My Family's Story
By Shana Kelner
The story from the town of Vienna
Little is known about my family from my father's side expcet that they were Americans as far back as you can look. On my mother's side, however, there are some interesting stories. My great grandfather, Rudolph Stern, lived in Vienna around 1934, where a tenth of the people were Jewish, until the Nazis came over in 1938. Suddenly the streets were plastered with posters of Hitler, and the Jews were forced to be street sweepers. In the journal he wrote later, he recalled ’Walking single file, we were led through rows of curious onlookers to a place where we filled our buckets with water...Those petty tyrants and hundreds of onlookers got their money’s worth as we Jews in turn began the laborious work of rubbing out anti- Nazi political slogans painted on the pavement’’. One day the police were doing random ID checks and noticed Rudolph was Jewish and sent him to jail for nine weeks. In a later reflection on his time in Austria he reports that the experience of the jail made him feel ‘physically and mentally broken’. After he got out of jail on June 25, he got papers stating he had to leave Austria within the next 6 week. By July, he left Austria with his friend Hubert. They hired a pilot to take them to Italy with the little money they had left. They brought nothing with them, except his mother's precious candlesticks. When Rudolph left Austria, he never saw his brother and mother again. From Italy he went to Switzerland, leaving his one friend, because he knew he would be safe there, as Switzerland was a neutral country during the war. In Switzerland, he met a woman named Lily through a Jewish social group. They married, and had a daughter named Marion, who is my Bubby, and when she was 3 years old, they got an opportunity to go to America. They went by boat, and landed in Galveston, Texas. In America, Rudolph couldn’t continue his medical studies because he didn’t have any documents from his previous schooling proving he was at a certain level of medical training. He couldn’t afford to start medical school again, so he took up any job he could to support his family. He worked in a linen factory for a while, until getting a job as a professor in Yeshiva University, which he did for many years.
Still to this day, my grandmother makes us finish all that's on our plates because of the little food they had while living in Switzerland. Especially with Rudolph being from Vienna where money was tight, he instilled on her how lucky she is to have food.
The other 'tradition' that still has stuck with her is being very strict to make sure her grandchildren take off their shoes every time they come into the house. In other countries like Vienna and Switzerland, wearing shoes that were outside inside the house is unheard of and considered disgustingly unsanitary. It was a huge culture shock for their family when they came to America and noticed so many strange things just considered acceptable in America.
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Still to this day, my grandmother makes us finish all that's on our plates because of the little food they had while living in Switzerland. Especially with Rudolph being from Vienna where money was tight, he instilled on her how lucky she is to have food.
The other 'tradition' that still has stuck with her is being very strict to make sure her grandchildren take off their shoes every time they come into the house. In other countries like Vienna and Switzerland, wearing shoes that were outside inside the house is unheard of and considered disgustingly unsanitary. It was a huge culture shock for their family when they came to America and noticed so many strange things just considered acceptable in America.
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