My mother and grandmother fled Vienna in September 1938.
I don't know whether they left by car or by train or whether it was day or night, but according to my grandmother's fading brown passport with the swastika on front, they crossed out of Nazi territory into France near Strasbourg on Sept. 14. They made their way to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where they embarked for Great Britain on the 17th. They crossed the Channel and arrived at the seaside town of Folkestone. Five months later they sailed for the United States.
My grandmother, Margarete Beigel, was 35 at the time, and my mother was just a small child. I don't know if they thought they'd return to Vienna eventually, but they certainly understood, or at least my grandmother did, that they were running for their lives.
