In my eyes, as with many young boys, my father was always larger than life. His was a veritable Horatio Alger story: coming to America with nothing, working for a small paper company, then starting his own successful large distribution company which became a well-known and respected multimillion dollar corporation. His success allowed him to realize the American dream, which he did to the fullest extent possible.
His European flair and Viennese pride served him well socially and although I wasn’t there in his early years in the U.S. (I had to wait for him to meet my mother), the pictures he showed us and the stories he told were of an athletic self-confident young man. He was now enjoying living his new life in the early years after the war.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I began to realize the man that my father was in those early pictures, and the mountains of pain and loss that the walls of success and charisma were protecting.
My father was born in Vienna in 1920, first son of Samuel (known as Jacques) and Leopoldine Amster Eisenberg. Jacques, though a naturalized citizen of Austria, was born in Poland, while Alfred, Leopoldine and Alfred’s brother, Henry, were born in Austria.
Though I’m not exactly sure of the details, Alfred’s grandfather was a violinist back in Poland and although Alfred’s father never played, he took to the instrument quite early. The photos shown date back to 1925 when he was only five years old. Alfred became accomplished at a very young age and was performing concerts all through his younger years, a photo of which is shown from 1935 at the age of 15.
His father owned a furniture store and I’m told was a bit of a wheeler dealer but was always able to provide well for the family, and it was always a surprise at the end of each week as to what he would bring home for dinner on Shabbat.
The situation in Vienna was getting increasingly tense in the early-mid 1930s but I can only surmise that disbelief overpowered reason. In the mid-30’s, Alfred and Henry were coming home from school by bus and a group of Brown Shirts accosted them yelling, “Dirty Jews on the bus!” My father’s pocketknife was stolen and used to stab him in the leg while he and his brother were called “Dirty Jews” and chased off the bus. The reality of the situation became dire, and then on November 9, 1938, the utter destruction of their neighborhood finally gave them the impetus to leave their home.
The Eisenbergs, the Amsters and other family members began scrambling for transport documents and it wasn’t until late 1939 that they began to trickle out of Austria to family or sponsors in England. In the early fall of 1939, Germany invaded Poland and at the same time all Jewish travel documents that showed “of Polish birth” were cancelled. Immediately all naturalized Polish citizens were detained and their travel documents revoked.
For many weeks, my father, uncle, and grandmother were detained in a “transfer camp” and were now separated from the dozens of other family relatives that had not been born in Austria as they had. The stories were starting to travel about the building of the ‘work’ camps and separation of families and the trio was told to leave all of their possession other than what they could carry. My grandmother carried her silver Shabbat candlesticks hidden in her coat, and my father, who had preceded my grandmother and uncle in their exile to England, had his inexpensive but third generation Czech violin and his and his father’s tefillin. (His father joined them in America the following year.)
They then took a train to Holland, and then a ship to England to meet my father. The three stayed in England until 1939, living with relatives who had left Europe a few years earlier, having seen what was what was on the horizon in Europe. My uncle continued his schooling and my father found what work he could to help with the family needs.
On February 5, 1939, the three sailed from Southampton to America on the SS Westernland. They entered New York through Ellis Island and headed to Brooklyn, NY, to live with relatives temporarily. Shortly thereafter, the United States did a number of things for my father. He was made a naturalized citizen, was drafted into the Army, and was given a driver’s license. He first went to Camp Picked, and then on to Camp Ritchie, on secret orders.
Camp Ritchie was just evolving into the now famed Military Intelligence Service. The “Ritchie Boys” consisted of approximately 20,000 servicemen, about 14% of them Jewish refugees born in Germany and Austria. Most of the men sent to Camp Ritchie for training were assigned there because of their fluency in German, French, Italian, Polish, or other languages needed by the Army.
At Camp Ritchie, Alfred was taught interrogation techniques and spy craft to be trained with the intent of sending him back to Europe to interpret for the Allies or Spy on the Germans. About the same time German POWs began to be returned to the States in droves. The Americans realized that the General Staff was often masquerading as enlisted men to avoid interrogation. The Senior Staff decided to take Alfred and his friend Eddie and dress them as German officers and have them mingle with the captured POWs, which allowed them to remain in the U.S.
Apparently, this was so successful that one of the camp colonels arranged a band for the camp commander comprised solely of this small group of interrogators. As there were no stringed instruments in a marching band, my father learned to play the snare drum, but in his off hours, when he returned to Brooklyn on leave, the violin always came out.
My father barely talked about the war though there were a few stories of kangaroo courts and shootings of SS soldiers by guards who were identified as soldiers that had killed family members, and quite a bit of payback from the Camp Ritchie soldiers from time to time. When he was finally discharged in 1945, he went to work for the Paul Bine Paper Company and then started his own company Canover Paper Company in LIC NY in 1949. One of his first projects at that time was to become party to a class action lawsuit against the Austrian government for what was to become a 60-year lawsuit settling a few years after his passing.
All through my childhood my father played…all the classics, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, the Gypsy music, Dark Eyes, a favorite. He played at parties, at people’s homes and when entertaining at home, the violin was always played, sometimes accompanying our cousin who was a concert pianist. We traveled to the Red Tulip in NYC, his favorite restaurant, so he could play with the Hungarian Gypsy violinists. The violin was part of his soul. Although my siblings and subsequent children are all very musical, the violin was always Alfred’s alone. I only recall touching it once when I was 5 and apparently my mother took a picture of it!
My father played with a beauty and a sadness that only now in my memories can I appreciate. It captured his life, his lost childhood and the horrors of all the family members left behind, murdered in the Holocaust, and buried in Austria and Poland.
In 2008, the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism closed the class action suit, and in addition to a precise actuarial value of life cataloging all my family members that were slaughtered in Europe, gave us a few thousand dollars as compensation for the horrors our family endured.......never a better example of adding insult to injury.
My father passed away in 2004 and his violin found a home under my piano.
My family couldn’t be more pleased that the violin’s new resting place will be with the Violins of Hope. It could never do the story justice sitting under my piano when it can sing the story to the world in such illustrious company. As it is said, the violin is the closest musical instrument to the human voice. I believe the Violins of Hope will soon accompany orchestras singing beautiful music.
