| Felix
Hans Georg Zwierzina changed name 1958 to Felix George Game |
28 April 1930 -
Now: Felix G. Game - author of this book
Only child of Emil Anton Karl Maria Zwierzina and Katalin Farsang
Data Summary:
| Born: | 28 April 1930, Budapest, Hungary |
| Parents: | Emil Anton Karl Maria Zwierzina, Captain (Artillery),
Vienna Katalin Farsang, Master Tailor (Ladies' Fashions), Budapest |
| Given names at Birth: | Bódog Farsang |
| Given names at Baptism: | Felix Hans Georg (illegitimate) |
| Name 1938 to 1958: | Felix Hans Georg Zwierzina |
| Name after 3 July 1958: | Felix George Game |
| Wives: | (1) Adrienne Jeanne Lanthier -
m. 1954, Sudbury (2) Jean Clare Heffernan (née Lemke) - m. 1985, Ottawa |
| Children | From 1st Marriage: 1. Mark Anthony Game * 1 July 1955, Sudbury 2. Vance Clayton Game * 25 Dec 1959, Willowdale 3. Todd Allan Game * 28 Aug 1962, Willowdale |
Childhood in Hungary
As mentioned in Chapter Six, I was born on 28 April 1930, in Budapest's Szent István General Hospital, the illegitimate son of Katalin Farsang. The relevant extract from the Birth Register shows that my mother lived at Angyal u. 64 in Pesterzsébet, a suburb of Budapest. Other interesting tidbits I learned from my Birth Certificatefggdoc2 and my Baptism Certificatefggdoc3 were that the birth took place at 1 Gyáli út in the 9th district of Budapest, and I must assume that this is the address of the Szent István General Hospital. My mother had a "Certificate of Poverty" issued to her by the first district of Budapest, which can only mean that she was unemployed, and probably receiving social assistance.
The extract from the register of births is dated 25 August 1938, and was obtained when requesting my first passport in preparation for our trip to Austria where my mother was to be reunited with my father. This document also reveals that at birth I had been given the ridiculous name of Bódog which, mercifully, was superseded by the three given names Felix Hans Georg which were used when I was baptized. I still suspect that Bódog may have been some priest's idea of translating Felix into Hungarian.
These are bewildering documents. My mother's age is recorded as 24 when she had in fact just turned 21.fggdoc002 My certificate of Baptism is dated 5 May 1930, seven days after my birth. Although it again shows me as illegitimate, it names two important-sounding sponsors: my Godparents were Róbert Talmajer, Graduate Engineer, of Vienna, and the wife of Dr. János Vaczek, born Baroness Henriette Waldstetter. I actually met Róbert Talmajer (as Robert Thalmayer) nine years later in Vienna, so I must assume that the friendship between him and my father was not a short-lived one. I have no idea who Henriette Waldstetter was, or how she fits into the picture. I also think her name may have been misspelled because I have not been able to find any trace of a family by that name, whereas I did find in the 1870 City Directory of Vienna a Colonel Johann Freiherr von Waldstätten, a professor at the Kriegsschule, residing at Ungargasse 18 in Vienna's 3rd district. I believe that this may have been Henrietta's father, and that a connection somehow existed through the military background.
It is very interesting, and says much about the priorities of the Catholic Church, that although much importance was accorded to the sponsors, there is no mention of the father's identity despite the fact that he was almost surely present at the baptism and would have provided my given names, and the correct names of the sponsors, who were his friends. It is however possible, that he probably made it a point to tell the priest that he had left the Catholic church in 1919, and as such he just did not merit mention in the parish register.
I am not sure of my age when my memories begin, but the remembered fragments seem to indicate that I do remember things from the time I would have been three or four years old. I base this on my physical size which can be related to some of the experiences and associated implements that I do remember.
In an age of cold-water flats in Budapest most people had a round, enameled wash basin. White enamel, with a blue line around the top edge. These were used to catch the water which came out of the lone tap. In them people washed their hands, their faces, their feet, the dishes, delicate blouses and underwear, and their babies, and the lettuce - although not necessarily in that order. The Hungarian word for this vessel was lavór (no doubt from the French lavoir), and although these basins came in various sizes, I would say ours was usually about 18 inches across at the top. I remember sitting in such a lavór, which is why I think that I could not have been much more than 4 years old, or I would not have fit.
We lived in a multilevel apartment building with an external corridor, something like a continuous balcony which runs the whole length of the building at every level. The individual apartments open onto this external corridor, which is the only way to get in and out of each flat. Nowadays in Canada the Fire Marshall would have a fit over the lack of a second exit. In Budapest, the buildings were made of solid masonry, and the walls were plastered. I do not remember hearing of a single fire breaking out in all the years we lived there. There seems to have been no need to have a second exit.
One warm summer day, the sun moved into a position which cast a few yards of sunlight in front of our door. My mother probably wanted to give me a special treat, and filled the lavor with cold water into which she sat me stark naked outside our door onto this common balcony. I sat there obediently, even though I neither liked cold water nor the abundance of sun, and then the other kids appeared from nowhere, as kids always do. They just stood around me and stared. They not only blocked the sunlight, but made me feel very self-conscious about my nudity. Luckily my mother had given me a face cloth to play with, and I became very busy trying to cover my privates - such as they were at that age sitting in ice-cold tap water.
In that story, the size of the wash basin is a more reliable indicator of age than the fact that I had been put outside stark naked. Nudity was considered quite appropriate for children even as old as six (and sometimes older) when they were in the proximity of water.
At
any rate, my memories probably start somewhere after my 3rd year. Another memory
of the same episode deals with the visit of a couple who had a small daughter
about my age. Probably for lack of money, there was a completely empty room
in our apartment. While the adults did their visiting, we two children were
sent into this empty room to play. I don't think there were any toys, and all
I can remember is that we were sitting on the gleaming but bare hardwood floor
facing each other. With nothing else to do, and naturally curious, I suggested
that we should show each other what we had. "I will show you mine if you
show me yours". The girl was not against it, but wanted me to show her
first, which I did. When her turn came, I was most disappointed because I came
to the conclusion that she had nothing to show. I think I felt cheated.
My parents must have thought that these rather high-density areas in the city were not a good place for me to grow up, or for them to live in. My next memories center around a house on the Gugerhegy (one of the hills on the Buda side of Budapest, not far from Rózsadomb - elevation 376 meters). The house came with several acres of abandoned orchard. It could not have been too well suited for winter occupancy because the plumbing seems to have been permanently frozen. My father instituted a methodology for going to the bathroom whereby you had to equip yourself with a supply of old newspapers, then go to a part of the house which was a long, glassed-in corridor with marble tiles. Here, and only here, you would spread the paper on the floor and do what had to be done. Emo would then pick up the four corners of the paper, twist it into a missile, and propel it out the window. I strongly suspect that it was something he had learned in the trenches of the Italian front during the first World War. Here, however, were several majestic Walnut trees, and some of these missiles got hung up in the branches, and kept hanging there well into the early summer by which time rains, winds and foliage would finally rid us of the reminders of a cold winter. "Cold" is not what you would understand by cold in Canada. There was snow, and it looked like winter, but it did not last as long, and was seldom severe. At least I do not think it was, because no one had thought to buy me long pants until after we had moved to Vienna in 1938.
To me Gugerhegy was probably as near to a little boy's paradise as you can find. I had complete freedom on those sloped acres and the high pile of stones which ran the whole length of the property's boundary. It must have taken generations of backbreaking work to remove all those stones from the land and to carry them to that long pile. For me it was one of the most fascinating places to play. Every stone was different in shape and size, and the spaces between them were alive with lizards, mice, and all sorts of snails, and insects. There were various animal bones, horns from cows, skulls of rabbits and mice, and claws from birds. I was only about five years old but knew exactly how the inside of a cow's horn smelled, and could not understand my family doctor twenty years later in Sudbury, who became completely frustrated when I asked him to tell me what was wrong with me that made my urine smell exactly like the inside of a cow's horn.
The orchard may have been abandoned but nobody had told the trees. In the spring they were a beautiful mass of varicolored blossoms. Then came the cherry season. Oh, the cherries! I climbed into a tree and ate cherries until I could no longer reach any, then I would climb into the next tree. Gorging myself on cherries had a predictable result, I would usually develop a tummy ache rather suddenly and be forced to make a quick descent. At least on one occasion I remember being taken by surprise and could not make it off the tree in time. Since the house was a fair distance away, it took a lot of shouting before my mother finally heard me, and was able to bring some toilet paper to hand to me up in the tree.
Not too far from our home there was a great big ditch, which was partially lined in concrete, and wide open at the top. It ended in a culvert in which I could walk almost upright. It was probably intended to be a storm sewer, but judging by the smell, other sewage probably found its way into this system also. I used to like to play down there. There was always some water in which to push pieces of wood around that had, in my little-boy's mind, magically become battleships. But the most important aspect of this storm sewer was that if I climbed inside the culvert, I could continue underground for a little stretch, and then surface inside the Ludovika, the military academy for officers of the Hungarian army. Once inside, there was much to see and to explore. They had real field artillery pieces standing around, and lots of beautiful horses that smelled really neat. I used to walk right into the stable and stroke them. Nobody gave me a second look. They were either too busy, or felt it was not their business, or probably thought that if a 5 year-old kid walked around loose on the grounds then he must belong to someone who had a right to let him roam around. Once one soldier asked me, not at all threateningly, who I was, and I told him my name was Felix, and that my father was captain Zwierzina. He smiled, nodded, and went on his way. My father had never been inside the Ludovika, of course, he had done his stint in Austria. I still wonder how come I could think fast on my feet then but today I cannot remember where I had put my hearing aid.
Wherever we moved, ditches and gullies and shrubbery were my favorite hangouts. When you are small, you can get through thick brush easier than adults, and you can get to go places that are reasonably untouched by adult feet. Sometimes you find things, sometimes you see things. That is how boys learn. What you do find frequently when exploring like this is other boys who are doing the same thing. Then you move around in packs. One time, one of our pack found a discarded condom. Well, everybody had to say all they knew about it, all of which amounted to nothing considering that the average age of our group must have been 5 years or less. It was however the first time I had seen one of those things. Looking back, I find it interesting how different people's instincts can be when it comes to touching something unknown. I would not have touched that condom unless forced to do so, yet some of the other boys were handing it around for closer inspection. Could I have learned already the concept of germs by that age? It is possible because my mother was a fanatic in that department. She was forever worried that someone would get too close to her food, and spray some of their spittle into it as they spoke. (At 81 years old in Vienna, she had already caused some friction in the nursing home when she insisted on holding up a piece of cardboard protecting her soup bowl from the person sitting across from her. The leopard can't change its spots.)
One of the discoveries I made as I prowled around in the neighborhood bushes was a family crypt complete with bones and skulls. It was not in a cemetery, but seemed to be just a few feet from the road, and it was all below the ground. There was a square hole in the ground about eight feet by eight feet, and perhaps six feet deep. It was made of concrete and had two big iron doors, but one of the hinges had rusted off, and the door was hanging into the tomb. Actually a dangerous set up, which could have killed or badly hurt someone accidentally stepped into it. I found it on a bright summer day and squatted down to peer into the inside. There was no question about it, there were human bones down there - I could tell by the skull that guarded them. For some reason I was neither startled nor the least bit ill at ease being so close to these remains, and so alone with them. Now that I knew where they were, I periodically went and looked into the hole, more or less checking that they were still there. I suppose it would be stretching the truth to imply that this may have been the beginning of my interest in genealogy.
Later we again lived in the city in an upstairs apartment. From this apartment stems one of my more unpleasant, and most enduring memories, which may have had deep psychological consequences. I was too small yet to tell the time. So when my mother slipped out one day to go to the store, she left me alone, but took me to the clock and told me exactly where the large hand would be when she returned. Well, I kept staring at the minute hand of that clock as it went past the magic spot without my mother returning. Anyone who has done it knows that those hands move very slowly when stared at. I became worried, then panicky and started to cry. I have obviously never forgotten the episode and am to this day a stickler insisting that people keep their promises.
My father smoked cigarettes, and one day he sent me to the corner store to get him a few. (Cigarettes were sold singly out of open boxes). This must have been in 1935, the year the Italians invaded Ethiopia. The adults must have talked about it because the word Abesszínia (Hungarian for Ethiopia) was not unfamiliar to me. When a boy, about the same age as I, whom I met on my way to the corner store, suggested that we should take off and go to Abesszínia, it seemed like a very sensible idea, and I immediately agreed. Trusting that he knew where it was, I did not pay any attention to where we were going, and became lost in the streets of Budapest. I cannot remember the details too well, but assume that I started bawling, because all I remember is a lot of people standing around looking down at me, and that one of them was wearing a uniform. Then somehow my mother appeared, and we went home. I doubt that my father got his cigarettes that time.
Much of the time there seems to have been only my mother around. I am not sure why this was so. Perhaps my parents had separated. My father did at one time go back to Austria, probably hoping that it would be easier there for him to find something he could make a living at. As an Austrian artillery officer without a war and without an army he was like a fish out of water and had a bad time of it.
My mother's mother lived on the other side of the Danube in Pest. She had been a widow for twenty years by then and still had a grown daughter, my aunt Mariska, living with her in a small cold-water flat in a proletarian neighborhood. Mariska did not seem to be doing anything, but my grandmother worked for the Budapest Street Car Company (Beszkárt) for many years. Her job was to paste advertising posters on that board which ran the whole length of the car above the seats. We called her Mama, and she was a solid woman who grew up in a small village. She used to buy live chickens on the market, and then at home she cut their throats above the sink, and then plucked them. I have no doubt that my grandmother was very poor, yet it was she who made the best donuts at Easter, and the most sinfully delicious Strudel and many other varieties of pastry. It was also she who arranged the most memorable Christmas Eve that I can remember.
That Christmas Eve, when I was about four or five years old, my mother and I visited my grandmother, and as always, we all hung around in the kitchen. My mother, her sister Mariska, and my grandmother kept me occupied and primed with Christmas talk. There are differences between the way Canadians celebrate Christmas and the way I grew up celebrating it. In Europe we did not have a Santa Claus or reindeer, or stockings or chimneys. We believed that the Christ Child was coming in person, and that it was he who brought the gifts. His means of getting around were wings, and he was of course accompanied by angels, who also had wings. So there was no need for chimneys to slide down in, or for reindeer to pull the entourage around. Our holies were self-propelled. The most significant difference was, however, that it all happened on Christmas Eve (December 24).
On that particular Christmas Eve, about an hour after dark, the adults really got into the spirit of it, and started to speak in whispered tones, and practically tiptoed around. The suspense was a work of art. Then all of a sudden my nose snapped to attention and I was sniffing the air in great drags - incense and frankincense! I knew the smell from some forgotten exposure to the interior of a church, and immediately made the connection between the churchly smells and the expected heavenly visitors. Judging by the smells, they must have arrived. Now even the whispering had stopped, and except for the fact that humans breathe instinctively rather than deliberately, we would have stopped that too. We were waiting for the other important manifestation that the heavenly entourage had arrived and was ready to have us enter their sanctum sanctorum: the faint tinkling of silver bells. And then I heard it. And the adults heard it too, and now they broke the silence and encouraged me to open the door to the room which had been declared taboo all day.
Rather awed by the tension, the scents, and the sound of the silver bells, I walked slowly, my hesitancy fighting with my eagerness, and opened the door to that other room. There stood the most beautifully decorated floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree full of angel's hair, tinsel, candies, shiny glass balls, and many, many burning candles - real ones made of wax with a flame on top. It was breathtaking. And of course there was still the strong hint of those special scents. And I was convinced that if one listened hard enough, the bell could be heard somewhere in the neighborhood, because Jézuska, as Hungarians call the Christ child, would still be making the rounds to visit the other children.
To this day I cannot figure out how they were able to set up and decorate the tree, and then light the candles, and burn the incense, and tinkle the bells without anyone's absence from the kitchen being noticed. It must have been a real labor of love, and it was flawlessly orchestrated - and I am very touched after all these years that it had all been done just for me.
Being an only child, I spent a lot of time in my own company and kept myself busy with little boy fantasies. Usually I was quiet and content with what I was doing, and I must not have been too much trouble for my parents. The odd mishap was bound to occur, though, and then their adrenaline would flow. Two such incidents come to mind. In the first one I was merely trying to kick-start a radio, like I have seen someone do with a motorcycle. The toggle switch of the old radio was not built for that, and broke off on the first kick. In the second one I probably came close to giving my parents a simultaneous heart attack when I held up two blood-drenched arms from behind an upholstered chair where I had been playing with my father's scalpel. He used to bathe his feet, and had this special pedicure knife which was like a scalpel, but folded into a handle. When opened up, a ring would slide over the short end inside the handle to keep it from accidentally closing. I knew that I had no business playing with it, which is why I had moved it to my hide-out behind the big chair. Here I opened it, but when I wanted to slide the ring into place, it was stopped by a rivet. Thinking that it should go over the rivet I tried to force it, slipped, and quite deeply cut my thumb. Now I had a real problem. If I reported immediately and asked for help, I would get chewed out by my father, and possibly worse. If I dripped any of that blood on the floor I would get the same treatment, but with my mother leading the assault. So without a sound, I tried to prevent dripping on the floor, and kept wiping the cut hand with the good hand with the result that both my arms up to my elbows looked like I had just retrieved them from a meat-grinder. Still hoping to get out of this dilemma discretely, I tried to attract my mother's attention ('kst, kst') until she finally turned my way and I could hold up both bloody arms to show her I had a problem. There is only one standard Hungarian outcry in such circumstances: "Jézus Mária!!" my mother cried out with total abandon. Which prompted my father to stand up in his foot bath and start yelling "kötszer! kötszer!" which probably also dated back to his days on the battle field. The word is the Hungarian equivalent for first aid kit. He yelled it twice for emphasis - perhaps something that was spelled out in the military "how to" manuals to avoid misunderstanding of an order given. When the blood was cleaned off me, and the bleeding thumb bandaged, they were so worn out, they even forgot to scold me.
Later on, when my father had gone to Austria to try and reestablish himself, my mother started sewing for other people, usually in their homes, which left me alone a good deal of the time - although I was less than eight years old. We moved around a few times, and occasionally were living quite far out of the way. One time we rented a room from a family who had a house about an hour's walk up a hill. I still remember walking up there one day in about two feet of snow. In typical Budapest tradition I only had short pants, but long stockings.
It was in that house that I had another memorable Christmas. Probably for lack of money, stamina, and opportunity, my mother did not manage to get a tree. She came home from her sewing job on Christmas Eve rather tired, and proceeded to explain to me that the Christ child does not always have time to go to all the outlying places, and that I should not feel bad if it should have been too busy to remember me. I said "of course not", and I meant it.
Later in the evening, alluding to her tiredness, my mother asked if I would turn down the bed so we could retire. As I started to get the bed ready for us to climb in, I kept finding gifts hidden between the blankets and the pillows. I was of course very happy, and found nothing at all unusual about not having a Christmas tree with candles and the customary scents that I had grown to associate with the occasion.
My mother was only in her twenties, and had lots of vigor. She would take me to places that intrigued her, and in the process I saw some places I would otherwise not have seen. One day she announced that we would visit the Margit Sziget (Marguerite Island), which lies in the Danube between Buda and Pest, and is connected to both by the Marguerite Bridge. I later learned that it was normal for women to take very long to get ready whenever they were going somewhere, and that it involved a lot of staring into the mirror and dabbing at their faces, and alternately pummeling and tearing their hair, and that it was best to stay away from them during that frustrating exercise. But back then I could only think that we would be late and they would have closed up the Danube by the time we got there. We did eventually get there and had a nice walk around the parks of the island. My mother somehow wound up with small snapshots of me all dressed up in a navy outfit, which seems to have been considered the only acceptable outfit for children. From these pictures, it is quite evident that I could not have been more than 4 years old, and that I had a fantastic head of hair. It is also clear that my mother either knew she was going to meet someone there, or made the acquaintance of someone, because we certainly did not own a camera, yet we have pictures.
One other time she took me to a public bath. I think what they did is fence off a piece of the Danube shore and the people would stand around in the water. I have a very bad memory of that episode. My mother wanted to mix with the people and stood me in a spot, asking that I stay put. What she did not know, was that she had stood me on a single, roundish timber, and since the water was already to my chin standing on it, slipping off seemed a sure way to drown. The motion of the water did not allow me to stand still without holding on to her. When she wanted to let go of me, I started to scream in panic, which probably annoyed her to no end, but my feet were coming off that timber and I knew that once off, the water would be higher than my mouth. I was quite frightened that time, but I can understand that she did not know of the danger I felt myself to be in.
Then there was an air show at Gödöllö. The feature, which had coaxed thousands of foot-weary folk out there, was to be a mass parachute jump. I was still very small and way down between this big herd of adults, I could hardly see the sky. I was rather bored, and tired from the heat and that walking. As I remember it, when some people finally did spot some parachutes, they were very disappointed because it was cargo, rather than people that floated down.
We must have been quite poor for a while, because I remember going to what must have been a soup kitchen. My mother was most likely embarrassed to go there, so I had to take a pot and go and get it filled up, and take it home. One day they served a delicacy, noodles all covered with ground poppy seeds and sugar. On the way home I put the pot down near a tree and played for a while with some children. When I finally got home, we were going to have a big feast of mákos nudli, but when I opened the lid, some of the poppy seeds seemed to be moving. On closer examination, it turned out that the sugar had attracted hundreds of small black ants.
I was not the only one who had an experience with a pot of food. My mother often brought home leftovers from the dinner at the places where she sewed. She came home one evening on the street car, carrying in a pot square noodles covered with browned cabbage (káposztás kocka). Covered with sugar, it is also a delicacy. After she had been sitting a few minutes in the street car, my mother started to give the man sitting beside her very evil, very outraged looks, and finally got up and moved to a different seat. It did not take long before she felt again offended by her new neighbor, and moved on again. She was just about to repeat this scenario for a third time when it suddenly dawned on her that the foul smell of dirty, sweaty feet for which she had been doling out poison-dart looks, came from her own pot of cabbage squares.
Street cars were the way to get around, unless you walked. We used to visit my grandmother via street car, and if you had to go to the hospital, you took the street car. One day I was playing with a boy in our yard, and since we had nothing else to play with, I unhooked the two parts of my scooter. This is the old- fashioned type, where you stand on a board with one foot and push with the other (now a modern metal variety is making a comeback at highly inflated prices). It is steered with a second, vertical board that ends in a handlebar. The two pieces snap together with the help of a piece of hardware. So now my visitor and I we both had a piece of my scooter which was made of good, solid hardwood. What can you do with half a scooter? You can see how far you can throw it, that's what you can do. So we tossed our pieces around with a vengeance. One time I had run after my half, and was just bending down to pick it up, when all of a sudden I could only see stars. The other boy's half of my scooter had come flying through the air and hit me right on the head. He disappeared, I wailed, and when my mother came to see what this was all about, she almost fainted because I was bleeding profusely from a head wound.
She wrapped a towel around my head, and we hurried to the street car, and went to the hospital emergency. I was not in big pain, and behaved like a hero. What else could I do? You can definitely not be carrying on when riding the street car with all those strangers on it. In the hospital it was nice and clean smelling, and would have been all right if some smart-ass intern had not wanted to entertain my mother with stories about how they would have to amputate my head with a straight razor. I knew he was "joking", but this was a hospital, and he was a doctor, and they did cut things off people, and he did have a straight razor with which he had shaved around my wound. The evidence was stacked against me and I became very frightened, which started me wailing. That scene should have been filmed, and shown in all the medical schools, as an example of what not to do. The only good that came of it, was that by the time he stapled my scalp together, I did not even feel it. I can still feel the scar though.
One summer I was sent off to a summer camp. It was in a place called Zalaegerszeg, and was in the middle of nowhere. Just a bunch of barracks, and hundreds of city kids. There certainly was a lot of space to run around in, but of the entire three week stay I can only remember two things. One was the daily procession through all the dormitories of boys with their bed sheets draped over their backs. These were the boys who had wet their beds the night before. This was the pedagogically approved method to deal with it. Supposedly all you had to do was to shame the victim so much, that he would never again wet a bed. Back then I felt sorry for those boys, today I wonder about the system that allowed such treatment of children. But today I am also convinced that they had statistics proving that this really worked and stopped bed wetting.
The other thing I remember has to do with how early in life people become prejudiced, in this case anti-Semitic. About midmorning every day our chasing around on all that expanse was interrupted by the ritual of a snack being handed out. It was very, very simple, but we were small boys, and food was food was food. This memorable morning, the playground supervisor came with a basket full of sliced brown bread, and a jar of honey. Each kid got a slice of bread and on it a table spoon of honey. When the teacher had finished, he still had the end piece of the loaf (which has more bread in it and is more crusty), and about a half inch of honey left in the jar, and he kept wondering who had not been around to collect his snack. Then came a little boy, who indicated that he had just arrived and that he did not get his bread yet. The supervisor looked at what he held and gave him the big end piece of the bread and the jar with the remaining honey. I have no idea who he was, but in no time all the other boys were telling each other that the Jew boy had staged his late arrival on purpose to make sure he got the biggest piece of bread and much more honey than anyone else had received. To me this is a frightening experience, because these were small boys of six and seven years old. Nobody questioned the story, and everyone was ready and willing to believe that it was true. We had all been outsmarted, and the one who had outsmarted us, of course, had to be a Jew.
That other boy probably would never find himself in the predicament I got into quite innocently one day. We were living somewhere along the Hidegkuti street in Buda, and as always, I was alone all day and went to meet my mother who would be arriving by street car at a prearranged time (give or take half an hour). So I stood around at the street car stop, and waited. A group of boys were involved in the favorite past time of some street kids, the riding on the bumpers of street cars. Those metal beams that stick out at each end and allow more than one car to be connected. Conveniently enough, there was a thick black rubber hose fastened to the outside of the car (it must be connected for the air brakes to work), and provided a good handhold to the illegal rider.
I had never done that before, and had no desire to do it now. So I just stood there and waited for my mother. In came a street car, and just as I had concluded that she was not on it, and it was ready to continue, the conductor, with a triumphant gleam in his eye, jumped at me, grabbed my arm and propelled me onto the street car, which by now was moving out of my neighborhood. Got you did I! I'll teach you to hike on those bumpers! I kept telling him that I was merely waiting for my mother, who would now be looking for me, that I never rode the bumpers in my life, but to no avail. The people standing around me in the street car all had very stern, hard expressions on their faces. I was clearly a street urchin caught at something bad, and whatever else was involved, the point in their mind was that I should not have done it. I had been judged without a trial. Here was another lynch mob. It was already dark outside, I had no idea where the street car was taking me, I knew my mother must have arrived by now, and I had no money with which to buy my fare back. I started to cry, told him that I was about to wet my pants, and to let me off. Well he took me two stops, then let me out. I broke into a trot, and ran all the way back to "our" stop. I can't remember how my mother and I met up. It was an unpleasant experience, and I think here today it would be called kidnapping, and the conductor might find himself in some great unpleasantness.
It cannot be a good sign that I hardly remember the two-and-half years I went to primary school in Budapest. There is only one teacher I remember by name, probably because it is like a mnemonic: Zölddioné. The -né suffix means Mrs., her name translates into Greennut. I also remember that for a while I was given a noon meal in the principal's apartment. My mother must have arranged for this, and no doubt had to pay. Again, the only thing I can remember was that one day the principal had a dessert which looked simply wonderful, but which only he received, and proceeded to eat in front of me. I had never seen the sub stance before, and it was only after seeing puffed rice in Canada some twenty years later that I was able to identify it. I think he ate it with whipped cream.
They must have taught well enough though, because by the time I left, half way through grade three, when we moved to Austria, I already knew the multiplication tables, and could write coherent stories, and read without difficulty. They also taught me a mnemonic for deciding whether the moon was increasing or decreasing. To this day, if I want to know whether the moon is on the increase or decrease, I have to revert to Hungarian: if the sliver is convex to the left, as the belly of a lower case "a", that is apad, meaning, it is decreasing in size. If the sliver curves the other way, like the belly of an upper case "D", that is dagad which is the word for swelling. We also learned a little verse for remembering the four cardinal points of the compass, which was for a long time the only sure way for me to know where East and West were. I still remember the verse: Elöttem van észak, hátam mögött dél; balra a nap nyugszik, jobbra a nap kél. (Before me is North, behind me is South; to the left the sun goes to rest, to the right it rises). Today as an experienced analyst and veteran cynic I do not find this verse all that safe. First of all it can only be applied if North is known, because you have to face it for the recital. Secondly, only the last word in each line rhymes, which does not prevent you from mixing up the right left sequence. It would be a pity to have someone learn it the wrong way around, and then remember it for the rest of his life.
One day a new boy arrived at school. He was a Viennese Jew whose parents erroneously thought that they would be safe in Hungary. The boy could not speak Hungarian, so we all tried to communicate somehow, because he not only looked like a decent chap, he had tremendous novelty value. I was of course, entirely unaware of the world's political happenings, nor would I have understood them. One of the kids seemed to speak some German, and interpreted some of the things being said. I caught two words that I had heard before: Vienna, and Hitler. I knew my father was in Vienna, and that Hitler was the boss man on the other side of the border. With that childish desire to impress by saying something - anything, I informed the newcomer that Hitler was my father. After this revelation had been translated for him, he gave me a funny look. Looking back, I can see that being the same age as I was, he probably did not fully understand the implications of his family's move to Budapest, and since he could not understand my nonsensical comment, I hope he thought nothing of it.
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1938
passport picture |
The day we went to board our train for Vienna, there was a little excitement at the Budapest railway station. There were red carpets rolled out, and just as we passed, there was a man dressed in bright scarlet clerical garb. I assume he was a cardinal. The next thing I knew, we were on the train to Austria, and after passing through the border at Hegyeshalom, we arrived at Vienna.
I was now eight years old and had been issued my first passport, which has unfortunately disappeared, or most likely been deliberately destroyed by my mother as irrelevant, or because it was a tangible proof of my illegitimacy. She did, however, tear out the photograph from it and thus saved the most important part, the best picture of me at that age. Saving the picture also saved the official notation on its back which identifies the person pictured as Bódog, born at Budapest on 28 April 1930, of Roman Catholic faith, student at a primary school, single, resident since 6 September 1937 at Galgóczi út 8 in the 1st district of Budapest. His father's name: Zwierzina Emil, his mother's name: Farsang Katalin. These details were provided by Sergeant Eröss György at the 81st precinct office, and was given the sequence number 133/938. It was dated 19 November 1938 (I must note here that the round official stamp which shows the date as ..38 XI 19 must have been set wrong. I am saying this because for paragraphs further down I am saying that we saw "Christallnacht" happening in Vienna, and it is historically said to have taken place on November 9th, which means we were already in Vienna and not having my passport picture dated in Budapest. I suspect the Hungarian police sergeant was not too solid with Roman numerals and had turned the date one month too far.
Growing up in Austria
My memories of Vienna are very threadbare. There was the Christmas at the Birman residence. I was either very tired, or not interested, or could not understand anyone. I can't remember speaking, or being spoken to by anyone. I do remember the tree, and a little girl, somewhat older than myself, who was my "niece" Dorli. I thought I had been given a violin that Christmas, but it may have been not part of the festivities. (I was given a Mathias Thier violin built in 1794 inside an alligator skin case. I never did learn how to play it, and finally sold it in the 1960s through the house of Geo. Heinl in Toronto. I think they cheated me, when after deducting their 20% commission they sent me $250 without even a word of an explanation. I don't think the case alone could be bought for that!).
My mother went to the main post office with its polished brass revolving doors to write letters there. I think she had left a lover behind in Budapest, a fellow we called "izmos Vilmos" (muscular Willy), and she found it safe to write to him from the post office lobby. While she wrote I amused myself with opening the big brass doors for people. Some of the people started to tip me, and I finished up with a variety of coins.
We visited Gretl, who was my father's sister Margarete Hablé, wife of Robert Hablé‚ a graduate engineer. She was a plump, unattractive woman who owned the ugliest dog I have ever seen. I think it was a bulldog. My mother was very upset when Gretl fed cookies to the dog, but did not offer any to me. We did not know then that there were biscuits made especially for dogs.
One evening I was walking the streets of Vienna with my mother, and on the Kärntnerstraße we heard a commotion, and approaching closer to see better, we found ourselves walking on several inches of shattered glass. The windows of some big stores were all broken, and some people were helping themselves to the merchandise out of a jewelry store window. It was 40 or 50 years later that I happened to read something which mentioned the Kristallnacht incident staged by the Nazis, and I finally made the connection and realized that this had been the infamous Kristallnacht of November 9 1938 when Hitlerites smashed the windows of all stores believed to be owned by Jews. Imagine, Kristallnacht, and I had been an eye-witness.
For a while we stayed in a Vienna hotel, where I seem to have insulted several chambermaids by calling them Tepp the only German word I knew because my father had been using it on me. It turned out to mean "dunce", a word usually reserved for one's younger brother, or a school chum who is not bigger. Not recommended for eight-year-old boys when talking to chambermaids.
There were few other experiences during our short stay in Vienna which left a lasting impression, but there were a couple. It was here that I was treated to my first banana, which my mother had bought and triumphantly peeled for me. I was not too impressed but it was a first, and I have liked bananas all my life despite this lukewarm introduction.
One other time my mother and I went prowling around in the Vienna parliament building which had two remarkable attributes: it had two real live Nazi honor guards standing outside the main entrance in their SA uniforms and swastika armbands. It was incredible how live humans could stand still like statues. Right behind them started a red carpet which continued inside the building and then down a seemingly endless corridor. I have no idea what was inside the parliament building in 1938/39 but we obviously did not have any difficulty gaining entrance and wandering about unescorted. A bit later into the season, all I remember is having been very cold in my short pants walking around on Vienna's windy streets in the middle of winter.
The next thing I remember is living in a room in a Gasthaus in Schwanenstadt. I was enrolled in the third grade of primary school and expected to carry on where I had left off in Budapest. Problem was that the language was different. Oh was it different! So, at every break (five minutes after every 45 minute lesson), all my classmates gathered around me and just stood there and gawked. This was before the big migrations caused by WW-II, and a foreigner who could not speak a word, was a genuine attraction. The only thing I could follow was arithmetic. When the teacher wrote it on the blackboard, it looked like the Hungarian version. I remember one classmate, a boy with big, beautiful blue eyes. I really liked him, and used to seek him out, and walk with him. I guess I considered him a friend, or was simply attracted to his blue eyes, the kind I was not used to seeing in Hungary.
Then it was moving day. My father must have arranged with a trucker to move us after his regular hours, because it was dark. We headed for an empty house which was beautifully situated among the trees in a rather hilly area of Gschwandt not too far from Gmunden. It snowed that night, and the truck could not make it up the hill. They were able to reach my sleigh, and took it down from the truck, and I amused myself for hours while my father tried to feed burlap bags under the spinning wheels. Somehow we got there, and woke up the next morning in a winter wonderland. The house had very definite gingerbread characteristics. Snow was up to my waist, so I went out with a pair of old skies I found somewhere, and tried to walk in the snow. Good luck! There was deep powder snow, and when I fell on my behind, it took a long time to get myself back on my feet for a few seconds. In the middle of all this, which was mercifully very private amongst the trees, there was a sudden apparition: a boy on skies appeared from nowhere. Stopped, stared at me, then without saying a word, jumped up, and around between his poles and disappeared. I really needed that while I was trying to dig myself out of the powder. Someone must have tipped him off that the new people had a boy, and he wanted to check out the boy for play mate potential. It took him about 20 seconds to formulate an opinion: That guy can't even ski! He disappeared as smoothly as he had come, and I never saw him again.
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Gmunden
- The view I saw for the next 12 years |
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1939
- Gmunden - Felix watching Herr Jüngling strumming the chords |
Because my father's title was "chick-breeding consultant", he felt he knew more about it than anyone else, and he must have thought he had inside knowledge which should be exploited to make a fast fortune. So he got several hundred chicks, and brooders, and rented a few abandoned greenhouses, and set up a chick-breeding operation in them. The chicks were cute enough, but my father was on the road a lot, and much of the chores of tending to the chicks fell to me at the tender age of 9 years old. Between the lack of knowledge and the lack of manpower to do the husbanding of our feathered children, we kept doing things wrong, and the chicks, seeking warmth near the brooders as they would under the wings of the mother hen died when they brooders were maladjusted and too hot. Perhaps the brooders were not even properly constructed, and could not be adjusted, they certainly were not a success. The chicks could have been dying of hunger, or whatever chicks die of. At any rate, there were a lot of dead ones around every morning. I was expected to do things for them and spent a lot of time mixing their feed, or just squatted there and talked to them.
My mother sewed most of my clothes, but she didn't quite know how to make a fly for boys' pants. These were the years when zippered flies on men's pants would not be known for another 15 years or so. My shorts usually wound up with a small semicircular trapdoor which may, or may not have a snap-fastener. Often this invention of hers didn't stay closed. Squatting down one day to feed these chicks, I almost jumped out of my skin when one of them pecked at my pecker which was peeking out through the trap door. The insult of having been mistaken for a worm!
There was one redeeming feature to the chick-raising era. These abandoned greenhouses had two-thirds of their height below ground level. This is where my father gave me my first lessons in gun handling and target shooting. I had been given a 22 caliber single-shot bolt action (Flobert) rifle for my ninth birth day. But no ammunition. That was a sensible precaution, and everyone would have agreed that it was quite safe for a little boy to be playing with a real rifle for which he had no ammunition. Everyone that is, except the ladies in the neighbor hood who had this real gun aimed at them. By the time the lesson was taught that one never aims a gun at a person, there had been several cases of hysterics in the neighborhood. But the lessons were good, and lasted a lifetime, as did the rather good shooting skills that I developed (good enough to place third in the provincial competitions a few years later even though the regulation rifles were so heavy I could hardly hold them up to my shoulder).
World War II broke out, and my father saw his chance to get back into uniform, and do what he did best: play at soldiering. Since this also put him firmly on somebody's payroll, he could not resist the opportunity. He moved about for a while, and I never knew for sure where he was, nor did I seem to be too concerned about his whereabouts. At one point he was stationed in Wels, which is not very far from Gmunden, and I saw him more often. I was allowed to spend my summer holidays with him in Wels, and although I never got to like that town, I had many adventures there.
One day in Wels my father decided
that his son should become a horseman. He had a horse saddled by one of the
soldiers assigned to stable duty, and the horse was taken on the 'longe'
(about a 25 foot long tether). I was a small boy, and my legs were barely long
enough to hang down each side of the horse's broad back. To make matters worse,
my father was going to do it with class, and teach me to ride according to the
methods used in the Spanische Reitschule
(the Spanish Riding Academy of Lippizaner fame), i.e. without the use
of stirrups. The whole idea is that the trainee is forced from day one to get
used to good Knieschluß
(knee contact). That is easier said then done even if one has full-length legs.
In the meantime the horse is going around in circles on the longe,
and I am trying to hang on to something - anything. Then Papa Emo does
or says something which makes the horse switch into a trot. To me it seemed
that I was being tossed so high out of the saddle with each step, that when
I came back down again the horse would be gone. But I must not look afraid.
Not in front of the handler. Papa Emo in the meantime is giving his own
horse a workout, and ignores the eyes popping out of his ten-year-old son's
head. He finally noticed that this whole exercise was a bit premature. The horse
is stopped, Felix is lifted off its back, and the torture is over. There was
no conversation about it, nor were there any further attempts to turn me into
a Lippizaner tamer.
My father may have been disappointed since he was himself a competent horseman as I was able to witness one day when I happened to see him on horse back wanting to go through a narrow street in which a steam-driven pavement roller was puffing away. The horse was frightened by these puffs and started to dance on its hind legs. Emo remained glued to the saddle and alternated between talking gently to the horse, and telling - not so gently - some infantry soldiers, who felt obligated to come to an officer's aid, that they should stay out of the way for their own safety. He quickly had the horse calmed down and back on all fours, then he continued on his way past the steam engine.
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1940
Wels Felix with first bike |
It was also in Wels in 1940 that my father bought me a bicycle when I was 10 years old. That provided a means for enlarging the sphere of my explorations, and also kept me out of his hair. I could easily have gotten into trouble with all the freedom I was given. But I was either lucky, or perhaps by then knew how to take care of myself. There were exceptions.
At the time, I didn't know the concept of "woman driver", but I did make the acquaintance of a representative sample. Out on my new bike every day, I seldom wore more than swim trunks. One foot path that I liked to explore, wound its way along a gully about 12 feet deep - all full of four-foot-high Brennessel (stinging nettles). A big country girl on her bike came the opposite way one day, and would of course not yield to a ten-year-old boy. The foot path was about 18 inches wide. Playing chicken up to the very last second, I lost the path, lost the right of way, lost my balance and sailed with all that bare skin into the gully of stinging nettles. The young cow on the bike kept right on going. If you have not experienced the sensation of stinging nettles, there is not much point in having it explained. Just think of having your underwear full of very angry ants. The burning of the skin is unbelievable. Then your skin starts to look red and blotchy, but looks are by now the least of the victim's concern. I guess this is how boys get to be tough. Out there all alone one can only get back on the bike and keep on going - there really is no other choice.
Since there were no other children around to play with, I spent all my time on my own with my bike for company. Some times this freedom went to my head, and I would venture rather far afield. I must have had a good sense of direction, because I always found my way home, and I do not remember ever asking for directions. One such occasion when I really got carried away, was the day in Wels when I decided to cycle to Linz (the Provincial capital of Upper Austria) for a Schnitzel dinner. I must have had some money on me, even though I was wearing nothing more than swim trunks. I pedaled to Linz, found a restaurant, ordered and ate a nice Wienerschnitzel, then climbed on the bicycle and started back for Wels. It was getting dark, and I had no lights, but I got home. I must have been pedaling on automatic pilot like a zombie, because I was so exhausted that I never got out of bed for two days. Well, it was almost a 40 Km round trip, and I was just a scrawny little 10 or 11 year-old boy.
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| 1941 Gmunden - with Albert Rueprecht (left) |
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1941
Gmunden, Miesweg with Albert Rueprecht (right) |
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1941
Gmunden, Lenaufall with Albert (left) |
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1941
Gmunden with Gertrud Rueprecht |
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| Schneerosen
by Gertrude Rueprecht 1941 |
As far as I can reconstruct the sequence of events I would have entered 1 year Gymnasium (classical high school) in the fall of 1941. So the class picture below would be of that vintage. I can still remember some of the faces and names. The teacher was Herr Professor Lang, a short man with an even shorter fuse who would go ballistic on the slightest provocation and go into a tantrum. One day he threw his bundle of keys so hard against the wall that the ring busted into several pieces and his large collection of keys flew all over the place. He was in other words an idiot. He also taught English, and he was also the home room teacher of our class.
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1st
year Gymnasium. Felix 3rd from left in last row (white sleeves) |
My mother and I took a trip to Melk,
home of a famous and very large monastery on the Danube (picture at left). They
had a boarding school there, but it seems they were not interested in me.
Next I was sent to Breitensee, a suburb of Vienna, where my father supposedly spent four years as a cadet. This time it was not a school for cadets but a NAPOLA, (Nazionalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt). A NAPOLA was an elite secondary school where above average boys were raised to become the future backbone of the Third Reich. I am convinced that my father merely wanted me to experience the same buildings and grounds, and the same regimentation that he had been subjected to as a boy. He was not a Nazi and kept pointing out that a soldier was non-political; he served his country no matter who was running it. It was actually a good thought. I would have been under control, would have learned the spit and polish, would have had above average teachers, and as things looked in those days, would have finished up by being part of the inner circle. As it turned out, the Third Reich finished up becoming extinct anyhow.
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Breitensee,
former Cadet School, where Emo spent4 years, and where I almost finished up too. Image courtesy Roman Schneider |
This leader of my dormitory was a smallish boy, about like I was, had straight blond hair and blue eyes. He had a very confident demeanor without being arrogant. I could have liked him. He thought perhaps that the best way to integrate me, while at the same time making sure I knew my place, was to assign me some task. He told me that tonight I would be the one to shine his shoes. Trying to mimic his posture, I replied that tonight, I would be shining my own shoes, and why would he need somebody to do his, when everyone else was doing his own?! He was a cool guy, which is more than I can say for some of the other residents. Those other guys were ready to tear me limb from limb because each one seemed to take this as a personal affront. The little blond Führer must have signaled to let it go, because no one touched me, although one thrust his face within about four inches of mine and demanded whether I had any idea who that boy was. And then answered his own question by informing me that he was the senior of this dormitory, and that I had to obey him. In return I pointed out that he had to obey, but that I was not yet part of this circus, and therefore not bound by its rules. After such an undiplomatic beginning, I was probably fortunate to have been rejected after the final exams.
We were tested for two solid weeks. Much of the time we sat in class rooms, and wrote exams. We were examined by doctors, and eyed by playground supervisors - for lack of a better word. We spent all our free time outdoors, and were encouraged to try all the physical training paraphernalia. There were not many we knew what to do with, so we tended to cluster around the shot-put site. Those big steel balls are heavy, and so as not to have to carry them back after a put, there was a v-shaped steel rail on which they could be rolled back. One of the boys had his middle finger quashed right in front of my face when he was in the process of lifting out a steel ball while another idiot slammed one down the rail with great force. I felt very sorry for him because I knew exactly how it felt. He had let out a bloodcurdling scream, then danced around holding the injured hand with the other. One of the residents was on the spot in an instant and led him to the first aid station. I was grateful that it had not happened to me.
After two weeks of this, the results were announced. Some had been accepted and stayed, others - I among them - went home. I was rather happy with the outcome because during the two weeks we had heard enough stories about the sort of hardening these guys considered appropriate. They would wake up an entire dormitory before dawn every morning and take them out for morning sport. The most harmless variety of this wake-up exercise was a brisk run around a few city blocks. The odd leader turned out to be a bit demented, and these types would occasionally lead their charges down to - and into - the water of the nearest river or lake. They would do this regardless of time of year. It is difficult for us civilized people to fathom this sort of lunacy, but the interesting thing was that the boys felt very special after such an ordeal, and felt immensely superior to those who had not had such torture imposed on them.
The school's administration was very diplomatic about the rejects. In my case the reason given was that I was physically too small. Which was true. I have photographs showing a black spot way down at the tail end of our Hitler Youth unit, where the short guys were. I was about the shortest, and definitely the one with the blackest hair. The rejection did not bother me in the least, since being small was at best a temporary affliction, and at any rate, it was not of my doing. Had they said that I was stupid, or a coward, or a liar, that would have bothered me very much, because I would have had to accept responsibility for it.
My father was in a military hospital on the Semmering recovering from the amputation above the knee of his left leg. During his stay he probably discussed the problem of trying to find a school for his son, and he must have received many suggestions. How else would I have wound up in a place called Waidhofen/Ybbs, of which none of us had ever heard? Here is what Fodor's Austria says on page 119 of its 1980 edition:
The most picturesque town in the lower Ybbs Valley is Waidhofen, with rows of 15th- and 16th-century gabled houses with bay windows and arcaded court yards; the parish church with winged main altar and several other interesting churches; the high and impressive castle tower; and massive "city tower" built 1542 in memory of the city's victorious repulsion of the Turks, with the clock dial still showing the hour of the Turkish defeat - 11.45 a.m. A landmark seen miles around is the majestic baroque pilgrimage church of Sonntagberg, crowning a 2,300-foot hill not far from Waidhofen.
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A
section of Waidhofen/Ybbs (photo: Roman Schneider)
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There was a building called the "Konvikt" which, unlike its English meaning would imply, was "a place of communal habitat", such as an abbey. In the 1940s it was commonly referred to as the "KV" and was a boarding school for boys. There were about 300 boys in residence, and I spent almost four years of my life there. It was not all bad. We got up, got ready, had breakfast and walked to school which was about five minutes away, came home, played for a couple of hours, had to study for a few hours, were fed supper, played a bit more, and went to bed at 9 p.m.
The Opportunities for mischief were innumerable with new ones constantly created. There was always something going on, there were always fads. For a couple of weeks everybody would have slingshots for example, and would shoot thumb tacks into anybody's rear end who was careless enough to bend over.
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| High school in Waidhofen/Ybbs (by: Roman Schneider) |
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| 1942 - 3rd graders
with "Zit" (Dr. Preitensteiner). |
We either ran out of empty bottles, or just got fed up with something that became very predictable. The next thing I knew, I was part of a conspiracy to buy 3 Kilograms of carbide for a special project. There was an 18"x 18" catch basin in our play area which was separated from the street by an old, out-of-commission bowling alley. This catch basin was for gathering the water from the down- spouts, and was always about half full of water, about four feet deep. The plan was to dump all 3 Kilograms of the carbide into the water, and then ignite the gases which should result in a nice big flame. Compared to a railroad lantern, this would be the Sun. The roles were all assigned. One boy would fetch the carbide, one boy would lift the grate of the catch basin and I would light the gases as soon as the bubbling started.
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1942
- Dr. Schätz with some teacher's pets. Left to right: Haselsteiner,
Katzelberger, Petz, Dr. Schätz, Felix, Freudl, Kalbfleisch, Gärtl. |
The fact that he twice looked at me, but passed me up should have given me a hint about my appearance. A minute into this frenzied beating of bystanders got him slowed down a bit, and he grabbed a boy, thrust me at him and told him to take me to the doctor who lived around the corner. I wasn't at all sure why I needed a doctor, but it did get me out of the vicinity of that one-man beating machine. The boy grabbed a bike, sat me on the cross bar and away we went. The doctor was not home. His wife took one look at me and suggested we head straight for the hospital, which was a few kilometers down the road. We went there, and a nun immediately started to swab my face with aluminum acetate. By now I was having a fair bit of pain, especially in my lower arms which I held straight out so they would not touch anything. My face felt very hot too. And no matter how gently the nun did the swabbing, my skin was so sensitive I could have screamed. I was badly burned on my entire face, and my two hands half way up to my elbows. Second degree they said.
Another nun joined the party, and cut a mask out of a piece of white fabric. Two holes for the eyes, one for the mouth. They first put some greenish powder all over my face, then smeared some ointment onto the mask, and then ever so gently they glued the mask to my face which was really operating on some lower layer of the epidermis by now. Then they assigned me a bed and found an old pair of slippers, and a hospital gown of my size.
I had plenty of time to find a mirror and look at myself. The hair on my head was all curled really tight, and when I touched it, it felt hard like my fingernails. There were no eyebrows, and very few of my eyelashes had survived. Those that had, were little tight hooks, and worked like an efficient zipper. My eyes were zipped shut every morning and I had to literally pry them open a little at a time. Having admired these changes in my appearance, I thought nothing of sending my mother a proud postcard stating that I was in the hospital, and that I bet she wouldn't even recognize me. It was admittedly thoughtless. It was also very effective. My mother was there the next day, did recognize me, and was so happy that I was alive. She went to the head master of the boarding school and kept gushing at him about how happy she was that I was alive, etc. He kept a very stern face until she finished gushing, then advised her that I had been expelled.
Somehow she managed to have them reverse the judgment - after all, having her son alive was one thing, but having him live at home with her was quite another. I suppose she used the argument that "his father is away in the army and is in a military hospital at the moment, and not doing too well, and she has to be maintaining our home, and has to keep going to his hospital etc, and this would not be in the best interest of our family". Well, all right, we make one more exception.
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June
1943 - After the explosion |
My stay was educational too. I prowled all over the hospital, and one day found some patients forming a little queue. Although I hated lineups, I also knew that people did not line up because they were bored. There was always something at the end of the line. I joined the queue, and after a few minutes found myself inside a dark room and stepped up to a gadget only to hear a bored voice describe my innards. He liked everything he saw, and said so "liver normal, kidneys normal, lungs healthy, next". I wanted to see what he saw, so in the dark instead of leaving the room, I went around behind him, and stayed there about half an hour watching the skeletons march past. After a while even I could tell that the organs of some did not look like the others did. It was very interesting.
Whenever I hear about peer pressure these days I am more than just a little suspicious about the extent to which it can be blamed for the things young people do. I have done many things which were outside the behavior parameters that most parents and educators consider acceptable, yet I do not remember being pressured into doing them. My peers did not have to. I was more than eager to show off, and to do things others were reluctant to do. Perhaps the pressure was too subtle for me to be aware of, or perhaps I was exceptional in my desire to impress. I suspect that I was insecure, and this may have been one way in which the insecurity manifested itself. The truth may be buried deeper, but at any rate, I feel that blaming one's misdeeds on peer pressure is too convenient an excuse, and is most likely overused. It seems to shift the blame onto the peers, and I find that dishonest. One escapade will illustrate the point very nicely:
When holidays came around, most kids went home. I was never encouraged to do that for some reason. Probably the same reason why I was in a boarding school in the first place. No one ever told me not to come home, but no one ever sent me the train fare either, and there were those remarks about how far it was, how long it would take, and how expensive it was. I eventually took it for granted that I was one of the very few who stayed at the school when others went home.
So it was also for the Easter holidays when I was about 13 years old. We were about six who stayed, and we were determined to have a good time. I can not remember how it all started, but here we went out to a farmer to buy cider. We got a gallon or two, and marched into the kitchen, where we knew the agreeable ones among the girls, and sweet-talked them into providing the sugar we needed, and then boiling the cider for us. It was a bit like mulled wine, but with a cider base and only the sugar added. It was fantastic. My sweet tooth was very happy. One of the boys in our group was the headmaster's nephew and had access to his uncle's office, where there was a big box of Havana cigars. They were quite dark and fat, and about eight inches long. He stole a few of those cigars and when the cider was properly boiled and steaming, we retired to our dormitory and started the party. I think we got rather intoxicated with the hot, sweetened cider. Then the nephew passed out the cigars. Most of the boys just took a puff or two and quickly passed it on, pretending to share, but were already slightly green around the gills. To see the other guys so uncomfortable was all the encouragement I needed. What kind of dish rags are you guys? You mean you can't even smoke a cigar?! Give it to me! I immediately had one thrust into my hand, and I proceeded to smoke the whole thing all by myself. I don't remember exactly how the party ended, but I do remember staying in bed for two days with what I had diagnosed as nicotine poisoning. For months after I was so sensitive to tobacco smells, that when a teacher came too close to me in class with his cigarette-stained fingers, I just about threw up. We had for some time smoked anything we could get a hold of, but this incident caused me to quit smoking and I never touched a cigarette for the next five years, and no cigar until I was past forty. So where was the peer pressure?
My preoccupation with ammunition led to another incident which should have resulted in my final, and irrevocable expulsion from that school. The same teacher who was on yard duty when I caused the Big Bang that hospitalized me, was our regular music teacher, and one of the sternest disciplinarians. There was never a whisper during his lessons, and nothing but utmost concentration. For the music lessons we moved to the music room which housed a grand piano, and on an elevated platform were several rows of backless stools. We had been permanently assigned our spots depending on the kind of voice we had (or lacked) so that whenever there was a need to sing as a choir, we were already in the right place. There was not much singing that year, because we were learning the fundamentals of harmony, and other such boring topics.
On that memorable day the teacher tested us at random. Since I did not know any of the answers, I did not bother to be afraid of being tested because it did not matter what he would ask me, my score would be zero. Consequently the whole period bored me immensely, and I started to go through my pockets looking for something that I could occupy myself with. Ah, here was an empty bird-shot shell from a 22 caliber rifle. It was a miniature shotgun shell on which the paper part had been opened and the shot removed. Since the cartridge had not been fired, it contained a live cap, and I thought it could be salvaged, and made into a proper 22 shell if I could get rid of the paper from inside the casing and fit a regular lead ball into it. I required something small and sharp to work with, something like the lapel pin of the boy sitting beside me. I pulled it out of his lapel and began to work on my cartridge.
It was very delicate work, because if I slipped, the pin would go into the cap and fire the cartridge. Not exactly what I would want to do in the atmosphere of the music room, which was probably not too different from the one in the Pristine Chapel. I was very, very careful. But then somehow I slipped, and it did go off, and although some of the blast went into my right eye, I merely blinked it a few times, and rubbed it a bit. With ears still ringing, only two thoughts came to me: Whether the teacher was going to drop dead from an attack of his bad heart, and when the next train would be leaving for Gmunden. I was sure they would physically throw me out of school and that I would be home within the next twelve hours.
By this time the teacher had correctly identified the source of the blast, and was prying my eye open to see if it was damaged, but finding that God had not done the punishing, he grabbed me by the elbow and marched me, taking two stairs with each step, to the principal's office on the third floor of the school. The principal was also a war reject, and a rather tired looking gentleman. He listened to the complaint, then put on his sternest face (which did not look all that stern) and informed me that the next time I did anything like that, they would have to take some action. I actually felt sorry for the teacher who was visibly disappointed at this very mild rebuke. I wonder if it had turned out so mild because the principal was glad he did not have a blind kid on his hands. I don't remember my marks in music that year, but I do not think that I was ever tested.
All boys are at one time or other interested in martial arts. The only one we knew about was Jiu Jitsu, and one or two had little books about it with pictures of how to apply the various holds. We practiced a lot and tried not to hurt each other. There was never an element of surprise since the holds were intricate and both had to collaborate in applying them. An important part of this was to know how to fall, because the assumption was that sooner or later one would be tossed through the air by one's opponent. So we practiced falling. The idea was to roll on impact, rather than connect mother earth with a bone breaking thud. So first we just fell flat on our faces from a standing position, then climbed on things and would lean until we fell. The sign of an expert was not to use his hands, but just to tuck in his head and roll off one shoulder. I used to get a lot of head aches when I was practicing that. The ultimate dare was a six foot high stone wall from which a kid would have to dive off, head first. He was allowed to use his arms though. I did that quite a few times, and actually got so good at it that it no longer knocked the wind out of me. It was still dumb, just as it was dumb to eat dew worms fried in boot grease (supposedly Walrus fat).
I have never figured out how like-minded individuals sniff each other out, but I always found the guys who had similar interests to mine. One such fellow came from Südtirol, an area actually belonging to northern Italy since 1918, but still referred to by the name it had under the Habsburg Monarchy. He was a pleasant, inventive chap who did not look at all Italian, although he could speak the language. Coming from a mountainous, wooded part of the country, he was most comfortable when we climbed some of the surrounding hills, and wandered around amongst the trees. This in turn immediately put us into the hunting/poaching mode which goes hand in hand with mountains and forests - just read any Austrian novel and see if there isn't some contest between foresters and poachers, or border guards and smugglers. So we started to fabricate traps for small rodents, and then had to go back daily to survey our success. We gave up that hobby pretty soon because we could not remember exactly where we had hidden the traps.
Our Konvikt was large enough to have its own unit of the Hitler
Youth. We had less than 100 boys in uniform, which was about right for a
Fähnlein, the third level up in the hierarchy. Our unit was called
22a/518 and was lead by Hammer Willy, a pleasant, quite mature young man. We
did our prescribed weekly drills on the soccer field until everyone could tell
his left foot from his right foot, and even could march in a block of eight
abreast while keeping the ranks from disintegrating. We marched in the streets
and sang the popular, and prescribed marching songs. I am still not sure what
came first, were they popular because they had been prescribed and we knew them
all, or had they been prescribed because everyone liked them already. I think
we liked to sing, and I cannot remember a song we did not like. It is a lot
easier to march when one sings. It helps you keep in step, and you can concentrate
on the words and the tune, and forget about how tired you are.
We also did sporty things like broad jumps, javelin throwing, shot put tossing,
and playing hand ball. One time the leader of the entire District came by to
inspect our outfit, and thereafter we were allowed to sew red piping around
our collars. The story went that we were terrific, a real elite outfit. I had
my doubts, but it did make a good story, so I used it later on when I went to
a summer camp near home, and was challenged on this "frill" on a no-frills
uniform. They backed off when I told them that it was simply the visible sign
of the invisible grace which had made us into a crack outfit, and that it was
bestowed on us from high up.
One day a teacher died, and everyone was told to don uniforms because we would be marching to the funeral. There was a quick inspection before we departed, and I was excused from going because I had holes in the pants of my winter uniform. I had very mixed feelings about this. First I was very embarrassed and ashamed, that of all the kids, I had the most ragged pants. Then I saw the good side of it, which was not having to march through town to the cemetery. But something in the back of my mind kept whispering that this should not be happening to any kid, least of all to one whose mother was constantly sewing for other people.
Somehow
I eventually returned to Gmunden. I think it had to do with the approaching
end of the war. Going home was going to be nice, I thought, then found to my
extreme disgust that my mother had rented my room to five adult Hungarians!
It was a family called Berger, who must have been of some substance, because
they seemed to have class. Mr. and Mrs. Berger, their grown son, and their married
daughter with her husband. The younger couple's name was Lunzer. They also had
all their worldly goods with them. All in that one room. It must have been awful
for them. No wonder they were forever walking the streets, visiting with other
refugees, and spending a lot of time with the Hungarian military policemen who
at the end of the war had set themselves up as interim keepers of the law, and
who happened to have more provisions than they knew what to do with. We all
owned about half a dozen vests made of lamb's fur, which were nice to sit around
in, especially since we had considerable difficulty heating our homes.
I still do not know for sure what happened, but at the time I was convinced that my mother's avarice had gotten the better of her, and she just could not turn down the monetary offer she was made by these Hungarians. It is also possible that she just felt sorry for them because they had no place to stay, or that the local Party hierarchy was going around making sure no one had any unused rooms that they could make available to the poor people fleeing from the Russian hordes. The Bergers and the Lunzers were doing everything in their power to move on because those close quarters, without privacy must have been hell. They eventually emigrated to the U.S.A.
Once I had regained my room, I could live more normally. My mother probably felt the same way. I had many interests, and worked at them all. I alternated between feeding the birds right at my window, and shooting some of the bigger ones out of the trees with my 22 caliber. There was absolutely no conflict between those two activities. I liked animals and was kind to them. I also needed to develop and maintain good shooting skills. I also shot squirrels out of my window, then had my mother make squirrel goulash with lots of paprika. It was actually quite delicious, and we were always in need of a dietary supplement to our potatoes and noodles. One of the ultimate challenges was shooting pears off the trees without damaging them - by shooting off the stem only. I got to be a very accurate shot.
It was during that period that I became interested in electricity. I had a big work table made out of 2 inch thick pine boards. When I discovered that a resistor wire (the type which glows red in your clothes dryer) can be used as a transformer, I stretched it across the table anchored at each end with a big 4 inch nail and laid a bunch of upside-down china plates and saucers along under it to keep the table from going up in flames. Then I attached electric cord to it and plugged it into the standard 220 Volt circuit. The resistor wire got hot, then red, and sagged and laid down on the saucers. What you saw was 220 Volts. Then I dug up a box of a variety of bulbs, including some 12 Volt automotive bulbs, and started to experiment by moving one of the hot wires down towards the other end. About half way would be 110, half of that would be 50, etc. I actually was able to have the 12 Volt automotive bulbs glow, but not blow up by reducing the 220 Volts simply by reducing the length of the red-hot coil. Neat.
The nice, bright, blue light emitted by an arc welder also intrigued me. So I got a couple of carbon sticks I had saved when I had taken apart some flash light batteries. I wrapped the ends of my electric cord around the carbon sticks, then wrapped them in electrician's tape and clamped them at 45 degree angles into my vise. When I plugged in the cord, first nothing happened, then after I gently tapped them, I finally got the required gap between the tips and a bright blue arc sprang into life. One more successful experiment. Very neat.
Chemistry had not interested me very much in school, but at home I much preferred to learn by doing than by cramming symbols and formulas. I had a whole battery of test tubes, had a small microscope, an assortment of chemicals, and a bottle of sulfuric acid. I grew cultures of micro organisms and examined them under the microscope along with anything else I could find in our house hold. The sulfuric acid did a nice job cleaning things, except I found that some cleanables tended to disappear completely, while others enjoyed their pristine existence for only a very short while and then turned into clumps of rust. Copper coins were a particularly interesting item to try the acid on. The blackest, oldest copper coin would come a beautiful pinkish clean copper color, but often the design would disappear. The one problem I had with that bottle of sulfuric acid was that the stopper did not seem to be 100% tight. I had it sitting on the window sill, and I noticed that with time the window's hinges above the bottle turned into very rusty specimens. I have avoided storing sulfuric acid at home ever since, but years later found that muriatic acid has very similar characteristics.
One day I rummaged in some old stuff we had accumulated for some reason and came across photographic paper. This was the old, old kind which was called Gaslichtpapier, and I suspect that it either required gas lantern light, or was intended to convey that it was so sensitive that gas light would also be adequate to expose it. I had seen some big frames being set out into the sun to make copies of maps and such. To my delight I even found some frames into which to clamp the negatives and the paper for exposure as contact prints. I found some old negatives and tried my hand at this and came up with some very purplish images. So it did work, but I would have to learn more about it.
An elderly spinster ran a photographic studio on the Esplanade (I believe her name was Hernler) and somehow I got to know her and she was very supportive of my endeavor to learn about photography. She often just happened to have some paper that she could not use and gave it to me. She also needed to try out some negatives, to see if they were still any good and asked me to sit for portraits. The next thing I knew, I was building an enlarger out of plywood and an old camera. It worked remarkably well and I used it for years. My darkroom was set up in the toilet, and all my prints were washed in the toilet bowl. The love for photography stayed with me for most of my life, and I did eventually graduate to a store-bought enlarger and a fully equipped dark room in the 1950s.
 |
Gmunden,
Bahnhofstraße 4 - My home 1939 - 1951. We occupied the entire second
floor except for 1 room. |
This handy quality of mine brought about some funny situations. Because nothing could be bought, people were encouraged to make things. Right up my alley! There were courses given, for example, to learn how to make slippers. It was called the Patschenkurs. I went with a bag of remnants, and found myself the only male in a room of middle-aged women. I was 14 at that time. So for a day or so we were shown how to trace patterns and how to cut the material for the uppers and the insoles, and soles. Then the pieces had to be sewn together. The organization giving these courses was extremely well equipped. There was a battery of brand new, commercial class Singer sewing machines, and shelves and shelves of shoe lasts of any conceivable size.
So I sat down to one of the sewing machines and started sewing. We always had a sewing machine, and my mother had always tolerated my use of it. I never gave it a thought, but then I looked up and there were about four women standing there watching me, and one asked if I would be so kind as to show them how to thread the machine. Well I did, and I had to show them a few other things about sewing machines, but I felt a bit funny about this upside-down world I had stumbled into where young boys teach older women how to sew.
The shortage of men was most apparent on farms. The word was put out in school that we were to go and help the farmers. I guess somebody must have had a list, and assigned us boys. I went out to "my" farmer, and put in a very unpleasant two weeks. The biggest problem was that I had no decent foot wear. I was wearing what we called Klapperl because of the clip-clop noise they made. This was a wooden sole hinged in only one place - under the ball of the foot - with a band going across the top to hold the contraption to the toes, and a very feminine looking harness to hang on to the heel and ankle. The cheapest pair of thongs would have been preferable. I also had stepped on a nail just recently and had a painful hole in the bottom of my foot.
By seven every morning we were out in the wet grass cutting a wagon load of it for the stabled animals. Then we would go out and make hay. For the next two weeks every goddamned cut stubble of grass found its way into my wound, which by now was bleeding almost constantly. Also, since this was in Austria, the terrain was far from level, and working on a slope in the summer with wooden soles is not that different from working in the winter on an icy slope. A lot of my energy had to go into just surviving. There was enough to eat, and that was a welcome, and adequate compensation. The farmers probably tolerated the kids they were sent, suspecting all the while that this was just another city slicker trick to get some food out of them. Although some farmers got lucky, and drew big, strong boys. My friend Peter Dornhofer told different stories when he came back from "his" farmer. He was very muscular, and worked as hard as the regular hands. He also happened to like farming, and they also happened to have a couple of daughters about the right size. The whole family was sorry to see him leave when his stint was up, but Peter came away very motivated and went to an agricultural school the following year.
The very few good memories of my stay at that farm had to do with eating. Keep in mind that we had very, very little food in the city in those days. Coupons were needed for everything, but often there was nothing in the store and you had to go home with your coupons still in your pocket. On the farm I went looking for eggs in the hay loft. I found some every time, and making a hole in each end, I sucked them out raw. Next I found myself a small tin cup which I carried on my belt, and I would, at every opportunity, sneak into the barn and molest a cow until I finally figured out how to fill my cup with milk, which I would then drink warm. At 14 I needed lots of this kind of nourishment. I might as well mention the Russian slave laborer they had. Propaganda is a very ugly thing, and very powerful. People cannot be blamed for falling victim to it. I have read many articles about how Germans have used people from occupied territories as slave labor. Perhaps there were some unpleasant situations. The foreigners I saw in Gmunden during the war all had a job to go to, were very much in demand, and needed, and consequently were quite well treated to keep them healthy and content, and useful. The Russian on this farm was a constantly happy, mischievous rascal, who gave a days work, was well fed, was like one of the family, and bantered along all day with the women who seemed to enjoy it. I would not be a bit surprised to find that lots of these people stayed in Austria after the war.
A similar kind of "help them out" scenario happened in town too. Businesses were looking for help. What they wanted was free labor. There was a firm selling motor cycles and bicycles. The owner's name was Busch, also on the Esplanade practically next door to my benevolent photographer lady. I went there to work. They had no Motorcycles of course, and no bicycles, and I really wonder why they even stayed open, or what sort of income they had. I sorted through a messy arrangement of parts bins and put order into it, then for lack of anything else to do I wandered into the office and started to look at the book keeping. It was a mess. So I asked the owner if he would like me to try and do something with it. He was delighted. He gave me complete carte blanche, and although I had never laid eyes on a set of books, I did put considerable order into his affairs while I was there. I was not paid anything, but later, after the war, after I lost my bike to a fellow making his way homeward from a concentration camp, and I needed parts for a bike I got for nothing after an American ran over it with a jeep, I was able to go to Mr. Busch and ask him for the replacement parts I needed, and got them.
Once, though, I had a very embarrassing moment in that store. There was another push on to flush out bicycles that could be commandeered for the Army, and they brought one in, still wrapped in oily paper, followed b