Monica Ingrid BERAN

Story

My mother Hildegard and I as a 13 year old followed my father Oscar Beran 10 years after he had to flee Vienna in 1939 from the Nazis. His parents perished in a concentration camp because they could not get a Visa to emigrate. They had been deported in 1941 to Kaunas in Lithuania. When my mother and I were supposed to follow in 1939, all private shipping was cancelled due to the declaration of the war. So we left Vienna to live with my maternal grandmother in the Sudetenland which is now the Czech Republic. She was being harassed by the Nazis during all these years. They tried to encourage her to divorce my father in absentia because she was a catholic they did not take us away but it nearly happened towards the end of the war.

We came on the “Surriento” embarking in Genova Italy. It took 27 days. I was sea sick a lot. I had to be immunized on board against something and this did not help matters combined with the sea sickness. We were lucky in that we had a 1st class cabin sharing with a swiss lady and her daughter because the lower class cabins were booked out so they put the overflow of some passengers in the 1st class. We had a tiled pool, lots of food, pasta as entree, chianti on the tables every day. I got sick of it by the end of the journey. I made some friends and I had a shipboard “romance” with an Italian waiter who used to give me extra gelato.

We arrived in Sydney at Circular Quay on Sunday 4/12/1949, it turned out to be the hottest day for many years. My father, uncles and auntie Schlesinger were waiting for us.I was very apprehensive. I hadn’t seen my father for 10 years since I was 3 years old ! It was a very emotional reunion. My parents could not correspond for most of the war years. At the beginning through the Red Cross and only a few words, In the meantime my father got TB and had to have a big operation and then stay at the Waterfall Sanatorium for 3 years. This probably saved him from being interned as German and Austrian Jews were because the Australian Government thought there might be spies among them.

My mother knew nothing of his illness. We think it was the stress he had to endure by the separation which weakened his immune system. Through all these circumstances, I stayed an only child. I now miss having siblings. This country has been good to us. I did well at school but my mother always yearned for Vienna. They had 20 more years together when father died at 64 in 1969. My mother was given extra years she missed during this terrible war and died at 99 in 2003. They are both interned at the Lane Cove Crematorium Cemetery in Sydney.

We settled in Canberra where my father was allocated a government house in Turner which was then on the outskirts of Canberra and is now an inner city suburb commanding very high prices. I have seen many changes in this country since my arrival. Some good some bad but times move on. After finishing Canberra High School I married and had 2 daughters and 3 grandchildren. I belong to several ethnic clubs in Canberra and Sydney and we are all trying to have a good time. One hears the carnage that goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan and one wonders that the world hasn’t learnt a lesson from WW2.

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