Didaktische Handreichung
Peter Kollisch
geb. 1928, USAPeter Kollisch, now 80 years old, left Vienna with his brother Steve (now 84) and his sister Eva (now 82) in July 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. We were among the lucky families who were reunited with their parents in New York in March 1940.
There are enough horror stories that occurred after March 12 1938 between friends and neighbors against Jewish families that had lived among them for years. So I will tell a positive one: “Since there were very few Jews living in the outskirts of Baden bei Wien, my two best friends were Christian. One, Vicky, was the son of our locksmith, an illegal stormtrooper years before the Anschluss. The other was Harry, who was raised by his grandmother, the owner of the neighborhood grocery store. I always say that they did what I would have done had I been a Christian. They joined the Hitler Youth, the older one Harry, was drafted into the German army, fought on the Russian front, became a prisoner of the Russians, and finally returned to Baden in 1947.
After the war, they both wrote to me asking me to help them to get away from Baden. Vicky, now an orphan, because his father got a bullet in his head from a British soldier in France and his mother died of cancer spring of 1945. Harry was raised by his grandmother with divorced parents who did not help much. Both my friends immigrated to Canada. Vicky still lives there, retired
successful photographer and Harry moved to New York years ago. We continue to be good friends.Hitler could not destroy our friendship.”
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