Blame it on Rio

Today is the 84th Anniversary of Kristalnacht.

We swore to never forget yet in recent days not only in the USA but around the world we seemed not to recall that lack of vigilance will make history repeat itself. .

Below is the memorandum my father wrote to his children so we would never forget. I share it with you so you will never let it happen again.

A MINOR MEMORANDUM TO MY CHILDREN

ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF KRYSTALLNACHT,

NOVEMBER 9 AND 10, 1938

I don’t intend to make this a big deal literary effort or a weepy emotional debauch. I simply want to tell you what I remember about Krystallnacht. So you should remember as well. And if there are to be others like us, so you can tell them. Nothing big! Just a small and portable lesson about the planet we live on and the hazards of being a little different.

Krystallnacht did not start for me until November 10, 1938. I knew that von Rath had been shot by Gruenspan but I knew nothing about what was happening all over Germany during the night of the ninth. I was 12 years (12 10/12 ths )old and I was asleep.

I was still lying in my bed, at about seven on the morning of November 10, when there was loud knocking on our door. I heard my father and mother (your grandparents ) talking to some people. Several stormtroopers (SA) had come to arrest Jewish men. The entrance to our apartment was through the kitchen and all this was taking place in the kitchen. After a few minutes I heard one of the Brownshirts ask whether there were any other male Jews in the apartment. Grandma said only my little boy. I dont think they believed her because they came into our mainroom, where my bed was. I closed my eyes and pretended I was asleep. They came to my bed and they looked at me and they must have decided either that I was too young, or that I looked too fierce to mess around with since there were only six of them. So they took just grandpa with them and they left.

As we later found out, they took grandpa to the local police station. From there they marched him and others to the Rossauer Kaserne, a military barracks. He was lucky because he had a roof over his head. Many other Jewish men were taken to a large soccer stadium and did not have a roof over their head.

Grandpa had been fired from his regular job as a bristle processor a couple months before. He was earning some money by helping a carter hauling the furniture of Jews that had been kicked out of their apartments. The cart was pulled by one brown horse. Grandpa had a job scheduled for that morning.

Grandma sent me to help the carter in grandpa’s place. May- be grandma was a tough Hungarian cookie who did not want the Rothkopf’s reputation as men of their word sullied, or maybe we needed the money, or perhaps she wanted me out of her hair so that she and Aunt Mitzi ( who lived in the next apartment and whose son Walter and friend Albert were already on the way to Dachau) could weep in peace.

I don’t remember exactly where I met the carter but it was at his client’s apartment near the Jewish section of Vienna. We loaded the wagon with furniture. I sat next to the driver on the high bench behind the horse. Then the brown horse slowly pulled us through the streets towards the place where we had to make our delivery.

Groups of people were standing in front of the broken windows of Jewish stores, gawking while Brownshirts were putting their owners through their paces — handing over business papers, washing the sidewalk with lye, licking Aryan employees shoes clean. Anything that would keep the cultured Viennese crowds amused. We passed a narrow street that led to one of Vienna’s larger synagogue. The alley was jammed with jeering onlookers. Stormtroopers were throwing furniture and Torah scrolls through the big main door into the street. One side of the roof (I couldnt see the other and you know what a sceptic I am ) was afire. I remember very vividly the twists of whitish-yellow smoke that were curling up the slope of blue tiles.

Farther on we passed another synagogue that was fully ablaze. The police had made people stand back from it. I suppose they feared for their safety. A fire truck was parked down the street. The firemen were leaning against their equipment, talking and smoking cigarettes. Everywhere there were clusters of people, in a holiday mood, gathering around smashed Jewish stores. Little groups of Jews, both men and women, were being led along the sidewalk flanked by squads of SA men. The Jews were made to do all sorts of menial chores. Someone told me later, that one elderly Jew asked to go to the toilet. They made him go in a bucket and then forced him to eat his feces.

By now I was beginning to figure out what was going on. I sat high on my horsey throne (just like the Duke of Edinburgh when he drives his high-stepping pair, except that I didn’t wear an apron ). Whenever we passed a sidewalk event or other happening, I pulled down the wings of my nostrils (I thought I looked more Christian that way), staring straight ahead, but watching the Nazi street theatre out of the corners of my eyes. The driver, who was also Jewish, was a hard old soul. I dont remember him saying a single word to me, all day, about what was going on. Maybe he thought I was too young to hear about such things.

I dont remember much more detail. I got paid. The trolley I went home on was crowded. I kept staring out the window so that people wouldn’t notice the handsome Jewishness of my face. Beyond the rattling trolley panes, the peculiar happenings of November 10, 1938 were still in progress here and there, even as the day’s light was fading.

When I got home, grandma and Mitzi were still weeping. They had just come back from the police station but grandpa and the other Jews were no longer there.

Grandpa came home ten days later. He had spent that time in a room with 500 other people and one water faucet. They did a lot of military drill ( was this the beginning of the Hagganah ?) and exercises — push-ups, deep kneebends, and the like. Some who didn’t do so well got beaten up. He never told me whether they did anything to him. But then I wouldn’t tell you either. Grandpa was lucky. A lot of the Jewish men who were arrested on the 9th and 10th of November were sent to the concentration camp at Dachau.

Not one single synagogue was left intact in all of Vienna. That really screwed me up because I was nearly thirteen. You need to have a Torah to become a Bar Mitzwah and you need to have a table on which to lay the scroll while you read. And how was I to get a fountain pen now?

The dead, of course, are dead. They are mourned by those who remember. Tears dry. Bruises heal. Razed synagogues become parking lots. Injured dignity heals although slowly. What hurts most to this day is impotent compassion for those who were swept away.

In order to have faith in our quality as human beings, we need to remember! And thats why I am writing you this note.

I am a conservative.

By definition that means a person who supports an emphasis on traditions and relies on the individual to maintain society.

A conservative is someone who supports a woman’s right to choose what to do with their own bodies without government interference, but because like or not the right to an abortion is a traditional value as it has been settle law for over fifty years.

A conservative would never force a ten-year-old rape victim maintain a pregnancy that would destroy her life and likely kill her nor prosecute a Dr. for assisting in the termination of that pregnancy. That is, the definition of governmental overreach.

A conservative is someone who supports a person’s right to love whom they choose. Government should not entangle themselves in people’s emotional lives. That is private and no one’s business but their own. It is also a traditional value. Homosexuality, queerness, bi-sexuality, interracial and inter-religious  (to name just a few brands of love) relationships have been around since Homo Sapiens first encountered Cro Magnon. The government should not tell us who we can love.

A conservative supports the constitution of the United States. They believe in country over party. They don’t believe lies never had any basis in truth and were rejected by sixty courts of law. A conservative would never support a person or group of persons who attempt to overthrow the government or interfere with the constitutionally mandated duties of congress.

A conservative does not believe that the United States has a national religion. They believe in the constitutionally mandated and traditional value of “make no law respecting an establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” A conservative would never say that we are a Judeo-Christian, Christian, or any other sort of religious country. We are by tradition and law a country that embraces all religions and eschews anything that does not separate church/synagogue/mosque/temple/pagan alter from state.

A conservative understands that the second amendment in its originalist form gives the right of gun ownership only for maintaining a “well regulated militia.” It is not so anyone, mentally undone, untrained, and not competent can legally buy a weapon of war and enough ammunition to keep at bay an entire police force while innocent children are being slaughtered on a wholesale basis. A conservative understands the hypocrisy of crying the right to life for a fetus yet not respecting the right to life of those faced with gun violence.

A conservative understands that there is a difference between an enterprise and an individual. Enterprises are run based on the needs of the few for profit. A country is based on the needs of the individual. Respecting the individual over corporations means a respect for privacy and the environment. That if corporations appropriate these rights, they not respecting traditional values or individual rights and should be sanctioned.

Winston Churchill once famously said “If You Are Not a Liberal When You Are Young, You Have No Heart, and If You Are Not a Conservative When Old, You Have No Brain.” (He was likely not the first to say this)  He was right. At least by my contemporary definition of conservative.

It is 11:45 and we are in hotel room in Baden.

It is an unremarkable room in that it resembles most mid priced hotel rooms in Europe: It has very simple modern wood furniture, two twin beds that are placed directly adjacent to each other, a small table with chairs for writing postcards, a euro styled television and a frigio bar. There are no pieces of art on the wall. The door is open to a small balcony that overlooks a typically beautiful Austrian park with its well manicured lawns that you can not walk on and immaculately planted flower beds that seem always to be in season. This afternoon an ompah band entertained us with an hour and a half concert of Austrian classics and Broadway show tunes and this evening we had dinner at the Grand Casino that directly abuts the park.

It is quiet. The only sound coming through the open door is the sound of a passing car its tires crackling against the wet pavement. The smell of hydrangea’s and lilacs are wafting in through the open door. My father is restless in his bed. Instead of the steady stream of snoring that I normally would hear I hear nothing except the occasional rustle of his duvet as he tries to find a comfortable position. Sleep is eluding me as well. My stomach is still shaky, my mind still buzzing with the events of the day.

I was very happy to leave Sopron this morning. It was a perfect morning for drive with soft sunlight, a feint breeze and mild temperatures and I knew the Austrian countryside would be beautiful. But it is more than that.  My father has been very sick in this hotel. Whatever the gastrointestinal illness that first manifested itself in Vienna really took root here. He spent most of his time here asleep or in the toilet. The room despites its open windows has taken on the smell of a sick room and the bathroom lacking any ventilation whatsoever has a fetid evil smell somewhere between third world slit trench and an unclean litter box. I am convinced that the nausea and uncomfortable feeling that I have in my gut are from this place and that as soon as this place is in my rear view mirror the sooner that I will begin to feel better.

After I load our Opel Astra with our luggage I go in search of my father. I find him in the most unlikely of places doing the most unlikely of things. He is in the dining room eating breakfast.  I am not eager for breakfast this morning and for some reason I decide to watch him for a little while as he makes his way through the breakfast buffet. He is wearing a decidedly dad clothes, a light blue shirt of which he has so many and that he has worn for so many years that I secretly call it Ernie blue, twill pants that he has in a variety of khaki colors including the brown that he is wearing today, and dark brown half boots that he has had in some variety for as long as I can remember. It is an outfit that is neither in style nor out of style, practical and I decide that is as good a metaphor for my father as I can think of.

He is also not moving well this morning. His shoulders are stooped and he is bending forward at the hips. Instead of lifting his feet he is shuffling them a little bit more than normal. He is walking old today and I don’t like it. My pops shouldn’t be walking old. He should be standing straight up and walking tall like he is in my memories. These are things that we can fix through better exercise and stretching that he finds boring but will give him a better quality of life and I vow silently when we get back to the states that I will work with him on stomach exercises, and back exercises that should help him to regain his posture.  I know that the likelihood of my father doing these exercises in the way that they are supposed to be done and in the numbers required to really help straighten him out are slim but I also know that I have to try. I don’t want my Pops looking or feeling old. It implies too many things that I would prefer not to think about.

When I finally make it to the table I find my father fully engaged in breakfast. Not only has he picked up some picked some yogurt, cheese and breads from the buffet but he has ordered some scrambled eggs from the waiter. I am impressed but not surprised.  Impressed that my father’s recovery from this bug that had laid him low just a couple of days ago had progressed to the point where he would eat a substantial breakfast before getting into a car with no assurances on when the next rest stop would be. Not surprised because my father has always been a big eater. In fact, the thing that made him seek out medical help when he developed lymphoma was that he could not eat an entire sausage so I am happy that he is eating.

The waiter comes and asks me in Hungarian what I would like for breakfast. At least that is what I think that he has said as I don’t understand a word he is saying. I reply in the only words in Hungarian that I can speak with any sort of confidence “Coca Cola.” My father looks at me and asks “Don’t you feel well?” knowing that drinking soda, let alone Coke is not something that I regularly engage in.

I respond “No, no I am fine. I am just not that hungry and my stomach is a little queasy so I don’t want to push it. I don’t want to tell him that this morning that I was forced to take two Immodium and had nearly thrown up for the first time in nearly 20 years. I don’t want to tell him given my druthers I would be in bed asleep.  I don’t want our trip together to be about me being sick. I don’t want my father to feel like he has to take care of me. This is our chance to explore together and I don’t want to be the one who, excuse the expression, craps it up.

We leave Sopron on a route that takes us directly past the house my grandmother was born in. As we pass it I am filled with memories of her. How she always made me feel loved and complete. I thought about her hugs and how they made me feel safe. I think about how she smelled. I could picture her smiling at me and shaking her head in the way that she did sometimes. I think about that this is where it began for her and as a consequence for both my Dad and me. So as I drive by I wave and say “Good-bye Grandma.” I looked over and see my father staring at the red house as we drive by and I wonder what he is thinking. My memories of her are when she was older and life had taken its toll… From when she was a stranger in a strange land.  His memories of her are from this place and from a time where life had not extracted so much. And even though my grandmother has been dead almost 30 years I miss her and I wonder what it must be like for him to be without his mother for so long. Her funeral is the only time in my life I have ever heard him sob.

I know better than to ask him about his thoughts. He will only crack wise or make a joke. So instead I concentrate on my driving and leave him to his thoughts and for a while we drive on in silence.

We cross the Hungarian/Austrian border with barely an acknowledgement from the Guards of either country. Apparently, we do not look worthy of them wasting their time on and just like I do when I clear customs or enter a country anywhere, I feel like I have gotten away with something. It is a nice feeling and soon the car is speeding down A2 at 140km hours.

As on the trip to Sopron, my father is the navigator. He is blessed with a great sense of direction and the map reading skills the army teaches its officers. He has also been to this part of the world many times. So I have faith that he will get us to our destination of Fahrafeld. Still I think that our decision to take B and C roads instead of just the A’s has more to do with happenstance than planning just as I have no doubts that more than a couple of times we made decisions that took us farther away from our destination rather than closer.

It is sunny and warm and our windows are open and the smell of flowers and freshly cultivated fields fill the compartment of the car. Whether it is because of our stomach problems or the fact that my father and I have spoken more in the last three days than we have in years we are not talking very much. Instead we pass the time looking beyond our windows. We pass through vineyards with their meticulously kept vines greening and in bloom. .There are small farms that look dainty by American standards, with freshly cultivated tracks and farmers atop green tractors often wearing brightly covered overalls.  There are fields densly packed with yellow bright yellow flowers.  We pass through small towns that look like they belong more in n gauge train set than in real life.

At one point I comment to my father that everything looks familiar enough to be comforting but just different enough that we could be in an episode of the Outer Limits. But he is lost in some thoughts beyond the reaches of the car and does not respond so I drive on.  

We are in the hills now and the scenery has changed from farms and fields to meadows and trees. Not to far from Pottenstein which is the nearest town of any size close to Fahrafeld my father yells at  me “Turn right, turn right here” in the same tone he used to use when he was teaching me to drive. I do my best not to let his tone of  voice get the better of me but for a few minutes I am one pissed off 17 year old whose father is doing him no favor by teaching him how to drive. I slam on the breaks and still manage to make the turn a little faster than I probably should have.

My father realizes that the tone of voice that he used is not appropriate and as he has done so often in the past when this is the case, changes the subject. He says “ I know where we are now. You see that building up there on the hill, that is horticultural research station for the University of Vienna. I remember it from the last time we were here.”

He says this with satisfaction and there is also an element of excitement that I have not heard in his voice on this trip. So I ask him “Are you excited about going to Fahrafeld and he replies in a manner that is typical of him “I don’t know if you would exactly call it excited….”

I can tell that what is to follow is a discourse on the appropriate word for how he feels and I turn down the volume. I realize that this discussion is just a way for my father to mask his feelings. For whatever reason traveling to this place has brought more emotion to the surface than all of the other things we have done on this trip. More than seeing his best friend in the hospital; more than visiting the graveyards of his relatives; more than visiting the house his mother was born in. As he talks in the background I wonder why he feels so emotionally connected to this place. All I can remember him telling me about Fahrafeld  is that he used to go there to visit his Aunt in summer and it is the place he learned to love buttermilk a beverage that to this day he claims is the best drink in the world to relieve the heat of a summer day.

So after he has finished talking I say in my best smart ass way “You know I didn’t listen a lot to you as a kid, tell me about you and this place.”

So he reminds me that when my grandmother was very young her mother died. That her father who already had 12 children had a hard time running a household with that many kids and no wife so that some of the kids were parceled out to other relatives as was the custom at the time. Little Jeni, age 4, was sent to Fahrafeld to live with her Aunt Pepi her mothers sister. She lived their until she was 14 when she sent away to a technical school so that she could learn how to be a seamstress. My grandmother always thought of her Aunt as her mother so it was natural that when my father got too old to spend summer’s in the city that she would take him to her to spend the summer. He said that he would arrive by train in the early summer and not leave again until school was about to begin.  . He tells me that his Aunt Pepi was the only grandmother he ever knew and says this is a such a wistful voice and I know that I can not press further so once again we drive in silence for a while.

We come to a T-intersection and my father tells me to take a right. I look at the sign and it says Rt 212. When I suggest the irony of the Rt, 212 being the NYC area code, to my father and he just nods his full attention on the road ahead and trying to find Pepi’s house. The road is of the type that German performance cars were made for. It is narrow, winding, and well maintained. It is also quite picturesque. Along the drivers side of the road is a fast moving stream about 5 meters wide that you can see the occasional fly fisherman and fields full of wildflowers and what appear to be Dandelions. On the right side are small cottages, the Austrian version of a cape, in brightly colored hues and a mountain dense with trees.

After about 5 minutes we pass a white rectangular sign with the word Fahrafeld written on it.  Almost immediately upon passing into the town the road becomes canopied by trees on either side. The houses become more frequent and my father, who is normally calm to the point of stoic, is visibly agigtated and keeps telling me to slow down. I look in my rear view mirror and see that a long line of traffic has built up behind us and tell my father that I really can’t slow down much more. This news is greeted with a harrumph and visible annoyance. The town itself is beautiful with small cottages and what can only be described as chalet’s in various bright colors densely populating the right hand side of the road. On the stream side it appears that they have created a small park with paved paths and flower beds. The town does not last long. A couple of minutes at most and before too long we see the same white rectangular sign with Fahrafeld written on it only this time there is a red slash going through it.

My father who was agitated before is now quite upset and  I can tell by the way he tells me to “turn the car around” that he is royally pissed off. I see a picnic area on the right hand side of the road and I pull into it hoping to use it as a jug handle to turn around. I don’t want to drive with my father this annoyed. I don’t want to have an argument with him and I know that in his current state the 17 year old in me could come out at any moment so I pull the car over and park. He barks “What are you doing?” and I respond that the scene in front of us….a grassy meadow dotted with dandelions, a farmhouse with a red roof surrounded by trees, framed by a mountain in the background…is lovely and I want to take a photograph. I take my time and probably more photographs than I should but the result is what I had hoped for as my father is visibly calmer when I re-enter the car.

I try to go slower as we go back through town but the road is a very busy one and before too long there is once again a long line of traffic behind us. When I see in the middle of this village a place to pull over I seize the opportunity.  My father is looking around and tells me in a very disappointed tone that he thinks that we may have come all this way for nothing as he can’t spot his Aunts house and that he is afraid that it might have been torn down. I can tell that he’s upset and wish that I could find the words to comfort him but I can’t so I remain silent.

He says you see that over there. I nod. He says that is a war memorial and lists the names of the dead from this town. One of the kids I use to play with as a kids name is listed there. As I pull back onto the road, I think about how bizarre a world we live in. How two childhood friends could end up on either side of a war and one makes it and the other does not. It reminds me of how random life is and as always I am disturbed by this.

I am broken out of my thoughts by my father yelling at me to pull over. Luckily, just beyond a small bridge passing over the stream,  I spot a place to pull the car off the road and park.. My father points at a light blue house with a red tile roof and only windows facing the street and says “That is your Aunt Pepi’s house….they have clearly renovated it but that is clearly her house.” His tone of voice which just minutes earlier had been harsh and upset is now that of relief and delight and I can tell that seeing this house has transformed him in a way that I can’t imagine.

We both get out of the car and study the house from the distance. My father is wearing his signature Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses so it is hard to figure out what is going on inside of him but there is a whisper of a smile on his face so whatever is going on I suspect is a good thing.  As I pull my camera from the backseat so that I can take photographs of the house my father turns and walks towards the bridge. My fathers steps are small and deliberate, probably  the result of the long drive, and it upsets me to realize that he is walking just like the octogenarian he is.  I snap a few photos and when I finish my father  is turning the corner onto the bridge and disappears from sight.

I hurry to catch up with him but when I turn the corner my father is no where to be found. Instead I see a 10 year old boy standing in the middle of the bridge, surveying the scenery, as if he were a Prince and this was his own private kingdom.

The boy finished with surveying his property walked over to the rail and scoops up a hand full of small rocks that lay near by and begins to toss them one by one into the rushing stream below. I stare at the boy not quite sure of what to make of this transformation. He is wearing a dark blue polo shirt with khaki shorts and brown ankle height shoes that laced all the way up. Not too different from what my father was wearing this morning but dated as if you would see the clothes in a black and white photographs whose edges were curled and worn.

I walk up to him and lean across the rail. Below the water is running rapidly over smooth rocks and the babble of the water is loud but soothing. For some reason I am nervous to speak, as if by saying something aloud will make this apparition disappear. So for a while the boy and I just stand, our faces warm in the spring sun, and watch the water disappear under the bridge. Finally, the desire to talk to this boy who will be my father is greater than my fear of his disappearance and I ask “What is the name of this river.”

He replies “It called the Triesting” and then points and says “Look over there by the rock in the center of the stream. Do you see the trout?” I look to where he is pointing and I see what appear to be two golden trout, nearly camouflaged by their background and the glint of the sun off the water. We watch as they make their way upstream and out of sight. Eventually I ask him “Do you ever go fishing here?”

He replies, in the gushing way that 10 years old speak when they are particularly excited about something, “I don’t have a fishing poll and neither do my friends so we can’t really fish here but” he says pointing to place just beyond a field of tall grass and dandelions “over there is another smaller stream. My buddies and I sometimes go over there where the water doesn’t move so fast and you can straddle the brook, and we make a noose out of wire. We wait until we see a fish and then we dip the lasso in the water and just at the right moment  we pull on the noose and we catch ourselves a fish.” He looks up at me his chin sticking in the air and proudly adds “You don’t think it can be done, but it can.”

I have no doubt that it can be done because if this little boy says it can, it can. Instead I think about how tempting those fish must of have been to him and his friends. I imagine the serious conversations and the plotting he and his buddies must have had to devise a plan to catch the fish and the arguments and eureka moments that must of occurred while they perfected their device and how to use it. I can only imagine how proud they must have been when they caught their first fish and I wonder who they showed first and what they said to them.

And then I too am struck by a memory. I am very young and my father, brother and I are going for a walk through the woods together. It is very green and the forest so lush that it blocks out most of the sunlight but the path is clear and we eventually make our way to a wide but very narrow stream. My father helps my brother and I take our shoes and socks off and we wade into the cold water. Picking up some stones my father begins to make a small U shaped structure with the open end in the direction of the oncoming water. He tells my brother and I that these are minnow traps and says that the fish come with the flow of water and can’t make it back out due to the current.

I am broken out of my reverie by the ten year old asking “Do you want to go for a walk?” I nod and we begin down to walk a dirt path that I would have sworn was paved just a few minutes ago. He points ahead of us and says “That’s the canal.” And sure enough just a head of is a slow moving span of water that I don’t recall seeing on our drive into town. Nonetheless we walk along it for a short while until we reach a wooden dock. The boy takes off his shoes and then unwraps a piece of cloth that is wrapped around his foot like a bandage, and dips his feet into the water.

I ask, pointing to what was wrapped around his feet, “What are those?” He replies unabashedly that his Aunt Pepi made them for him. That he didn’t have any socks so this is what he put around his feet to protect them from rubbing against the leather of his shoes. I nod not quite comprehending what it must have been like to grow up without socks. When I was a kid they always seem to be disappearing into my shoes.

I take my off my sneakers and we both dangle our feet in the cold water of the canal, and we bask in the sun like two turtles on a log. Accoss the canal the breeze slowly moves the grass in the meadow. I ask him “What do you all day?”

He tells me that sometimes he helps the local shepherd take the animals from the village up to the meadow. I must of looked confused because he explains that “His Aunt Pepi had an arrangement with the local shepherd to take him along when he would take the animals of the town up to the pasture  . In the morning the shepherd, who was some young guy from the village, would  pick up the local livestock and take them up to a place where they could graze. Then sometime in the late afternoon they would walk back into town with the animals and drop them off one by one at people’s houses.

I think about what a practical solution this was for everyone. How folks around there were not farmers but they had livestock to supply the with basics like milk, meat and fabric but none of them had enough to warrant having a shepherd of their own so theirs was communal. How practical too for my father’s aunt. She must of have been in her 70’s back then and having a 10 year old running around and underfoot must have been quite a challenge so she invented a day camp for him…very different from my day camp experience…but camp none the less.

Thinking about my own favorite experiences at camp I asked him “What did you do for lunch.” He tells me that his Aunt would put together what ever she had in her larder for him. Perhaps a hunk of cheese, maybe a piece of salami and some bread and if was really lucky a piece of hard candy and she would wrap it all in a handkerchief for him to carry. The idea of lunch wrapped in a handkerchief seems so foreign to me but this was time and a place before lunch boxes or paper bags and I think about the mountain of little conveniences that separate the past from the present.

I ask him what he does when they get to the pasture and the little boy tells me proudly that a lot of the time he helps the shepherd take care of the animals. I imagine this little boy herding cows, sheep, and goats….running after them, keeping them from wandering off  and from harm, watching for predators, making friends with the animals. I think about how different that this must have been from his life in a fourth floor walk up in Vienna, where he slept in the kitchen, and the bathroom was not in the apartment but down the hall. How different it must have been walking the peaceful paths of Fahrafeld from the streets of Vienna ever more dangerous with burgeoning anti-Semitism. I  know longer wondered why my father, the city kid, ever considered becoming a Zoologist, or is so kind to animals or when he is a jovial mood says in his retirement he would to raise goats.

I remark that even with all the things that he  helps the shepherd with that there must be a lot time that there is nothing for him to do and I ask him what he does  then. He tells me that he goes off exploring in the woods. That he goes and finds new paths and new places to see in the forest. That he goes looking for birds and animals and that sometimes if his friends have come with them they play the cowboys and Indians that  he has no doubt read about in books he loves. I smile at him and ask “Do you ever get lost?” He replies with the confidence of every ten year old “Never!”

And I think about the countless hours I have spent with my father in the woods. The hikes we have taken…the animals, birds and plants that he has pointed out for me. I remembered  when I was ten and my father, brother and I were hiking in Humboldt National Forest and we had gone far from camp and I told my Dad that I thought we were lost and he had told me in absolute confidence not to worry. I believed him then but now know where that confidence has come from.

I also remember the father’s day five years previous at Skilak Lake when I left my father behind to climb a trail. I wonder what the ten year old I am now sitting with now thought then. I realize how painful  it must have been for him not to be able to take that walk and the funk I felt in the Alaskan woods return for a moment.

The boy says “You want to walk over to the train station.” I nod in agreement and walk down the dusty path our shoes dangling from our hands. I ask “ Do you come here by train.”

“Yes. When it gets warm in the city my mother brings me out. We sit in the back of the train, in third class and it is not so bad unless its really hot and gets really stuffy back there.”

“Can’t you open a window?”

“No, Muti won’t let me. She is frightened that the sparks from coal fire in the engine will light her hair on fire.”

I smile at him and say “Does she stay here all summer with you?”

He shakes his head and says “No. She has to work so she just comes sometimes for a few days. And you want to know a secret? I think I may have some psychic abilities! Sometimes when I hear the train whistle blowing in the distance I try to concentrate really hard on whether or not she is on the train and if I think that she is I will run down to the station to greet her and I almost never wrong!”

I think about the first summer I spent at camp and how I missed my mother and have no trouble imagining how tender and sweet those reunions must have been. How it must have been pretty lonely for both mother and child to be without each other without phone or perhaps even mail to comfort them. I also wonder about this boy’s talk of psychic ability. My father, the scientist, has never talked this way yet I find it very believable.

It is February 1979 and I am in Syracuse, New York.  The night before a snow storm had rattled my windows all evening but it isn’t the storm that has gotten me up so early. It was quiet now a thick layer of white snow lay every where silencing the normally busy apartment complex where I live. I am up because during the night I have an amazingly realistice dream that  has disturbed me. My grandmother Jenny visited me in my sleep and told me that the art deco garnet ring that was my grandfather’s,  and was given to me my dad,  which had been lost since my return from Christmas break, is underneath the front seat of my car. In a stupor and still in my pajamas I walk through the snow drifts to where my orange VW bug is parked and proceed to look where my grandmother has told me to despite the fact that I have looked there before. The ring is exactly where she said it would be. I am surprised and stunned but most delighted that I will not have to tell my father that I have lost my grandfahers ring. I put it on and walk back into the house.

I am sitting on my couch, drinking my first cup of coffee and admiring my ring finger when the phone rings. It is my brother. He is calling to tells me that sometime during the night my grandmother has passed away.

We stop just shy of the train station. It is a simple structure of dark hewn wood with a small home next to it. I have no troubles imagining a steam engine pulling into the station  nor the warm embraces of a mother and son.

We turn around and walk back the way we came and I ask the little boy what he does at night. He tells me that because of the mountains in the west it gets dark pretty early around here so that he usually just goes home and has a simple meal with Aunt Pepi and goes to sleep on a horsehair mattress that she has set up for him. Knowing the curiosity of the boy and of his love of books, I ask him if he reads before he goes to sleep. He says he sometimes does but it is hard becomes his Aunt’s house is without electricity and is only lit by oil lamps.

In the distance I hear the sound of bicycle bell ringing. “Tring Tring Tring Tring”. The ten year old looks up at me and says “It is the ice cream man! Aunt Pepi gave me a some money in case he came today. Would you hold these for me” and with that he hands me his shoes and goes tearing down the path and over the bridge to main road. I watch as a man riding a rickety bicycle with a brown wood case hanging in front of the handle bars  comes to stop in front of the boy. They talk for a little bit and then the man opens up the case and after a few seconds his hand emerges with an ice cream cone that he hands to the boy. The boy walks slowly back constantly licking at the cone so by the time he reaches me it is almost gone. He offers me a bite and when I decline he pops the rest of the cone into his mouth and I hand him back his shoes.

We walk slowly towards the bridge. Along the way I stop and turn around. I want to take a photograph of the train station, as the light is hitting it well. I begin to frame the picture in my lens when I hear from behind me “Bastards!” I spin and look and the ten year old is no where to be found. Instead my father has returned. He points to a telephone poll and shuffles away. I approach where Dad was pointing, and see scrawled on the side of the pole a freshly drawn swastika.

We are back in the car on the outskits of Baden. We have not talked much in the 45 minutes since we left Fahrafeld, both of us lost in our thoughts and reflections. Finally my father says “I hope you don’t mind but I don’t feel like visiting cemeteries today.” I reply that I don’t much feel like visiting cemeteries either but that I can’t remember who is  buried here. He tells me that Pepi’s husband is interred here.  I pause before I ask him the next question not knowing if this is a question to far, and then I say quietly “What happened to Pepi?

He replies “By the time we left in 1939 Pepi was too old to take care of herself anymore so she moved to an old age home in Vienna”his  voice trails off a little bit and finishes with “We had to leave her there.” I say nothing more. I know what the Nazi’s did to old and infirm jews. They were the first to go into the ovens. 

Outside our hotel windows we can hear the sounds of a group of people walking along the street. They are a little drunk and speaking too loudly and although I can not understand a word they are saying I can tell that they have had a good time this evening. I roll over and turn off the light and for a while just lay on back and hear the party goes recede into the distance.

I hear my father roll over and he says ““You know Paul, it really got to me today at Fahrafeld. It is gone for good….never to come back.” I can think of nothing to say to comfort him or the ten year old boy I had met early that day so I just rub his back until we both fall asleep.

Five years previously, I was in my car driving my mother to a radiation treatment for her lung cancer when my phone rang. As you can imagine the mood in my car was less than light. I guess some people put on a false front when facing treatment for a disease that has a huge chance in causing your demise, but Mom was not one of them. It is not like she was overly morose or weepy. She was tense and brittle  anticipating her treatment and when I saw that it was Delilah on the phone I thought speaking with her would be a good way to ease the tension. To move Mom’s and my thoughts from disease and death to something lighter and distracting. I answered the phone on speaker. I had barely gotten out “Hi D “ and had not warned that my mother was in the car when she laid into me. Apparently, she had just gotten off the phone with Conor Jr.,  then a sophomore at MIT,  with whom she had just had a knock down drag out fight and for a reason I could not fathom at the time, blamed me for argument.  He had, she said told her that her listening to Fox News was rotting her brain and that her political opinion was racist and woefully ignorant. That her view of Christianity, steeped in the megachurch evangelical community in which she had immersed herself were both heretical to the true precepts of Jesus and hypocritical. That she preached love and understanding but practiced hate and intolerance. She screamed into the phone “You did this to him. You and your New York point of view have stolen his values from him.”

On my back heals from a verbal assault I didn’t see coming and knowing full well what New York point of view meant when dealt by a viewer of Fox News I elegantly responded, “What the fuck do you mean by that.”

“You and your liberal ideas that you put into his head. All those Jewish ideas he gets from the New York Times and other anti-Christian media. It has turned my son against me. I never should have left him into our house.”

I guess I could have been a good Christian and turned the other cheek. But as she pointed out I am Jewish, a son of a holocaust survivor and someone who has had to fight against insipient antisemitism most of my life. (They called me matzoh king of the Jews in High School) her triggered nothing but anger and rage.

“Who the fuck do you think you are calling me on  the phone and accusing me of corrupting your son and blaming Jews for corrupting his values. Are you insane? You spent every day with him for twenty years and suddenly I am the problem and Jews are to blame. You talk to him every day and I maybe speak with him once the month and his opinions and thoughts are my fault. Perhaps it would be more useful for you to take a look in the mirror than call and yelling at me while I am taking my mother to radiation therapy.”

“I don’t need to look in a mirror. I know where he got these anti-Christian ideas from. Whenever you would come to visit I would spend weeks trying to deprogram him and Finn from your ideas. I told Conor I never liked having you in our home.”

I flashed red. Not necessarily a great thing to have happen when you are driving a car. But this was too much. I always thought I was the welcome addition to their house. Uncle Daniel. The guy who took care of Delilah when she couldn’t get out of bed for fear of losing her baby. The Uncle who bought the kids their first hot fudge Sundae. The man who got took them to Yankee Stadium with tickets behind home plate on the rail. The guy who whenever he came to visit would take the family to Morton’s or Chops or some other fancy restaurant for an opulent meal not just for fun but to teach them what to do when they went to fine restaurants. The link to their roots who reveled in telling the boys stories about their grandfather because they needed to know, and I wanted them to know, about their legacy. Now this woman, whom I had introduced to her husband is telling me that I was never welcome in her home.?”

“You know what Delilah. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I will never set foot in you home again. “ And then  I had the good sense to hang up. There was silence in the car for a few miles and then my sweet, Ferragamo wearing loafer, never leave the house without putting on lipstick mother said “What a cunt.”

I called Conor later that day and told him what had happened. I said “This is all kind of fucked up. I don’t need to tell you why. You get it. And she can be as mad as me she wants even if it is stupid and fucked up. But man, I can never stay in your house again. Never. Not because of animosity or anger. But because if she has been harboring all this hate for me for years, and saying nothing, how can I feel welcome when I know somewhere lurking beneath the surface is this hostility. Can’t do it.”

He replied, “I will take care of it.”

Later that day, I got a call from Delilah. I didn’t answer it. I let it go to voicemail. Her message was a tnon apologies,  apologies.  She said that she was sorry for the tenor of the conversation but that she meant what she had said. As she didn’t ask for forgiveness, I saw no reason to speak with her. My relationship with Conor didn’t change except I never set foot in his house again. My relationship with his boys Conor Jr (Con) and Finn continued through emails, texts, and the occasional visit I never saw Delilah again.

That is until four years ago at my wedding.  

In 2012, I was in desperate need of a break. I had spent most of my free time over the previous two years being a caregiver for my father. In 2010, he had fallen and injured himself so badly that he could no longer walk. A pattern of hospital, rehab center, home had developed where I became the child that helped both parents cope driving them to Dr’s appointments, or taking Mom to the hospitals and rehabilitation centers, or just sitting with my father and talking. It was traumatic. Not only dealing with the inevitability of your parent’s mortality on a daily basis but dealing with the indignities that they were forced to deal with wiping your old man’s ass or changing his catheter. And even though Dad’s constant refrain was “Don’t break your ass over me” and my always reply “Don’t worry it is already cracked” It ground me down like a knife that had been sharpened too many times and could no longer keep an edge.

Then the Costa Concordia hit a rock and sank off the cost of Italy killing 34 passengers. It made great video footage and all the news outlets covered it extensively. I had never been on a cruise before. Never had any desire but for some reason I decided to check the Costa website. I thought that due to the tragedy that their cruises might be bargained price and afford me a champagne vacation for beer prices. I was right. An 18 day cruise from Santos, Brazil to Savona Italy all inclusive with a balcony stateroom was less that $1,500. I booked it on the spot hoping that it would restore me and give me the opportunity to find a little bit of the joy that had been knocked from me over the last couple of years.

I was not expecting to find a wife. But I did. On the third night of the cruise I was seated next to a stunning Brazilian lawyer named Nadine and by the time we said our farewells at the end of our cruise I knew that I had found my great love. An intercontinental romance had commenced punctuated by the deaths of both of our fathers and long flights between Rio and New York City and culminated 9 months later in a proposal of and acceptance of marriage.

We decided to get married that summer, in my parents’ backyard,  among a select group of family and friends. I asked  Conor to be my best man and for the boys to be there for their “Uncle’s” big day. I knew, of course, that this meant that Delilah would have to attend. At that point it had been almost five years since we had talked. I figured the scar tissue over the wound had healed enough at that point those whatever uncomfortable feelings we had for each other had faded into whisper. And by and large I was correct. She, besides being a little bossy with Nadine, she was helpful and thoughtful. And the good will produced by that wedding allowed was enough to allow me to be here in their new home.

I am not saying that the animosity had subsided. A bell once wrong cannot be un-rung. But it was enough to reduce it to a minor case of tinnitus.

“Nothing Del” I said “Your husband and I were just discussing whether or not the green flash exists or whether or not it is myth invented by hippies and drug dealers to get us to stare at the setting sun. What do you think?”

She made no move to embrace me. Perhaps it was the oversized glass of red wine in her hand. Or perhaps some other unspoken reason. It didn’t really matter but it made for an awkward moment that was only relieved when she took a seat on one of the deck chairs on the side of Conor farthest from me. Her welcome, or lack thereof, made me realize that Conor’s insistence that I stay with them, was his idea and not embraced by Delilah. I was thinking how awkward this was going to be over the next few days when she said “People around here talk about the Green Flash all the time. You always see people walking out to the pier at sunset to watch it. Our neighbor Phyllis, she and her husband sit have cocktails every night on their deck and watch for it. “

“But have you ever seen it?”

“Well, no but….”

“That is what I was telling Conor. It is hooh-hah designed by some chamber of commerce to get people to come to the beach and spend money at their stores and restaurant” I said with what I hoped was more than a touch of snark to my voice.

I could tell from the nearly invisible smile on my buddies face that he had heard my comments the way they were intended. I was throwing a verbal hand grenade into the room and seeing what would happen. Or said another way, just adding a little spice to the conversation to make it more lively and fun. It was an element of my sense of humor. An element I might add that was shared by Conor and had been honed in us by Conor’s Dad who loved to inject a bit of contrarianism or fit of fantasy in a conversation for fun. I had forgotten than in this regard (and dare I say many others) Delilah lacked a sense of humor.

She replied with earnestness “Well, it just has to be true. Phyllis would not make it up. She has lived here all her life and she says she had seen it. So I believe her.”

Conor chuckled. I may have too. Which I could see instantly was a very bad idea as Delilah’s face turned stormy. Rule one should be “never tease your hostess.” Especially if she doesn’t particularly like you, has little or no sense of humor, and you get her husband to join in. Her voice tinged with ice said “Well, why don’t we just sit and watch and perhaps then  you will see that you have been wrong.”

Chapter 1:

“The green flash should happen at any moment.”

The speaker of that line was my best friend, if people still use that phrase,  for the past 45 years, Conor Sean Kennedy. We were on the deck of his apartment in Manhattan Beach watching the sun make its terminal plunge into the Pacific. This view, the nightly reverence for the final moments of the day was still new to him and in he was showing it off in the proud way a friend might show off a new car. The intention was not to rub your nose in how wonderful his life was but to share delight (excuse the pun) in where his life had taken him. He had reached a new pinnacle in his life and he was savoring it.

I understood. After all isn’t that what best friends are for. To share in and celebrate each other’s successes. I also knew that it was all new to him. This view, the apartment, the city and state still had a new car smell to it. They were all just weeks old.  A month before he and his wife had been empty nesters in a McMansion in a suburb of Atlanta. Running a second phase start up in the tech sector (I was never quite sure of what they did) that was struggling to find traction when out of the blue a former colleague had invited him to join Lloyds of London and head up their west coast business. The job carried with it the stink of prestige,  a huge salary and overall package that could make him a wealthy man in just a few years

When he had first told me about the job, I knew he would take it even though that decision was less obvious to him. He had invested so much time in his startup that he was reluctant to leave despite the business having seriously drained his bank balances. He had a streak of stubborn in him, always had, that made him believe that given a little more runway, a little more money, his foray into entrepreneurship would make him wealth as Mark Cuban. But the boy loved prestige. It was baked into him from our days of growing up in a tory suburb of New York City. His father had been a President of a small securities firm and the life he had was that of entitlement and privilege, two things that don’t necessarily greenhouse entrepreneurs. Working for the most well-known company in his industry was something that appealed to his ego. I am not criticizing. All of us have egos and while Finn’s was more developed than most, I think most would of us would feel boosted by landing one of the top jobs in our profession.

I also so knew from our near daily phone calls that he missed the perks that came with corporate life:  big salary, ridiculous expense account and worldwide first-class travel. All things he used to have and had lost when after a series corporate merger he had lost in the adult version of musical chairs and was forced out of his company of 20 years. He had received a great package and ventured out to set the world on fire with his business and investing acumen. Not only because he felt he had the skillset for it but also, as he once put it “to prove something to those motherfuckers.” He had not failed in that goal. He had survived. But he hadn’t succeeded either. In addition to the inner sense of failure you get when you don’t achieve as much as you had hoped  to.

If our high school yearbook had a category “most likely to move to California” Conor would have won in a runaway. He was blonde, handsome, glib, charming and with a near constant horniness that sabotaged any effort he would make towards more serious relationships. He also worshipped the sun, the beach and the water in the way an acolyte would a deity. He loved nothing more than going to the beach,  slathering on Coppertone dark tanning oil (despite his Irish pale skin) and spend his days body surfing, and admiring bikini upholstery.

The chance to live in California, by the beach, and live the life he always dreamed of I knew would be irresistible.

I felt, like he did, that it was his destiny to be here.

“Bullshit”

“What is bullshit.”

“The green flash is bullshit. It is in the same category as green sparks from wintergreen lifesavers chewed in the dark. A modern fairytale. Doesn’t exist. A myth created so people feel justified in watching the sunset into the ocean.”

“I have seen it.”

“Sure you have…show me a picture.”

“I am sure I can find one on the internet.”

“Yeah, and everything on the internet is certainly true.”

At this point, we were both chuckling. He with the deep belly laugh that he had inherited from his father and my own laugh come from that deep inside place where real amusement grows. Our exchange was a summation of our relationship where neither one of us took each other so seriously that we would accept without question what the other said. In fact, it was more likely to be the contrary, where we would find a way to poke a hole in the balloon of our pretension. Not of meanness, but to remind us that we each knew each other to well to try to bullshit each other. Or at least that is what I thought.

Besides busting balls is what men  do to show affection.

“What are you two boys laughing at?” Conor and I both turned to see Delilah standing at the sliding glass doors that separated their apartment for the deck. I immediately stood up to greet her. She had not been at home when I arrived an hour ago, which if I were to be honest, I was grateful for despite the fact that she and I had once been great friends.

I had met Delilah shortly after I had graduated from Syracuse. We had both been accepted in IBM’s legendary sales training program. The program and job were everything that I could have hoped for back then. A salary that was way above what my peers were receiving in their first jobs, training that would be useful regardless of what path I took in life….the ability to sell people on  ideas and concepts is useful whether you’re a rabbi or a lawyer and at the time, the largest part of the job was sitting in a classroom learning the IBM selling technique and memorizing the FAB (features-advantages-benefits) of the product. It provided a lot of time to daydream which I was particularly adept at especially when it came to contemplating the few women who were my class. By the nature of the selection process, which while enlightened for the day, still had a long way to go as far as rooting out sexism, the females in our class were selected not only for their businessmen acumen, they were aggressive and smart, but for their looks. In both areas, Del was top of the class. Tall and slim with the Nordic features and flouncy shag cut hair that seem to define that era’s “it” girls, I thought I could sense a “wildness” underneath the modestly cut, shoulder padded, business suit with matching Pirate blouse with built in oversized bow tie.

 I made it a mini mission to take her out a date. I was not particularly slick in my attempts. That was not my most developed skill set. But what I lacked in style I made it with sincerity which is why I was almost always thrown in the friend zone.  I kept asking her stupid questions about material we had in class or ridiculous questions about the future of the technology we were using (Fax machines were in their infancy and the first home PC’s were still a few years away.)  Delilah knew  what I was up to or at least that is what she told me later and eventually we agreed to go out for drinks after work.  Thinking back on  it after all these years, I can still recall the exact moment that I knew that there was not going to be a love or for that matter a lust connection. We were talking about where we grew up and our backgrounds when she brought up the subject of “how she had been saved” and how here “personal relationship” with Christ was the single most important thing in her life.  I am not against religion. I am not against Christianity, per se. However, I am the son of a Holocaust survivor and had a strong defense against any who proselytized too fervent a belief in God. In this case with Delilah, it poured ice water  on any lusty notions I was erecting. Eliminating the sexual tension allowed for a relaxed evening of conversation and backgammon (we still played board games back then). At some point it struck me that this woman was just Conor’s cup of tea. This was more an intellectual leap of faith than some magical check list. I thought, instead of knowing that the two of them would click.

Turned out my hunch was correct. I introduced the two of them and soon they were a couple, and we were often a troika. No not that way, not my thing, but in most other things. Barbara became a regular at the beach house Rich and I had rented in Spring Lake New Jersey, and we would spend weekends as sun worshippers and party hounds.  When Rich’s father died of lung cancer, and he fell apart, she and  helped him up. When he developed a taste for cocaine that he could not control she led him it was she and I that helped him confront his addiction and move beyond it. When they fought or hurt each other’s feelings I was the one each turned to as mediator and confidant. While likely not the healthiest of ways to manage relationships it worked as in relatively short order they were engaged and married.

When Conor’s job transferred him to Saudi Arabia our relationship did not weaken. It just changed. I would send them the latest videotapes ( pre streaming technology that required an advance degree to master recording the correct shows) and exchanged frequent letters (things people used to send each other before email, Zoom and texts) When they would get leave I and whomever I was dating at the time would meet them. We had raucous and    which at its conclusion l uttered words I had a o introduced the two of them and been there for every major point in their relationships from their wedding to the birth of children. At one point where I had even taken two weeks off from work to come live with them when she was confined to bed in the last few months of her pregnancy with their second son, Liam. I became an honorary Uncle to the boys with frequent visits and sharing with them experiences that I hoped would sweeten their lives like taken them for their first hot fudges sundaes or arranging for front row seats at Yankee Stadium.

It was all good until it went bad.

The sub-title of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is “A Savage Journey To The Heart of The American Dream.”

I was thinking about this yesterday for two reasons. First, I was wearing my “Fear and Loathing” t-shirt which, in an addition to the famous Ralph Steadman drawing has the sub title blazed across the front. All I need do is look in the mirror and be reminded.

But that was of intention. I had put the t-shirt on because I was flying to Hawaii. You may say, that makes sense. Going to Hawaii “American Dream” etc. But Hunter Thompson covered that in “The Curse of Lono.” No, the reason I had put the t-shirt on was because the purpose of this trip was to live out the last part of my best friend’s savage American dream and toss his ashes, along with his sons, into the depths off of his Hawaii.

Richard has been dead over a year now. His son, Patrick, a little less than a year. I cannot say with any honesty that I have managed to move beyond the grief over their deaths. I doubt that I will ever be over their loss as both left unfillable voids in me and the desire to speak with them happens daily and occasionally hourly. What I can say, is the time since their deaths have given me enough time to imagine what how they would like their life celebrated.

In passing, and certainly not in any maudlin way, Rich and I talked about what kind of funeral he would want. He told me wanted to be eulogized with people spouting all of his faults and telling stories horrible horrible stories about him. It would forces you to be less sentimental. You say, ‘That guy was a rat,’ and I’m a rat too, and I’d better do something about it rather than weep my life away.”

My buddy Rich was not a perfect person. In fact like most of us he had glaring flaws. If I were giving the  eulogy for him he wanted, what would I say? The first thing I would mention is that he was way too charming, and he knew it. No doubt his charisma was  rooted in his Irish heritage and perhaps a pinch from the time we kissed the Blarney Stone. He would use his charm to his advantage despite the consequences to the person he was charming. Such as the night he convinced me to steal an industrial size jar of pickled onions from my employer, the Beacon Hill Club, because he liked eating them so much.  The end result of this episode was that I got fired and he got the pickled onions he wanted. (Although to be completely forthcoming the jar eventually broke in the back seat of his father’s car which caused problems for both of us.)

Please do not get me wrong. I have free will. I could have said no, and over time it was something that I became adept at with him. But I mention it because there is not a single person I know who loved Rich who hasn’t felt the backside of his charm.  Where they have done something that should not have done because Rich convinced them that it would be a good idea to head down that path.

The amazing part of his gift, if amazing is the correct word, was even when RP had used his charm and lied to us or betrayed us in some way, we most often forgave him.  So complete is that gift that now a little more than a year after his death I struggle to remember any of the bullshit that he managed to foist on me or on others.

Far easier to remember, are the good times we had together. Suffice it to say, that wherever Rich was a party or a good time was to follow. As a disciple of the great Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson he insisted on it. For years, whether it be in Stockholm where he got a party started by telling a group of Swedes gathered for a wedding how fucked up their country was or in Key West the night Ronald Regan was elected President and he kept pouring “Hurricanes” down my throat to ease the pain brought about by that victory, he insisted on calling himself the Dr. (as in Hunter S.) and me his attorney based on characters from Rich’s favorite books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. .

I never asked Rich why he loved the Dr. so much. I did not have to because I knew. It was the Gonzo writers code for life. He believed that “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body , but rather skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What A Ride!” And, “the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived  rather or he who who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed.”

Richard would have wanted a funeral like Thompson’s. His carbonized remains were shot from a canon placed upon a 150 foot tower accompanied by red, white, blue and green fireworks while accompanied by Norman Greenbaum’s” Spirit in the Sky” and  Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I believe that is the type of finale my buddy would have loved only he probably would have substituted Bruce Springsteen’s “Growing Up” for Tamborine Man. Unfortunately, Thompson’s funeral cost an estimated $3M and that was just not in our budget. Which is why we will let his carbonized remains will be placed in the placid Pacific from a boat in the middle of the Pacific. Not quite as spectacular but I have no doubt that Rich would have approved.

I do not want to leave you with the impression my buddy was a complete hedonist. He wasn’t. That was only the part that showed above the surface. For as long as I knew him Rich was a seeker of a bigger truth. Whether that was embracing transcendental meditation and the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when we were in high school or reading the poetry of Kahlil Gibran (his high school year book quote was “In on drop of water were found the secrets of the oceans.” To becoming “born again” and his embrace of evangelical Christianity he sought deeper meaning for his purpose on earth.

The bigger meaning and what came next was very much on his mind after he received his diagnosis. Shortly after he began his first round of chemo, I flew out to Manhattan Beach to hang out with him. To cheer him up I took to Blue Star Donuts because while donuts are not a cure all I have found that while eating them you often forget your problems. Sitting out in the SoCal sunshine,  chowing down on Blueberry Bourbon and Meyer Lemon and Key Lime donuts, he confessed to me while he was saying to everyone else that he was going to lick this thing “even that had to give him a new brain”, he knew the score. The clock was ticking down and getting louder by the second. He was staring into the abyss we all will face and he was scared about what came next.  He asked me if I thought there was something that came after our life here was done.

I told him that I was the last person in the world he should be asking that question. I was  a heathen: a non-practicing Jew. But he insisted. After a moment’s hesitation I shared with him that since my mother’s death the previous month I had spent a good amount of time thinking about what came next. I told him that it made no sense to me that the essence of who we are would not be preserved in some form. Didn’t Newton’s law of the conservation of energy state “ energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.” Aren’t we, or the parts that make us, us, energy?

I said that, unremarkably, I spent a lot of time seeking solace in books because that is something Mom and I both loved.  The book that made the biggest impression was the Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, a book he and I had read in a Humanities class we had taken in high school.  It was about a man’s search for the purpose and meaning of life after living through the slaughter of the first World War as told by an urbane and witty British dilettante. I told him the protagonist in the book reminded me of him at least in the sense he was an American whose experiences in life had made him go in search of a higher truth.

I shared there was one passage in the book that had resonated with me. “Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. … “

I told him none of us knew when we would die. For all we knew I could pass away before he did. Our sacred obligation to ourselves and to those around us is to delight in our life while we have it. That he, had the greatest capacity for delight in life of anyone I knew. He should not abandon that just because of a cancer diagnosis.

I am not sure what effect my words had on Rich that day. I know that when his son and daughter in law  took over as his primary care givers, he found joy every day because they were there every day for him. Perhaps it was in the comfort of his care that he found the true meaning of his existence. To paraphrase Maugham

“The man I am speaking about is not famous. He never will be. When his life came to a close, he left no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over those who knew and loved him so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.”

Rich you were a remarkable creature. You left your mark on everyone who knew you and loved you. And even though your time with us has ended, who you were and what you shared with us, carries on.

We were quiet for a few moments and he said “Lets go for a walk. “

Crossing the street we headed down Weyprechtstrasse and after a block or so we paused and he said “This used to be a park where me and my friends would play football.”

I asked “Was it grass?”

“No, gravel. It used to cut it us pretty good.”

“I can imagine.”

We resumed our walk after a short walk my father paused and pointed to a plaque on the side of a building. It read “Hier stand eine um 1885/86 nach planen des archiiteten Ludwig Tischler Erbautes Synaggoge. Zerstort in der Reichskristallnacht am 10.November 1938” (Translation: Here was a synagogue building built around 1885/86 after the plan of the architect Ludwig Tischler. Destroyed in the Reichskristallnacht on 10 November 1938.)

My father says, in a voice that is supposed to convey nonchalance but sends the exact opposite message “This is where my synagogue was before the bastards burned it down.” He paused and said something to me that he had said many times before “I didn’t even get a fountain pen” referring to a once traditional present for a young Jewish boy when he became Bar Mitzvah.  This time, though, it struck me full force how hard he must have studied to become a bar mitzvah, how heartbroken, horrified, disappointed and devastated to see his temple be burn to the ground by a mob just weeks before fulfilling that dream. How that night changed his life forever. That every time he mentioned not getting that fountain pen, it meant more than not getting a gift, it meant the death of a dream and the end of whole period in his life.

It broke me and I started to weep and noticed my father was doing the same. I swore to myself there and then that I would get him his fountain pen and kept that promise later that year as a present for his 81st birthday. It must have meant something to him because after his death I found the card and the pen in his top desk drawer. The card read: “To Zaki ben Mordecai: Abba…a little late, but better late than never…Love Daniel Ben Zaki.”

We turned the corner and after a few more blocks came across another belle epoque building but this one had a huge gold coat of arms, a shield boarded by angels on its sides and a bust of Hermes above, on its façade. He pointed and said “That is where Litzi, Aunt Leni and Uncle Benno lived.”

“Litzi emigrated (alone) to Belgium, how or why I don’t remember,  where a family named Weening became her foster parents.  When the Germans invaded she fled with them to unoccupied France.  They then made their way (on foot) across the Pyrenees, and then somehow  Mrs. Weening, Lizzi, and her foster sister got themselves to Jamaica, where they were interned.  Mr. Weening was gravely wounded while serving with Dutch Forces in the Normandy Invasion.

“Walked?”

“Yes. In fact Litzi says the woman who was taking care of things walked over the Pyranees wearing high heels”

“What about Benno and Lenni?”

“He was arrested in 1938 and sent first to Dachau and then transferred to Weimar-Buchenwald.  Sometime in mid-1939 he was released on the condition that he leave Germany within 72 hours.  He got a visa to Italy (Milan) where we saw him as we passed through in November 1939.  Because his visa was no longer valid, he managed our meeting by leaping on our train while it was in the switching yard and then rode into the Milan station with us, where he managed to disappear immediately on the platform.  The Italians finally interned him in a camp in  Southern Italy (Alberobello and Ferramonte in Bari)  .  The British liberated the camp and he attached himself to the Jewish Brigade, whom he served as a laundry worker and later worked for American troops in Naples.

“Wow. The guy always scared me a little but he must have been some tough son of a bitch to survive all that. And Linni?”

“She stayed in Vienna, living underground what they called a u-boater.” One of her life savers was her gentile sister’s baptismal certificate.  She never left. She hid with people all over the city. I think a good part of it in the red light district. “

“Unbelievable story. I can’t even imagine what they must have gone through” I replied and then mentally chastised myself because for years I had remembered them as the horrible couple who had babysat my brother and who hadn’t allowed me to have potato chips when I wanted them.

We walked a little farther down the road until we came across a white multiple story building with Schule Der Stadt Wien or School of the City of Vienna in red letters across the front of the building. He said “this is where I went to primary school.”

Deciding that we had been too serious for too long, I tried a little humor on him. I said “Is there a plaque somewhere.”

He smiled and replied “Smart ass.” And we walked on until we reached a very imposing, very federal looking building that said “Bundesfaschule fur wirschatliche Frauberlufe” which I in my very bad German roughly translated as “Federal School for Women.” Pops said “This is where I would have gone to High School.”

“But it says that it’s a woman school.”

“It wasn’t then.”

Then something occurred to me. “What do you mean would have gone to high school. I thought you started high school here.”

“No. I was about to but after Krystalnacht Jews weren’t allowed to attend secondary school.”

“Krystalnacht was in November of 1938 and you didn’t immigrate until a year later….What did you do with your days.”

His reply, slow coming as if he didn’t want to open up a can of worms said “I hung out with my friends. Lets get a cab. Were late.”

What we were late for was a visit my father’s boyhood friend Paul Gross. For the last several years he had been suffering with Parkinson’s disease.  Recently, his symptoms of body tremors and stiffness, confusion, and an inability to communicate clearly had forced a hospitalization. His wife Henni had invited us to their home and we would take her to the Hospital where we would all have a visit with Pop’s oldest friend.

Despite being named for him, and being my father’s oldest if not best friend, I had only Paul twice in my life. The first time was on my only previous trip to Vienna when I was seven. My memories of that trip are few but I have a vivid memory of visiting the Furrier shop Paul owned. He gave me a mouse that was made out of mink that I adored. That is until I lost him. The other memory I had of him was when he had visited the United States shortly after I had become a Bar Mitzvah. He had given me a beautiful Seiko chronograph with an orange face that I wore for years and still cherish. Other than those two meetings, that he had been the leader of the Jewish Community in Vienna for decades, and the rare stories from my father’s childhood, I knew little.

As the cab maneuvered in traffic I asked, “When you returned to Vienna did you look for Paul?”

“Of course.”

“How did you find him.”

“I went to the grocery store his mother owned. But it had closed so I went to the apartment they used to live in and was told they had moved but the folks there had a forwarding address. I made my way over there and I found his mother. Paul was not there but she, in the best Viennese tradition and despite the shortages the war, invited me in for coffee and cake.  While we were having coffee with her Paul  arrived. ”

“That must have been one hell of a reunion? I mean you had done it. Survived. And then to just show up on his doorstep wearing the uniform of an officer in the American Army? That is a whole new definition of the term shock in awe!”

He paused and replied. “He just acted, as did I, like we had just seen other the week before. Hi Paul. Hi Sam” He grinned, a self-satisfied smile  and said “We didn’t need to say anything more. We knew what it meant.”

“What did it mean?”

He took a beat before answering. As if there was a lot to unpack. Then said, “We survived.”

I nodded, knowing that while I understood the words, I had no comprehension of how that moment must have felt for them.  I don’t think anyone who is not a survivor can understand the jumbled emotions that go along with that status.  I asked, “Why didn’t they leave?”

“That is complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

 “It wasn’t that easy. You had to get permission to leave.  And for a variety of reasons Paul couldn’t”

“How did they manage to make it through?”

“Paul’s mother’s family hid them and I think they spent some time living in the sewers. U-boaters.”

We fell into silence. I knew from a life of living with my father and how he told stories of those years during and surrounding the war that what happened was more complicated than the responses my father was giving me . I knew, for example,  that at the beginning of the war nearly 200,000 Jews were living in Vienna and that many, up to 130,000 had managed to find other places to live including places like Singapore. But those who left, left almost all their wealth and belongings. Where ever they went they had to begin their new life with little but the sentimental items like photographs and other family ephemera they managed to carry with them.

Of the 60,000 Jews left in Vienna when they closed the border only 2,000 survived the war. Paul had managed to win one of the most horrific lotteries of all time.

When we walk up the front steps, to Paul’s home we are met by Henni. She greets my father with hugs and kisses on both cheeks. I get the same treatment even though I have not seen her since I was a small boy. She then steps back and taking us both in while commenting on how much we looked alike. We were ushered into her parlor because in proper Viennese fashion as she has prepared us a little cake and coffee so we would not go to the hospital with any hunger.

Over the coffee and cake she explains that Paul had been admitted to the hospital because his Parkinson’s had progressed to the point where he was no longer able to take care of himself, that his ability to speak had become limited and that the Dr’s had thought that a change in medication would help him with his tremors and communication. This had been going on for the past two weeks. She is , in the gentlest of ways, trying to prepare my father to see his oldest friend now altered by this horrible disease.

Vienna’s General Hospital is different than any hospital I had ever visited. It is a high rise. Twenty-two stories tall with a motor lobby for cabs and cars drop offs and a mini mall that contains everything from flower shops to McDonalds. It was more like visiting an apartment complex in Miami Beach than a hospital that had originally been established in 17th century.

A high-speed elevator takes us to the 21st floor where Paul’s room is located. Hennie leads the way to Paul’s room with my father and me in her wake. He is not there. She suggests that my father go to the nurse’s station and see if they have seen Paul. Apparently, despite his currently being confined to a  wheelchair and troubles speaking, he liked to socialize. While Henny and I remained guard outside Paul’s room my father makes his way down the hall. We see an old man in a wheelchair emerge from a room. It is Paul.  Pop walks up to him and when Paul recognizes him, he slowly extricates himself from the wheelchair and despite tremors stands at attention for my father and salutes him. My father returns the tribute with a crisp salute of his own. No words are spoken. 70 years of friendship encapsulated without a word. The silence a part of their code. Why speak of things that are not capable of being understood or where words are inadequate.

We decide that all of us trying to sit in Paul’s hospital room would be too uncomfortable and an inconvenience to his roommate. Instead, after straightening Paul up a little bit and gathering up his caregiver, we ahead downstairs to the Hospitals coffee house. I should have known that in this city that invented the coffee house, where patisseries and pastries were part of their birthright, a hospital coffee shop would be far superior to its American counterpart.  It was decorated in browns and brasses, the tables of real wood, no Formica. The menu had everything from Schnitzel to Sachertorte. And apparently smoking was on the menu as well  because everyone in the restaurant seemed to be smoking and a blue haze hangs just below the ceiling.

We arranged ourselves around a square table. My father and Henny on side. Paul and I on the other with the caretaker sitting on the end closest to Paul. Dad could tell that this was a difficult situation for Paul. His verbal skills had deteriorated to the point where getting a word out was painfully labored. This was made even more tortuous by the fact he wanted to speak English so that I would feel a part of the conversation. As a consequence, a pattern emerged pretty quickly at our table. I would ask a question and Paul would try to answer. If he got hung up or frustrated in finding the words my father would help him complete his thoughts.  Paul would react and try to expand a little a to me.

After we had ordered coffee and some Austrian pastries my father told Paul that the reason, we had come to visit was because I was interested in writing a story about what it must have been like for him, to return to the Vienna at the end of the War… a Jewish boy forced to flee his homeland only to return a few later, a man and an officer in the conquering army.

This embarrassed me a bit. I am not a professional writer, and I didn’t know if I could even write something worth reading.  Leaning into my discomfiture , I ask Paul “What was your reaction, when you saw your old friend in your mother’s living room, wearing an US Army officer’s uniform?”

Paul glanced over at my father, and then back at me, his large eyes gleaming with a sense mischief and says in a halting voice. “It was good to see him.”

“Were you surprised?”

“No. I was pretty sure that he would turn up sometime.”

I could tell that he was going to be every bit as difficult to get information out him as my father so I decided to change tack a bit. I had heard stories for years of how my father had a group of friends who roamed the streets of Vienna after the I said to Paul “Who was the leader of the gang you two were in.” I knew that as close as my father and Paul were that part of what defined their relationship was a fierce competitiveness and I was not above tossing a grenade to see if I could some details beyond single sentences from them.

They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds and then my father replied, “He was.” but in such a way to make sure the listener knew he was just being gracious. And Paul smiled back and said in a halting way but with the same inflection as my father, “He was.” And then they both laughed knowing that had both outsmarted me.

Frustrated, but somewhat undaunted I persisted. I asked Paul “What was the name of you “gang.” He smiled and responded stuttering a little bit “The Wolf…wolf pack “and smiled eyes gleaming as if the thought of this band of miscreants brought back every good childhood memories from schools.

“How many people were in this gang.”

Paul held up his hand and said “Four.”

“Who were the other two?”

Paul began “Walter…” and seemed to get hung up and my father added “Eduard…Eddie.”

There was a pause as if the thoughts of these childhood gang blocked out the present for these old friends. As if their friends were now seated at the table with us. Enjoying a smoke and a coffee with their old comrades. I knew how special this gang was to my father. He had been telling us about them since we were small children asking for bedtime stories. He would tell of the adventures of Tad and Huge and their desire to escape Vienna in a makeshift submarine they were creating in a fishing shack on the flood plain of the Danube and the adventures they had along the way.

Wondering whether these bedtime stories were based in fact I asked “What this gang of your do?”

Again, my father exchanged a look with Paul and said “Mostly, we tried to find a way to get out of Vienna. There was always some rumor of Singapore, Palestine or some other country opening up for visas’ or a Kindertransport to England or anywhere safe.  We tracked these down and let our friends know.  Or when people needed someone for an odd job. We needed the money. It cost money to leave and we…..”

Paul nudged my elbow and signaled that he wanted to have something to write with him. My father obliged him by handing him the pen that was perennially in his pocket. Paul then took a napkin on it drew what appeared to be a stick with five branches growing out of its top. He said “The wolfs paw.” He then drew a line through the second branch sticking up from the stick and said “Me.”

My father jumped in and said “That is how we used to leave messages to each other. If we had been some place and wanted to tell the other we had been there we would draw the wolf’s paw and depending on what digit was crossed we could tell who it was. I was the first, Paul was the second and so on. “

“But what kind of messages would you leave each other.”

Exchanging a glance with Paul he said “Nothing really important. Just kid stuff.”

I asked, reluctantly “What happened to them…the other members of the Wolfpack?”

Paul replied “Walter I used to see around for a while and then he disappeared one day. One day he was there and the next gone and no record as to what happens I thought he had managed to escape. After the war I found out he died at Mauthausen.”

“And Eddie”

My father replied “Eddie….” and sighed and then said “He got out before all of us. A Kindertransport to England where he lived with in Lancashire with two school teachers. When he turned 18 he enlisted in the RAF and on the very last day of the war his plane crashed and he was killed. Poor bastard.” A silence fell over the table.  I didn’t realize it at the time but my Dad had been in touch with Eddie from the time he left Europe until shortly before he was drafted. After my father’s death we discovered he had saved the letters for over 70 years and had even written a short story about being in England and searching for some trace of his old friend and Wolfpack member.

There was a pause in the conversation. The memory of Eddie and Walter of the memory of the adventures of the Wolfpack hovering over the table like the cigarette smoke at the tables adjacent to us. It made me realize that the salute Paul had given my father by getting out of his wheelchair and standing like a soldier at parade rest  was more than courtesy afforded to any old friend. It was a salute to their old comrades and friends. Paul’s and my Dad’s survival and a tribute to Edi and Walter there fallen comrades.

Paul looked at my father and said in his halting way “Does he know about Tomahawk?

Pops gave a half shake of his head but before he could answer I said incredulously “The Hugi and Tad stories are true?”

Dad looking extremely uncomfortable replied. Well let’s just say there was some fact in the fiction.”

The stories of Tomahawk were my favorite bedtime stories, but I thought them the gifts of Pop’s vivid imagination to his children. Stunned and curious I decided I need to pull this thread. I asked “What is the real story?”

“Its too long a story to tell.”

I rollmy eyes. This whole trip I had been trying to find out more about his life and what happened to him before and after the war only to run into brick walls like “its too complicated” or “Can we talk about something else” or him just changing the subject.

Paul must have sensed my frustration. Directing his gaze at Dad he said, and considering his condition a very insistent tone “You need to tell him the story.”

My father’s response was a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head.

The conversation proved exhausting to Paul. His nurse signaled that it was time to leave, and our coffee klatch broke up. We said our goodbyes in the lobby They were more matter of fact than emotional. Sometimes silence says more than words. Kisses on the cheek for Hennie, a shoulder squeeze for Paul and we were out the door on our way to cab stand. We were silent as we waited for a cab. Each of us lost in the dissection of the day and adrift in our memories. I, for one, was wondering what Paul meant when he said “You need to tell him the story.” What story? And why was the old man so reluctant to tell me. I was confused. I thought he wanted me to write a story and this whole trip getting information out of him was tougher than finding the truth at a liars convention. A cab finally arrived and as the it pulled away from the hospital Pops says  “I need a drink.”

I heartily concur. His reasons for imbibing are no doubt different than mine. Watching your best friend slowly fade away is not for the feint of heart. It is what he told me when my best friend was dying of brain cancer the year before.  He was right. It forces you to think about things that are best left in the dark recesses of your consciousness most of your life. Dark questions. Questions without answers combined with deep sorrow and now bittersweet memories often requires a distiller’s skill to allow you to muddle through.

My reasons are, in part, a reflection of his. I love my old man. He is my friend and my hero. He has been, and always will be, my great protector but now I have taken on that role for him. It is what sons do for aging parents. Seeing him in so much pain is painful for me and I do not know what I can do to mitigate his pain, and this frustrates me. But this is not the only thing that is frustrating me. Dad has always chosen his own way in life often to the confoundment and exasperation of others. Once he adopted a point of view it was almost impossible to get him to change his mind. Clearly, there was a story he was hiding. A story that I traveled all this way to find and for reasons that I could not understand he was keeping it to himself.

The cab ride back to the Sacher was in silence. Both of us lost in our own thoughts. When we arrive at the Hotel we go directly to the bar and finding a table in the corner promptly order drinks. Doubles. Scotch for him. Bourbon for me. Please don’t think us drunks. Doubles in Europe is a light pour at home and we need extra strength medicine after the experiences of the day. When the waitress returns with our drinks and a few peanuts we silently toast each other and maintain our silence. Neither of us are being rude. It is a comfortable silence. We are old travel companions. We can sense when the other needs time to be with our own thoughts. This just happens to be one of these times.

Finally, when we have finished our first drink and have ordered our second, Dad still grim faced asks “Do you remember the coin I gave your brother, sister and you during the Holidays last year?”

I am surprised by his question because it seems so out of context to our conversation and because the gift of the coin had confounded my siblings and I. They had arrived by mail, unaccompanied by a note of explanation, and were it not for the return address on the package we would not have known who had sent them to us. That was not even the strange part. The gold coin wasn’t really a coin at all it was more of a religious medal. A Catholic religious medal with an image a crown with a cross tilted at an angle at its peak and the word “Stephanskrone” underneath. On the flip side was an image a medieval man king wearing that crown underneath which was written “St. Stephan.”

The present of the coin had baffled my brother, sister, and me. Why had our Jewish by birth, agnostic by practice, father, given us a religious coin? We all asked him about it. He told my brother “A little gold is good to have in case of emergency.” When my sister inquired, she was told my sister that it was “St. Stephan was the patron saint of people who help others, and you guys have been good at taking care of me…” He told me it was “for luck.” We all knew from his nonresponse responses that there was a deeper meaning for the gift than the reasons he was giving and each of us in turn had pushed him on it. Much to our collective chagrin we were unsuccessful in unearthing those reasons.

I reply to my old man “Sure.” And, then pull out my wallet and from a compartment inside it I pull out the gold medallion and place it on the table between us. He looks surprised. I say “You said it was for luck. So I carry it around with me.”

Getting over his surprise he asks “Can I trust you to keep a secret?
I can sense the seriousness of his question and for some reason it activates the snark in me and I reply “Well, I have managed to keep the world from knowing what a good guy you are?”

He doesn’t smile and says “Don’t be an asshole. I am being serious.”

I smile. In our family being called an asshole is often an honorific but not in this case. “Sure Dad. What is up.”

“I am serious. What I am thinking about telling you is classified and I am breaking about a dozen laws just thinking about telling you about it.”

“Is this about the war?” thinking back to Paul’s veiled references.

“Yes.”

“Then how can it still be classified. The war ended nearly seventy years ago.”

“It is. I checked.”

“But that makes no sense.”

Frustrated he responds “Trust me. What I am going to tell you could still ruin people’s lives. Hurt reputations and worse.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

He pauses and after taking a sip of scotch he begins “There was a man named Anton Skoda who worked at Winter’s department store…”

Five years after our visit to Vienna. Pops passed away. He died like he lived.  On his own terms. Unable to walk at the end, and faced with three time a week dialysis, that involved lengthy ambulance rides and being stretchered in and out of his home, he chose to end his treatment and slip quietly into the goodnight. It was not easy to see him go but I would like to think for him it was just a transition to the next great adventure. He made that easy to believe because even as uremia took him away from this reality. His positive outlook never wavered. Even blessing us from time to time with recitations of Kubla Khan by Coleridge, “ In Xanadu did Kubla Khan. A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.”

Just weeks after Pops died the Federal Government,  in an effort to streamline and codify how we classify documents ordered the declassification of millions of top secret documents. Among the documents released were those on the Crown of Stephan and how it came into American hands at the end of the 2^nd World War.

Dad’s story could finally be told.

In the end, it had not been difficult to convince my father to go to Austria with me. While I am sure that my desire to understand his war experience and write a story about it was a part of the decision-making process, I am pretty sure that it not take a lot unction to get him to go. One factor was no doubt to see his oldest friend in the world, my namesake, Paul Gross. He had been suffering from Parkinson disease and the chances were if my father didn’t visit him soon, he would miss the chance to have one last talk with him.

Another reason it had been relatively easy to convince to embark on this trip with me was that despite all the pain and suffering he had experienced in Vienna as a child,  and the heartbreak he discovered on his return as a young man, he still loved the city. It contained the memories of his childhood. Those memories most of us hold most fondly. And knowing my father’s optimistic attitude and perhaps sharing some of the same brain chemistry, I know that the tough times had faded to the background while the memories of families, of his friends, and the good times had been burnished over time and visiting the city added to the polish the remembrances of a long ago childhood.

What made this trip even remotely possible is that he and I were good travel companions. Over the course of my adult life we had been on a number of adventures together. In 1988 he and I spent 10 days in Israel exploring the country and both living out childhood dreams of visiting the Jewish homeland. In 2001 we had gone to Alaska, another bucket list trip for both of us, in celebration of my father’s recovery from Lymphoma. We knew how to be together. When to chat and when to be silent and when to give each other room to be by ourselves. We saw humor in many of the same things and could point out things to each other that we would relish. He knew, as did I, that no matter what happened on our journey, it would be enjoyable because we would be together.

A little more than two months later on a crisp and sunny May afternoon, we arrived in Vienna. I had arranged for a driver to meet us at baggage claim and were soon speeding our way into Vienna in his spotless Mercedes. The cab was warm, so I cracked the window and gazed out, mesmerized. Not because the scenery was spectacular, mainly open fields intermingled with a few industrial parks that had a far neater, more elegant look than their American counterparts. But because that is what I always did when taking a cab from the airport into a new city. It was a city’s overture I wanted to hear it.

I looked over at my father. He was wearing an outfit so common for him it should have been trademarked. He wore khaki pants with a light blue shirt, safari jacket and Ray-Ban Outdoorsman aviator style sunglasses. He was lost in thought and I wondered if he was remembering what this part of Vienna looked like before and when he had returned at the beginning of the occupation.

I asked, “When you returned to Vienna at the end of the War what time of year was it?”

He looked thoughtful, like he was thinking about what he should say, and replied “I really can’t remember.”

“What do you mean you can’t remember? You remember everything!”

“I just don’t remember.”

“Well, can you remember what the weather was like.”

“No, not really except it was not too cold nor hot.”

“So, it was likely Spring or Fall?”

“I guess.”

At this point I was getting pretty frustrated with my father’s non-response responses. I asked, no doubt in an irritated tone,  “Can you remember what year it was?”

“I think it was 1946.”

“But you were in Europe since early 1945. Why did it take you so long to go the 300 miles from where you were stationed in Italy to here?”

“It was not that simple.”

“Why”

“Because…

“But you can’t remember when that was.”

“No. Now will shut up so I can enjoy the ride into the city?”

I shut up. I did not think it strange for him to ask me to shut up. I tend to chat and ask questions when I am in new situations. I think his asking me to pipe down had more to do with the fact that we were on the outskirts of the city proper and the “real Vienna” was revealing itself.  No doubt he was caught up in the thoughts we all get when we return to a place that is full of memories.  What I did think strange is my father’s equivocation on the details of his return to Vienna. How could he not remember the time of year? Not only had he had the months in which we had planned the trip to contemplate that but I didn’t think it was a detail that I was likely to forget and his memory was every bit as good, if not better, than mine. But instead of questioning this further I too got lost in the sights and sounds of Vienna.

My father insisted that we stay at the Hotel Sacher. When he had told me of this request, I was more than just a little surprised. In the past when we traveled, the hotels we stayed in were more of the three star or, on a good day, four-star hotels. For him to insist on a five star, let alone an iconic was completely out of character. But I did not challenge him. If that is where he wanted to stay, it is where we were staying but I sensed there was a deeper meaning that perhaps I some point I could coax out of him. If you have ever been to the Hotel Sacher you know the lobby is impressive. All dark woods, velvet couches and overstuffed chintz chairs. It is an echo to the past when Vienna was a capital of empire. Dad seemed to breathe in the history of the place as we entered and was transformed from Sam Floessel, American to the Viennese Hugi Floessel. (How I discovered his birth name is another story) This was reinforced as he lapsed into Viennese German (there were many ah-so and naturlichs)  when speaking to the front desk clerk and securing our room.

Our room was not ready which was just as well. We were both anxious to go for a walkabout. My father wanted to rekindle old memories and I wanted to get a sense of city that I had not seen since I was seven. After dumping our bags at the bell desk, left the hotel and headed down Kartner Strasse towards St. Stephen’s Cathedral.. As we walked Dad’s morphing into a Viennese continued. Instead of walking with hands by his side, as most Americans do, his hands were clasped behind his back. His chin tilted just a little higher. We strolled rather than walked.

At the time, I didn’t question the reason my father wanted to walk to St. Stephens. It is the city’s landmark and seemed a natural destination. It was one of the few clear memories I had from my only trip to the city over forty years before. But later I would wonder whether these first steps in Vienna were really a pilgrimage, of a sort, for him. Eventually, we found our way to a café and ordered an afternoon pick me up, which in Vienna is an exquisite pastry accompanied by an espresso. As my father ordered for us, I remember thinking natural it was for me to hear him speaking German.  This was the language he learned to think in. I wondered how speaking the language of his childhood would stir ancient memories.

When the coffee arrived I asked “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your Army career. I want to make sure that I have the timeline correct.”

“Sure. If you must.”

“Well if I am going to write this story, I would love to get the facts straight.”

“Go ahead.”

“You entered the army in the summer of 1944.”

“Yes, my draft board had issued me a deferment so that I could complete my sophomore year.”

“How long was basic training.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Two months, 3 months?”

“Probably closer to 3 months.”

“So, if you entered the Army in the Summer of 1944 you probably finished basic training in September or October.”

“I guess so.”

“And you went to basic in Texas.”

“Yes. Fort Wolters.”

“So, did you go to OCS immediately after you finished basic”

“Pretty much”

“Did you have to take a test to be any officer, or did they have some other way of selecting you?”

“No, you had to submit a request and then the Army decided whether you were selected. And I didn’t know whether I wanted to become an officer or not.”

“Didn’t you want to become an officer?”

“I don’t know. I had a friend in basic and he thought it was a good deal. So, I applied and was accepted.”

“Is that why you became a citizen in Texas…so you could go to OCS?”

“Yes.”

“Where was OCS?”

“Fort Sill, Oklahoma.”

“When did get there…. I mean what month.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it right after basic?”

“Pretty much.”

“So, if you finished basic in October. Then November would have been the earliest you entered OCS.”

“I guess so.”

“And OCS took 8 weeks, right? That is why 2nd Lieutenants were called 8-week wonders.”

“I think the Artillery school took a little longer. Probably 12 weeks or so but I really can’t remember.”

“Well if it took 12 weeks the earliest you could have been shipped overseas would have been February. Right.”

“Then if you were in theatre before the end of the War then you probably got there sometime in late February or early March of 1945, right?”

“I guess. To be honest Paul the dates I really do not remember. I just remember thinking it was cold. But can we end for this right now and head back to the hotel.”

The next morning is when my father took me to the Danube and gave me his little speech. It was another beautiful mild spring day but we decided to take a cab as the walk would have been a little too far for my eighty-one year old father. We didn’t dawdle there. It was too windy and there was a distinct chill coming off the Danube We grabbed another cab headed to the Kunsthistoriches Museum which contains the amazing art collection of the Hapsburgs and was the one place my mother insisted I visited.

Arriving at the museum Pops chose to sit on a bench opposite the statue of Empress Marie Theresa while I gave the museum the once over. It was not that he did not like the museum, but the standing and the stairs would be a challenge for him. And moreover, despite the sophisticate he was, he had a low tolerance for museums. 30 minutes to an hour and he was done.  Add to that the fact he had been there before, sitting in a garden, soaking in the Viennese spring seemed ideal choice for Dad.

The collection of paintings and antiques were amazing in their depth and scope. But what struck me most of all was the realization that this had been an Empire, for five centuries a leading power in Europe and Vienna its capital. And for a time, it was the center of the Universe. And then, after World War 1 they were suddenly an insignificant capital, in an insignificant country. It helped me understand the Anschluss and why most Austrians accepted annexation by Germany and becoming part of the Reich. They wanted their empire back.

Gaining an understanding of Austria’s vainglory did not diminish my contempt and anger at what they had done in their misguided attempt to reclaim empire. It was said while Germans were successful anti Semites, Austrian’s were pros.  Worse, the Austrians had never fully accepted their role in the Holocaust.

My tour did not take long as, like my old man, I have a limited tolerance for museums. I love the art. I love the history but if I take any longer than an hour in a museum, I get cranky. I found my father sitting on his bench, enjoying the spring sunshine and it looked as if he might have even managed to slip a quick nap in while he waited for me.  I asked him if he was tired and told him if he wanted, we go back to the hotel. What was to come next would require a huge reservoir of emotional energy that would be a challenge for anyone let alone an octogenarian.   He told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop coddling him. To prove himself ready, he set off at a brisk pace to the Karlsplatz, a light rail station, a few blocks away. When we arrived my father without seeking guidance from anyone picked the #44 trolley and jumped on board.

Our destination was #48 Ottakringer Strasse, the apartment where my father was born and lived his entire life until he left Vienna in 1939. It was a central part of our family mythology about my father’s childhood. My grandparents were extremely poor. My grandfather worked in abattoir, cleaning hides and getting them ready to be tanned. A job that was brutal on the body and crushed the soul for little money. My grandmother worked as a seamstress making handmade ties at home. All they could afford was a two-room apartment that had a kitchen, where my father slept, and a living room where my grandparents slept. The bathrooms were shared privies at the end of the hallway and the refrigerator was, weather permitting, the ledge outside their window. It is this apartment that the Nazi’s invaded on Kristallnacht and arrested my grandfather and terrified my father.

I asked my father “We’re Jews allowed to take the trolley after Kristallnacht?”

He pursed his lips into a pucker, as if he was sucking on a sour memory, and said “No.” I wanted to ask him how he got around but I could tell he was far away and no doubt my questions would annoy him so I got lost in my own thoughts instead.

My father, who never talked to us about that night, wrote to us what he called a “minor memorandum” on the 50th Anniversary of that awful night.

A MINOR MEMORANDUM TO MY CHILDREN

ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF KRYSTALLNACHT,

        NOVEMBER 9 AND 10, 1938

I don’t intend to make this a big deal literary effort or a weepy emotional debauch.  I simply want to tell you what I remember about Krystallnacht. So, you should remember as well. And if there are to be others like us, so you can tell them. Nothing big! Just a small and portable lesson about the planet we live on and the hazards of being a little different.

Krystallnacht did not start for me until November 10, 1938. I knew that von Rath had been shot by Gruenspan, but I knew nothing about what was happening all over Germany during the night of the ninth.  I was 12 years (12 10/12 ths) old and I was asleep.

I was still lying in my bed, at about seven on the morning of November 10, when there was loud knocking on our door. I heard my father and mother (your grandparents) talking to some people. Several stormtroopers (SA) had come to arrest Jewish men.  The entrance to our apartment was through the kitchen and all this was taking place in the kitchen.  After a few minutes I heard one of the Brownshirts ask whether there were any other male Jews in the apartment. Grandma said only my little boy.  I dont think they believed her because they came into our main room, where my bed was.  I closed my eyes and pretended I was asleep.  They came to my bed and they looked at me and they must have decided either that I was too young, or that I looked too fierce to mess around with since there were only six of them. So, they took just grandpa with them and they left.

As we later found out, they took grandpa to the local police station.  From there they marched him and others to the Rossauer Kaserne, a military barracks.  He was lucky because he had a roof over his head.  Many other Jewish men were taken to a large soccer stadium and did not have a roof over their head.

Grandpa had been fired from his regular job as a bristle processor a couple months before.  He was earning some money by helping a carter hauling the furniture of Jews that had been kicked out of their apartments. The cart was pulled by one brown horse.  Grandpa had a job scheduled for that morning.

Grandma sent me to help the carter in grandpa’s place. May- be grandma was a tough Hungarian cookie who did not want the Rothkopf’s reputation as men of their word sullied, or maybe we needed the money, or perhaps she wanted me out of her hair so that she and Aunt Mitzi ( who lived in the next apartment and whose son Walter and friend Albert were already on the way to Dachau) could weep in peace.  

I don’t remember exactly where I met the carter but it was at his client’s apartment near the Jewish section of Vienna. We loaded the wagon with furniture.   I sat next to the driver on the high bench behind the horse.  Then the brown horse slowly pulled us through the streets towards the place where we had to make our delivery.

Groups of people were standing in front of the broken windows of Jewish stores, gawking while Brownshirts were putting their owners through their paces — handing over business papers, washing the sidewalk with lye, licking Aryan employees’ shoes clean. Anything that would keep the cultured Viennese crowds amused.  We passed a narrow street that led to one of Vienna’s larger synagogue.  The alley was jammed with jeering onlookers.  Stormtroopers were throwing furniture and Torah scrolls through the big main door into the street.  One side of the roof (I couldn’t see the other and you know what a sceptic I am) was afire.  I remember very vividly the twists of whitish-yellow smoke that were curling up the slope of blue tiles.

Farther on we passed another synagogue that was fully ablaze.  The police had made people stand back from it.  I suppose they feared for their safety.  A fire truck was parked down the street. The firemen were leaning against their equipment, talking and smoking cigarettes. Everywhere there were clusters of people, in a holiday mood, gathering around smashed Jewish stores. Little groups of Jews, both men and women, were being led along the sidewalk flanked by squads of SA men.  The Jews were made to do all sorts of menial chores.  Someone told me later, that one elderly Jew asked to go to the toilet.  They made him go in a bucket and then forced him to eat his feces.

By now I was beginning to figure out what was going on. I sat high on my horsey throne (just like the Duke of Edinburgh when he drives his high-stepping pair, except that I didn’t wear an apron).  Whenever we passed a sidewalk event or other happening, I pulled down the wings of my nostrils (I thought I looked more Christian that way), staring straight ahead, but watching the Nazi street theatre out of the corners of my eyes. The driver, who was also Jewish, was a hard-old soul.  I don’t remember him saying a single word to me, all day, about what was going on.  Maybe he thought I was too young to hear about such things.

I don’t remember much more detail.  I got paid.  The trolley I went home on was crowded.  I kept staring out the window so that people wouldn’t notice the handsome Jewishness of my face.  Beyond the rattling trolley panes, the peculiar happenings of November 10, 1938 were still in progress here and there, even as the day’s light was fading.

When I got home, grandma and Mitzi were still weeping.  They had just come back from the police station, but grandpa and the other Jews were no longer there.

Grandpa came home ten days later.  He had spent that time in a room with 500 other people and one water faucet.  They did a lot of military drill (was this the beginning of the Hagganah ?) and exercises — push-ups, deep knee bends, and the like.  Some who didn’t do so well got beaten up. He never told me whether they did anything to him.  But then I wouldn’t tell you either.  Grandpa was lucky.  A lot of the Jewish men who were arrested on the 9th and 10th of November were sent to the concentration camp at Dachau.

Not one single synagogue was left intact in all of Vienna.  That really screwed me up because I was nearly thirteen. You need to have a Torah to become a Bar Mitzvah and you need to have a table on which to lay the scroll while you read. And how was I to get a fountain pen now?

The dead, of course, are dead.  They are mourned by those who remember. Tears dry. Bruises heal. Razed synagogues become parking lots.  Injured dignity heals although slowly.  What hurts most to this day is impotent compassion for those who were swept away.

In order to have faith in our quality as human beings, we need to remember! And that’s why I am writing you this note.

As the trolley made its way I recalled the words my father had written nearly 20 years before and I tried to imagine what it must have been like as a 12 year old boy to have to have your house broken into the middle of the night, have your father taken from you, perhaps never to return and then being forced to go and do your fathers job, while atrocities were happening all around you, because you needed the money so badly that you didn’t have a choice. What must have it been like to see your neighbors making your co-religionists lick their boots and clean their sidewalks with toothbrushes. To see your synagogue, burn to the ground just days before you were to become a bar mitzvah after studying for years to achieve this milestone rite of passage.

I could not imagine what he had gone through.

My father jostled my arm to get my attention and said, “We’re here.”

There, astride the corner of Ottakringer Strasse and Bergsteggasse was a 4 story V shaped Belle Epoque building, the color of ripe hay, with a mansard roof.  The main entrance to the building was at the end of the V on Ottrakringrer Strasse above which a blue and white sign with “48” printed on it. Embracing the outside of the building was a small café with a blue awning that looked as if it was the place where the neighborhood sippeds its coffee and guzzled its beer.

Pops pointed at the building and said, “See the third floor, 2nd window over, that was our apartment.” A feeling of déjà vu rippled through me as I realized my father and I had this very same conversation over 40 years previously on my first and only trip to Vienna. It was so long ago that fragments of the trip are all that remain in my consciousness. My parents cutting me off after my third hot chocolate. Seeing a Tom and Jerry cartoon in German.

I had, when I thought about this moment in preparation for the trip, realized that coming back to his childhood must evoke powerful memories and emotions for my father. More than just the Holocaust and all it wrought. But of motherly hugs, and family gatherings. Of fatherly love and the complicated man Marcus had been both loving and angry and the occasional beatings these unexercised emotions would generate. A childhood of happiness and deprivation that would help create the man that would one day be the father that his children adored.

Now we were here at the site of those sweet and sour memories and for a moment was so overcome with the emotion of the moment I needed to turn my back on Dad so he would not see my tears. Eventually, the light changed, and I followed him across the street.

We walked up the front steps and into the dark foyer of the building. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the lighting and when they did, I saw a set of broad stairs that led up into the building. I turned to my father and asked “What are you thinking about?”

He paused, reluctant to share his thoughts and replied “I was thinking about the wife of the superintendent of the building. She was a nasty piece of work. She hated having Jews in the building and would scream at us kids every chance she could get. She would say vile things and scared the shit out of us.”

“Didn’t your mother say anything to her.”

“What could she say without getting us thrown out of the building or worse.”

I decided to change the subject. “Really, no bathrooms in your apartments.”

He smiled and said “Yes. If you had to go the bathroom you had go down the hall. Except when I small and we kept a honey pot in the kitchen so I would not have to go outside…. The Super’s wife always yelled that we were fouling the bathrooms and making her life miserable.” He paused and said, “You should go up and look.”

I replied “No. I have seen enough, and I don’t want to have explain myself to the current tenants. Let’s go outside and get a beer.”

Once seated, and beer ordered. I asked “When you got to Vienna at the end of the War how did you find a place to stay.”

“You have to remember that Vienna, at the time was an occupied city. The Army found something for me. I seem to remember being put up with the Brits… and eventually assigned me a room that I had to share with another officer.”

“Did you two get along.”

“No. Not at all. My recollection is that he was a real asshole. But I met someone other folks there and they were thrilled that I spoke the language and knew the town. He took a long sip of beer and I could tell he was struggling with the idea of telling me something and said ‘Yeah, they even tried to recruit me. “

“Recruit you how.”

“He wanted me to stay in Vienna and help them with intelligence work. He thought that I might be an asset.”

“Really!” I said honestly surprised. “What unit was he in?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Come on”

“I remember that his shoulder patch had was gold and black and had a spear on it.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

He smiled at me, into a benevolent way that suggested that there was no way that I would understand him and replied “I wanted to get back to school.”

He was right to think that I wouldn’t understand because to me it sounded like he could have been James Bond if he wanted. Even at 50 I could not understand giving that up. But thinking about this years later, knowing what I know now, I realize that my father had already lived too exciting a life. That what he craved was a less interesting, not more interesting, life. All things considered I could appreciate that.

I said “I didn’t mean to go down the sidetrack. What I wanted to get to is what was required of visiting officers.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what did you wear. You didn’t wear fatigues or civilian clothes. You wore your class A’s right?”

“Yes.”

“So did you come here when you came back looking for your relatives.”

“Yes.”

“And did you see your landlady.”

“Yes.”

“And did she recognize you despite the fact you were 4 years older and had grown a foot since last you seen her and were now an officer in the US Army?”

“Yes.”

“How did she react?”

He looked away from me and I could see on his face that he was retrieving a very specific moment, likely in full 1040p resolution and Dolby sound and said “ She was scared.”

I smiled at his simple response and asked “How did that make you feel?”

He paused,  as if a little ashamed of his emotion,  and said “Great. ” I was not ashamed of the smile I had my face at the thought of a tormentor of my old man being scared shitless. The thought of it made my day.