A Street Car That Changed Our Lives
Friday, August 4, 2023
Featured Guest: Holocaust Survivor, Julie Gutfreund
Julie was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1931. Her father, an attorney, was from Tarnapol, Poland; her mother, from Vishnitz, Romania. The family was well-off and Julie was a self-admitted “spoiled only child.” The family owned a house and had a live-in maid/nanny. Julie attended kindergarten and then had a private tutor at home for first grade. However, all that changed in the spring of 1938 when Hitler entered Austria and Jews experienced changes in lifestyles. They were no longer permitted to go to the park or shop in certain stores. A great many restrictions were placed on them.
On Kristalnacht, Julie and her mother were home alone. The German SS came to the house and banged incessantly at the front door yelling “Juden Kommt raus”, (Jews come out) while Julie and her mother hid in the closet. Her father, meanwhile, had chosen to ride a streetcar all night. What he observed convinced him that the family needed to flee the area. The next morning he moved the family into the home of a Gentile friend and plans were made to leave. Because of the family’s wealth, they were able to give bribes of money and gold coins to consulates. However, Julie’s dad lost his position as lawyer at a bank for no reason other than he was Jewish.
Six months later, in the spring of 1939, the family received permission to go to Antwerp. The first option was to leave by train, but a few weeks earlier they learned Jews were being arrested on trains.. so they flew in a non-pressurized old plane, holding oxygen masks to their faces for the duration of the flight. Once in Belgium, they were on their own to find housing and other accommodations. Julie was placed in first grade. She should have been in second grade, but since she spoke neither French nor Flemish, she was behind in school. Julie’s father began to believe that all of Europe was not going to be safe and he began searching for all possible destinations accepting Jewish refugees including Shanghai.
Julie’s father contacted a family friend originally from Tarnapol who was now a doctor in Chicago. Dr. Davidsohn provided sponsorship and papers for the family. However, since Jews could not get into the U.S.with sponsorship alone, the family had to obtain falsified papers which indicated they were farmers. The trans-Atlantic trip was made on the Holland-American ship Pennland. Although the two-week voyage experienced rough seas, Julie remembers being “happy, running all over.”
In New York, HIAS aided the family, finding them an apartment on the lower East Side. While Julie became sick due to the travel and climate change which caused her to miss school, her adjustment to a new language and environment was otherwise smooth. However with a short time, Jewish agencies in New York were concerned with overcrowding, and wanted Jewish refugees to go elsewhere in the country. In the spring of 1940, Dr. Davidsohn once again helped by arranging for the family to move to Chicago, where Julie’s dad found work selling silk ties door to door. Unfortunately, his accent had him pronouncing pure silk as poor silk and he did not find success in this position. He later became a bookkeeper for a tavern and attended school to become an accountant. It was in this capacity that he later worked for the Board of Education. Her mother, who had moved to Vienna to attend culinary school, became a cook in the Curtis Candy Company’s cafeteria. Julie did not have difficulty transitioning to a new language and lifestyle in the U.S. She persevered, attending summer school to make up for her lost second grade education and later attended college and became a medical technician. She met her husband, Kurt also a survivor, on a blind date. They married in 1954 and had three children, one of whom lives in Phoenix, and 5 grandchildren.
