What was their story?

He was born on 18th February 1906 in Vienna, the second of four sons, where his father, Leopold, was a ladies` tailor. The family found it hard to make ends meet. On occasion food was so scarce that Ernie and his friends would collect up some scraps of bread from a pig-sty, and cheekily take them to the local baker and ask him to exchange them for a new loaf. Even in tough times Ernie could find humour.

One summer when the worthies of Vienna had paid for some of the poor children to go for a holiday in the country, Ernie and his younger brother, Imre, were selected. On arriving at their destination, Ernie showed the instinct for survival which was later to be put to a much more severe test, by ducking away from the group heading for a local orphanage, and selecting his own host family from the assembled hausfraus. How his younger brother, Imre, reacted to Ernie`s disappearance, as he himself was shepherded to the orphanage, is not recorded. But Ernie spent a pleasant week, and in due course they all returned to the city.

He told tales of driving over the mountains with chains on the car-wheels on barely passable winter roads. Once his brakes failed, but he steered and careered successfully down the mountain, and lived to tell the tale. Gradually he built up a clientele of customers, arriving with his car ⁴ laden with stock at each small town.

He was essentially self-taught from then on, and proved later to have musical and artistic talents. When work was done he often was to be found at the ice-rink, which doubled as a dance-floor in the summer. He became a proficient skater and dancer, and was entrusted to help young ladies learn to skate or dance, according to the season, by their protective mothers. In this way he had free entry to the skating rink and the afternoon tea-dances, with attractive and attentive partners. Another of his hobbies was boxing, as in this photo.⁵

Then he met Lora, who came from a more prosperous and more religious Jewish family. She was one of four children, having two older brothers, Willy and Joseph, and one sister, Lina⁷. Lora is on the left. Both her parents were dead by the time she met Ernie. So her eldest brother had the last word as to whom she should marry, and approved of Ernie as a prospective husband, both of them being observant Jews.

So they became engaged.

Her sister Lina was already married by this time, but the aforementioned brother had vetoed Lina`s first choice because her `intended` was not Jewish. However she was allowed to marry a Jewish man of whom her family approved, but unfortunately he was not a fit man and had only one lung.

Ernie was now making a reasonable living, with a good list of regular customers. He also found time to do some hairdressing, of both ladies` and gentlemen`s hair. But Adolf Hitler was rising to power. He marched over the bridge into Austria from Germany in March 1938, with Von Papen, the Ambassador Extraordinary beside him, accepting the homage of the crowd. This takeover was called Anschluss. Ernie told me that Hitler didn`t actually have to conquer Austria at all, because he was welcomed with open arms - by everyone except the Jewish population, that is.

One result was that Gentiles were ordered not to trade with Jews. Let one example give an idea of what went on.
Outside a Jewish shop was standing one day, a woman with a banner hanging around her neck, bearing the words, `I am a German pig who shopped at a Jewish shop`. An SS man posted beside her was ordering all passers-by to spit at her. It was hardly surprising that some of Ernie`s best customers, who had been virtual friends, no longer dared to buy from him. He found this terribly hurtful when they suddenly started to ostracise him.

Worse was to follow. One evening his car, full of stock, was seized from his garage by Nazi thugs, so that he now had no livelihood. Anyone with a grudge against a Jewish neighbour could now get official backing to steal his goods.

One night soldiers raided all the blocks of flats in their area, rounding up all the Jewish men they could lay hands on. Their flat was at the very top of the block, and fortunately the soldiers failed to come up high enough to arrest him; each block of flats had the names of the occupants on a name-plate, and as his name was not obviously Jewish, he was saved. That night they gave shelter to several women whose husbands had been seized.

As the prohibition against Jews engaging in business gradually tightened, he did some training in agriculture at Stallau near Vienna, and at Aggsbach, under the auspices of the Palestine Office. The idea was to train Jews to settle in Palestine with the skill to farm the land. But life got so frightening that he was driven to make an attempt on his own life at this point.

The fact that he had learned the trade of hair-dressing, now stood him in good stead. Hounded men and women used to congregate in his flat to get their hair cut, and also to hear the latest bad news.

He also took a job in an emigration office¹¹ , set up by the Nazis to encourage people to leave Austria, before the days of mass killing had arrived. An Identity Card¹² for this job is dated 8 January 1939, another one 24 February 1939 and another one 21 February 1939.

For people were beginning to think about leaving Austria for America, Israel or England, with ever-increasing desperation. His job was to process the applications to leave the country, and make sure no outstanding debts were left behind.
This developed into a policy of demanding a payment before applications were approved by the Nazi government, called a `Reichsfluchtsteuer` or `flight tax`. The Nazi regime decreed on 26 April 1938 that all Jews living in Austria who wished to leave, should declare all assets of money, property and valuables above a certain amount. Next it was all confiscated!

Here is Lora`s certificate that her affairs¹³ were all in order, with no outstanding debts.

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