In the fall of 1938, my parents managed to get a place for me in a Quaker school in the Netherlands which had been established for German and Austrian refugee children.

I had to travel to Warsaw to obtain a visa from the Dutch consul there and then, to get to
Holland without entering Germany, I would need to take a plane to Prague and then a plane direct to Amsterdam. But the first plane could not leave because of bad weather, and there was a wait of 10 days for the next available seat on the plane from Prague and no hotel would take a person without papers.

As the Nazis' aim was to drive out Jews, leaving Austria was possible and legal, but the difficulty of getting permission to enter another country was huge. In our case, a Czech border guard had been bribed and we entered the country illegally. Thus ended what had been a secure middle class existence up to the annexation of Austria by Germany, and we became refugees without resources, status or prospects; three lives in limbo. My parents and I went to live with one of my father's brothers in Karvina, the town where my father was born.

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