Voices of the kinder

introduction

When the German army marched into Austria in March 1938, my father expected a return to some kind of ghetto existence. Both my parents were dentists in Vienna: my mother, Bella (Isabella), worked for the municipal dental service inspecting school children, and my father, Hugo, had a successful private practice. The immediate cause was the appearance of a young man at his door in SA uniform who announced that he was also a dentist and one of my parents' two consulting rooms now belonged to him.

I was 11 years old in 1938. At this remove, I have a sense that I was quite aware of restrictions and possible dangers in the three months that I lived under Nazi rule. My parents reacted by remarking: First this man was red (which meant a supporter of the moderate social democrats that ran the city until 1934), then black (a supporter of the Catholic oriented government that took over Austria in 1934), and now he is brown (a Nazi). Wise words, they stopped me from taking seriously anything he may have said.