Asylum Read online

  I was not–in contrast with many other writers and journalists–immediately arrested and placed in a concentration camp. That was a fate that was to befall me a little later, after my emigration. I was left in ‘freedom’–unlike, for example, the venerable chief editor of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, the highly respected Hofrat Dr Löbl, who was locked up, along with his wife and daughter. I was extremely lucky. Still, at this time it was only the thought of my wife and children that kept me going. In these first five months alone, nine thousand Viennese Jews could not resist the temptation to escape to their deaths.

  Nine thousand suicides in the first five months. While the ‘Comrades of the People’ looked on and laughed.

  The door to the apartment of a well-respected Jewish family–parents and three children–who had ‘exterminated’ themselves was decorated, before the funeral, with a placard bearing the following inscription from the hands of the Nazis: ‘Five Jews, who have killed themselves. Course of action highly recommended to others.’

  Nine thousand in five months. And, even so, these nine thousand could never have imagined all that would have lain before them, if they had not found the courage to commit suicide.

  It was not simply physical, material things that led these nine thousand to prefer to pay the ‘tax for flight from the Reich’ with their own lives. They had had enough. It was not just that the brown-shirted German heroes made a sport of tying together male and female Jews on the open street; making them crawl on all fours, and then finally trampling their victims’ hands to a bloody pulp with their boots. It was not just that they thought it amusing to freeze Jewish café owners in their own refrigerators. It was not just that they enjoyed burning holes in the cheeks of defenceless Jews in the prisons with their cigarettes. Nor was it just that Jews were deprived, at a single stroke, of any possible means of making money; that every public space, every bench was daubed with the warning: ‘Jews strictly forbidden’; that the trams were decked out with huge posters declaring: ‘Jewry is criminality’; that… the list could be continued ad infinitum.

  No: what drove so many to death was the spiritual, the mental abuse. And the embittered, disgusted sense of disappointment at the cowardice and meanness of spirit of ‘friends’, who suddenly did not know us–who denied us, betrayed us, who were greedy for the booty that we would leave behind us, or who–in the best cases–dared to show themselves only from far off, their face covered with a protective mask. One day they were greeting you with open arms; the next day–well, they still stretched out their arms towards you, but this time in an anxious attempt to ward off any possible contact. You were an outlaw, something contaminated.

  Mixed marriages alone provide a miserable chapter in this story. There were many (legal as well as illegal) partnerships in which the ‘Aryan’ partner, in many cases after decades of a close relationship, not only brutally severed himself from his ‘non-Aryan’ companion, but even used the sanctions of the Nuremberg laws for the most appalling blackmail. The fabrication of a ‘crime of racial impurity’ could in certain circumstances be a profitable business.

  It was pitiable, too, to see how willing the vast mass of people was to take on board the most absurd terms of insult, as well as the most stupid anti-Semitic slanders. I remember one portly working-class woman, a nice, friendly-looking type, sitting opposite me in the tram with a female friend, and studying the Stürmer newspaper intently. Suddenly she turned to her companion and, with a sad shake of the head, said: ‘I really had no idea that the Jews were as bad as that.’

  ‘Jew–perish!’ Of those who died of their own accord, many were really killed by mental anguish, by disgust, by horror. They could simply not bear the ghastliness of Hitler’s world any longer. And all the while they had no idea that all this was actually a relatively harmless overture; had no idea what unprecedented pinnacles of devilish sadism would yet be achieved by German culture and science, by the German spirit of enquiry and invention, in its noble struggle to find ever new, ever more gruesome types of torture to accompany that catchy folksong, so full of true German sentiment: ‘When Jewish blood spurts from the knife’.

  As for the others–those who had steeled themselves to emigration, to a ‘new life’ somewhere abroad–somewhere where a visa had finally managed to open the door for them–those others of course had no inkling that Hitler would catch up with so many of them and get them in his grasp again. If they had, even more would have chosen emigration into the Beyond.

  Those of us who contemplated emigration were certainly not in any mood to laugh. And yet perhaps nothing encapsulates the tragedy of our situation–and also the world’s indifference to our fate–better than this little selection of anecdotes that did the rounds among Viennese would-be émigrés at that time. Gallows humour of the Emigration.

  Three Jews, who are considering emigration, meet on a street-corner. ‘I’m going to England,’ says the first. ‘I’m going to America,’ says the second. ‘And I’m going to Australia,’ declares the third. ‘Such a long way!’ cries the first, in amazement. To which the one destined for Australia simply replies: ‘A long way from where?’

  Four Jews, this time. The same old question about destination. The first replies: ‘China.’ The second: ‘New Zealand.’ The third: ‘Bolivia.’ ‘Well,’ says the fourth, ‘I’m staying here.’ The others look at him for a moment in silence. Finally one says, in a tone of admiration: ‘My God: that is adventurous!’

  And finally: one Jew, who has walked his feet sore in the futile effort to get hold of some kind of visa, finally goes into a travel agency. ‘I must get out,’ he tells the man at the desk, in desperation. ‘But where to, where to? Can you give me any advice?’ The man fetches a globe. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘here you have all the countries in the world. You must be able to find something here.’ The Jew turns the sphere this way and that for a long time, shaking his head the whole time. Finally, crestfallen, he puts it to one side. ‘Well,’ says the man behind the desk, ‘what have you found?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ says the Jew very diffidently, ‘you wouldn’t possibly have another globe, would you? There’s no room for me on this one.’

  To this day I cannot rid myself of a feeling of bitterness, when I think of the endless forest of red tape that was put in our way by most states at that time, as we begged for visas. With a little good will, it would have been possible to save everyone.

  Meanwhile Goering–the stout, jovial Goering–had announced even in those days, in Vienna: ‘For Jews who are not able to leave, there are only two possibilities: to die of hunger or to be rooted out by fire and sword.’

  Emigrating: that was the Act I of the tragedy. But once this problem had been solved, there began the second act: Being an Émigré.

  To begin with Act I, let me give just a very brief summary of my experience of it.

  Since 1914 I had been on the staff of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, as essayist and critic. In 1924 I was recalled from Paris, where I had been working as a correspondent for the paper, to take over the post of head of feuilleton after the death of Paul Busson.3

  It goes without saying that after the completion of the Anschluss I was immediately back on the street. As a ‘non-Aryan’, I received not a penny of the severance money promised me in my contract, nor of the amounts owing to me from my pension and insurance funds. The investments I had in a deposit account, and the author’s royalties held by my publisher, were also both frozen.

  It was very simple. Anything I possessed–and could still get access to–had to be spent in obtaining permission to leave the country. To get what I needed for everyday living expenses, I was forced to sell valuable objects, furniture, books, and so on.

  We were allowed to take with us ten marks per person, with which to start our ‘new life’ abroad.

  And yet the actual, physical robbery–the poverty–was not the worst of it. Much worse, as I have already said, was the impoverishment–the degradation–of the soul. No reparation could ever compensate for these experien
ces.

  Few are born with the capacity for loyalty. Few, even, with the courage to behave decently. As regards Hitler’s ‘Comrades of the People’ in the Reich, there was no depth that would surprise me. Yet all too many Austrian ‘Aryans’, too, of my immediate and not-so-immediate acquaintance, were every bit the equal of their brothers from the Reich. Intellectuals, especially–even people who owed me some kind of debt of gratitude. If I have any positive memory of individuals in Vienna at that time, they were with few exceptions the ordinary people: a waitress, who sobbed uncontrollably when I left the Neues Wiener Tagblatt building for the last time; a compositor, who even dared to look me up in my apartment; our porter in the Mariahilferstrasse.

  Others–people who had worked alongside me daily for decades–people who just a short while before had been unable to do enough to show their friendship and intimacy with me…

  It is better not to dwell on such things. Although it is also important not to forget them. These people at least made my leavetaking from my homeland easier. ‘A long way from where?’ It was an observation that applied to the spiritual aspect of emigration too. Even homesickness had lost its home.

  On the evening of 15th August 1938 I was finally able to leave Vienna. My elder stepson, Stefan, a medical student, had been taken in by a wonderful woman, Miss Marian Dunlop*–who had not previously even met him–in the most magnificent spirit, and was already in England. My wife had to wait a few days longer in Vienna with my younger stepson, Konrad, who was waiting to obtain a transit visa for Switzerland, in order to be able then to go to Scotland, where he would be enabled to continue studying for his degree in chemistry at the University of Glasgow, thanks to a grant from the International Student Service.* For my wife and myself I had obtained visas for France–with great difficulty, in spite of the fact that I had for decades been an active and enthusiastic propagandist on behalf of French literature and culture. But that was all in the past…

  The afternoon before my departure I made a last visit to a friend, the well-known architect Dr Hans Berger, to say goodbye to him. At the end of the visit Dr Berger went with me as far as the tram stop. As the tram came into view, I said to him: ‘Look at this. This is the last time that I shall be able to buy a ticket out of my own pocket. From the moment that I cross the border, I shall have to live on… on… charity. That is something I shall have to get used to.’

  To be, suddenly, in the position of a poor relation who lets people thrust money into his hands (even if those people happen to be your best friends); to be compelled to accept invitations which you will never be able to return and which must therefore be regarded as a subsidy, as a merciful bounty–this is among the most painful things contained within the concept ‘refugee’. To be a beggar you have to be born to it.

  The facts of my situation, though, would be brought to my attention with absolute clarity the very next day, even before I crossed the border at Feldkirch.

  A few minutes before the train’s departure, the boy in the Storm-Trooper uniform who had taken my passport at Innsbruck returned, holding it in his hand. Apart from me, the compartment was occupied by three Swiss people.

  ‘So: you are the Jew Scheyer,’ he said. Then, looking at the passport: ‘Fifty-one years old.’

  I wondered where he was going with this.

  ‘Fifty-one,’ he continued. ‘Not as old as all that. And ten marks in your pocket. So–how are you going to live, now, with your ten marks? Can you tell me that?’

  I ground my teeth together and said nothing.

  ‘These Jews,’ he shouted furiously, ‘these Jewish pigs! You can take everything away from them and they’ll still find someone to take them in.’ And with that he threw the passport down at my feet. The train started. One of the Swiss people stood up and grasped my hand, silently.

  How are you going to live… Jewish pigs… take them in… These were the last words of comfort–the provisions with which my homeland sent me off into the unknown.

  They have lasted me up to the present day.

  2

  Breathing again: Switzerland

  THE TRAIN ROLLED OVER the bridge above the Rhine: it had crossed the Swiss border. Buchs. Switzerland. Noble land. No more ‘Heil Hitler!’ No more Swastika. No more Brown Shirts. No ‘Jew–perish!’ Saved. Free. The land beneath my feet is a land where Jewry is not, after all, criminality.

  How I had dreamed of this moment. How I had looked forward to it, as to a transport of joy. Homelessness, poverty, uncertainty–all the anxieties and questions about the future–how unimportant that all seemed, put alongside the sensation of being free of the constant mental presence of Hitler. That, at least, is how it was in my dreams, my longings.

  Now, however, in the very moment of fulfilment, to my own surprise and dismay, the expected, longed-for euphoria did not come. How was that possible? What had happened? Some kind of nervous response, perhaps–a reaction to all the tensions and let-downs of the last five months? There was this terrible feeling of disappointment, of irritation–irritation with myself. A feeling of being cheated of a priceless, unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

  But the more time passed in the new surroundings–the closer I got to Zurich on this stretch of track, so familiar from previous journeys–the more clearly I understood the reasons for this apparently inexplicable, unforgivable mood.

  Here you had the Swiss landscape–houses, people: peace, strength, solidity, the sense of well-established contentment and security. The whole scene–you would have thought–balm for a wounded spirit, for shattered nerves.

  And yet, this time, there was this simultaneous feeling of being irrevocably distant–on the opposite bank of the river. On that side stretches another world–near enough to touch, yet at the same time unattainable. A world in which the present is still the legacy of the past and the future still the legacy of this present. Where I am standing now, on the other hand, is a No-Man’s-Land–the desolate land of a person with no legacy.

  I am sitting in a railway train with other people. To all external appearances, I am no different from them. My destiny is not inscribed like a sign on my forehead. I read the newspaper, just as they do. I glance at the wonderful scenery, at the comings and goings at the stations, just as they do. Inwardly, though, a huge gulf divides us. A gulf as wide as…

  The only real answer to that comes from that same question: ‘A long way from where?’

  In Zurich I was expected by my old friend Victor Sax.* Ours was a friendship of decades: it went back to our early youth. Many were the happy months I had spent on holiday with him, first in the house of his late parents at Kreuzgut Goldbach near Zurich; and later, after his marriage, in his own house in Zollikon. I had been his best man. He and his wife Sylvia greeted me with the same warmth as always. And yet something has changed between us.

  Something? No, not some thing: what has changed is myself. I have lost any spontaneity in my reactions; worse than that, I catch myself feeling distrustful, almost suspicious, in my relations with this old, trusted friend. I find that I am actually on the lookout for anything in his behaviour–a word, a look, a thought–that might offend me, that might reinforce the consciousness of my outcast status.

  The fact that I am no longer in a position to buy a tram ticket from my own resources threatens to become a barrier between us.

  In the evening we go to the same old restaurant I know from my previous visits. But now I feel like someone who has no business in establishments of this kind any more–almost like a gatecrasher, some down-and-out who is being given an inappropriately grand meal, out of pure kindness. Every word is an effort; every mouthful chokes me; and the moment when my friend settles the bill brings the colour flooding to my face.

  The next day, too, when I visit Victor’s brother, Erwin Sax, and another old friend, the university professor Dr. [] (who has since died), this inner feeling of constraint, this depressing sense of dependency, will not leave me. Every perfectly well-intentioned question se
ems to my over-sensitive spirit to be a wounding reference to my situation.

  I should have been wallowing in relief at being able to breathe freely again; at being surrounded by friends; at being able to walk down the road without the constant assault of ‘Jew! Jew!’ I should have been enjoying the sense of freedom and normality afforded by this wonderful country. I should at least have been able to take refuge in forgetfulness for a few short hours. Instead, all these things came across, in my mind, as a constant, dull reminder: ‘You are not part of this any more. It’s over.’

  Now I realised all too clearly what it was that had robbed me of that happiness that I had so keenly expected on stepping upon Swiss soil–robbed me, even, of some small interval between Acts I and II of The Refugee’s Tragedy. Previously, when I still had a home, and a homeland, saying goodbye to Switzerland and Swiss friends was always difficult. This time… well, this time I almost felt relief when I was finally alone again in the train taking me to Paris and the unknown.

  3

  France: beloved France

  AS HE RETURNED MY PASSPORT, the guard at the checkpoint on the French border smiled at me and said: ‘Maintenant vous pourrez respirer.’ Now you will be able to breathe again. I was grateful to him, not just for those few friendly words themselves, but because they seemed to me to be a confirmation of precisely the qualities that I expected in France.

  I had loved France since my early youth. For me it had achieved the status of an emotional construct–the home land of my ideals, my fantasies. Other countries that I had visited had given me pleasurable holidays. But France–however many times I visited–was always the fulfilment of a passion. And I had never tired of praising the country’s delights, in conversation and in print. To me France was like a lover to whom you enslave yourself willingly, and who is quite incapable of disappointing. Even her little weaknesses are things that, if anything, only enhance the charm. Austria was where my home was. But France was where I felt at home.