When I was seventeen….
Around the time of my 17th birthday, after my Grade 12 highschool year came to an end, my Mum handed me a file folder filled with typewritten pages in English. They were covered with edits and corrections some in pen, some in pencil and in different handwritings. It was the first three chapters of my deceased maternal grandmother’s memoirs. These chapters were self- translated, by Granny herself, into English from the original German. I could make out both my mother’s handwriting and my Granny’s amongst the editing, as well as another hand, probably that of my Granny’s good friend, Lois Field.
Granny had died five years previously, May 17, 1970, when I was almost twelve years old.
My younger brother, Peter and I, were sent off to Bowen Island with school friends and their parents for the weekend. Upon our return, we children were told of Granny’s passing while sitting at the dining table for supper. The timing of our Granny’s death was such that it came only one day after my Mum’s own birthday on May 16th….As a child of eleven going on twelve, I thought that particular fact was deeply unfair and sad, and my child’s tears sliding quietly down my face were shed for my dear Mum, sitting quietly across the table from me.
Our family life was different without Granny’s presence in our lives.
Family dinner celebrating Granny’s birthday, ca. 1968. My Dad looking rather jolly! Elder brother taking the photo.
Reflecting now as an adult, I’m sure our Mum’s loss of her mother from her life was enormous. And only more recently have I also wondered about Mum’s own emotions when she handed me those first chapters when I was seventeen. Did this evoke any memories and feelings she had experienced when she had just turned seventeen? She had just fled for her life from Vienna, the city of her birth, her father had been murdered, and she herself, along with her mother and older sister were now refugees from Nazi terror, staying in London, May 1938.
The first three chapters of Granny’s Recollections….
I immensely enjoyed those three chapters, recognizing many stories which my Mum was fond of recounting to us children (and which I now repeat to my own children!), of little Annerl and her brothers. The additional details and new stories all fascinated me. I read and reread and wanted more.
Taught by our mother, my brothers, John and Peter and I could from a young age all recite, rather like a mantra, our Great Uncles’ names in birth order: “Benno, Leo, Oscar, Frederick and Robert”. Anna (our Granny) was the little sister. Their parents were Malvine Gutmann and Siegmund Mahler. One discovers in the third chapter that he is a first cousin to Gustav, the composer, and conductor of the Vienna State Opera. 🎶
The first three chapters also covered young Annerl’s primary school experiences and escapades, again many of which we had heard repeatedly from our Mum over the years, and stories of the brothers, their artistic abilities and the jobs they obtained with the help of the rich branch of the Gutmann family. (Malvine’s father, Bernhard, was from the poor branch!) There’s also a hilarious story of a dancing teacher who was hired to teach the teenage boys to dance; and this resonated….our own Mum had given John, Peter and I waltz lessons in her desk room study. And the five boys and Anna all were musically gifted and played chamber music together at home, and artistically gifted. They crafted a tiny fleet of ships of balsa wood and designed games for them. Granny had a few ships, kept in a little tin, which she inherited after her beloved brother Frederick passed away in August 1958. We then inherited them, after she died, but when i enquired recently, my brothers didn’t have them. One cannot keep everything!!
My childhood memories of my Granny, as well as these three chapters of the memoir, and the stories and expressions my brothers and I still repeat today, reinforced the family tradition to recount stories humourously and usually with the laughter directed at oneself. This was a huge family value, which was passed on over the generations, a gift for which I am so grateful and hopefully it’s being passed on to our children!
When I was forty-four….
Please fast- forward 25 years with me, to the year 2000. I was now 42 years old, happily married with three young sons, ages 9, 7 and 4. We had just returned to the Vancouver area after living and working for 6 years in East Malaysia, Borneo.
During the time we had been away, my father had passed away (my mother had already passed in 1988). Our childhood family home was rented out, which meant all the belongings of my father’s 50 years in the home, and my mother’s 33 years, had to be stored somewhere….much had been distributed between 6 adult children, but much remained! My father was a collector of antiques and medical history books.
Shortly after we returned, a visit to my older brother John’s home revealed his over stuffed crawl space. The first box he hauled out for me was heavy with large binders of typed manuscripts.
One of these had a shiny wooden cover and was laced with a black silken cord which held 811 typed pages.
I opened the cover.
The language was all in German. On the title page, I saw our Granny’s name; then, to my astonishment, I saw my name in her European slanted script.
I borrowed a German English dictionary from John to look up a few words, and in those following few minutes it was revealed to me that this was our Granny’s memoir, “My Recollections” and that they were
“dedicated to my grand- daughter, Jennifer Elisabeth Dolman” – me!! ( when I was an infant, 1958, which is when she finished the memoir writing).
Over the next two to three years while we were in Vancouver, I also spent some time exploring photo albums, again with a German English dictionary. One day I suddenly became aware that my Granny had been only 44 years of age when she fled Vienna with her teenage daughters and a few days later was widowed by the murder of her husband Simon in the Vienna Gestapo prison. It suddenly struck me that my Granny, whom i had only known in her 70’s, was a young passionate woman of 44, my age then, when these traumas had occurred. That was very moving for me, and in fact, opened up a huge chasm of pain. My mother had shared so little of the trauma, but it was there, and over the next years, it was my turn to experience it deeply.
Now I’m sixty- four….
Today, as I write, the years have unfolded so much more of the Recollections and reflections, and there has been great progress and exciting news!
The memoir was fully translated into English 2017-2019 by an excellent team of translators, Anuschka Elkei and Dr. Uma Kumar. It is available online at the link below: you can hover and read it from the website, you can or download it and read it on your computer or print it.
https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/objects/9347
The original German typescript was donated to the Collections Archives of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, along with some other items, and the English link in March 2021.
Exciting news in October 2022….
And, we have the recent wonderful news that the German edition has just been published in Vienna, Austria by Danzig & Unfried (October 2022). The publisher, whom we met in June 2018 in Vienna, is Dr. Ernst Grabovszki, a professor at Universität Wien in the department of Literature. The book is for sale on a number of websites, including Amazon. The title in English is:
We danced on the Volcano: My Life in Vienna 1893-1938
Below is the English translation of the back cover:
And here is a YouTube video of “yours truly” reflecting on some questions from our publisher, Dr. Ernst Grabovszki.
And there’s more: in honour of International Women’s Day, a book launch is happening at UBC on March 6th, along with some speakers. ( a local Vancouver event).
Reflecting on all this at 64, pushing 65 years of age, I realize that was the age my Grandmother was writing her memoirs.
Perhaps it’s time for me to do the same😊
JenniEliz 