Good Living Street

by Tim Bonyhady

  Her one expression of interest in Paul came in 1971, when she went to Freiburg im Breisgau, where he had studied chemistry, and sought out his thesis. Otherwise she wanted nothing to do with him. Her last words on Paul were: “My father died in Toulouse in 1958. After his death I received a letter from a rabbi in Toulouse suggesting that a suitable gravestone should be erected in his memory. But I did not consider this. I never felt that he had been a father to me and in any case the contact I had had with him throughout my life was minimal. I had no idea what his wishes regarding his grave were and my relationship to cemeteries is an ambiguous one. When I was in Toulouse in the early eighties I did not visit any of the cemeteries to find his grave.”

  4

  Eric

  The refugees who fled Hitler as children often married other refugees. One American survey suggests that almost half of those who went to the United States did so. In Australia, the number was probably even higher because the society was much less cosmopolitan and much more fearful of the foreign. Anne was eager to do differently but recognized that, because of her origins, there was little chance of a “genuine Australian” wanting to marry her. An incident in 1942 was telling. At a dance one night, she met a young member of the air force who had no idea where she came from because of her success in learning to speak English without an accent. They talked at length and danced together happily. Then she revealed that she was from Vienna and, to her dismay, he lost interest.

  My father, Erich, was a refugee from Graz, the capital of the Austrian province of Styria, where his grandfather Salomon and father, Eduard, ran a small leather business. Within days of the Anschluss the Nazis arrested Salomon and placed him in a police prison in Graz where they held him for a fortnight. On the morning of Kristallnacht they arrested Eduard and sent him to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he became prisoner 23,486 on the twelfth of November but was let go that winter, like most of the other men sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht. While the majority were freed at the start of December, the Nazis held those whom they had beaten, such as Eduard, for longer, releasing them only when their injuries had partly healed because the Nazis were still concerned about their image abroad. When Eduard’s wife, Edith, finally got word that the Nazis might free her husband, Erich began going to the Graz railway station early every morning so there would be someone to meet Eduard. He went in vain day after day until, one morning, Eduard appeared.

  The men whom the Nazis let out of Dachau at the end of 1938 were the last inmates of a concentration camp ever to be released by the Nazis. Just as when they let Käthe out of the police prison in the Hahngasse, a condition was that these men had to leave Greater Germany. Eduard was able to comply because he had applied successfully for Australian visas not long before his arrest. By April 1939, Eduard, Edith, Erich, and his younger brother Friedrich were ready to depart but stayed in Graz long enough to celebrate the start of Passover with Eduard’s father and mother, Salomon and Bertha, and brother and sister-in-law, Berthold and Else, who had no means of escaping. Then Eduard, Edith, Erich, and Friedrich set out for Sydney, where they were met by Eduard’s sister, Mira, and her husband, Fritz, who had fled while Eduard was in Dachau. Before long, there were no Bonyhadys in Graz, as the Nazis forced Salomon, Bertha, Berthold, and Else to move to Vienna as part of their drive to make Graz Judenrein. Seventy-eight-year-old Salomon was dead by the end of the year from natural causes, followed shortly thereafter by seventy-six-year-old Bertha and one of Eduard’s brothers, Norbert, whom the Nazis pushed out of a window. By the end of the war, the death toll had grown as the Nazis killed Berthold and Else, Norbert’s wife, Alice, and ten-year-old-son, Gerard, and one of Edith’s sisters, her husband, and one of their sons.

  Had there been no Anschluss, Erich would have stayed at school in Graz until he graduated, then continued on to university and, most likely, embarked on a career as a professional. In Sydney, Eric (as he was renamed) did not even complete the Intermediate examination held at the end of third form, let alone do the Leaving like Anne. Instead, his father put him in school for just six months, then sent him to earn a wage as a process worker on a metal press. Before long, like many other young refugees, he was drawn to communism because it appeared to represent the opposite of fascism. When his family moved from Sydney’s eastern suburbs to the city’s west, his worldview was transformed by another Austrian refugee, a Social Democrat with a vast library. After attending meetings of the Australian Communist Party’s Youth League, Eric joined the party itself. En route he lost his belief in Judaism and, though he remained a party member for only a year, his faith did not return. When he met Anne, he was an agnostic but avoided conflict with his father by observing Passover with the family and going to synagogue.

  The Bonyhadys—Eric, above; his brother, Fred, below; mother, Edith, and father, Edward—taken in Sydney by Australia’s foremost refugee photographer, Margaret Michaelis, 1944. (Illustration Credits ill.48)

  The Bonyhadys’ tradition of religious observance was much stronger than that of either the Herschmanns or the Jacobis, the families of Anne’s father, Paul, and Erni’s wife, Mizzi. The Bonyhadys took pride in being descendants of Meir or Mordechai Tosk, a dayan, or religious judge, in Bratislava, whose portrait was displayed in the Bonyhady house. Salomon Bonyhady went to synagogue every morning and occupied ever more significant posts in the Jewish community in Graz until he became president of the Hevrah Kaddisha, or Jewish burial society, and a member of the executive of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde. In Eduard’s last three months in Graz following his release from Dachau, he was the Kultusgemeinde’s president. In Sydney, Edward, as he became in one more name change, was a member of Sydney’s Central Synagogue. Together with Edith, he also joined the local chapter of the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith and regularly attended its meetings. They kept a kosher household. They always had a mezuzah by their front door, symbolically sanctifying their house as well as announcing their faith.

  All this made Eric in many ways similar to Anne as well as very different from her. They both came from Austria. They both were of Jewish origin. The Bonyhadys had not only been engaged in the leather trade like the Herschmanns but had also done business with them. Anne and Eric arrived in Australia within six months of each other. Like Eric, Anne was an agnostic if not atheist. Yet while Anne had acquired intellectual range and ambition at university, Eric’s educational aspirations had been stymied. For all the property that Gretl and Kathe lost when they escaped Austria, Eric still thought of them as rich. Whereas Anne knew almost nothing about Judaism, Eric was steeped in it. While she was intent on leaving her Jewish past behind her, Eric remained attached to his.

  They met in 1945, when Anne was doing her teacher training and Eric was working as a draftsman, and were soon going out every Saturday night. After he took her to a cabaret at Sydney’s Maccabean Hall staged by the Women’s International Zionist Organization, Anne recorded how much she liked Eric. After another outing to the ballet, Eric escorted her home to Cremorne for the first time. During another, they encountered Anne’s friend Gerty Angel, who warned Anne that Eric’s father was very controlling. Still, when Anne went to meet his family at their house in Bankstown, she was shocked by his father’s dominance and mother’s subservience. While her friends included several Jews who had retained their faith, Anne was appalled by Edward’s religiosity. She described him as a “zealous Jew.”

  As Anne and Eric continued courting, they still were able to see each other only on weekends because they lived far apart and he was studying at night. While they had wonderful times together, their relationship was usually fraught. When Eric wanted to marry, Anne did not, and vice versa. The same was true when one of them wanted to break up but still wanted the other’s agreement. His father was a prime source of tension. Edward Bonyhady loathed Anne, as he despised all converts from Judaism, while Anne loathed Edward’s religiosity and his power over Eric, who in turn came to recognize that he let Anne exercise too mu
ch power over him. “I gave too much in to you,” he wrote in September 1947, “allowed you to take the lead too often!”

  They decided to marry that December when Anne was approaching her twenty-sixth birthday and had just begun teaching at the Sacred Heart Convent, while Eric had just turned twenty-four and was still working as a draftsman. Within a week they were looking for a place to live. A week later Eric revealed their plans to Edward and, Anne recorded, the “Kampf,” or “battle,” was on, as Edward demanded that Eric and Anne wait a year while Anne converted to Judaism. When they talked on December 28, she refused to convert but agreed to wait a year, only to fear she had conceded too much. She began a letter to her “dearest Eric” late that night by demanding that he make up his mind at once. He had to choose between his family and her. They needed to marry or part immediately. But by the end of the letter, she was willing to wait so long as Edward fixed the date of their wedding and Eric left home at once.

  Eric agreed to marry immediately but did not tell his family. When his aunt Mira pressed Anne to convert, declaring that her marriage to Eric would otherwise be an irredeemable stain on the Bonyhady family’s honor, Anne considered Mira a “fanatic.” On January 3, 1948, they married at the registry office in the city with just their two witnesses present. As they emerged, a street photographer caught them holding hands, beaming with happiness. They had lunch at the apartment in Cremorne with Kathe and Gretl. They spent the afternoon watching Black Narcissus, a new British film, despite Anne having little taste for popular culture. They spent their wedding night in a hotel.

  Eric and Anne following their marriage, Sydney, January 1948. (Illustration Credits ill.49)

  The following day Eric wrote to let Edward and Edith know what Anne and he had done and to try to placate them. “Dear Parents,” he began in German, when he usually wrote to them in English. “Ad meah shanah,” “For a hundred years,” he continued, for once adopting his father’s custom of using this Hebrew salutation. “Hopefully you will understand how sorry we are to notify you in writing that we have just married. But if you put yourself in our situation and imagine how much we love each other and that we cannot relinquish our relationship, you will understand that we could not find another way out other than to marry quickly and secretly. This we did on Saturday and look forward to hearing from you when we can personally receive your blessings.”

  Gretl did her best to ensure that Anne and Eric benefited from what she had learned from her marriage. Because Hermine’s criticism of Paul Herschmann had been so destructive, Gretl resolved to side with Eric whenever Anne and he argued. When Gretl received a letter from Anne that April describing her first Passover with the Bonyhadys—almost certainly the first Passover Anne had attended—Gretl was so disturbed that she immediately sent Anne a letter in which she recounted her experience of a similar situation, Paul’s obvious contempt for the Gallias’ Catholicism when he attended his first Christmas at the Wohllebengasse. Gretl advised Anne that she was incapable of hiding her feelings so, even if Anne said nothing, her response would be clear from her face. She warned that even if Eric said nothing, he would be acutely sensitive to her rejection of Judaism, since he had been raised a Jew. She admonished Anne that “one should never make fun of the religion or beliefs of other human beings.”

  It was to no avail. Anne was incapable of changing or hiding her animosity toward Edward, just as he could not hide his antipathy toward her. Eric’s aunt Mira added to Anne’s sense of alienation by persisting in calling her “Sie” rather than “Du,” as if she were still not part of the family. For the next few years, Eric and Anne spent Easter with Gretl and Kathe and Passover with the Bonyhadys. But these occasions were always awkward, if not unpleasant, so after a few years Eric began going to his family’s Passover celebrations without Anne. By then it was clear that, for all their similarities, theirs was a mixed marriage.

  Their first house created more tensions between them. In keeping with Gallia tradition, they employed an architect, and Anne had a range of furniture designed by a fellow refugee, George Korody, who was at the forefront of modern design in Australia. But when Eric’s parents offered to give them a wedding present, and she asked for a bedroom suite from Korody, they went to another refugee, Paul Kafka, whose work was generally much darker and heavier. Just as Norbert Stern was appalled when Moriz insisted that Josef Hoffmann design the apartment in the Untere Augartenstrasse when Norbert and Gretl were engaged, so Anne loathed the furniture that her parents-in-law imposed on her. When Anne and Eric separated, she kept all the Korody furniture apart from the desk used by Eric. He kept the Kafka furniture.

  Pregnancy brought out everything that Anne and Eric had not resolved about their religions. While Anne wanted their baby baptized Catholic to mask his Jewish origins and shield him against a recurrence of anti-Semitism, Eric feared his father’s reaction. Whereas Paul Herschmann had determined that Anne be a Jew despite Gretl’s opposition, Anne insisted that Bruce become Catholic. His baptism, three weeks after he was born in March 1954, may have been the first time that thirty-year-old Eric was in a church. It almost certainly was his first Christian service.

  Anne and Eric started the day by going to visit Gretl and Kathe, who celebrated Bruce’s baptism by creating a bank account for him into which they deposited £50. Then Anne and Eric went to the Catholic church in Mosman with Kathe, who was to be Bruce’s godmother. When the priest insisted on questioning them because he had not seen them before and wanted to confirm their commitment to the Church, they lied. The priest wanted to know where they lived, clearly expecting them to become parishioners, so they gave their address as the flat in Cremorne rather than their own house in Chatswood. He wanted to know where they had been married, and they told him St. Mary’s, Sydney’s Catholic cathedral, rather than the city’s registry office. That afternoon, after returning to Chatswood, they had a terrible argument.

  My religious identity was not as much of an issue for Anne. But having had Bruce baptized, she decided I should be, too. Once again Eric had to be involved, he dared not tell his parents, and Kathe was godmother. Once again the priest sensed a lack of conviction, which led him to ask questions. “Who brings this elderly child?” he exclaimed when Anne and Eric took me to the church when I was almost three months old, in December 1957. Kathe made things worse when, feeling the strain of the occasion, she lapsed into German when the priest asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer, prompting him to ask for it in English. Eric—Anne recorded in her diary—was “reluctant and angry.”

  My Catholicism almost stopped there. Only Gretl built on it when she taught me the Lord’s Prayer in German before I even knew it in English. Bruce and I never went to Sunday school or church. For Anne, our baptisms were part of a pragmatic approach to religion that saw us go from being baptized Catholic to having us educated Anglican and then Methodist while she raised us as atheists after Eric and she were divorced. When Bruce found himself being picked on after revealing his Catholic baptism to one of his classmates at the Anglican school we attended in Melbourne in the mid-1960s, Anne instructed him not to talk about his religion. If he was ever asked, she told him, he should say he was Church of England.

  5

  Return

  One of the highlights of the BBC’s Christmas Day program for 1954 was a feature on “Good Neighbors,” broadcast immediately before the Queen’s message to the Commonwealth. As described by the BBC, “Good Neighbors” told the stories of men and women from around the world, some famous, others not, who were “living and working for the sake of others.” One was Leonard Cheshire, the most celebrated British bomber pilot of World War II, who became a hero of the peace by establishing the Cheshire Homes for the sick, old, poor, and helpless. Another was the Canadian Marilyn Bell, who had swum “into fame and fortune” by being the first to cross Lake Ontario and then had used her feat to secure donations ensuring the future of a Toronto clinic for crippled children. Nurse Joseph exemplified “the new spirit moving the
sons and daughters of India’s privileged classes to share the primitive way of life of the villages in which nine-tenths of India’s four hundred million people live.” Gretl was a “New Australian” helping even newer Australians by teaching them English, repaying “the gift of a new home in a new country by a very practical form of good-neighborliness.”

  This radio appearance, lasting for one minute and fifty-five seconds—marginally more than the Canadian Marilyn Bell and the Indian Nurse Joseph—was Gretl’s closest brush with fame during her life in Australia. It provided her with an opportunity to represent her new country and to be heard across it. She also reached family and friends who had fled to other parts of the Commonwealth and with whom she had not spoken for at least sixteen years. It was a matter of family pride, as Anne put it, that Gretl was “on the Christmas broadcast with the Queen.”