortnight later, he disclosed that for a long time he had been unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. He also revealed that his doctors attributed his condition to his taking too many tranquilizers and sleeping tablets. At least Paul had company while he was in the hospital. When he wrote another letter to Gretl a few weeks later, he had been visited by a rabbi and a bishop and had enjoyed seeing them both, as his experiences during the war had changed his view of Catholicism. While he did not believe in any God, he was open to both Judaism and Christianity. Anne recorded that Paul had tried to commit suicide but failed.
The awfulness of his situation is patent. Paul was a beaten, broken man—his health ruined, his muscles wasted, incapable of adjusting to new circumstances, afflicted by depression, unable to hold down a job. Just as with Anni Wiesbauer, Anne gave Paul material help. After he wrote that his doctors had advised him to eat more but that he could not get the food he needed because he was unable to buy anything on the black market, Anne joined Gretl in sending food parcels. She even asked for Paul’s measurements and knit him a woolen vest. But whereas she conveyed her deep attachment to Anni, she had no love or affection for Paul. Whether fairly or unfairly, she thought he had failed her as a girl and, despite the extremity of his situation, she would not forgive him.
One way in which Paul tried to bridge the gulf between them was by giving her a new sense of family by writing about his parents and grandparents, who had all died before she was born. But while Anne preserved these letters, Paul’s family history was of no interest to her. Having always thought of herself as a Gallia in Vienna and finally become one in Sydney, she had no desire to learn about the Herschmanns, let alone identify with them. Paul’s other way of trying to find common ground with Anne was by expounding about German literature and theater. By drawing on what he had learned as a young man, he hoped to engage Anne, who had just embarked on a master’s degree in German at Sydney University. But she found what he wrote of no interest at best, bizarre at worst, especially Paul’s advocacy of Ibsen’s Ghosts, which she read as a play in which “the heroine … had been married to a dreadful man, so much so, that she had her son brought up far from home so that he should have no contact with his father.” Anne observed, “Considering that he was so anxious to have contact with me, that was a very odd choice.”