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Frank Buchwald: He Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. In between,
they had to go authoritarian and they excluded all the workers until 1934.
It became so bad that they they closed down the parliament and closed down
all the unions, the Socialist Party. It came to a short civil war. Hundreds
of people were shot. In the end, February of 1934, people were-- a few of
the leaders were hanged. And the underground, the Socialist underground
against the Austrian fascism started.
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Beth Strasser: The working class leaders were hung?
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Buchwald: Some, yeah, Some who were caught with with with arms. It was
the, you know, and the movement was was whatever was left went underground.
And some leaders went to Czechoslovakia, which was still a democracy at
that time, later to Paris.
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Strasser: At this time. Were, were you raised as an Orthodox or
conservative Jew?
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Buchwald: My father was Conservative. The orphan home was Conservative.
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Strasser: When did you. Now that didn't have any effect on on your
involvement with the Socialist Party being Jewish? Buchwald: No, no.
Strasser: When did everything start meshing together and you decided to
leave, or was that a sudden decision to leave Austria?
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Buchwald: No. Hitler made up my mind. The first to see they came in March
1938. About six weeks later, after they took over. My license was revoked
and I was thrown out from the from my market stand. So we had to close down
and had no means to stand anymore. They started to-- I couldn't go into any
other profession. No Jews were just thrown out from every from every place
of employment. They gave us unemployment. They gave us unemployment. It was
very, very low. But they gave us-- I have still my card from the
unemployment insurance. And so there was no other way. If you could get
out. But, where to go? All the all the borders were closed. No one wanted
to wanted to Jews anymore before, if you could--I mean, you could buy a
Visa somewhere, you know. The-- especially the South American embassies.
You could you could pay something and could go to South America. We didn't
have anybody. We didn't in fact, we had we tried different things. We tried
in November of 1938, what is known as the Crystal Night. Just about that
time, France, who had already gone to London, wrote us There will be one
night, one day, gave us exact a day you could go to Belgium. So we packed
we got the letter in the morning and in the afternoon we were on the train
and then left. That was me, my wife, my, my son who was five, and my
brother with his wife and this little girl, which was three. And we just
went to-- took the train and went to went there and and and were thrown
back.
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Strasser: Oh, really?
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Buchwald: It wasn't true. The whole thing was a hoax. They had.
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Strasser: Traveled to Belgium, but then you had to return to Austria
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Buchwald: Yes, I was very lucky that I didn't go to the concentration camp
then because he already had taken me when I came back. You know, when I
when the Belgians turned me back, he already had turned me. He says, you
all go back and you stay. And my boy was clinging to me and crying and
shouting, you know, and the train station. And somehow the the policeman
said, Oh, get out. He didn't want any more trouble with the kid.
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Strasser: Oh. Why?
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Buchwald: Well, it was clear the Jews had to leave. They lost their
leases. They were thrown out of houses. They were the all Jewish businesses
were taken over by, by Nazis. Just taken over. You get out, whatever you.
They had to give up. Some of the employees would take over. He would show
that he was a Nazi. So he became the boss, belonged to him now. Jews go
out. All the Jewish employees had to get out. And there we were. We were on
the soup line.
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Strasser: What was this Crystal Night you mentioned earlier?
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Buchwald: A German embassy an employee in Paris was shot by a Jew, This
Jew went in Paris and to to this embassy and and asked for a Visa or
something, a passport. And he was mad and he took a gun and shot this guy
which cost about I don't know how many thousand lives in Germany and
Austria. And they went. That same-- the man was not dead, but he took about
ten days that he died. This, this, this, this German. And through these ten
days, the tension started to build up. It was clear that something would
happen when he died. And he died. The day he died. All synagogues in
Germany and Austria were burned. Broken. All the the, you know, the
windows, all this that something of this is the crystal. Because first of
all, they they broke they wanted to make a big show. A big. They wanted to
show the people what what happens when when when a Jew raises his hand
against a German. And there was not one synagogue left after that. And they
threw a, a brother in law of mine was a elder in a in a synagogue. And they
came this morning came to him for the the key he had to give give them the
key and they went in and put a load of of hand grenades into the center of
the of the synagogue. And so people, everybody around the next house is to
get out and the whole thing blew up and this happened to every every to
every it was a organized way of the the German State of the-- Austria at
that time was a German state, was one of the German belonged to the German
Reich. And we had friends, not Jewish friends and neighbors, and everybody
said, Oh, nothing will happen to you.
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Buchwald: You are you are born in Vienna. You are. We are only against the
east Jews, the ones who come from the east, from the Poles, from Poland,
from Austria against them. A couple of weeks later, they wouldn't even look
on the street at me anymore. It was a public. It was a mess. A mess. The
media's, of course, did their part. Daily talks, daily speeches. You know,
the German you know, you could see the little the little Viennese grocer
become eight feet tall because he was now the ruler of the world. We will
rule the world, and so on. It was bad. So they of course, everybody went
along. Nobody even dared to to to swim against it. Slowly people would they
see they got the Germans were very clever. Goebbels was the was the
propaganda minister and they were very the propaganda was so clever. The
Jews thought really we we are we are the scum of the world. You know, we
are. You just ducked under. You didn't know what to you knew what what
what? Everybody was thinking of you because they heard it daily. Ten times.
So it was not that I had no bad conscience. And I mean, I had done-- my I
worked my way up to where I was. So in at the end of 1930, at Christmas,
39-38. I knew that friends, very good friends of ours, had already gone to
France, to Paris. It was a Socialist group there and we wrote them. We were
friends of my wife, really from from childhood. And we wrote him a
Christmas card. And they wrote back, What? You are still there. Where are
you going? Nowhere. And then then they arranged for us underground, way out
over the Switzerland. We made a very. Quiet exodus.
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Strasser: How did that didn't involve Visas then it was sneaking through.
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Buchwald: Well, it's so long after that. I might. I could. I can tell. We
sent our pictures to Paris, and then we got a letter. Take this and this
train. From there, aren't there in Germany and go to Basel.
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Buchwald: That's all.
Buchwald: We didn't know any more. So we took the train. We went there,
took the train. We had no idea what will happen. And we always looked out
in every station. We thought, well nobody nobody appeared. Then we were in
Basel in Switzerland. And Basel has a three is a is a three country corner
of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. And the railroad station two has three
different landing places. And when we came in, when we came into Basel, we
still looked out nobody came. And there came the policeman, the Where's
your passport? So we showed him the passport and he said, come along. So we
went with him when we were in his in the in the police station, he said, Go
out there. Somebody is waiting.
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Strasser: Oh, my. You could have it.
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Strasser: Oh.
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Strasser: Must have been terrifying until he said that.
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Buchwald: Well we were in, in in in Basel. Basel. We were two nights. We
stayed in a in a union home union. Home union. The union had a hotel like
with restaurants and all. And we stayed there. We had a room there and the
young man came, the same young man who had waited for us and took us to the
to this hotel, a hostel, a hostel. And he said, Follow me. You take to the
railroad, you take the train. The the streetcar and go to the end. To the
end station. And then it was 6:00. It was in the evening. And he said, I
cannot go with you over the border, but I will wait. He went by bike. I
wait there for you and you go the way we I will tell you. And when you end
that way, you will be in France. And I will be there. He could he could
cross the border with the Swiss. So we went over the mountains in the
darkness and the boy was not. And he was shaking. And we passed people. We
heard, you know, but we went our way. It was a way over the mountain. And
we arrived in a French village.
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Strasser: You were walking over the mountain?
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Buchwald: Yeah, Yeah. We were walking over the mountain and we arrived in
a in a French village. And there the man said, Now you are here. And we had
taken in Vienna a railroad ticket to Paris. So in we took a
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Buchwald: Train?
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Buchwald: To Strasbourg. I think it was a train to Strasbourg. And from
Strasbourg. Yeah, we had the ticket. We had the train to Paris and Paris.
We arrived, and with my last money, we took a cab to an address where my
friends lived there. Turned out it was a. A boarding house, one room, 50
one room apartments, and every five rooms had a toilet and there was a
water and the bidet was in every room, of course. But the we were there and
there were out of the 50. We are probably for the refugee families and
there we lived for seven months. Then the war broke out and when the war
broke out, I was all men had to go to concentration camp, to a French
concentration camp, which was not as bad as as German. But it was it was
bad enough, no use to go into all the details. It was bad enough, but it
was not a camp where you were supposed to die. You know, it was a camp
where they just didn't care what you whether you died or lived. But the day
we were there and for seven months, after seven months, we had had, uh, I
have had an uncle here in Paris, in in Pittsburgh an engineer and had an
aunt here. She lived in Homestead, had two daughters, two teachers, and
they all had sent us affidavits of-- was all not enough. Not enough. Then
my aunt secured a friend of hers, an affidavit for us, and she had never
seen us. She had never-- we were two years here before we saw her, that
every day we did it. And it was the last moment too, because the boat we
got then an American Visa and Jewish organizations paid, of course, for our
trip. And we on the Champlain, a French boat, we sailed for New York in a
convoy and we arrived safely on April the 9th, 1940 in New York, and the
boat was sunk on the way back. Straser: Oh, my.
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Strasser: What did you do in those seven months before you were sent to
the detention camp?
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Buchwald: I went to a middle school at night and went to to become a
machinist. The French government did this because they needed people,
skilled people. And in that time I went painting, I painted. The Jewish
organization, had bought an old castle. There were very many Jewish
children from Germany and Austria who had come see people. Parents knew
that if they couldn't escape some someone took their children along. And
there were 100 children in just on this one spot. And they made a home for
these children. Oh, they a French Jewish organization took care of them.
And and we painted there and we built and rebuilt and and then fixed it up
for for the children.
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Strasser: And your wife was involved with that also?
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Buchwald: No, my wife my wife was in house was keeping house for for
people. She went with some mates to household.
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Strasser: So the government supported you there? That's how you and your
wife's earnings from housekeeping?
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Buchwald: Well, yes, we scraped together. We they didn't the government
didn't do anything. No, it was the Jewish organization who gave us.
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Strasser: Which Jewish organization?
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Buchwald: Well, the equivalent to the Jewish Federation in Pittsburgh.
Gave us a small, really small 54 or something, which was just what we paid
for the room and the rest we would. I worked there, you know, I got it from
the from another arm of the Jewish organization by working out in this in
this home. And my wife got a little bit from her-- from her-- she worked,
too. She worked for some people. Well, anyway, she was in household. She--
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Buchwald: What does it mean?
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Buchwald: And the boy was in this in one of these homes.
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Strasser: Yeah. Did you see him daily or.
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Buchwald: No. From time to time. He was not in this home. This home was
being built. We saw him. We visited.
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Strasser: You escaped with him? Yes.
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Buchwald: By the way, my brother, he he had a he escaped to England.
England accepted at that time. He got he wanted to go to Israel, to
Palestine at that time. And the British said, your number isn't up yet. We
leave. We can every year. We let only so many come in. But you can
meanwhile come to England and be in a camp and wait your turn. Meanwhile,
his wife and the little girl were in left in Vienna and he thought they
could get them out. Never. They never came out. They were killed off both.
My family and my wife's and mine. The we we had 28 closest relatives who
were her father who were killed in concentration camps in German
concentration. My brothers. Both brothers lost their wives and--
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Strasser: So you got to know your child.
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Buchwald: So let me see New York while we were. Became I-- My sister was
already in New York. She had gotten a Visa. She was alone. My aunt had made
her her affidavit and hers was good enough. Mine was good enough because we
were three. Hers was good enough. And she came and worked in New York as an
underwear worker, and we hoped to stay in New York. But the Jewish Agency
said, no, we cannot keep all the refugees who come in New York. Your uncle
in Pittsburgh had started your your affidavit, so you have to go to
Pittsburgh. So eventually we were shipped to Pittsburgh. And here we
started and got settled somehow. We first we lived with my uncle who was at
that time living alone and we lived in his house.
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Strasser: Where was this? Buchwald: Out in--
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Buchwald: Harrison Avenue. But what's the-- Annie? Well, out in the North
Hills.
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Strasser: North Hills. Was the HIAS in New York that sent you here?
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Buchwald: The HIAS. The HIAS got our tickets. The HIAS took us. The HIAS
got our tickets. They paid for that. They paid for our stay in New York. We
stayed in New York. You know, big, big. You know, it was every family had
cut it off in a big room, a little place. And we ate there and we stayed
there for about two weeks before we before they shipped us to to
Pittsburgh. I must say that in France. And I was not a very conscientious
Jew. I was more or less a religious, you know, Socialists were athesiast. I
was not an atheist, but I was kind of thinking about all this, but I became
a very conscientious Jew. First of all, Hitler Hitler told me that I'm a
Jew whether I want to be or not. I never wanted to be no Jew, but I didn't
deny it. But I was not a practicing Jew, let's put it this way. And, but I
must say, the you know, when you came with your passport stamped in a J,
this Jew, that was like a, you know, every Jewish to open. In France and
here. So I came there. I got at least 50 France to pay a room.
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Strasser: All right. That's good.
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Buchwald: So when he had to, they helped us over the I started to I
started to work. First I started to paint house painting. And again, the
Jewish Federation helped me bring me to to a real estate who gave me work
and I worked till the winter came. Then fall came. I think in September. At
that time, Pittsburgh stopped every painting job that was over, so there
was nothing. So I started to, I said, I want to work. I went over to the
Jewish organization. There was a worker there and I said, I seen the in the
paper this they look for spray painters can't I do this? I said, This is so
different from your painting. He couldn't explain to me because I had no
idea. So I said, can't I do this? I said, No, but that gives me an idea. He
got me in Turtle Creek to Bodyman to to a to an old Oldsmobile dealer who
had a body shop. And I became a helper in the body shop. And I worked there
for two and a half years as a helper. But I soon started to I, I, I liked
it. It was hard work, but I liked it. And-- Strasser: Did you--
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Strasser: --move out there?
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Buchwald: No. I had every day. It was long, long trips. We lived on
Darragh Street here. Darragh. Darragh. This is the street where the where
the Mandeville Hospital is on there, the Or there. There. And we found
ourselves this apartment there. And later on, we rented the house and. So I
worked for two and a half years, but I saw that there was a the foreman who
said no son of a gun who didn't go to school like I did for this, you know,
to become will learn anything from me. You stay as a helper. So I said,
well, since I had studied in Paris, cause is a metal worker, you know, as a
machinist I heard of the defence training school.
