old photographs<\/a>, documents and letters that, with limited German, Ruby is unable to read. These mementoes prove crucial to Ruby reaching a new understanding of her parents and her wider family.<\/p>\nIn Vienna, Ruby first heads for a prison where her father was imprisoned in 1938, the year the Nazis took control of Austria. Edmund had given the impression he was in charge of aerobics in the jail, but the truth is darker.<\/p>\n
The reality is that Jewish prisoners were tortured, in part by being made to perform humiliating and painful exercises. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t he tell me anything?\u201d Ruby says. Edmund was freed because he promised to leave the country. He flew to Belgium in September 1938.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, he married Berta, but she remained in Vienna until December 1938. This means she lived through Kristallnacht, \u201cthe night of the broken glass\u201d, in November when, across the German Reich, the Nazis targeted Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues.<\/p>\n
Ruby wishes Berta had been able to talk about what she saw. \u201cMy heart would\u2019ve bled for her,\u201d she says. \u201cI had no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruby quickly located the graves of her grandfather and great grandfather at Vienna Central Cemetery \u2013 but finding the final resting place of her great aunt, Olga, was more tricky<\/p>\n
Next, Ruby wants to know more about the letters in her mother\u2019s suitcase from Ella and Salo, written in 1941. A genealogist explains that Ella was the sister of her maternal grandfather, Ruby\u2019s great aunt. Salo was her husband.<\/p>\n
One of the letters refers to the couple growing thin at a time when Jews were denied foodstuffs. But Ella also says she\u2019s learning English, evidence perhaps that she hoped to get a visa for the US.<\/p>\n
Instead, Ella and Salo were sent to Theresienstadt ghetto, in Czechoslovakia. There were no gas chambers here, but 33,000 largely elderly prisoners died of disease and starvation, including Salo. The fate of Ella is less clear and Ruby can only hope she didn\u2019t get sent to Auschwitz.<\/p>\n
In a shocking twist, archivist Dr Lenka Matusikova revealed that Ruby\u2019s great grandmother, Berta, was also admitted to a psychiatric hospital<\/p>\n
Having identified various figures for the first time in a Goldmann family photograph from her mother\u2019s suitcase, Ruby also traces the story of another great aunt, Olga. Olga\u2019s final address was Am Steinhof \u2013 a psychiatric hospital in Vienna. Prior to this, she was resident at another institution, in Brno, now in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n
Visiting Brno, Ruby discovers that her great grandmother, Bertha Goodmann, was also institutionalised \u2013 after selling her furniture and saying she was going to commit suicide.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I could have saved myself a lot of time and money,\u201d reflects Ruby. \u201cRather than doing therapy, I should have been doing genealogy. Now knowing my ancestors, I understand a lot more about myself.\u201d<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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