“GOLDEN KEEPSAKES”
Beaufort resident reflects on life of perseverance
by Dan Bisbee
Published in Carteret County News-Times (2002)
A pair of gold cufflinks. If they hadn’t been well hidden in a candy wrapper, Susanne’s life would have turned out drastically different. Tragically different.
Susanne was 10 years old at the time, as the Nazi soldiers boarded the train and began searching the children’s luggage for forbidden items. Items such as valuable jewelry. Discovery of the cufflinks would have most certainly resulted in Susanne’s being dragged off the train and sent back to Czechoslovakia. And eventual deportation to a concentration camp.
But the guards did not suspect anything amiss. The cherubic face quietly munching on her candy drew no special attention. The train pulled out of the station, and rolled towards Holland, and eventual safety across the English Channel.
Susanne was one of the 10,000 children that escaped from Hitler’s Germany and occupied territories on the Kindertransport in the months preceding World War Two. The Kindertransport, the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary film “Into the Arms of Strangers”, was set up when concerned Jewish citizens of Great Britain convinced the British Parliament and the German government to allow a number of European Jewish children to seek refuge in England. Emigration of Jewish families at that time had been severely curtailed, both by a German government intent on their destruction, and other nations’ reluctance to allow an influx of new Jewish refugees, including the United States. As the harassment and outright hostility of Hitler’s regime towards its Jewish population erupted, the Kindertransport provided hope that at least some would be spared. Parents placed their children on a train, not knowing if they would ever see them again.
Susanne made it to England and reunited with her father, who had escaped by traveling through Poland. She immediately gave him the cufflinks.
“He was furious,” Susanne said. “He couldn’t believe my mother had taken such a risk by hiding gold in my candy.” The cufflinks had been a wedding present to her father from her mother, who remained in Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia.
Susanne Van Dyne’s (then Susanne Deutsch) episode on the Kindertransport is just one event in a very full life. She has experienced uncommon events of sadness and tragedy. But through her experiences has also learned hard lessons in perseverance and survival. Now retired and living in Beaufort, Susanne recently decided to begin writing her memoirs. She believes sharing her story might help others in facing crises in their own lives.
The beginning of Susanne’s life held no inkling of the future difficulties that she would face.
“I was a spoiled little girl,” Susanne said. Born an only child into a successful Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1928, Susanne was accustomed to the privileges of wealth in a very cultured world. She was tutored in French, took piano lessons and spent hours getting her clothes custom fitted with her mother.
“It was extremely tedious, getting fitted for all of my clothes. It was years before I learned that most people bought their clothes in a department store,” Susanne said.
When Hitler rose to power in neighboring Germany in 1933, few Austrian Jews took notice. There was a very vibrant Jewish community in Vienna that was very well assimilated into Austrian life. Reports from German relatives about Nazi harassment and discrimination seemed far away, and no worse than typical anti-Semitism of the time. Life went blissfully on as Hitler spent years building Germany into the incredible machine that he would soon unleash upon the world. Too few paid any attention to Hitler, until it was too late. Susanne’s father, Josef, was paying attention.
“My father had been increasingly aware of the danger inherent in Hitler’s rise to power. My mother and her friends seemed to deny it until it was too late,” Susanne said.
Her father began shifting some of his business interests to Poland and England, and considered ways to get the family out of Austria. But the danger still seemed far away.
In March 1938, everything changed.
“Nazi flags went up everywhere overnight. Jews were not allowed to sit on park benches. I could no longer go to school and was restrained from going outside alone,” Susanne said. What had happened was the Anschluss. Austria united with Germany, and with the arrival of the Nazi regime came their vicious anti-Jewish policies.
Josef decided that the time had come to get as far away from Hitler as possible. He packed up the family and sent them to Prague, Czechoslovakia where Susanne’s grandmother lived. Josef went on to Poland to determine if emigration there was possible. His property in Vienna, including the house and a wood veneer manufacturing factory, was confiscated by the pro-Nazi Austrian government.
Others who stayed in Vienna soon realized the awful cost of living under Hitler. Kristallnacht. The ‘Night of Broken Glass.’ In November of 1938, the Nazis unleashed a violent demonstration of hate and racism as roving bands shattered Jewish-owned storefronts, burned synagogues, and beat and lynched Jews in the streets.
Soon after, Kindertransport trains began leaving German cities bound for England filled with children, many soon to become orphans.
Prague proved to be a safe haven for a very short time. The Munich Agreements of 1939 allowed Hitler to invade and control Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. Again, Susanne and her family were in immediate danger. And again, those who thought Hitler had achieved his final conquest were wrong.
“My father had an apartment in Warsaw, and was trying to get us passage there. He then traveled to England and tried again.” But he could not arrange for passage of Susanne’s grandmother.
“My mother refused several opportunities to leave as she would not leave her mother, and my father could not bring three of us out at the same time,” Susanne said.
That refusal would be a tragic decision. Fortunately Josef prevailed upon his wife to send Susanne to England on a Kindertransport train. The Prague Kindertransports were organized by Nicholas Winton, a 30-year old English businessman who haphazardly cancelled a skiing vacation to Switzerland and ended up in Prague, responsible for saving hundreds of lives.
“I remember the scene at the station. My mother’s best friend came along. I got on the train; my mother was crying and screaming that she would never see me again. I did not know what she meant and was rather embarrassed,” Susanne said.
Josef had paid the 50 pounds required by the British government and waited for his daughter to arrive in London. Susanne’s case was unusual in that she had a parent waiting for her. Most of the children ended up in English foster homes and orphanages.
“I think I had a better chance of going because I did have someone at the other end who would guarantee that I would not become a burden on His Majesty’s Government,” Susanne said.
“My mother told me I was joining my father in England. I was delighted to join him – life with my mother and grandmother had been very restrictive and depressing. I had always been very close to Father and in Prague I couldn’t even attend school. It looked like a great adventure to me,” Susanne said about leaving Prague.
“In an effort to save my life, my mother had me baptized. The baptism was a mere formality, and I’ve gathered that many such attempts were made. One thing I noticed in Prague is that Christians, when they walked past a church would cross themselves quite often. And I remember, after this ceremony – which my mother paid for – we were in a tram, and we passed a church and I crossed myself. I thought that was very exciting.” Susanne added, “I’ve always thought that I would have made a great Catholic- if they had gotten to me earlier.”
Unfortunately the only true protection from Nazi persecution was escape. Susanne made it to England. Her mother and grandmother never did. They were eventually rounded up with thousands of other Jews, gypsies, communists, intellectuals, homosexuals and other ‘non-Aryan’ undesirables and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camps. Their souls joined the nearly six million others who perished in the Holocaust.
It would not be the only time that Susanne would tragically lose a loved one.
Susanne grew up during World War Two at a Jewish boarding school for girls. At first it was located in southern England, but when German bombing raids began it was evacuated to a small town in North Wales.
“When I arrived, I could speak my native German and French, but no English. I tried to pick it up as quickly as possible. I did and soon I was reading everything I could get my hands on- Dickens, Shakespeare, Dumas, everything.” Susanne said. Susanne enjoyed her time at the school getting a liberal arts education.
“My father was a bit upset sometimes – he thought I wasn’t learning anything practical. He found it amusing – and annoying – that they taught us ballroom dancing,” Susanne said. “He thought that rather frivolous.”
“My father was one of the few foreign nationals who were not interned during the war in England- he helped in the war effort,” Susanne said. Josef’s knowledge of wood products proved useful in airplane and ship construction.
After the war, rebuilding began. Josef married a younger German Jewish woman who lived in his London boardinghouse during the war. Susanne, a young woman herself now, did not get along well with her new stepmother, and her relationship with her father also deteriorated.
“He became a sad person after the war. He had lost a great marriage,” Susanne said.
Things became more strained as she attended art school in London to learn dress design, and got engaged. Her father disapproved of Sam, her fiancé, and the families disagreed about nearly everything including the wedding arrangements.
“My father attended the wedding, but he wouldn’t give me away. Then I remember leaving the synagogue after the service and seeing my father and Sam’s father in an altercation – almost a fistfight – in the street. I think someone had said something nasty about my stepmother, who was a heavy, unattractive woman,” Susanne said.
Several months later the young couple moved to Los Angeles. Sam, a graphic designer, eventually got work, but Susanne could not get a job in dress design. She became a dental assistant for several years. Then her life changed drastically again.
In 1955, her second child Valerie was born with mild brain damage. Told that she should just give up on her daughter and consider institutionalization, Susanne would not. Frustrated with the lack of support and educational programs that existed at the time, Susanne decided to create them. This became the major occupation of her life. She developed residential and day programs for special populations and also set up homeless shelters. She remained in social services until her retirement.
Her marriage began to falter, and Susanne and Sam divorced in 1971. She relocated with Valerie and her youngest son, Larry to Virginia. Her eldest son, Geoffrey graduated from the University of Michigan and moved to New York to pursue a career in theatre and dance. Susanne was busy developing more educational programs in the D.C. area. Valerie was adapting and taking on more responsibility for herself. Susanne met and married Ted, an FAA inspector. She was rebuilding.
And then the nightmare.
Visiting a neighbor’s house, Larry was shot and killed by a friend playing with a rifle. He was sixteen and a half years old.
“I never think consciously that I will never see friends or children again but always ‘I know’ there is that possibility. My youngest son died very suddenly- here one moment- gone the next,” Susanne said.
Again, rebuilding. Again, perseverance.
Susanne and Ted visited Geoffrey in New York, and Susanne was pleased to see how well the two got along. Her relationship with her eldest son had always been difficult; strained. But now a chance to rebuild this most precious and fragile of relationships appeared to be possible at last.
But then another nightmare. This one longer.
Geoffrey was sick. He had AIDS. After four and a half years of the best treatments at the time, he died in 1991.
While others might curse God and fall prey to depression, Susanne does not.
“You don’t have to look very far to see the suffering of other people,” Susanne said.
“I consider myself a survivor- you just have to keep going. I’ve always tried to reach out to others who may not have my coping skills,” Susanne said modestly.
Susanne and Ted left the northern Virginia area and lived in Swansboro several years before moving to Beaufort. Valerie is now married and works at the Pentagon.
Susanne lives close to the gym where does water aerobics three times a week. She is taking a sketching class and re-discovering her love of art that she abandoned so long ago. And she has signed up for a writing class. So that she can tell her story. So that others might know what can be experienced in a lifetime. And knowing, draw from it lessons on the ability to overcome; to persevere; to heal.
Susanne had a special pin made several years ago. It was made out of two special gold cufflinks. She wears it when she wants to remember.
