The presence of the absence’

The presence of the absence’ – this phrase of Katherine Klinger, founder of the Second Generation Trust – touches a major issue in Vienna, where I live. Almost everywhere in the city, the absence of those residents, mostly Jewish, who were deported, put in prison or killed by the Nazi regime, is evident. About every tenth flat in Vienna – including the one my flatmates and I have lived in since 1999 – was ‘arianised’ or taken away from its owners and inhabitants. I discovered in the files of the Austrian Documentation Archive of Resistance (DöW) that Lea Deutsch, born in Vienna on 4 November 1883, was deported from that very flat on 3 December 1941 to Riga, where she was presumably murdered. In 2005 Katherine Klinger encouraged me to put a note on the AJR website addressed to descendants, relatives and friends of Lea Deutsch suggesting a visit to the flat or offering my help in doing research. Many years went by. In 2010 I received an email from Sue Rutherford in England who was looking for a relative by the name of Friedrich Deutsch. We emailed back and forth only to discover that Lea and Friedrich obviously did not share more than their last name. Nonetheless, Sue’s email was the beginning of an on-going conversation. She asked me what were my motives in doing research. When replying, I was prepared not to hear from her again given that I am the granddaughter of two couples who were German Nazis and whose families profited from the Nazi regime. But Sue did get back to me and, despite our different perspectives, we became friends. She told me about her mother, who survived the Nazi regime by being sent to England on a Kindertransport, and about her grandparents and other relatives who were killed by the Nazis.began digging into files in Vienna archives to find the missing links Sue and her sister Laureen were looking for. When in 2011 they came to Vienna together with their cousin Chantal, I felt as if nothing but ‘the presence of the absence’ was the ground we were walking on. I thank Sue, Laureen and Chantal for their openness and for sharing their thoughts and feelings, their silence and laughter. During their visit, the sun made Vienna appear warm and bright as if the city wanted to conceal the atrocities inflicted on their family. This friendliness of Vienna made me angry. But unexpectedly Sue ‘fell in love’ with Vienna, as she put it. I understood that my anger, shame and negativity about Vienna were not the way Sue felt and I slowly opened my eyes to a more complex way of looking at the city of her mother’s childhood and at its houses, stones and park benches – and the sun. Sue and Laureen were keen to see the Prater. Sitting on a bench in the park, they said, was something they owed their mother and grandparents. They asked me if I would like to accompany them. I couldn’t imagine sitting with them on a bench in the Prater or standing beside the bench or behind it – nor even sitting on a different bench! In the end, I resolved that I would decide at the moment in question what felt right. When we arrived at the Prater, a ‘Vienna Oktoberfest’ was going on with hundreds of people in traditional costumes. Sue and Laureen changed their plans and we left the park. Intense days went by. When finally we had to say goodbye, I walked home crying. I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was that made the tears run down my cheeks. February 2013, three years later: another email – Debbie from England, who had also read that note about Lea Deutsch. Debbie’s husband David is Lea’s greatgrandson. We began sharing information about Lea and the vegetable stall she and her husband Emanuel had been running at the nearby Naschmarkt until it was taken away from them by the Nazi authorities and their market ‘neighbours’. I hope to have the chance to meet Debbie and her husband sooner or later. This possibility changes my everyday thoughts and responsibility as I am a current inhabitant of the flat that was violently taken away from Lea Deutsch. My flatmates and I do not own the flat and I wonder how anyone – including its current owner – can claim to own it. We live our everyday lives at that address as the third, even fourth, generation. But Debbie’s husband and his relatives might have chosen to live in that very place had their ancestors been given the opportunity to survive. We cannot undo what is done. The chance to meet and become a friend of the descendants of those who are absent means a lot to me. A lot. Lilli Axster