Read the previous part of Elly’s story here: War years: Marseilles and two miracles
For many years I was under the impression that the tickets were given to us by an order of nuns who would purchase tickets from those who had them, but who lacked the necessary papers to leave. I tried, by contacting organization and individuals, to find out who this order was or had been, so that I could send them a “thank you” letter but also funds so they could continue their good works. However, I never did find them. My sister died in 1992 and her daughter came to visit me in Los Angeles one day. As we sat in my garden reminiscing, I mentioned how much I would like to thank the nuns who had saved us. My niece looked at me and said, “What nuns? It was the Dominican Monk”. The explanation of why this kind man did such a deed is in the story below.
The Dominican Monk
When it had looked as if we would never get away from Europe, my Mother had Gerty and me baptized, although we knew as everyone did that in the end it would not help. If you had even a remote ancestor who was Jewish, you were considered a Jew. But anxious parents will try anything and she arranged for us to be educated in the Catholic faith which would result in our being baptized and maybe saved. The task of educating us was given to a Dominican Friar who, it turned out, was a converted Jew and looked far more Jewish than either Gerty or I. As he worked with us, it became obvious that he had fallen in love with my sister who was a blooming 20 years old, and she flirted with him to my dismay and anger at seeing him suffer and her being so heartless. Although Mother’s intent had been different, no matter how hopeless it would be, she achieved it in the end. It was his love for Gerty which moved him to buy, from his own funds, three tickets for the SS Winnipeg sitting already in port.
And this is the second miracle in two days which saved the three of us. Nor do I know his name, or any way of thanking him for what he did for us, but to remember him and feel grateful for what he did for four Jewish women in deep trouble.
Some stories have happy endings.
Celebrating our departure, and why it was not so good
Affadavit: to allow Mrs Oppenheim and her two daughters “… to proceed to the United States… being an ex-Austrian refugee she is unable to obtain a valid travel document due to the present circumstances”. Signed by Erna Oppenheim, executor’s signature, Hiram Bingham.
When we had received the visa for the United States, the exit visa from France, the transit visa for Martinique, and the tickets for passage on the ship, Mother decided that a celebration was to take place. She contacted the person who could help us achieve this. A small old man came to our hotel, knocked on our door, looked to the left, looked to the right, dashed in, sat on our bed, took off his shoe, took off his sock, and from the toe of the sock extracted a many-folded piece of paper. The three of us gathered around: the paper listed the items he could obtain in the black market, with the cost of each. We had very little money, but Mother felt we were going to be saved, and she was willing to go for it and found an item we could afford: a small sausage! Back went the paper into the sock, back went the sock on his foot, on went the shoe, out went the man.
The next day he appeared, followed the same furtive routine (dealing in the black market could have been a costly endeavour for him), and the sausage was ours. Of course this was not to be eaten right then and there. Oh no, it would go on the ship with us, and then, when we had finally pulled away from Europe, we would celebrate. The food on the ship would be, we knew, very sparse. Meanwhile, overnight, to keep it cool – having learned our lesson from the milk episode – we hung it inside the window shutters. Oh, it smelled so good, it was part pleasure and part pain to have that perfume in our room all night long. The next morning we were ready to go to the dock to board the ship, we did not have much to pack, and father even came to wish us goodbye. Although we were about to escape a sad fate we did regret leaving father and the friends we had made in the many months we spent in Marseilles. But we rushed to get to the ship and on board.
Gerty and I were hanging on the railing, watching all the action, while Mother went below deck to find out where our cots were. The hold still had the aroma of the cattle it carried before the cots had been installed for us to sleep on. Well, the ship pulled out, we were somewhere between laughter and tears, when Mother said: “Now is the time to have a bit of… Oh, God, where is the sausage???” In the rush to leave, it remained behind, hanging on the shutter of the hotel window.
Grab what life offers you while you can, don’t wait for a better moment, it may never come. There were so many lessons learned.
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