Father Francis Wahle came to Britain from Vienna on a Kindertransport. His mother and father, an ex-judge, remained in Vienna:

At school, letter-writing was timetabled: once a week. But from 1942 onwards there were no letters in reply because on May 1, 1942, my parents went underground. The Gestapo came to get them.

Both Francis's parents had converted to Catholicism before he was born but Nazis still considered the family Jewish.

My father happened to be out of the flat. My mother was there. She got her handbag & simply walked down the stairs as they were coming up to get her, muttered something about a hell of a to do in the house today, & just left. They'd obviously made provisions beforehand in distributing their belongings as far as they could & having arranged the place to meet in a case like this. From then on, they were non-persons.

They couldn't use their identities. No home, no place to actually spend a night in; couldn't spend it in the open because the winter is too hard in Vienna, & secondly, because if you were found in the open, what excuse is there? They had no ration cards, no money, no earning.

They experimented a little bit. My mother came up with the idea of spinning a yarn that she was a married woman, married to a policeman, but having an affair with my father who was living outside Vienna but coming in to visit her regularly once a week, & they needed a place where they could spend the night together. And for heaven's sake were they not reported to the police because her husband being a policeman that would wreck her marriage. That story was spun perfectly for the Viennese mentality; sentimental, romantic.

With this yarn, they went from landlady to landlady. The more the landlady was a Nazi, the better; it's safer.

My mother wasn't shy. She started private tuition in people's homes. It didn't matter whether she knew the subject, provided she was one lesson ahead of the child. And it meant that she was warm during the day. Occasionally she was given rations- either fed or given some ration, so they had something.

Also, in restaurants there were one or two watery soups & things like that which you could get without ration. They'd go to those places where the Gestapo also ate because that was the safest place. Once you got yourself established as part of the furniture, they would never dream of having a razzia in that restaurant. It was their base.

So, they would meet also in places which had two exits, like churches. If they saw somebody suspicious coming in at one, they would, not hurriedly but just gradually, move to the other exit.

Then, identity. My mother's name, Brunner, is very nondistinctive. So she never even changed her maiden name. My father knew that if anybody recognised him from his acquaintances & called him by his name, he would react, so he had to have a name which sounded like Wahle, so Taler, Maler, something "a, e". You could get travel cards for trams & buses. He'd give a name & address which was actually taken from the telephone book.

My father suddenly realised—the penny dropped—that as he was now hunted, he was an outlaw. Although he was a judge who had to keep the law & make certain other people kept the law, he was no longer a judge. He was able to tell lies, cheat, because this is an illegitimate government.

My mother did some smuggling, all sorts of things. They once spent the night in a brothel. The police raided it, they were taken into custody & released the following day. My mother said, "Give me back my money & jewellery". Far more suspicious if she hadn't brazened it out.

They loved it when there was an air raid because then they could get to the shelters where there was no control & they were safe. But for three solid years, watching your back the whole time.

It's amazing that they survived. It's a miracle. They had some very narrow squeaks. Their tremendous bravery: not giving in, not saying we can't fight against this huge organisation. My mother said: "they're not as efficient as they portray themselves to be & we've got no other option. We've just got to go and... fight for the children as much as anything.

Converted To Christianity

Memories

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