Tag #127315 - Interview #97610 (Jak Rutli)

The Austrian captain that I remember.  At the end of World War I, when the foreign armies that were here were leaving, the Austrian army, I have no idea where they came from, stayed for 3 days and returned to Austria.  A soldier with a captain’s uniform missed the return date and stayed here in the streets with his cane.  Just as my father was crossing the street in Tünel, he looks and sees an  Austrian soldier.  My father knows that the Austrians have left.  This soldier, his cane in his hand is shouting.  “Achtung (attention), Fire”, he shouts.  My father called him.  He asked his name: “Schwartz”.  My father understood that he was Jewish, he also checked, he was circumcised, he was not mentally normal.  They tried to help him return and asked around at the embassies.  They could find no connection, his family probably died during the war.  They looked for his family to send him back but could not find them.  He had to stay here.  My father gave him civilian clothing, found him a place to sleep.  There was a grocer, Jewish, “come to me every day.  You can deliver the orders”, he said.  He came to us too every evening for dinner.  We were together every evening at the table.  This lasted 25 years.  During this time he never begged, he even gave money to beggars.  There was one thing he loved, he always said give me a tie.  When I was in the military, there was an epidemic of smallpox and he died, I heard about it when I was in the military.