Elisabeth Orsten - “What was to become of my little brother?”

My brother and I grew up in Vienna, and received the Catholic education provided by the public school system at the time. After Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, and I could no longer attend public schools, I was briefly sent to a convent school. To be told that we were Jewish made no sense to me whatsoever.

My parents realised that we would have to leave Austria. As a temporary measure, they sent my brother and me to relatives in Germany where things were calmer. All that changed after 9 November 1938. My mother hastily collected us from Frankfurt. Thanks to a cousin who practiced medicine in London, she had already found a new home for me with an English family, but wondered how to get me there.

Furthermore, what was to become of my little brother? This is when the Society of Friends entered the picture. Because I already had a place, they were willing to find somewhere for my brother, and saw to it that we both left on a transport from Vienna in January 1939.

Not only did the Kindertransport save our lives, but it also saved the lives of my parents. No longer so worried about what would become of us, they were free to concentrate on their own security. After various false starts, they finally received US visas thanks to financial guarantees provided by distant relatives. If the latter had had to promise to support two growing children as well, they might have been less willing and able to help.

Although I was in England for less than two years, I was very happy and loved my English family. Neither my brother nor I wanted to leave, but after the fall of Dunkirk, my parents insisted we join them. Ours was the last ship prepared to evacuate children to cross the submarine-infested Atlantic. For me, the nightmare journey from a tranquil countryside to Bloomsbury House in London, where bombs were falling, and then on to Liverpool which was also being attacked that night, until we boarded that lonely ship, was far worse than the journey from Vienna to England, and, given wartime security, there was no one to meet me at the other end. But that is another story.

Elisabeth Orsten
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada