Eva Arnott

My father’s family had been in Vienna as literate civil servants and professionals since the early nineteenth century when only a few Jews lived in that city. Family names include Weiss, Max and Schenkel. My grandparents lived on Gumpendorfer Strasse, in the Mariahilfer bezirk, where some books say there were no Jews. I have their 1899 residence permit. They had no religion of any kind, but because my father, born in 1902, was musical, he attended the Wiener Singacademie, the choir school which provided music for Masses at the Hofburg and he sang in choirs which performed in churches without experiencing any anti-semitism. Many refugees from the Russian revolution lived in Vienna in the ’20s and ’30s, and earned their living as ski or tennis instructors or chauffeurs so my father was aware of the danger of Communism from those Russian friends. He always considered Nazis to be another group of people who wanted to steal the property of others, like leaders of the French, Russian and Cuban revolutions. The family was able to get some money to Northern Ireland, which entitled them to entry visas, and they bribed enough Nazis to get exit visas. I was born in 1936, exactly two years before we left. The good people of Derry, Northern Ireland, made it possible for me to go to a good private school without paying tuition. Later, we moved to South Wales, where my father managed a factory in the Rhondda Valley and I attended the academically selective Cardiff High School for Girls and graduated from the University of Wales at Bangor. My English husband received his PhD in 1958 when we married and emigrated to the US where I’ve lived ever since. Our children are educated professionals and as I see them and their children I feel that “living well is the best revenge”.