Chapter 1 Childhood in Vienna

The Vienna that Milo Kleinberg was born into was still reeling from Austria’s stunning defeat in World War I, and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of which the city had been the center of power. It was the late 1920s.

It remained the country’s cultural center, despite wartime losses and destruction. The intellectual core somehow held, albeit in a somewhat less vibrant form than before 1914 and the declaration of war. At the time of Kleinberg’s birth in June of 1926, Vienna’s cafés were again the bustling centers of city life, where the literati, artists and power brokers of the day, less and less chastened by war and defeat, would convene over thick coffee, sometimes with a dollop of whipped cream. At marble-topped tables in Café Pucher, Café Central and Café Rebhuhn, sharply dressed patrons read the free newspapers, and met with their friends to discuss the ever-evolving political scene or Arthur Schnitzler’s latest play. The Wiener Werkstätte held sway over trends in the decorative arts, and the Vienna State Opera staged elaborate productions in its grand, 1869 Neo-Renaissance palace. Demel’s, the legendary pastry and chocolate shop, continued to thrive, but the famed Hotel Sacher had begun a slow decline. Unable to accept the fall of the monarchy, management would serve only aristocrats, many by this time living a life of genteel poverty and dining on credit.

The Kleinbergs lived quite a different life away from the prosperity of that most urbane of stages, in an area known as Vienna’s First District. As a fur salesman, Kleinberg’s father, Max, came into contact with the bourgeoisie on a regular basis, but the young Kleinberg’s memories are the simple ones of a small child, of candy shops, green spaces, lots of friends and riding his treasured wooden scooter with red wheels. The cleanliness and order of every part of the city still stands out in his mind.

“You never saw a piece of paper on the street,” he says.

Kleinberg sang in his synagogue’s boys’ choir, an experience that contributed to a lifelong love of music.

He loved to play soccer, which he did in a public park that was about a 20-minute walk from home. Max Kleinberg made only a modest living, but for his young son it was a happy time.

“I had friends and I played soccer,” he says. “I enjoyed myself even though we were poor.”

Max Kleinberg worked for his brother, Fritz, who designed the furs Max peddled around Vienna, where fur garments were de rigueur among all middle- and upper-class Viennese women. Their home was a small, one-bedroom apartment where Kleinberg’s mother, Charlotte, presided over a narrow kitchen. He had a sister, Thea, born when he was three.

“We weren’t rich, but I was a child and didn’t know any different,” he says. “We always had food and clothing.”

The Kleinbergs were a conservative Jewish family that attended synagogue services on Friday and Saturday. Friday evenings were reserved for the Sabbath meal with the immediate family. Going to the public baths on Sunday was a regular ritual for Max and his son because the small apartment had no bath or shower.

The Sabbath meal may have been a quiet affair, but an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins lived in the area, as did the four grandparents who doted on little Milo.

“They gave me groschen whenever I saw them, a few small coins,” he remembers. The four Kleinbergs were occasionally afforded a vacation, sometimes to nearby Prague, the Czech capital, but sometimes to a traditional spa town where Kleinberg’s grandmother bathed in the natural springs to relieve some of the physical complaints that came with age.

It was two of his uncles that influenced the young boy in a way that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Both were hard-working, both were designers, highly creative, and making the most of natural talents the way Kleinberg would as an adult. Fritz, the fur designer, was successful at his craft and in business in Vienna and, later, in America.

Uncles Fritz Kleinberg and Willy Morgenstern, his mother’s brother, were involved through business dealings with Vienna’s more prosperous residents, some of whose sensibilities likely trickled down to the young Kleinberg. He credits both uncles with the path he took in life. “I got my design talent from Uncle Willy and Uncle Fritz,” he asserts.

Uncle Willy, however, might have had more of an influence. He cut something of a stylish figure and was, in his way, an arbiter of fashion through his job as a window dresser at Schiffman, the capital’s largest, most elegant retail emporium. Kleinberg has vivid recollections of visiting the glittering department store in the center of town, where the doorman was a statuesque black man—likely the only dark-skinned

person most Austrians had ever seen. Every day he would be at his post, sporting an immaculately tailored navy blue uniform and a remarkable hat that made him appear even taller, opening and closing the doors of the store with great flourish.

Beyond forays to Central Vienna, Prague and the spa town, daily life for the Kleinbergs was pretty much status quo. While most of Vienna’s 180,000 Jews were segregated into their own districts, as the town’s different zones were called, the Kleinbergs lived in a sector that was mixed, where Jews and non-Jews lived as neighbors. Kleinberg attended a public school that was likewise mixed. It was a gymnasium, a higher level of public school for boys who excelled academically.

That all changed in March of 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria and life as young Kleinberg had known it was over. “I was tossed out of my school when the Nazis came in and put into a school for Jews only,” he recalls. “The Jews were just stepped on.”

The whole tenor of life shifted dramatically for the family as once-friendly neighbors suddenly shunned them for no reason the young Kleinberg could understand. He was 10 years old.

“Overnight, they turned on us,” he says. “They wanted to save their own skin. They were afraid they would be thrown into the camps, too, accused of collaborating.”

The young Milo in school, center row, second from left.

Government issued identity card. Pictured are Charlotte Kleinberg, center, with Milo, far right, and his sister, Thea. Even at age 10 or 11, he was keenly aware of the sense of fear pervading his world.

“I would hear my parents and their friends say, Oh, they took someone to the camps,” he continues. “I understood what that meant.”

Traumatically cast aside by friends in the wake of the Anschluss (annexation), Kleinberg also remembers being frightened by Austrian soldiers in Nazi uniforms shouting in the street one Sunday as he walked to his grandmother’s house with his parents. He further recalls one unforgettable night when all Jews were abruptly routed out of their apartments and into the streets by once-cordial neighbors. On hands and knees, they were forced to wash the streets of political propaganda promoting Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, who had fought hard to keep Austria independent from the Nazis.

Schuschnigg and Austria lost that battle. He was ousted when the Germans invaded, then taken prisoner. Deportations of Jews accelerated. On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Kristallnacht, Jewish-owned shops and businesses and some 95 synagogues in Vienna alone were destroyed. Twenty-seven Jews in the city were killed.

The Kleinbergs had no choice but to flee the country and, like so many other refugees, set their sights on America. They needed a sponsor to gain entry, a relative already in the U.S. who would promise to take them

in upon arrival and provide food and lodging shortterm. As luck would have it, Kleinberg’s mother had cousins, the Morgensterns, in Torrington, Connecticut, who could provide an affidavit on the family’s behalf. It was a written guarantee that the family arriving from Europe would have a place to live and possible job leads until they got on their feet. Marvin Morgenstern had a successful window cleaning business, so successful, in fact, that he could afford to drive a Cadillac. He and his wife, Naoma, offered the Kleinbergs shelter for a short while because they were family, albeit family they had never met but whose lives were in danger. He did his duty and opened his home, although he may have done so somewhat reluctantly, as Kleinberg’s oldest son, Jeffrey, recalls.

Indeed, the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initially turned its back on European Jews, hoping to negotiate mass resettlements of the refugees in other countries around the globe. In 1939, however, for the first time, Roosevelt allowed the quota of applicants from Austria and Germany to be filled completely. The young Kleinberg and his father were among the lucky ones.

The two departed for the U.S., going first to France and the port of Le Havre where they boarded the ocean liner Georgic for New York. Kleinberg’s mother and little sister Thea would follow six months later. “I was excited we were doing this,” Kleinberg recalls. “I even remember our cabin on the ship.”

It was March 1939. He remembers seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time as they sailed into the New York Harbor, going through Ellis Island like so many immigrant families of the day, and disembarking finally on Manhattan’s West Side. The cousins from Connecticut were waiting on the dock to take the new arrivals home to Torrington for what would turn out to be only a brief stay. Soon enough, the Kleinbergs headed south to New York City and their permanent home.