From Sand and Ash(13)
Eva’s father just shook his head. Uncle Felix didn’t really need him to give any estimation on the life expectancy of the imprisoned Austrian artisans. They both knew.
“Every day they are arresting Jews. I have to go get him. I have to get him out of Austria. I have to bring him here.”
“Felix . . . you can’t,” Camillo reasoned gently. “They are deporting Jews from Austria, not letting more come in! If you are lucky you will be turned away at the checkpoint. If you are not, you will be detained and deported. There is no scenario where you will reach Otto and be able to get him out. I am doing all I can. Otto has to apply for a visa, though. He must wait in line like all the others and show them his passport. He must tell them he has family and a place to stay here in Italy.” Camillo had been over this time and again with his aging father-in-law, but Otto Adler was weary and stubborn, and the incredibly long lines outside the emigration office were intimidating. Many waiting in line were often subjected to the kind of indignities that he had suffered recently. Scrubbing paint from a wall or political slogans from a sidewalk, or licking the cobblestones, or picking up horse dung with their bare hands.
“I have told him. But he won’t listen,” Felix mourned.
On March 12, 1938, Austria had welcomed Hitler with open arms. Anschluss, they called it. Union. But Otto Adler said the word was just Nazi propaganda to reframe a forced incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany.
Otto Adler had watched it all from his apartment high above the street, a street that was thick with thousands of people waving the crooked cross, raising their arms, and calling out to the motorcade that moved slowly down the street. It was a military parade, with Adolf Hitler himself standing in an open command car waving and acknowledging the jubilant crowds that were welcoming him, the Austrian-born conqueror, into their beautiful city. It was like nothing Otto Adler had ever seen before. A parade, but more than that. The cheering crowds treated Hitler like a savior or messiah.
Otto was not impressed, and he refused to be part of the celebration. He turned his back on the parade, resuming his practice. But the onlookers were as thick as flies, and the sound from the street seeped through the windows and the walls, making it impossible for him to drown them out, even with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major singing from his strings.
“Sieg heil, Sieg heil,” they intoned, throwing off his rhythm and making him curse. He shrugged and changed his tempo to keep time with the chanting. He was good at adapting.
“That is the problem with so many Jews,” he told his son in a letter. “They don’t adapt. They haven’t assimilated. But I have. I have been welcomed into the arms of the highest society. I have played for royalty and dined with dignitaries. I am not afraid of the little Führer. I will adapt, and as long as I have my music, I am happy. I don’t need much.”
Still, he hated to see Austria bow to the Germans. All of Austria lay prostrate, letting Hitler roll right over them with his tanks and fiery words, and they celebrated the invasion.
Eight months later, and mere days before the Racial Laws were passed in Italy, Nazi Stormtroopers and Hitler Youth implemented and carried out violent pogroms against the Jews. In cities throughout Austria and Germany, rioters looted and vandalized Jewish businesses and homes. They burned nine hundred synagogues and damaged or destroyed seven thousand Jewish businesses. Instigators attacked, spit on, and threw Jewish men and women into the streets, killing ninety-one of them. Police rounded up, arrested, and sent thirty thousand Jewish men to concentration camps. And when it was all over, the Nazis presented the Jewish community with a bill for the damages, claiming they had caused it to happen.
All this terror had a beautiful name. Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Otto Adler wrote to Camillo and told him he could have made a fortune. Ostrica would have had business for a year just replacing the smashed windows and the shattered glass in the streets. Then he’d confessed and told Felix he was finally afraid. He wasn’t adapting anymore.
“How can you compromise with people who don’t want you to exist? They want us to disappear. I can’t adapt to death!”
1938 had been a very bad year to be Jewish. 1939 was even worse.
Angelo went home from the seminary that day, expecting to accompany Camillo, Felix, and his grandparents to Eva’s concert, only to find that she’d been asked to resign her position and leave the orchestra. No explanation. Just dismissal. She hadn’t really needed an explanation. The reason was obvious. Another member was dismissed as well, the Jewish cello player she’d dated off and on the year before.
“I don’t care. It’s their loss,” Eva said defiantly. Her chin was high and her eyes were bright. She obviously did care. But Felix cared even more. The news was yet another, very personal blow to the teacher who had spent years molding her into a classical violinist.
Felix wasn’t adjusting well to any of the laws. He’d been in Italy for thirteen years and had become a citizen after five. But his citizenship was revoked with the new laws. Camillo had managed to get him an exemption. Angelo didn’t know how, but he knew it usually had to do with money and bribes, which Camillo had gladly paid. For the time being, Felix was safe, though his father was not. His father’s precarious fate in Austria and the continual insult of the Italian Racial Laws had made the handsome forty-five-year-old Austrian look sixty. His blue eyes were heavily shadowed and his light-brown hair had turned almost completely gray. He was gaunt and quiet and spent far too much time in his room.