داستان کوتاه انگلیسی

Sponsoring Relatives and Safety from Nazis in the US (part1)



Henry Schreiber emigrated from Vienna, Austria with his family in 1939 to flee Nazi persecution. They moved to Brooklyn, New York. Here he is interviewed by his granddaughter.

Austrian flag from 1934-1938, the time when my grandpa was growing up there.


Q: What was life like for you in Austria before you left? How did this change as the Nazi regime took over?

A: I was born in Austria; I was a little boy and my family lived in an apartment. When I got old enough I would go riding in the park. I had an older brother who was 7 years older. My father had a business in downtown Vienna. We also rented a summer home in the suburbs that my father and aunt rented together. We spent two months a year there. It was a fairly normal life, I used to play in the park nearby and watch what was going on in my father’s store. My mother did the housekeeping. We also had a maid and nanny.


And one day my parents were listening to the radio and they said that Germany was invading Austria. The chancellor of Austria came on and gave a speech, and they played the Austrian national anthem. As this was playing on the radio, German warplanes started flying overhead, and all the Austrians were happy to see them come in. They felt that the Germans would bring them a good life and good economy.

My father was a sportsman, mountaineer, hunter, and had a motorcycle. He had a lot of friends from these hobbies who wound up being Nazis. They never considered him a Jew, he was one of the boys. The Nazis remained his friends, and warned him when they would be picking up Jews in certain neighborhoods. We were made to move into another apartment. It was a 3 bedroom apartment that we shared with 2 other families. One day an army truck came to my fathers store and stole his merchandise.

There was one night called Crystal Night. The Nazis smashed all The Jewish store windows and set fires to the synagogues. Since my dad had friends who were Nazis they didn’t hurt his store. But then one day he came to work and his store had a swastika over the keyhole; it had been confiscated by the Nazis.

In 1938 I was kicked out of 1st grade because I was a Jew, and my brother was kicked out of middle school. We stayed home, and played chess. I would also play dominos with my ‘girlfriend’. I remember pushing dominos with her on the wood floor, and I got a splinter under my thumbnail, about half way up the nail. It got infected, and my parents took me to a clinic for Jews. Someone cut down each side of my thumbnail and yanked out my nail with no anesthetic, because Jews couldn’t have anesthetic. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life.