This memoir was compiled from notes from interviews with Alice and Norbert Nemon I did for a college project in Fall 2011. Its publication was, of course, authorized by the interviewees themselves, and I shared it with friends and family at the time of my grandfather’s funeral, planning to give it a more permanent home some time later on; a reasonable amount of time having elapsed, I’m posting it now.

Ed. Note: The general reader didn’t know my grandfather, Norbert Nemon, who passed away a couple months ago at age 91. It’s a bit odd to tell you about the childhood of someone you likely didn’t know as an adult, so I better offer something of that first. In his prime, Norbert made his living (and a modest fortune) as a pharmacist and then an operator of multiple pharmacies in the San Francisco Bay Area. My uncle Alec explains that he built his business by building quality relationships with his customers, by going to great lengths to serve them and helping them fill out paperwork. He was (so I heard at the funeral) reputed for his generosity. His children remember him as a strict disciplinarian who nonetheless was very engaged with (and insistent upon) the progress of all of his progeny. He could be stubborn (Mick LaSalle’s icon of the guy who gives a standing O or throws his popcorn in the San Francisco Chronicle movie section was, I remember, an article of faith for him) but to his credit, Norbert was capable of being moved by high art. (He was born, after all, a Viennese!) I said in my brief remarks at the funeral that I appreciated Norbert as the person in my family who made it okay to be into art and to cultivate the intellect. We once saw an avante-garde film together (it was Terence Malick’s Tree of Life) and spent a fair amount of time afterward discussing it, and Norbert was keen to better understand the nature of the aesthetic experience he had just had. All the same, he was not a literateur or more than mildly philosophical, but both he and his wife Alice read the newspaper every day and followed local and national politics (and in later years, Rachel Maddow) religiously. He liked a good silly joke, and while some of his children say he cried a lot, I remember him that way only in his last years, prior to which he seemed a stoical and guarded man. As the rabbi said at Norbert’s funeral, he lived too multifaceted a life for it to be summarized with any brevity; but this is I think sufficient to give a sense of what my grandfather was like when I knew him.

Birth and General Thoughts About Vienna

Norbert Nemon was born in Vienna on October 28, 1926. (I cannot recall at which hospital in Vienna, though we did investigate that and narrow it to two candidates.) His family lived at 12 Esterhazygasse in the Mariahilf district of Vienna, three blocks away from the main avenue of Mariahilferstrasse and about a dozen blocks away from the Hofburg Palace, the opera house, and numerous landmarks of the city. The city consists of a series of ring roads which were initially the site of fortress walls; Vienna was where the progress of the Ottomans was halted in 1683. (Norbert liked to describe salient facts about Vienna and was very proud to hail from the city.) Austria became a republic after WWI. Though no longer the capital of an empire, Vienna was a global center of art, culture, and science, home to world famous writers and physicians, though somewhat culturally isolated from the rest of Austria. It was known as “Red Vienna” because of its socialist political leanings.

Schooling

Norbert’s first four years of schooling were spent in the Austrian equivalent of elementary school, with one teacher teaching all subjects from 8:00 AM in the morning until 2:00 PM. Norbert adored his elementary school teacher, Herr Koblitz, a cleanshaven man who wore the white labcoat customary for teachers, and Norbert’s favorite subject was Math. The general instruction was followed by another hour when Christian and Jewish students were divided up and went to separate Religion classes. In the Jewish class, they spoke of the standing of Israel, only “Israel” did not exist then as a country, so rather it was “the Holy Land,” the origin of our people, on the level of “this is where our ancestors are from.” Norbert knew only of his own grandparents as there was little genealogical information available at that time.

Norbert was acquainted with kids at his school, but did not have any non-Jewish friends. (It was an all-boys school as well.) His best friend was Ernst, a boy who lived two stories up in the same apartment building. They attended the religion class together; religion was very influential in their lives. After school, they would go back to either one’s apartment and play with building blocks and erector sets. They were avid readers of Karl May, who wrote adventure stories for boys set in the Old West and featured favorite characters of Norbert’s like “Old Shatterhand.”

Bella and Johnny

Norbert was the youngest of three children. His sister Bella, who died in 1970, was 7 years older than Norbert, and his brother Johnny, who died last year, was 5 years older. Norbert called Bella “my beloved sister,”—“We were so close.” She was very protective of Norbert, almost like a surrogate mother while both of his parents were working. “She fed me, gave me approval, we were very close.” At times Bella helped out as a cashier in their parents’ cinema business, at times she manned the box office. Of Johnny, Norbert says he was “not as close,” because “he had his own life,” with different friends. “We got along well,” but didn’t have much in common. Alice adds to this that Johnny “pushed [Norbert] around,” and Bella defended him, and Norbert would complain about it to his father. Johnny felt that he was an adult doing most of the work, while Norbert was just a kid and acted like it. (Norbert said his brother teasingly referred to him as a nestschiesler—“a little child who shits in the nest.”)

Early Childhood

What few memories Norbert had of early childhood were happy. There weren’t superheroes in those days, but at three years old he liked Mickey & Minnie Mouse and cowboys. He remembers his father’s influence was great. “He was very loving. He put me on his lap. Cuddled me. Omama sang lullabies: ‘Ayla lulu, natza bulu, dupekulu.’” In those days they spanked children on the rear, which “didn’t hurt, but was slightly shameful.” It might be something like, “Stop talking at the dinner table.” For an early birthday Norbert remembers getting a train set and a scooter, books, and then the occasional red fire truck. “I was in tears because after that it was mostly clothes.”

Norbert’s Omama – Frieda Strum Nemon

The best source of information about Norbert’s mother, Frieda Strum Nemon, is her memoir essay, “Starting Anew: Escape from Vienna,” in which she describes life in Vienna thus:

My husband and I and some of my sisters and brothers were directors of movie houses. Life was comfortable in Vienna. We enjoyed a pleasant social life with friends and our large family. We were ardent Zionists and I was president of two districts of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO).

Frieda came from the Strum family of wealthy Jewish bakers, who had left Lvov in Polish Galicia to escape the violence of the Eastern Front in World War I. The family achieved renewed prosperity in Vienna and believed it would be their perpetual home:

A new bakery and matzoh factory thrived and eventually they expanded into the ownership of a movie theater. For twenty-five years the family prospered in Vienna and were known for philanthropic work and piety.

The story of the Strum family in the first half of the 20th century is told in some detail in the book Brown Was the Danube by Norbert’s aunt Helen Hilsenrad.

Alice describes Norbert’s mother Frieda—“Omama,” as she was known to her children—as “an elegant lady.” She dressed classy all the time, wore gloves and a hat, and was known as “Frau Director,” even after the years in Vienna, because she helped run the family’s cinema business and did nearly everything in that capacity—manning the ticket booth, refilling the syrups in the soda dispensers (though apparently not managing the budget.) Consequently, she was usually away at the theater, leaving Bella to cook and act almost as a surrogate parent to Norbert. Alice remembers that Omama was worldly and read newspapers in three languages, but she was also “friendly and not stand-offish.” Norbert recalls that Frieda was not very active in Austrian politics—she and her husband were Social Democrats—but that she went to meetings of the Women’s International Zionist Organization every week and was at times president of chapters of the organization; Zionism was her cause célèbre; she was passionately engaged by the broader fate of the Jewish people and seeking a homeland in the Holy Land. At one of time she had gone to see the famous Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud give a lecture.

Norbert’s Father – Benjamin Mendel Nemon

Benjamin Mendel Nemon, Norbert’s father, served in the Austrian army during World War I but did not see combat. He spoke Yiddish; he came from the (presumably less prosperous) Neiman family from Kropivna, a small farm village outside Lvov. Norbert remembers his father as being “very busy” running the family’s cinema business. His primary business partner was Joachim “Jim” Hilsenrad, Helen Hilsenrad’s husband, an apparently much more dapper, high-rolling type of man in Helen’s depiction. Brown Was the Danube describes Jim as a significant figure in the film industry, something like Berlin and Hollywood’s man in Vienna. Benjamin Nemon, we are given to understand, was less impressive a figure, the wingman; this, anyway, is how Helen Hilsenrad portrays the situation.

The Nemons and Hilsenrads operated no fewer than four cinemas in Vienna: Mariahilfer Kino, Schubert Kino, Amalian Kino, and Staffa Kino (which is now a large multi-story shopping mall.) Cinemas were the major form of entertainment in the 1920s and 30s—there was no television. While we are used to theaters with giant overhangs and marquees with oscillating light fixtures, Viennese kinos were less glamorous than that. You typically would enter through a back alley or a set of stairs descending from street level into a basement. A few playbill posters would advertise the latest films at street level, lit up with a handful of bulbs. You got there by walking or by streetcar as there was no public transit. When you entered the theater, there would be a small lobby and a stand where an attendant (often Omama) would serve refreshments: coffee, tea, soda consisting of syrups mixed with sparkling water from a tank. German theaters, in contrast to English, did not have organs. The inside had folding seats and sat 200-400 people, and there would be a projector room at the back with 4-5 glass windows one could look out of and watch the movie. Some of Norbert’s favorite movies that he saw were The Good Earth (1937) and A House Divided, adapted from novels by Pearl S. Buck.

Norbert repeatedly delighted in recalling the pendlers employed by his father, workers riding motorcycles who distributed the latest film rolls to the theaters, carrying them in a special film pouch. He noted that usually you would want to request 2-3 copies of the main attraction since these pendlers were sometimes unreliable.

Elementary Age

Some of Norbert’s favorite memories of his elementary school years were walking around Vienna with his friend Ernst, which both boys could do as long as they came home at a reasonable time. Norbert remembers sneaking into his father’s bed and stealing loose change to go buy ice cream. He and Ernst hung out in the Volkes Park and Stadt Park; there was a deli below the apartment, a bakery, and a grocery store, Nivis Grocery, which sold milk and butter on ice. (For his entire life, Norbert seems to have had a predilection for milchig foods: milk, ice cream, and fine cheeses.) His sister Bella would sometimes take him to the Prater, then as now an amusement park in the center of Vienna with a large Ferris Wheel.

Norbert would also often go to the houses of his grandparents, the Strums, and his cousins. He says of the Strums that he “knew them well, felt warmly,” but that the relationship was more one of respect than love. (Opapa Strum, judging by photos, appears to have been a tall and imposing paterfamilias with a well-groomed beard. He built a successful bakery business from scratch and put two sons-in-law in the cinema business, as Helen Hilsenrad explains; he was probably no shrinking violet.)

Norbert also would hear classical music every day on the radio, which began his lifelong passion for classical music and ballet. His two favorite songs were “Tales From the Vienna Woods” by Johann Strauss II and J.S. Bach’s “Concerto for Two Violins.”

Norbert once went with his sister Bella to see St. Stephen’s cathedral, which he remembers being a “huge palace.” They met Cardinal Theodor Innitzer and took a tour of the building. (This cardinal’s subsequent conduct in history was rather dubious.)

Events of 1938 – Bankruptcy – The Anschluss

“My childhood ended when I was 11 years old,” was how Norbert began when we turned to the events of 1938, which formed a series of painful memories for Norbert and changed his life irrevocably; in our interviews it was initially easier for Norbert to speak in the abstract about politics and world events. Gradually Norbert opened up and discussed some of the more sensitive memories.

Kurt Schuschnigg became the Prime Minister of Austria in 1934. (In fact, he became something more like the Dictator of Austria. His government tried to forge a more “Christian” alternative to the German Reich; he was not blatantly anti-semitic.) When Hitler occupied the Sudetenland around Prague, it set off a national crisis in Austria; everyone was sure that Schuschnigg would talk to Hitler and they would work out a deal so that Hitler wouldn’t invade Austria. Domestically, it appeared that the left-wing Social Democrats would re-take power in the upcoming plebiscite election. (Norbert’s parents were very much of the left.) Vienna may have been socialist, but in the surrounding country Adolf Hitler’s message of German cultural and racial superiority was beginning to resonate and attract a following. On the street, some “normal” everyday Austrians—plumbers, doctors, the elevator man: regular everyday Nazis—began to openly come out as Nazi supporters, wearing black Swastika armbands and lapel pins.

Then in February 1938, in a dramatic scene described by Helen Hilsenrad, Frieda Strum Nemon came home and was told by her husband that their cinema was bankrupt. He owed massive amounts of money to their creditors and was going to have to default on those loans. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested by the authorities for debt delinquency. Norbert’s father was arrested at his movie house. “Why?” Norbert says was asked. “Because you’re a Jew.” (It’s not clear who said this or what the exact nature of the criminal charges against Benjamin Mendel Nemon were; but this is what Norbert recollected to me.) Norbert was told of his father’s arrest by his mother when he got home from school. According to Helen Hilsenrad, the entire family’s financial circumstances were immediately reduced by the revelation of Benjamin Nemon’s bankruptcy and subsequent arrest. Norbert’s older brother Johnny went to work for his grandparent’s bakery, delivering bread on a tricycle he wheeled around with a basket, as did Norbert and his sister Bella. This was Norbert’s first job, carrying heavy bags full of bread in straw grocery bags to the bakery’s customers.

The arrest of Benjamin Nemon, co-owner of one of Vienna’s largest cinema empires, was in the papers. It was quickly followed by even more catastrophic news. In early March 1938, Kurt Schuschnigg’s talks with Adolf Hitler were breaking down. Hitler was continually threatening an invasion and demanding Schuschnigg step down and put a Hitler loyalist in power. Schuschnigg instead announced that there would be a plebiscite held on March 13 to determine the constitutional structure of the government going forward. It was widely assumed the Democratic Socialists would do well; but Adolf Hitler was not about to allow that election to go forward. On March 11, 1938, Hitler ordered the invasion of Austria. On March 13, Norbert was visiting his cousins Erica and Trudy on Mariahilferstrasse, the main commercial avenue in Vienna. They watched from their second-floor apartment as the Nazis paraded down the street. Large crowds cheered them and waved swastika flags.

 

 

Norbert’s parents explained what happened to Norbert, then 11, like this: Germany is taken over by people called Nazis, and they wear swastikas on their armbands and lapels. They were militaristic. “We are the master Race. We can take over the world.” They had a pact with Nationalist Spain. Norbert’s parents warned him, “Stay away from them. Stay in school. Stay away from kids who call themselves Nazis. Come straight home.” One would hear the German anthem: “Today Germany, tomorrow the whole world.” They proudly called themselves Christians. They were a massive economic and military superpower, with supporters in Austria, France, England, and the United States. Before the Anschluss, said Norbert, “Nobody had read Mein Kampf.” After the Anschluss, his parents told him, “Stay inside. Avoid eye contact.” All the Jews began to pack their belongings and began making a daily trip to foreign consulates to see if any country would take them in as refugees. (But as we now know, the borders of foreign countries were largely closed by restrictive anti-immigration policies. The same bigotry against immigrants that we see today was the ascendant policy after 1921 in the United States, and other countries similarly sought to keep immigrants out.)

Even as Frieda Nemon valiantly sought to find any possible way for her and her children to leave, Norbert and his siblings continued to regularly visit their father at the local prison house. According to Norbert, his father was held but never charged. “He was just a prominent Jew.” (It is unclear to what degree this is true, and to what degree it was a rationalization on Norbert’s part for his father’s arrest—a record of Benjamin Nemon’s arrest might shed some light.)

Benjamin Nemon was held at the 3rd district jail “for petty criminals.” Norbert would appear at least once a week and ask the jailer, “Can I visit my father?” They brought him out; there was no cruelty on the part of these Austrians, Norbert observed, and he was just a kid visiting his father. His father would appear on the other side of a metal screen. He would ask, “How are you? How is your mother?” Whatever Benjamin Nemon’s other failings may have been, there is no overstating the degree of love Norbert had for his father. As a child, he would put Norbert on his lap, stroke his hair. “He was my god,” Norbert said, “my hero.” He was a “wonderful father. I always received attention, warmth, and love.” He fondly recalled his father taking him to the Prater, riding the Merri-go-Round, and barbecuing chestnuts and bratwurst in the park.

Norbert could not remember much about the last time he saw his father, only that it was “just a regular conversation.” Their conversation finished, his father asked the jailer if he could hug his son; the jailor said no. Then Norbert’s father got up and “walked away into oblivion.”

Escape from Austria – 1938

In August 1938, Norbert left Vienna with his sister Bella from Vienna’s West Station, leaving his mother and father behind. Upon parting, his mother gave him her wedding ring as a token to remember her by. On the train, Norbert recalls going to the bathroom and perhaps putting the ring down on the sink; he lost the ring. In the ensuing years during the war as Norbert wondered about the fate of his mother, he would rue losing this keepsake of hers.

The travel arrangements were made by Uncle Teddy. This Uncle Teddy was a colorful character who died many years later in Germany. Alice describes him as a handsome man with blue eyes, a playboy who once dated the film actress Hedy Lamar, a charming man with pictures of girls in his wallet. According to Alice, he once walked into a German coffeehouse in New York and was at once accosted by swooning women. On this occasion, Teddy let Bella and Norbert stay at his apartment in Brussels. Their visas were approved and Bella and Norbert left from the port of Ostend bound for Dover in England.

Arrival in England – The Butlers’ House

They were met by organizers for the local Hadassah chapter who directed Jewish refugees further on upon arriving in the UK. Bella and Norbert were separated at this point: Bella went to work as a domestic worker in another part of the country, while Norbert was taken to a camp for recently arrived refugees at Hazelmere. He met a lot of German-Austrian children there, many orphaned or separated from their parents like himself. Shortly thereafter, a social worker came and took Norbert to the house of an English family—the Butlers—in Chelsea, London.

Norbert doesn’t remember much about his first day at the Butlers’ house. The Butlers lived in a row house in Chelsea, with steps up and down. The Butlers lived on the main floor; on the left as you entered was a drawing room, the nicest room in the house. On the second floor was the kitchen where the family ate. The 2nd and 3rd floors were where the bedroom were located. Mr. Butler was a mailman. Mrs. Butler was Jewish (hence her connections with Hadassah). The social worker marched Norbert up the steps and they were greeted by Mrs. Butler. (The first English words Norbert learned were “table” and “You speak English.” Prior to coming to England, he knew almost nothing about the country; Erica’s father had told him, “They [the English] eat a lot of lamb,” and that, Norbert told me half-jestingly, was all he knew about English people.) There were two Butler daughters, Helen and Vera. (There was also another German boy who lived at the Butlers with Norbert, though he and Norbert didn’t talk much.) The Butlers sent Norbert to the Sloane grammar school on Hortensia Road in Chelsea (today the site of Kensington and Chelsea College.)

From September 1938 to August of 1939, Norbert attended Sloane and quickly learned English. (As Norbert put it, “If you are in that situation, you better learn.”) His daily routine consisted of an English breakfast with tea, bread, and marmalade or jam. He carried a suitcase made of compressed cardboard which contained “everything I had.” He wore plus four breeches tied just below the knee and “slightly bloused over,” with heavy knee-socks and second-hand leather shoes. He rode the double-decker buses to school for a 1 cent fare, taking a sandwich of butter and marmalade. At Sloan he was part of House Nightingale, named for Mr. Nightingale his 6th grade teacher, which played soccer and cricket against the other houses.

On weekends, Norbert played in the streets and learned to ride a bicycle. One time he was hit by a truck (in what, fortunately, must have been a glancing blow), but he picked himself up, dusted off, and continued. He spent one year at the Butlers before the outbreak of World War II. (I feel it necessary here to express eternal gratitude, and note the significance of the fact, that in a time when nations around the world, including the United States, were designing policies to keep refugees and immigrants like my grandfather out, generous-hearted people like the Butlers instead chose to take them in. There’s an object lesson in that.)

The Blitz

Norbert remembers seeing a German bomber in the sky. With the outbreak of World War II and the disastrous advance of the Germans in Western Europe, Britain suddenly found itself under siege by the terrifying German bombing campaign known as the Blitz. Norbert said the terror of this was magnified when you thought that the Germans in general, and the Luftwaffe in particular, were more technologically advanced than anybody. The British began evacuating refugee children like Norbert out of the cities, but as Norbert wryly noted, “I was billeted near an aircraft factory, so I was well-bombed.” Norbert remembered distinctly the propeller sounds of the planes, the screech of bombs dropping. People were told to make makeshift shelters: Dig a 6 x 4-foot hole. The government distributed sheets of corrugated iron to create the roofs of these shelters. Most of the houses in Kensington, where Norbert was staying, were residential with three floors. He remembers walking by a house on Alkham Road and seeing the bomb ruins of a house.

People in Britain did various things to keep hope alive. There was a popular pub song then that went: “There will always be an England,” but when it was determined that there was a 4 in 100 chance that you might get bombed, Britons decided, right, those are pretty good chances! and decided to abandon the shelters and just live normally. It helped to heard Winston Churchill on the radio. Norbert recalls that Churchill “spoke like a true patriot. He spoke like we were going to win the war.” Norbert was eventually evacuated to Addleston in Surrey and billeted with another British family who were paid $2.00/day to feed him. He also remembers people put sticky tape on their windows during this time, and drew the curtains to prevent light from escaping and signaling the Germans where to bomb. People gave free food, drink, and respect to the returning servicemen. Norbert even saw his Uncle Teddy again at this time, who had had to flee Belgium and his glamorous life of dating movie stars and selling oil paintings at parties. He had found himself in Portugal and the Bogota, Columbia before coming to the United States and joining the U.S. army to help liberate his homeland, which had brought him back to the U.K. Norbert’s brother Johnny followed a similar path.

It would be an agonizing year before Norbert would hear anything from his father and mother.

Norbert’s Mother at Schloss Thalheim – Escape – Reunited with Bella and Norbert

To pick up where we left off with Frieda Nemon in 1938, she writes in “Starting Anew”:

I remained behind awaiting a visa for myself and trying to obtain my husband’s release from prison. While waiting I worked in a Zionist soup kitchen for several months. I was then asked by the Zionist organization, Hechaluz, for become an advisor to seventy homeless youths who could not live with their families; mostly because they were very poor or came from mixed marriage. These children lived together in a Haschara (training for Israel group) at Schloss Thalheim, a castle in the countryside, and worked in the nearby fields.

Schloss Thalheim is a vacation resort and spa located to the west of Vienna that bills itself on its website as a “country hotel with history.” A notable (though perhaps unstated) part of that history occurred after September 10, 1938, the night that “would go down in history as the infamous Krystal Nacht,” which also happened to be the same day Frieda arrived at the castle.

I expected to be met by 35 girls and 35 boys. Instead, 35 crying girls greeted me. The boys had all been taken to jail. I took all the girls with me to the police station and entered alone to speak with the police officer. I begged for the release of the boys, pleading that they were barely teenagers and added that the boys would be more useful working in the fields than staying in jail. The boys were released and we all walked the two miles back to the castle greatly relieved.

Days at Schloss Thalheim began at 5 AM. Some of the boys put on tefillin and prayed. We danced the Hora to wake up and to give the children spirit to work as they didn’t have very much nourishing food to provide strength for their hard work. Breakfast consisted of bread and chocolate milk which was half water. The boys went off to work in the fields taking with them a lunch of bread and fruit. The girls cleaned, did laundry, and prepared dinner. Meat was scarce but we managed to have a dinner of kosher meat once a week. I made a weekly trip into Vienna and “schnorred” (begged) kosher salami which was a great treat for the children. Supper was usually vegetables and potatoes. Friday night was special. We baked challah in preparation for the Sabbath, lit the Sabbath candles and ate fish for supper. Many of the children did not want to violate the Sabbath by working. To protect them from punishment for not working I and a few of the boys would unload all the hay and do whatever work needed to be done.

One of the boys in the group was my nephew, Adie, whose father (my brother) had died before Adie was born. Adie’s mother had remarried in Poland. Adie spent much time with our family and sometimes lived with us. Hechalutz tried to send children out of Austria as quickly as possible; Adie was sent to Holland. Adie’s girlfriend was sent to Denmark and was lucky enough to quickly obtain a visa for Palestine. Adie waited in Holland, hoping for a visa for Palestine so that they could be reunited. While he was waiting the war broke out. We later learned that Adie was sent to Treblinka, the concentration camp in which so many Viennese perished. Adie never returned from Treblinka. Many of the other boys and girls also were unable to escape and eventually perished in concentration camps.

Frieda Nemon herself barely made it off the continent. After getting a visa to work as a domestic in the UK, she was forced to tearfully leave her husband behind—“We said our farewell in an emotional parting in the jail.” Frieda then tells of a terrifying encounter with Nazi border patrol agents at Aachen on the Belgian border where she almost lost her passport and was stuck. Luck (or perhaps a higher power) reconnected Frieda with her luggage and her passport and allowed her to make it across the border to Brussels, where she then took the ferry boat from the port of Ostend to Dover. “I had taken the last train out of Austria and the last boat to cross the channel.” It was September before she saw Bella and Norbert again:

It had been a year since I had seen my children. Bella met me in London and brought me to a hotel. It was the second day before I could see Norbert because, along with British and refugee children, he had been sent out of London to where it was thought that there would be greater safety from bombings. The night before seeing Norbert was spent sleepless with excitement. Norbert had left Vienna as an eleven-year-old little boy in short pants and I was amazed to find before me a tall teenager in long pants.

After remaining with me in the hotel for four days, Bella told me that she needed to return to her work as a domestic and that I must figure out a way to support myself. The people who had sent my visa to enable me to escape could not afford a domestic and Bella could not afford to support me. It was time to start again. I wept as I wandered the streets wondering how I was to support myself without even speaking English.

Frieda was able, ultimately, to find work to sustain herself, but this meant she, Norbert, and Bella could only see each other on weekends.

On weekends Norbert came to London to visit me. Most people became so accustomed to the nightly bombings that they stopped disrupting their sleep to go to the bomb shelters. Norbert slept peacefully as buzz bombs flew overheard. I remained awake praying to God to spare my child. It was always a great relief when bombs had passed you by although it was terrible to read the next day of devastation in nearby streets.

When Norbert was fourteen and had finished the last grade of required schooling, the school department suggested that he might either come to live with me or go to live in a Haschara in the countryside in which he could learn. Fearful of the continuing bombings I chose the Haschara for him.

Norbert at Whittingehame

Norbert was sent to the Whittingehame Farm School in East Lothian, a school for refugee children located on a sprawling estate bequeathed by Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (he of the Balfour Declaration and known to be a great benefactor of the Jewish people.) There Norbert lived with many boys who subsequently went to Israel and fought in the 1948 war of independence. He was given a job cleaning and working in the chicken house. (When I showed Norbert a picture of the massive Whittingehame House where he had lived, he remarked that it “looks run-down,” like they had not maintained the building the way it was half a century before.) Alice states that Whittinghame was where Norbert first became a serious enthusiast of classical music. We also know that Norbert established lasting friendships during his time there, as Frieda writes:

Norbert continued to visit on weekends and I continued to pray. Often Norbert brought a new friend, Jack Swiebel, from the Hachshara. Jack’s parents had been unable to leave Germany and eventually perished there. Jack came to regard us as his family. When Jack turned eighteen he became a paratrooper and we were “home” to him when he was given leave.

Whittinghame closed in 1941, after which Norbert needed to find work. His mother helped Norbert get a job as a projectionist in a movie house. Alice says Norbert was basically a “gopher,” or coffee boy for higher-ups in the business. The other projectionist had Norbert get tea and “pregnant tarts” (and I’m afraid I do not know what that means.) (Update: My Aunt Jeanette has explained this line of my notes by saying that they wanted to play a trick on Norbert, whose English was not so good, and sent him to a pub to pick up tea and ask for “pregnant tarts”–a rather crude phrase, for those who understand British slang. When they said no, they didn’t have those, he was told to tell them that they keep them under the counter. Naturally they had a good laugh at his expense.)

The End of the War

The entire time that the Nemon family was scattered during the war, news of Benjamin Mendel Nemon was scant. Frieda tells us:

A letter arrived from my husband in 1941, sent via a relative in Switzerland. The letter said that he had been freed from prison the previous year and was going to flee to Palestine by way of Yugoslavia. That was my last word from two old acquaintances from Vienna that in Zagreb, Yugoslavia he was rounded up with many other Jews and taken to a concentration camp in Lublin. Once acquaintance told me years later that he had figured out a way to escape and asked my husband to go with him. My husband said he could not travel because he had no shoes. Another acquaintance told me, also years later, that there had been a roll call with some people designated to live and some to die and my husband had been assigned to the group that was to die. That is the last that was known of him.

Unfortunately, Norbert and I did not spend much time talking about his life after the war. (I had, in any case, described my research project as being about his early life.) At the end of the war the waters were still perilous and being patrolled by German U-boats. Norbert’s brother Johnny, as Alice told me, marched in full military regalia right up to the office of Senator Arthur Vandenberg in Washington and asked him to help secure his family’s passage to the United States. They secured a passage on a Liberty ship headed for Portland, Maine. Bella had married a member of the family she worked for and would remain in London (where her children still hail from today.) There was one curiously poetic anecdote that comes from this sea passage, which Norbert (not one to romanticize his own past) was not one to see anything more than an odd historical coincidence in. Frieda writes:

There were two other Jews on the Liberty Ship which brought Norbert and me to America. One was a Rabbi Schlesinger and the other a Mr. Effron who headed Jewish education in Buenos Aires. We knew that we would be celebrating Passover while on the high seas and I had prepared for this bringing Matzot and kosher wine from England. With the help of the ship’s crew we prepared two seders. Many members of the crew and many other passengers assisted us and observed.

Many years later, when Norbert and Alice were travelling in Buenos Aires they happened to visit the historic Templo Libertad synagogue in Buenos Aires. They were looking at photographs of people from the synagogue when Norbert happened upon a photo of none other than this same Rabbi Schlesinger and Mr. Effron who had shared a seder with him and his mother on the Liberty ship to America. It is a resonant story that Norbert, characteristically, refused to make anything of.

Norbert was very unassuming about his past. He didn’t believe his life was much worth writing about, as he didn’t feel he had done anything particularly heroic; such a feeling may have been exacerbated by the fact that so many people in his family—his father, his mother, his brother Johnny, his uncle Teddy, even his sister Bella—had in fact acted heroically in the face of horrible circumstances and historical events. But I undertook to learn about Norbert’s life because I felt that the only reasonable way a non-heroic person can react to the specter of violence and death is by learning about and celebrating life in all its complexity.

One of the final images I have of Norbert’s youth (we didn’t continue much into his life after the war) is a picture of him inside his pharmacy in Detroit. After the war, Norbert had briefly been in the army and married my grandmother, Simone Behar. They settled in Detroit, Michigan where Johnny and his family lived. He worked as a pharmacist across from the city’s main police station, and jokes that he dealt with “lot of Winos,” adding, “Nobody who respects himself buys wine at 49 cents a bottle.” The picture shows Norbert in front of rows of medicinal jars and signs, and he has a big smile on his face. It must have been a proud moment for Norbert, since this was a time when at long last he felt in control of his own life, able to chart his own course. In the time I knew him, I knew Norbert as man who loved travel, food, film, music, ballet, and a good joke; above all he loved life.