Last month, I submitted an artifact for the online arm of the exhibition, No Way Home: Viennese Jews in Exile, which is currently at the Jewish Museum in Vienna. The artifact I submitted is a photo taken by the German photographer Ilse Bing who escaped from France on the same ship as my family. I discovered this image while reading the book, Escape from Vichy, by Eric Jennings who is a University of Toronto researcher.
Heimatlos: Wiener Juden im Exil
It was clear that Jennings’ book would illuminate my father’s experience for me. He writes about the shipping lane known as the Martinique Route, which allowed ships carrying refugees fleeing Europe to leave at the Port of Marseille and sail to the French colony of Martinque. I knew through my research that this was how my family escaped. Still, I was absolutely stunned to find my father’s photo on page 95.
In the photo, Dad is situated on the deck of the SS Winnipeg at the port of Marseille as it prepares to leave France. He is about to turn seven. It has been more than two years since he fled Austria, and he is finally going to the United States. My grandparents, Paul and Regina, stand to the right. Grandpa Paul looks thin. His neck is skinny. He appears like a man who has survived many months in a prison camp with terrible conditions and limited rations, because he has. Grandma and Grandpa are turned away seemingly to have a one final look at the Continent. Dad, with his weary face in the April sun, looks straight at me.
Ilse Bing, Dockyard, 1941, National Gallery of Canada
Finding this photo was like finding a missing link to my past. Having it included in the Jewish Museum exhibit feels like a kind of justice, like my father is finally able to speak his trauma. I think the image tells us that these stories are very much alive and relevant and that artifacts can be healing.
I am grateful to Eric Jennings for writing a book that explores a route that has seen little research yet helped so many, and I am also grateful for the Museum’s Heimatlos exhibit. I see so much of my family in it.
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