Sometimes a smell, an image, a sound, a melody can take us way back to the past and bring to life moments that we did not even imagine were part of our lives.
Going through hundreds of music records that belonged to my mother my eye fell on a very old record “Ewiges Wien”. I cleaned and listen to it the first song “Fiaker Lied” brought me back almost 70 years ago.
One day in 1946 my father returned to Zottegem, where we moved during the war to be safe, with a boy of my brother’s (Rik) age, it was Peter Zak.
Peter was a Austrian boy who had been entrusted by Caritas Catholica to a family in Blankenberge a small city at the Belgian coast. Peter’s father served in the German army and worked during the war on the construction of bunkers along the Belgian coastline. During that time he stayed in Blankenberge. He had become friends with a family who owned a small shop and kept in touch. Once the war was over Peter’s father had asked through Caritas Catholica if this family could take care of their son because in Vienna life was very difficult.
The family accepted to host Peter, they had themselves no children and did not realise what it meant to have a young boy at home. The problem was that both the man and the woman worked, so they did not have time to really take care of him. In order to occupy him, he regularly received pocket money but soon Peter became unbearable and this family asked Caritas Catholica to take him back. My father was contacted by Caritas Catholica to see whether he could take care of Peter for a while. (my parents were during the war part of group for saving Jewish children and the head of the Group was a priest who introduced my parents to Caritas Catholica after the war)
My father decided to take Peter home we had no phone it was thus a real surprise to my mother to see Peter entering home with my father. At that time my mother was expecting her fourth child (Claire) it was not easy for her with Rik 5 years old, Annie almost 4 years and myself (René) 2 years old. An additional problem was that my father stayed during the week in Brussels and came only home during the week-ends and not even every week-end!
The first days Peter was impossible and did not want to obey until he told Mama that he was afraid of nothing except his father when he hit him with the belt of his pants. Not a minute later Mama had looked for our dad’s belt and was giving Peter a good spanking. The result was immediate: Peter was “tamed”!
Peter had quickly become part of the family, and he and Rik got along very well. After a few months Peter returned to Vienna but returned shortly thereafter back to Zottegem.
Late 1946 or early 1947 came Gusti Klement. Since Peter was at home Mama had had a lot of contact with Caritas Catholica and accepted to have another Austrian Child but she said that it should be a girl to balance the family. She was very surprised to see that Dad had with him not a girl but a boy. The explanation was the following. Arrived at Brussels main railway station where all the children coming from Vienne arrived Dad had very quickly found the girl who was to spend a few months with us in Zottegem.
But at the same time, he witnessed a dispute between a woman who came to pick up a child and one of Caritas Catholica’s officials. This woman did not want the boy who had been selected to go and stay in her family; the reason being that he was ugly and dirty. Dad was wrong to want to interfere in this case by trying to convince the woman to take this poor boy. She had told him that it was easy to talk like that when he was assigned such a pretty little girl. It is then that dad proposed to take the boy and leave the girl with that woman and that’s how Gusti landed at Zottegem. His brother Werner visited us some 20 years later!
The arrival of Gusti corresponded with Peter’s first return home, they met in Brussels and Peter explained to Gusti how it was with us what he could do and not do.
Gusti was to stay three months at home, but because of transport problems between Belgium and Austria he stayed for a year.
From 1949 Peter went to school with Rik.
The advantage of having all these Austrian children was that at home we spoke very often German. That’s how I learned German a bit like a second mother tongue. Rik and Annie spoke with a typical Wiener accent!
Both boys came several times back and later we also had a girl, Hilde, from Vienna. It was around 1950 that we received a 78 rmp record with typical Wiener songs from Peter’s family. We had not many records the choice was thus limited and my preferred songs were: Fiaker Lied from the Wiener Liedern Record and Belz from a Yiddish song record.
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