מאגר סיפורי מורשת

My name is Lisa Johanna Brinner. I was born in Vienna, Austria, on May 29th, 1928. Lisa was a common name passed down in the family. Both of my parents were born in Austria. Elsa Spitz, my mother, was born in Vienna, on December 6th, 1892. Karl Kraus, my father, was born in Oberndorf, on October 21st, 1889.  When he was called up by the army, he had to change his initials from K.K to C.K because K.K stands for “Kaiser & König” – the initials of the emperor. Only people who were related to the monarchy were allowed to use these initials. Later, when the Nazis took over on March 13th, 1938, the government added a large red letter “J” and the names “Sarah” and “Moshe” on their identity card to mark them as Jews.

Until Hitler and the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, ours was one of the many Jewish families living happily in Vienna and enjoying lovely summer vacations in different beautiful places in the country. My parents were high school teachers of Latin and French. At first, in 1934, I went to a regular public school. The teacher called up the names of the new students and the mothers answered “here” and the religion because that the custom back then. In 1937, I was put in a Montessori elementary school, because my parents did not like that the former school was political. The Montessori school was directed by Emma (Nuschi) Plank, whom I loved almost as much as my mother.

The Montessori school was forced to close in May 1938, and we had to enroll in Jewish schools in August. Our parents luckily found positions at those schools. Thus, my father and I went to the Chajes Gymnasium while my mother and Felix were at the Jewish elementary school.

I received an autograph book called “a Stambuch” for my 10th birthday. Suddenly this became a significant present because when I had to leave Vienna, I asked my favorite teacher Nuschi and all my friends to sign the book.

We did not have a radio at my house, so we went to my grandparents’ house and listened to their radio when we heard the prime minister’s resignation speech. When Hitler annexed Austria, everything changed. The traffic was changed to driving on the right instead of driving on the left side of the road.

My mother’s brother, Uncle Fred, fortunately realized the danger of our situation and managed to take his wife and daughter and most of their belongings to New York. This happened after he met a colleague on the street shortly after Hitler took over Austria and he asked him “When are you leaving?”. This made Uncle Fred realize that it was necessary to leave and was imperative to start working on arrangement to leave like getting a visa. In 1938, we had our last Hanukkah together where we saw all our family for the last time. It was a rather sad Hanukkah although the adults decided not to tell sad stories. Felix and I played a duet, Felix played the violin, and I played the piano.

Kristallnacht, also called the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the SS squad, the elite guard of the Nazi Reich and Hitler's executive force. That was the time when they rounded up Jews in Austria. We were protected by our concierge. But our family physician, Dr. Friedlander, was dragged off to Dachau concentration camp. Thanks to the successful efforts of his wife and friends, he was released on condition of emigrating and never coming back to Austria. I still remember that day in December 1938 when he came to our house with his shaven head and told our parents “You must send the children away to safety!”  Our parents took his advice to heart and sent us to England in the Kindertransport in March 1939.

We were put up for a temporary guardian family in England, but at first only Felix was picked by a foster family, the Benjamin. My father wrote an extremely polite and well-written letter, asking if the Benjamins would find a place for me near them. Sam Benjamin, Felix's foster father, answered with an equally polite although much shorter letter saying they would find me a home nearby. But, in the end, they kept me.

Felix and I left Vienna on the 28th of march. Once we were in England the language change was pretty easy. At first, we communicated with the little English that we knew and eventually we became fluent. Very soon we stopped speaking in German and we only spoke in English. We even wrote all the letters we sent to my parents in English. One of my favorite songs from that time is called “Die Loreley”. This was a song I was still singing in German while we were away. It speaks of “A homeland that you can carry with you”, the smells, the views. I still feel like that about England and the big old house we had much later in Berkely.

In London, we were taken in by a wonderful Jewish family, the Benjamins, and stayed with them for four and a half years, and still remain in close contact with their son and his cousins.  After the war broke out in September 1939, emigration from Vienna became very difficult. From New York, our uncle Fred, my mother’s brother sent affidavits for his sisters and our grandmother and brought them over.

Meanwhile our parents still did not want to leave, our father’s mother and sister and family behind in Vienna. It was a year full of sorrow: his father and one sister and her husband had died of old age and illness, and his brother had committed suicide.

Then in May 1940, when Hitler made a pact with Stalin, the Jewish Community seized the opportunity to organize emigration to the East. Most of these Jewish emigrants went to Shanghai or Australia, but our parents were lucky enough to get an American affidavit and to come to San Francisco after a very long and arduous journey by train across Russia and Korea, and then by ship across the Pacific.

In 1940, my parents left Vienna by going across Siberia and across the Pacific. With their passports, they got into America, but they were not admitted into the country because they did not have the $200 required, so they were kept at Angel Island overnight, where my father nearly had a nervous breakdown. Their struggle to establish themselves was eased a bit by Nuschi Plank my favorite old teacher who had become the principal of Presidio Hill elementary school in San Francisco. They also received help by other friends, including Dr. Friedlander and his wife and daughter who had settled in San Jose.  The first big step was a job for my mother as nanny for Linda Miller, the 4-year-old daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Miller, the managers of the Durant Hotel, who gave them an apartment to live in.  Mr. Miller helped my father find work at Berkeley High School where adult evening classes were given in ship-fitting. At first, he was in charge of handing out tools, and later after his efforts at finding a teaching position proved fruitless, he took the ship-fitting class and soon started to work in the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond.

Dorothy Aue was an American woman that settled in Vienna and was my parents’ English teacher. The fact that they knew the language helped my parents find a job when they arrived in America.

In the meantime, Felix and I settled in with the Benjamin’s very comfortably near Regions Park, London. Felix slept in the room together with Sydney and David, the Benjamin’s children and I slept in the maid’s room. The Benjamin sent me to a county school. A county school means that you don’t have to pay any fees because it’s a public school. The whole Benjamin family rented houses on ‘Bognor Regis’ every summer. In September 1939 England declared war on Germany because they invaded Poland. At that time The Benjamins rented a huge house called the Haven because they decided it is not safe for the women and children to come back to London after the summer vacation. After 6 month we moved to Hove because of the time it took the man to commute to London every day. At that point we spent a lot of time in the air raid shelters. Once, two missionary Mormons came to our house to try recruit us when the air raids siren went off, we had to take them in. While they took shelter in our house, they tried to preach us, and it was difficult for us to keep straight faces.

             Meanwhile both our parents tried non-stop to bring us over from England. At last, in the summer of 1943, we had all the papers and tickets and we were able to go to America and reunite with our parents. My brother and I arrived separately because it was easier for Bloomsbury House, the authority for refugees, to find chaperones for the expedition for a boy then for a girl. Teenage girls and sailors were a problematic combination.

When I was arranged, we chaperone I took the train from London to Cardiff, Wales. Mrs. Kolmar and her son Klaus took the responsibility to escort me to America. From Wales’s we left with a convoy of ships that took refugees and brought supplies to England for the war. The sailing on the Atlantic Ocean was quite dangerous. Out at sea, submarines attacked us, and some of the ships were sunk. Luckily, our ship stayed afloat. There were two significant submarines attacks that destroyed ships that were part of our convoy. All the passengers had to gather at one of the big lounges and wait for a message. A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare weapon that was on the destroyer ships that escorted our convoy that included about 20 merchant ships.

When my ship “The Curaçao” docked in New York, I found that I did not have my ‘Laissez Passer’, which is a document that allows you to pass from one country to another. I had to stay on the ship overnight and was taken to the Port Authority, where I burst into tears. This was probably a smart move on my part, for they released me into the custody of my aunt. Later the Laissez Passer was found and sent to us when I was already living with my parents and my grandmother in San Francisco, California.

I found that, even though we had to ration food in England and America, rationing was more important in Hove where I lived in England. For starters, in America, you could buy all the same food you normally would, but in England, you had no oranges or bananas. England was also more accepting of rationing than America. Instead of eggs, which we could get in America, we had to eat dried eggs in England.

One thing that was delicious in Vienna and was hard to find an equivalent in England and later in America was a good “Kaiser roll”. Which is a particular type of bread that is chewy rather than spongy. In England I really liked the “British trifle”. Its ladyfingers covered with Rum and layered with custard and then fruit.

When I got to America, I noticed that it had less security, and we didn't need to go through all the tests and exams you had to do in England. In America, I saw how women were treated almost equally and gradually were treated better. The schools in England had 10 subjects, but in America, the changed several things and we only had 5 or 6. I was in high school at this time, and for me the change wasn't that huge. When I finish 12th grade, because I had such good grade, all I had to do in order to be accepted to the university was to take an English test.

Felix arrived in July, and I came two months later.  Earlier that year our parents had found a flat on 12th Avenue in San Francisco and had brought our grandmother, aunt, and cousin from New York to live with them. Thus, we had a family of seven people, for which Groka (our grandmother) cheerfully did nearly all the cooking and a lot of the shopping, as well as going to school to get her U.S. Citizenship!

לקריאת הסיפור המלא לחצו על הקישור: Lisa Johanna Brinner's story

הזוית האישית

Lisa: This documentation was a memorable experience that we can cherish.

שרון סולימה תרמה סיפור נוסף למאגר המורשת, לקריאתו לחצו על הקישור: עדי מלכת הפרחים והרוק אנד רול