Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  * * * *

  It was the middle of October. With the volume of work decreasing in Linz, my father was promoted and placed in a new department in Gmunden, about halfway between Salzburg and Linz, but wouldn’t elaborate in his letters home as to what exactly he was doing, other than to say, “I got really lucky—they posted me in a new department here, and for [my commanding] officer they gave me this really nice guy that I had at Ghedi in Italy, who was also my Order of Battle instructor at Ritchie. . . . The work I’m doing can’t be described in precise terms, but at least I’m not glued to a desk and I’ll see the country—at least I think I will.” During the first couple of weeks he sometimes made the trip between the two cities twice in a day.

  He set out on an unusually warm morning, with his new commander to return to Linz for a high-level meeting. He hadn’t been back to Linz since he was promoted. As he got into the back seat of the jeep, he said, “C’mon, come on then.” He patted his leg and invited Lieutenant Sirkin’s dog to jump in and sit beside him. The dog was happy to comply, resting his chin warmly on my father’s lap. Linz was about a two-hour drive from Gmunden, and the dog stayed fast asleep for most of it. Occasionally, he’d pop up and reach his head out the window like a small child. With the wind caressing his face, the dog let his ears blow around like little propellers. When he’d had enough, he’d flop back onto my father’s lap, nuzzling his little nose between his paw and my father’s gun holster. That morning, man’s best friend was getting an unusual amount of attention as my father thought back to his own dog, Finito, who succumbed to an untimely death a few months back. The little orphaned puppy made it all the way from Verona to Salzburg.

  The meeting was at a bar somewhere near his old office at the Documents Center. My father listened intently to their every word. He was the only noncommissioned officer in a room filled with lieutenants, captains, majors, and colonels from both the Western Allies and Russia. He was sitting among the elite command of the army, feeling a bit like a little fish in a big sea. Relations between the Allied and Soviet occupied zones had become strained. Behind the scenes, the political rhetoric was heating up. Austria leaned toward building a neutral democratic state, leaving the Communists in the minority, which incited a demonstration of anti-Western feeling in the Eastern zone. Among friends, the Allies spoke more and more of the next war or wars to come. As time passed, my father could feel a distinct chill growing in the room as relations between the personnel of the two countries seemed to stiffen. While overtly they remained extremely cordial and amicable toward each other, they sounded like the meetings at the Munich Conference in 1938 must have been—filled with interminable pleasantries and formality without concrete results.

  My father excused himself after the meeting to check the mail. The postmaster handed him an avalanche of packages for the DPs, and one for him. Every single package would have to be accounted for and an appropriate thank-you sent to its proper donor. There were so many that he needed to corral at least three of his coreligionists to help him, but before he could do that he wanted to see what was sent to him. He knew better than to open anything from home publicly, so he found a more private spot before ripping open the box. He dug his hand in and pulled out—underwear.

  “For the love of God, when will she learn?!”

  Thank God he was alone. Underwear, a scarf, a cap, two sweaters, a comb and mirror set, magnificent Yardley gloves, a military shirt, candy, pralines, newspaper clippings, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post. He would pass along what he didn’t use to the DPs. But did she have to send him underwear? And to top it off had no interest in popular watered-down periodicals for the masses, especially Collier’s! (This was odd, because Collier’s was one of the first magazines courageous enough to publish an article, by Jan Karski, about Polish concentration camps months before the end of the war. Karski had been a Polish resistance fighter who was captured and then viciously tortured by the Nazis. He later escaped to the United States and was one of the first to break the story of the systematic murder of Jews to the West. Odd too, because Collier’s had in its stable an illustrious list of contributing writers ranging from Churchill to Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn.) He noticed that he had overlooked a letter in the pile of mail. Nice stationery. A girl’s handwriting, it looked familiar. He opened it, unfolded it, and began to read it on the spot. It was from his friend Doris in New York:

  Dear Walt,

  Just got your letter today and thought I’d answer pronto! I want to make this kind of fast because Floss is going out and I want her to mail it. I’m in bed with one of my yearly colds and feel perfectly awful. It seems colds are going around fast and furiously . . . and it wouldn’t be right to miss one.

  Was in our old hometown a couple of weeks ago to do a little shopping. Had a wonderful time. The one thing I really enjoyed (you’re going to laugh) was walking on Fifth Ave. at night. The more I go to New York, the more I love it. I don’t know what it is, but the whole atmosphere makes you feel like living and working. Do you know what I mean?

  You’re quite the important young man over in Linz. I don’t know what they’re going to do without you!?! Seriously, Walt, I think it’s wonderful (the work you’re doing). At least this job sounds interesting, which is more than I can say for a lot of other Army jobs I’ve heard about.

  Walt, I think it was awfully sweet of you to think of me, and I know the perfume will be something wonderful.

  You mentioned something about a car. What are you going to do with it after you come home? It would cause quite a sensation if you were to bring home a European car!! Can’t you picture yourself driving around New York in a low slung something or other. Ahem I can just picture the young ladies of New York and what they’d say to each other. “Darling you know Walt Wolff’s in town, and you ought to see him, he’s looking wonderful, but you ought to see his car. What I wouldn’t give for just one date with him—not that he hasn’t always been quite attractive, but now.” See what happens to people when they have nothing to occupy their minds? By the way, that picture you sent me was very much appreciated and you shall be rewarded—if you can call it that.

  Gotta close. Write.

  Love,

  Doris

  Suddenly the prospect of going home no longer felt so remote. He smiled and lit a cigarette. It wasn’t so bad being him. No, not at all, but he better hide the letter. His girlfriend might get hold of it, and God knows there was enough talk of war going on right now! Mady was an older woman. She was engaging, fun, and he just remembered they had a date that night, and he was still in Linz. She was twenty-three, an actress, and she spoke more languages than he and his sister put together. Before his group left for Gmunden, he phoned her and invited her for drinks and supper at nine. They arrived back by eight thirty. He ran up to his apartment to change and on the way in checked his bar. Full. He had just gotten a new ration of liquor, so it was flush. He quickly changed into his new shirt, then brushed back his hair with his two bristle brushes and a bit of pomade. A last look in the mirror and he was ready. When Mady walked in, she sat down on one of his couches, carefully removed her gloves, and placed her hat beside her.

  Breathily, she said, “What a lovely villa, Walter.”

  He described his villa in a letter home two weeks later:

  U.S.D.I.C.G-2, USFA

  APO 777, C/O PM, NEW YORK, N.Y.

  Linz, Austria

  Gmunden, the 30th, October 1945

  . . . I now have a new room in a little ultra-modern villa, and this room is the epitome of chic. It has a bed, two leather couches (the type employed by the legendary millionaires to smoke their $10 cigars), a little modern table—black, a beautiful armoire that matches the rest, and a little buffet-bar. There are rugs, lamps, curtains etc. It’s really deluxe. I also have a little room the size of your kitchen to wash myself in, etc. The bathroom is across the hall. I am the only one to have a private room—I suppose because I am the highest ranking in the unit. All of the old ones l
eft, that’s why.

  Otherwise, I have some pretty important work now, and it’s really interesting. That’s the real reason why I’ve been writing less often—I have a lot to do, because almost everything that comes into the department has to go by me—and naturally the lieutenant. We still get along really well—with him, one can act freely without worrying that it will filter through to the “upper-level commander.”

  I also have a new girlfriend, very nice. She is an actress, 23 years old, pretty intelligent (speaks more languages than Ellen and me combined)—She is excellent company. There is a captain interested in her as well, but she seems to prefer me—for which I am obviously honored!!!!

  That Saturday, my father and six of his friends left after breakfast and drove up to the Berg Hotel am Feuerkogel, located on the mountain overlooking Lake Traunsee and the town of Ebensee. Before it was requisitioned by US forces, the hotel had been used by the Waffen SS to house wounded soldiers returning from the Eastern Front. The men dropped their bags, settled in for a quick coffee, and then made their way up the mountain. The view was magnificent. They picnicked on a large rock overlooking the slopes, with the Alps extending as far as the eyes could see and in every direction.

  Finally, his years of anticipation disappeared in a moment. He laid his skis down in the snow and clipped into his bindings. Resting his eyes momentarily on the horizon, he adjusted his equipment one last time. His muscles tensed against six years of forced abstinence. Last night’s moon still held her steady gaze, white against the azure sky. In one smooth motion of muscle memory, he leaned toward the blinding powder and dug his wooden poles deep into the snow. Then, with the dexterity of a racer, he propelled himself forward and pushed off the crest. Freedom nipped at his boots, a rush of powder sprayed into the windy periphery as he pushed himself to find his groove. He found his old slalom. With every passing meter he shed his private war through the decompression chamber of gravity and lost time, exhilarated by the fantastic rush of speed on his victory run down the occupied mountain. Small, complicit villages rested below; concentration camps and gutted ruins were made invisible from his bird’s-eye perspective. The coming privation of winter was but a blurred detail on a scarred panorama, which looked for all the world like a Tyrolean snow globe in a toy store window.

  * * * *

  If there is one thing from his wartime service that struck my father deeply and remained with him throughout his life, it was the plight of the DPs in the early aftermath of the war. He never spoke about it, other than to describe a Chanukah party he gave, but he never forgot the faces of the survivors or the scarcity of children left in the aftermath of the war. In fact, during his Shoah Foundation interview in 1998, he was asked if he had a relationship with any of the survivors. He responded with surprisingly animated warmth to his voice and said, “Oh, yes . . . We took the utmost care of them.” His voice trailed off for a moment, memories echoing their way forward despite his control: “I have to go to a Chanukah celebration—which really doesn’t interest me, but the mayor of Gmunden will be there and I’d like to arrange for a license to open a butcher shop for three of our coreligionists—this is an excellent occasion to do that—we will distribute the things from the Wolff Relief Agency, and I would like to see who gets what.”

  Coincidentally, the first night of Chanukah that November in 1945 fell on the eighth day of the Nuremberg Trials. That afternoon, a one-hour documentary was shown in court, depicting footage the Allies had collected during the first hours and days after liberation. For the first time, the condition of the survivors at the concentration camps was forced upon the perpetrators. The film left defendants and prosecutors alike stunned into silence as the extent of the atrocities and crimes against humanity were brought directly into the courtroom. There was no denying in those pictures. As darkness fell in Nuremberg, candles celebrating the miracle of this festival of lights were being lit at nearby synagogues and at makeshift shuls all over the occupied zones. Several nights later, my father attended the Chanukah party that he had organized for the DPs at the Ort Castle in Gmunden. With the help of some friends, he brought along forty sacks of packages to distribute personally, only a fraction of the 1,500 that he would eventually receive through the army mail system, turning it on its ear.

  My father would not live to see a remarkable moment that occurred during the writing of this book and on the heels of Chanukah. One evening, while I was looking through a wooden wine box that contained his notebooks from high school and university, a contemporary-looking thank-you note fell to the floor. It read:

  Dear Mr. Wolff,

  Sorry I took so long with these . . . It has been very busy! I have enclosed copies of pictures I have. Thanks so much again for your kindness in sharing your remembrances. . . .

  Stay Well,

  Judy Zeichner

  P.S. If the Felix you refer to in your photos is Felix Opatowski—

  I am in contact with him in Toronto.

  In the box were seven pages of Xeroxed photographs. I leafed through them, and not far from the top lay a photograph of my father in uniform sporting his yellow ascot, which I knew so well, and his army beret with a US insignia pinned to it. And then, as if by magic, there were copies of the photos that had been taken at that Chanukah party.

  Someone had saved a picture of my dad until the day they died and was as touched as he was by the memory of that party given on that cool November night in 1945. It did not take me long after I sat down at my computer and Googled Judy Zeichner and Felix Opatowski to find them, and I called them immediately. Although in his nineties, Felix was ebullient and so warm and welcoming. He got so excited that he put his wife, Regina on the phone as well. Together, sometimes talking over each other, they recounted their time in Gmunden after surviving several forced labor camps as well as Auschwitz. Two phone calls later he told me how he and Jacob Artman, Judy Zeichner’s father, had become fast friends at Auschwitz and remained as close as brothers for most of their lives. Jacob was five years his senior and took care of Felix as if he were the little brother he never had. Both young men were alone and would never see any of their families ever again.

  Chanukah party given by my father and army personnel for survivors of Nazi concentration camps at Schloss Ort Gmunden, Austria, November 1945.

  Survivors celebrating Chanukah, November 1945. Among them are Felix Opatowski and Jacob Artman.

  Jacob had arrived at the camp three weeks before him and already knew how to act and what to do and how to stay out of trouble. He explained to Felix, who was originally from Lodz, in Poland, that he should never go anywhere by himself and always do absolutely everything as a group to attract as little attention as possible. Sometime during his first weeks at the camp, Jacob explained that the smell permeating the air and the ash falling to the ground was that of the Jews being gassed and cremated in the ovens at the camp. Felix remembered the day a transport arrived from France with busloads of children who were immediately marched to the crematorium—to their deaths. They came from Drancy, the transit camp outside of Paris.

  Felix and Jacob stayed together throughout their internment and found each other again at Ebensee in Gmunden—which had been transformed from a concentration camp to a DP camp after liberation. There, they eventually made money stealing food from the American mess and selling it in Linz on the black market. Felix and Jacob met their wives while at the camp before emigrating to Canada and the United States.

  When Judy answered the phone, she knew immediately who I was and began to cry as she exclaimed, “This is the best Chanukah present ever!” She explained how, after her father, Jacob Artman, died, she came across the photo of my father while going through his things and tracked him down in New York. They never met, but they spoke at length over the phone and he shared memories of Gmunden and the DPs with her. She was struck by a couple of things he said when, in the rarest of moments, he shared memories of Gmunden and Ebensee with her. He told her about the swimming pool at Ebensee, whi
ch he saw a few months after liberation. By the time he got there in September, it must have been emptied, but he had seen photographs or heard that when it was first drained of water, it had been piled high with the striped clothing of the dead, who had been stripped after they were killed so the Nazis could collect their uniforms. The other statement that left an impression on her was his description of the survivors with whom he came into contact. He gently told her that they all looked as though they had not eaten in a very long time.

  Felix and Judy on behalf of her father both told me what a wonderful thing my father had done for them, not only by organizing that Chanukah party but through his care and kindness in procuring the many packages for the DPs. I had just identified two people out of hundreds of strangers in my father’s archive of over two hundred photographs. Nothing short of a miracle.

  * * * *

  When my father and his group returned to the mountain again a couple of weeks later, they brought their girlfriends with them. As they got closer, they could see that a fresh coat of snow blanketed the Gmunden glacier and would make it too difficult for them to drive further. When they noticed a red and white cable car coasting toward them, they left the car at Ebensee. Floating above the majesty and serenity of the mountain reminded him of Corviglia in St. Moritz, except here the vast wilderness silenced the ghostly screams of those who never made it to liberation. They found a chalet on the trail a short distance from the cable car. In an act of questionable authority, my father requisitioned the house, and pronounced it their new weekend retreat and a perfect place for a celebration. He had brought something very special, which he had secreted away under every bathroom sink in every residence since summer: bottles of wine from my great-grandparent’s home in Landau, taken when he reclaimed the house from its occupiers. He wanted to raise a glass to my grandmother on her birthday. The wine was perfect. It tasted of champagne without the carbonation! Every sip was an elixir distilling the freedom that had hung in the balance for so long. After a full day on the slopes, he sat by the fire and shared some wine. My father proposed his long-anticipated toast among his good friends, “To my chère Mamo, on her birthday. To her health, and may I be home to celebrate with her next year!”