Oral history interview with Martha Donner

George Brunn (né Georg Brunn), born on Jin Vienna, Austria, describes his childhood in Vienna living with his father, mother, grandmother, and brother in an apartment how his family was not very wealthy but was rich in knowledge of the arts being close to his father his father’s work in a bank his father’s death from cancer in 1936, which caused his grandmother to move back to Czechoslovakia and forced his mother to take charge of the family and find a way to get herself and her children out of Austria his memories of the Nazis marching into Austria on a Friday in 1937 and his mother applying for visas by Monday having to wake up at 4:30 am to stand in line to acquire tax papers and other forms to emigrate the removal of Jewish students from schools having to attend a Jewish school becoming aware of the Nazi threat between 19 reading the newspapers and listening to the radio daily seeing people (Jews) scrubbing the streets and feeling sad and confused Nazis examining the books on his family’s shelf walking down the street to his synagogue and discovering that it had been burnt down leaving in November 1938 with his mother and brother his father’s family, all of whom did not try to leave and were killed in camps in Czechoslovakia taking a train to France, stopping in Basel, Switzerland, and taking a ship to New York learning about cereal, Hitchcock films, and laughter during the journey attending a boarding school in Vermont and learning English very quickly and his life after Austria.

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