by Vic Shayne
For the Russians, the war was not over; their appetite for vengeance against the city’s Germans could not be quelled. Out of control and with no law to intervene, Russian soldiers throughout Austria and Germany were hunting down SS officers and killing them on the streets and in their homes. They were butchering men, women, and children and raping females of all ages. Their own military leaders just ignored their underlings and let the violence continue as a matter of course. The Germans deserve what they get, they said. A German’s biggest fear was the Russian soldier.
One afternoon, while wandering up and down the blocks of Salzburg, I came upon a train station. The trains at that time were running day and night, transporting supplies, prisoners returning home, DPs, military personnel, businessmen, and civilians of many nationalities. Trains loaded with Italian POWs returning from the eastern front were crisscrossing with trains taking Russians back to Moscow and Kiev. Stockpiles of weapons, jeeps, trucks, and artillery were passing through Salzburg as a part of a massive effort to clean up and restore normalcy to war-torn Western Europe. The Russian command was in charge of this particular station where I watched a train screech to a stop. Hanging out the window were Italian soldiers returning from the east—former prisoners of war held by the Soviets. The Russians were sending the train ahead, back to Italy.
While standing on the platform, staring at the train, looking at faces through the windows, watching bored, disinterested Russian guards stroll back and forth, I took no notice that three women had approached me. They wore long skirts and scarves over their heads. As they got closer, I saw that they were a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter in her teens. I turned my attention back to the train. When I glanced at the three women again, they were standing a couple of feet away. As our eyes met, the mother began to speak to me in German. She was very nervous and frightened and constantly cast her eyes toward the Russian soldiers milling around the station. She tried to speak slowly and clearly, but her expression was desperate and she moved to within a few inches of me so she wouldn’t be overheard.
The mother asked me, “Are you from the concentration camp, Mauthausen?”
I said, “Yes.”
She looked down at her feet and said, “So you wouldn’t talk to me.”
I answered, “Why wouldn’t I talk to you? You came to me; I don’t know who you are.”
At that moment the woman took out a pouch from under her coat. It was a big cloth sack tied shut with a string. She told me, “I want to give this to you.”
I said, “I don’t want it.”
She said, “This is Jewish gold, silver, and diamonds. My husband gave this to me. My husband, an SS officer, was killed by the Americans, and now they’re looking for us. I want you to keep this and do me a favor.”
I was shivering. She told me the name of her husband, but I don’t remember. He was a big shot at the concentration camp. She grabbed her daughter by the sleeve and pulled her closer, as if afraid of losing her.
The woman told me, “I want you to take this so you’ll do me a favor. I want you to save my daughter. My mother and I will go back and they will kill us, but save my daughter.”
I didn’t know what to think. But when she told me to save her daughter, I saw my own mother and two sisters at that moment. I knew they were dead, but maybe a miracle happened and it was them. I was looking at Momma, Peshia, and Elka. Their faces were in front of me. They had come back to be with me. I stared at them in disbelief. How did they get here? My head was swimming. My eyes were lost in the past, my mind caught between two worlds. “Save my daughter,” the woman had said to me. I was faced with a test of my own humanity. After all I had been through, after all I had lost, after all I had suffered, now I was face-to-face with the family of one of those monsters who was responsible for destroying my life. And his wife and daughter and mother were asking me, of all people, to help them. What was I to do? It seemed what I did next took place without any thought. I asked the woman, “Do you have liquor at your house? Go ahead and bring me the liquor.”
She looked at me confused, “Liquor?”
I said, “Yes, go home and get the liquor and bring it back.”
They left and I just stood there thinking I was with my mother and sisters. I was there by the train for more than an hour. There was a Russian officer close by. He was keeping his eye on the cargo of tanks and Italian POWs. I waited and waited as people came and went.
At last the three women came back, and I said to them, “Follow me.”
I went to the Russian captain and asked him, “Where are you going with this train?” He looked at me suspiciously. I told him, “I have a present for you,” and then I showed him the bottle of liquor.
The officer grabbed it, his eyes popping out of his head. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
I said, “These three women are my mother, my grandmother, and my sister. They are from the concentration camp.”
The Russian took them to the train and put them on. Tears were running down the mother’s face as she boarded and looked my way. I told the lady to take the diamonds and other valuables in the pouch with her. I would have no part of these things. And I stood there staring at her. I was frozen. After the train rolled out, I was lost in thought. What just happened? What did I just do? Out of the ethers an idea struck me. “Oh, God, thank you, you answered my question. I could do for others the same thing Mrs. Glatki did for us.” I kept thinking this one thought over and over and over as the train picked up speed. It was a sobering experience that I never let go of.
Going to the Salzburg train station was a regular part of my schedule. For some reason, I was drawn to the area. Maybe it was a metaphor; maybe somewhere inside me was an urge to move on. As my body continued to heal and my energy returned, I wanted to get away from this German-speaking country. But I had nowhere to go. I thought of my Aunt Frieda in New York, but at that time it was impossible to leave Europe. There were a million people trying to get out and millions more who needed to be processed by the occupation forces. The bureaucracy of everything was stifling. All I could do for now was to wander the streets and visit the train station. I had food, drink, and a place to sleep, bathe, and rest, but I had no sense of purpose or direction.
A couple of months had passed since I put the three women on the train to Italy. Once again I was standing at the station. The Russians had stopped a long train for inspection. It was filled with the last of the Italian POWs coming back from the Russian front. They were a boisterous group who spoke like they were singing. This was a beautiful language that I had never heard before. Words rattled off the tongue and hands seemed to be extended parts of speech. One of the soldiers, a captain in the Italian army with jet-black hair and a friendly smile, spotted me staring at the train. He called out to me, wildly waving his hands. His buddies were straining to position their heads out the window to look at me.
“Hey, you! You understand me?” the captain yelled. I shrugged.
Then the Italian officer spoke to me in broken Russian. Now I was thoroughly confused. What kind of Russian was this? Maybe I had forgotten how to speak it. I could barely understand him. He pointed to a couple of his friends hanging out of the train. They were showing me their guitar, then they started to play it and I enjoyed listening. Since Tamara Ulashik taught me to play guitar in Maitchet, I’d been enchanted by the instrument, and the thought of a bunch of Italians playing Russian folk songs was something too strangely attractive to ignore. The Russian tunes they sang and strummed were songs they learned while in a Soviet POW camp, waiting out the duration of the war.
“You!” the captain yelled, “Do you play guitar?” I was still staring at him from the platform.
I nodded yes.
“You want to go to Italy?”
I didn’t think about it twice.
I had with me everything I owned and everything I had in the world—nothing. Just me. A second later the captain and his friends were pulling me onto the train. With hand signals
and a lot of shouting, the Italian officer introduced himself to me as Giovanni Onofre.
“Come in, don’t worry,” he told me. “The Russians won’t mind.” And in the next breath, with the Russian guard walking past their train car, Giovanni started to shoo me and said, “Hurry up, under the cot!”
He told me to hide underneath one of the military cots on the train so the Russian soldiers wouldn’t see me and throw me off. The Italians strummed away on their guitar and sang at the top of their voices in a ridiculous attempt to act nonchalant while I hid by their feet until we pulled away from the station.
Within an hour I was bound for Modena, Italy.
Viva Italia!
In a few days, our train of Italian ex–prisoners of war arrived in Modena, in north-central Italy. Modena is between two big rivers, and at that time the city was overflowing with throngs of Italian soldiers trying to find their way back home with one of the worst train schedules in history. Modena also hosted a camp for displaced persons, but I chose to stay with my new Italian friends who treated me like their long-lost pal.
When we passed into Italy, the men on board the train were ecstatic. They waved their hats, stuck their heads out of the windows, and screamed, “Viva Italia! ” and toasted with whatever drink they had with them. They forgot all about their Russian folk songs and, with their hats off and hands clutched to their hearts, began to sing in Italian with every ounce of their souls.
After rocking over the rails for days, at last our train came to a stop in a small, busy station. We were all immediately marched off to a military camp for questioning. The Italians and Allied military authorities were very concerned about communist spies infiltrating the west from Russia, so our stop in Modena was for debriefing and background investigations. Once cleared—a process guaranteed to crawl along at a snail’s pace—the Italians were free to continue home.
Since I had nowhere else to go, and Giovanni treated me like his closest friend, he insisted I stay with him and his army buddies in the Italian military compound. The officials running things didn’t seem to care that I stayed as a visitor. The Italians treated me to food, lodging, and entertainment. We played soccer, arguing about the rules, and played chess and the guitar at night. In no time I learned a little Italian. It was a new and interesting language—my fifth or sixth by now—which I quickly grew to love. My Italian was good enough to get by but was by no means perfect yet.
For the next eight months, I stayed with Giovanni in Modena. Being in a military compound, with not much else to do, I sat in on hours and hours of training sessions. Like an Italian soldier, I sat in a bare, cold classroom as an officer lectured us about everything we’d ever want to know about Matilda tanks. I learned what the Matildas looked like, how valuable they were, and what they were capable of. I learned how to drive one, fire the huge guns, and navigate it over all types of terrain. I was soon dreaming about Matilda tanks and making sketches of them. There was almost nothing else to do during the day but attend Captain Onofre’s army training sessions.
Three quarters of a year went by before the government authorities gave Giovanni permission to leave for home. After years of being away, out of touch with his worried family, Giovanni was going to be reunited with his mother, father, and sister. He couldn’t wait to see them again, and he wanted me to go with him to Rome.
“I want you to meet everybody,” he told me. “You’re gonna love them.”
I didn’t hesitate to tell him I was ready to leave with him right away. As soon as we could, we hopped on the next train and headed south. Then we walked for a few miles, sat and rested, hitched a ride in a couple of American army jeeps, then walked some more. Eventually, we made it home. Giovanni stood for a moment and stared at his house as his eyes welled up with tears. I still remember Giovanni’s address: Via Muzio Clemente #27.
The meeting between Giovanni and his family was incredible. They were overcome with emotion. He was squeezed and kissed black-and-blue. I was very happy for him and he was proud to introduce me to his parents. His father was a carbonere; he sold carbon for cooking and heating. The Onofre family lived in a modest house with a nice little garden and a traditional Italian kitchen. The house was not very big, maybe a couple of rooms, so Giovanni said, “You can share my room, if you want.” Not having anywhere else to go, or knowing exactly where I was, I eagerly accepted. Plus, there was a dividend: Giovanni had a beautiful sister named Olivetta. We became close friends, but I was in no condition to be married off, so we remained only good friends.
Giovanni had friends who owned a ristorante not far from his house in Rome. I spent a lot of time there and loved to help out in the kitchen cleaning dishes, setting tables, carrying food, and dumping out the trash—whatever was needed. I was glad to help out. I didn’t work for the money. By this time in my life, I had realized that money had no meaning. This is the way my grandfather and my father felt, and I’ve always felt the same way, especially since my family was taken from me. People are valuable; money means very little. I have seen people spend an entire fortune for a piece of bread. I’ve seen people murdered for their possessions. And I’ve seen people lose their minds with so much lust for money that they willingly murdered their neighbors.
The owners of the restaurant loved to feed me; that was payment enough. Plus, I was able to regain much of the weight I had lost through the Holocaust years. There’s nothing like pasta and Italian bread to put meat back on your bones. And there’s nobody who enjoys eating more than the Italians. Eating with friends and family is a religious experience. I fit right in. Every Italian I met was more welcoming than the next. Their food was my food. There was no such thing as a stranger.
With a lot of time on my hands, I explored Rome every day. It was, in a way, a Roman holiday. I was taken with this ancient city, its old buildings, historical sites, and expressive people. I walked the alleyways, shopping districts, and neighborhoods. Being that the war had only recently ended, every family was now trying to live life to the fullest. Red wine was flowing freely on everyone’s dinner table, and entire families were gathering outdoors in their gardens for supper every single evening. They started eating in the late afternoon and were still sitting with a bottle of Frascati long after the sun went down.
On one warm but breezy evening, I found myself strolling along in a nice neighborhood when I came upon a big, boisterous family having dinner in their garden. They were drinking, laughing, and breaking bread over bowl after bowl of pasta. There were old people, mothers and fathers, and little bambinos running around the table and in front of the house. My heart sunk just a little bit as I stopped to watch the colorful scene. I instantly thought of the Shabbos dinners at Bubbie’s house with my family. I didn’t realize I was staring, but one of the men looked back at me and stood up. His napkin was still tucked into his shirt and half a glass of red wine was in his right hand. He put his wine on the table and started waving his hand in a very Italian manner. His palm was facing me and he was waving as he spoke. Now his whole family was looking at me. I started to slowly back away until I was across the street. Where I came from, when somebody waved at you like this, he was telling you to go away. I turned to leave and the man started after me. I quickened my pace. I was almost running at this point. But he followed me, yelling, “Venaccà! Venaccà!” With his dialect I didn’t yet fully understand what the man was yelling. He was saying, “Come here! Come here!” But to me, his gesture was saying, “Go away! Go away!”
“Where are you running?” the man called out to me. “Venaccà!” Eventually, a block away, I realized the man wasn’t mad at me; he was trying to tell me something. So, cautiously, I stopped and let him catch up. We were both a little short of breath from the excitement and now I could see that he was friendly. He walked right up to me, smiled, and put his arm around my shoulder. In Italian, he said, “Come with me, come on, why are you running away?” I tried to explain in my fledgling Italian that I thought he was trying to chase me away, but I don’t
think he understood. The man shrugged his shoulders then ushered me back to his house. “You come with me,” he said. He took me right to the dinner table in the garden and made shooing motions to his family. They parted like the Red Sea and I was plopped down right between the mother and the father—matriarch and patriarch. This was the seat of honor in every Italian family. I felt a bit embarrassed at the attention. Out of nowhere, with lightning speed, like a magic trick, came forks, a knife, a big spoon, a glass of wine, a napkin, and a heaping plate of spaghetti. Then somebody shoved a big, warm piece of bread at me. Almost like a chorus they shouted, “Si! Mangia! ” This I understood very well. I picked up my fork and swirled a gigantic ball of spaghetti on the end of it. I took my first bite and moaned in delight. This must have been the perfect thing to do because the Momma clapped her hands together and smiled with pride at her daughter. Then everybody went back to eating and carrying on at this wonderful table lit by the moon and a dozen candles in the middle of the garden.
Whenever I hear the expression viva Italiano! I think of how wonderful the Italians were to me. I can’t say that I was happy in those days in Rome after the Holocaust, but living among these people provided an incalculable amount of spiritual comfort.
I was in Rome for a couple of months before I discovered the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). I didn’t fully realize that there were tens of thousands of Jewish DPs in Italy and that the UN had a facility nearby to help people make contacts with lost relatives and friends not only in Europe but all over the world. I returned time and time again to look for information about my own family members but came away disappointed. I checked the UNRRA registry for Shmulek Bachrach, but again, no luck. With the help of a few people I met from UNRRA, though, I was able to establish communication with my Aunt Frieda—my mother’s sister—whom I knew lived in New York. My aunt responded quickly by sending me a hundred dollars. Given the depressed and collapsed state of the Italian economy, this was a lot of money. In subsequent letters, I told my aunt of the tragic fate of my family and that I was alone in the world. I made up my mind that I wanted to move to New York. Aunt Frieda was my only connection to the past. She wrote back to me immediately saying that not only would she love for me to come be with her but that she would work on bringing me to New York. “Don’t worry about anything,” she wrote. “There’s a place for you with me.”
