Evelyn Klopfer (AND mother and father)
| First name | Evelyn |
|---|---|
| Last name | Klopfer (AND mother and father) |
| Country of Origin | Austria |
| Date of Birth | My date of birth 7.9.1936 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1938 |
| Submitted by | Evelyn Klopfer |
Story
My father was Jewish, my mother Old Catholic. But Hitler was coming to Vienna, so we had to leave.
I will write more about that later.
We were taken from Vienna by EMI, for whom my father was manager of their Record Shop in Karntnerstrasse and taken to England. We waited six months there for a boat, and eventually came to Australia on the Jervis Bay. . My father had wanted to go to Canada, but that obviously did not happen.
Apart from anything else, we were given a flat at Challis Avenue, Potts Point when we arrived, and it was just then that BLACK FRIDAY fire day here. My mother could not speak English, nobody told her this was not normal, and she said one could not put one’s foot to the ground on that day. She had me as a child in a cold bath, and she suffered. She said to my father she did not think she could live in a country like this. It was totally frightening.
We had come through from Fremantle and I still have the photographs of that. We had no money, we then moved to Ashfield as my father worked in Homebush, and later moved to Bellevue Hill where rents were cheap because there was a war on. We had to report to the police once a week in Rose Bay and were not even allowed to go to Bondi Junction, because we were enemy aliens.
There is a lot more, but I shall send this for a start.