Anna Goldenberg - I Belong to Vienna: A Jewish Familys Story of Exile and Return

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First published in German in 2018 as Versteckte Jahre: Der Mann, der meinen Grovater rettete

Copyright 2018 Paul Zsolnay Verlag Ges.m.b.H.,Wien

Translation copyright 2020 Alta L. Price

Published with support for the translation from the Federal Chancellery, Republic of Austria

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldenberg, Anna

[Versteckte Jahre, English]

I Belong to Vienna: A Jewish Familys Story of Exile and Return / Anna Goldenberg; translation by Alta L. Price.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-939931-84-9

Library of Congress Control Number 2019955324

I. AustriaNonfiction

For Laura, Joni, Dylan, Beni, Adam,

Nunu, Luc, Gina, Ella, and Rafi

CONTENTS

FAMILY TREE

Hansi Bustin was adopted by Josef Pepi Feldner in 1950 and changed his name to Feldner-Bustin. BOLD date denotes killed in the Holocaust.

POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK, 2013

No photos. The broad-shouldered security guard in a dark blue jacket sounds firm yet polite as he gives me the once-over. I am so focused on taking a picture of the hospitals entrance hall that I didnt even notice him approaching. Im in Poughkeepsie, in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City. A few people are waiting on benches, and the wall behind the reception deskan oblong, mint-green counteris painted brick red. The main glass door whirs when it opens. I lower my smartphone, which I had pointed toward the huge window overlooking the parking lot, and put it in my coat pocket, a bit intimidated. The guard turns away, visibly reassured to have warded off a threat. I summon the courage to ask him: is there anyone who might help me locate some old personnel files? He seems puzzled, thinks for a second, and leads me to the virtually empty hospital library, where Im enthusiastically greeted by a librarian.

Back in the fifties, two young doctors from Vienna worked at this hospital, I tell her. They were internswhat wed call residents todayand spent a year serving various departments. Im now looking for documents, references, maybe old rostersanything that might tell me more about their time here. The librarian replies that shell gladly look into it, visibly flattered by the provincial hospitals international reputation. What are their names? Helga and Hans Feldner-Bustin. She disappears into a back room. Five minutes later, shes back. No, unfortunately, they arent in any of the old files. Im so clearly disappointed that she asks why Im interested. Theyre my grandparents.

That evening I take the train some ninety miles back to New York City, downcast that no one here remembers my grandparents. After all, my grandmother Helga spoke of their stay here so often. In her bedroom theres even a newspaper clipping from 1955 hanging on the wall, from a Jewish-American newspaper. The photo shows a smiling young couple; Helga is twenty-six, Hansi twenty-nine. Also aboard the Saturnia were Drs. Hans and Helga Feldner-Busztin [ sic ], who came from Vienna to intern at Poughkeepsie Hospital. Dr. Helga was liberated from Nazi concentration camp in 1945. Dr. Hans said his brother and parents perished in concentration camp but he escaped when a Christian doctor adopted him.

The two had arrived in the States still fairly undecided. They knew theyd definitely stay there a year, they said, and then they could see how they liked it. Due to the shortage of doctors in the United States, Helga was immediately given demanding work in Poughkeepsie, unlike the Viennese hospital where she had worked as an assistant doctor for the previous two and a half years. The salary was good too. Hansi had previously been an unpaid visiting physician at a neurological clinic in Vienna and had only earned pay for overnight services. In Poughkeepsie they could even afford a car, which they shared with two other doctors. And yet by April 1956 they had gone back to Vienna, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Helga and Hansi, 1950s.

I only began to wonder why when I moved to the United States myself. In the summer of 2012, I started my masters degree in New York City. I was 23, just a bit younger than my grandmother had been back then. New York had fascinated me since my teenage years, of course, because it had been the backdrop for pivotal scenes in so many movies. Here, Woody Allen had been funny in a way I had long enjoyed. Here, shy Spiderman saved people from all sorts of villains. Here, despite all adversities, the heroes of the rom-coms I adored invariably found each other.

With its various neighborhoods, cultures, and broad range of possibilities, the city was so visibly diverse that I was convinced I could make a place for myself here. Like my grandparents, Id stay for a year and then see how I liked it.

Within the first few weeks of my arrival, though, I realized I was often misunderstood when I told people where I came from, especially when talking to local Jews. Many who heard my accent and learned I was Austrian became suspicious at first. Im Jewish, I said, as if to reassure them my ancestors hadnt committed war crimes. They were astonished: What? There are still Jews in Austria? Had my grandparents migrated from the Soviet Union after the war? No, I explained, my grandparents are Holocaust survivors who remained in their birthplace, Vienna, after the war. This was met with even more incomprehension. How could they live in a country where theyd been treated so terribly? Every now and then peoples reactions sounded reproachful, as if my grandparents had lacked the pride or courage to leave Austria. Many stayed for financial reasons, somebody once explained to me, with a condescending tone.

I had never made a big deal about my homeland. Like every member of a minority probably does, I often felt ignored. Why was there a Christmas break, even though I didnt celebrate the holiday? I didnt feel particularly Austrian. Still, it made me angry that my grandparents decisions were being called into question. Did that mean something about my childhood and youth in Vienna was wrong, since it arose from my grandparents questionable decision? At the same time, I myself had no adequate answers to such questions. That irked me even more. In fact, I couldnt quite understand why my grandparents had returned to Vienna. How had they found reconciliation with Austria? Werent they constantly reminded of the humiliations theyd been subjected to following Hitlers 1938 annexation of their homeland?

The longer I lived in New York, far from my familiar surroundings, the more interested I became in my family history. In the winter of 2012, I participated in a radio reporting workshop as part of my masters program at the Columbia University Journalism School, and I called my grandmother Helga in Vienna. What was your first impression of America? I asked. There was enough to eat, she replied.