A New Beginning
A New Beginning
Lucia Heilman comes out of hiding and into the world with her mother. This is what she old us, and we’ll end with this story."My mother had been a doctor in the hospital in Lainz. She went back there and demanded her old job back. And she got it.Next, my mother enrolled me in school. I was four years behind every other child my age, but I was so determined that I woke up every morning at 4:00 and studied like mad until I caught up.I was exotic at school – the only Jew. There were still Nazi instructors that tried to treat me unfairly, but the children were all the nicer to me for that. No one asked about my story and I didn’t say anything. That chapter was closed, suppressed, behind me.I enrolled in Vienna University. Like my mother, I became a doctor. I married and had two children. Now I have grandchildren. As for Reinhold Dutschke, we remained incredibly close. After all, when I think of my children and grandchildren I think—that’s three generations that wouldn’t even exist without that brave man. But it was quite late before I could tell my own children, or anyone else, about what I had gone through. I just couldn’t.  When I did, I felt like I was suffocating. But in time I started talking—really it started in the early 2000s. Yes, it took me half a century. And now I don’t stop. I speak with school children everywhere."Now then, you’ve made it down Taborstrasse, once teeming with Jewish life. The world that Kitty, Sophie and Lucia was born into is gone now. But they have shared with us their stories.We thank Jane Bertish for reading Kitty Suschny’s story, Jilly Bond read Sophie Engler, and Jeni Barnett read Lucia Heilman.Allan Corduner read Joseph Roth and Steve Furst read G.E.R. Gedye.Production and sound design was created by Tijana Zheraijkj. This tour was produced by Centropa and the Jewish Heritage Network as part of the project Jewish History Tours, co-funded by the 'Connecting Europe Facility program of the European Commission’. My name is Edward Serotta. 
As seen on
Centropa Jewish Vienna Tour
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