On the recordMay 5, 2011
This week marks the Holocaust Days of Remembrance. In 1938, there was a family that lived in Vienna, Austria. The father was a successful tea merchant. The boys were both talented and bright. And when the Anschluss came and the Nazis arrived, the younger son watched as his mother signed away all of their possessions. The mother made her way to the United States, because she had relatives here. The older of the two boys was smuggled out of Austria in the trunk of a car. The younger boy was taken to an orphanage, a boy's orphanage in Belgium. The father, Sigmund, was not able to obtain passage, as the boys eventually did to the United States, and he ended up in the free city of Shanghai, where he reestablished his tea business. He kept writing to his wife, Rose, over the ensuing 2 years, and then she stopped hearing from him. It turned out that Sigmund Haimovitz had died in Shanghai of malaria. His younger son, Henry, was my father-in-law, and I want to remember Sigmund Haimovitz and his brave family and all those who perished as a result of the terrible events of the Holocaust. ____________________
