In the meantime, much to my delight, my parents arrived and I got them a small flat in the same building as ours. Apparently my father was released from internment by the French, just before the Germans arrived, and managed to get back to Perigueux. And after they started to round up the Jews my father pretended to have a nervous breakdown and was taken to the local psychiatric hospital, run by the nuns, and they kept him hidden for I don’t know how long. Eventually my mother was also picked up and taken to the local collection camp awaiting transportation.

Transports were leaving regularly to take people back to Germany. When my mother was finally put on the train she suddenly got very ill, and the doctor on the train decided to have her taken to hospital immediately. They removed her gall bladder and from then on the nuns kept her hidden. My father who, by then, was accepted as completely crazy, snuck out in the middle of the night, well after curfew, and went right across town, to visit her almost every night. This apparently went on right through the rest of the war until the liberation army arrived.

This is actually all I ever heard them tell about their experiences in France. After the war, my mother found out that of the 8 brothers and sisters she had, and their children, only one brother, Hugo, and three of my cousins survived. My oldest cousin George, a musician, went to America and his two younger brothers finished up in a kibbutz in Israel. There was also a niece of my mother’s, Edith who managed to get to Israel also.

My mother had occasional letters from all of them. When we were in Israel in 1988, we were supposed to visit Edith in Haifa, but that was when my back played up, so we never got there. Slowly my mother lost touch with all of them, except Uncle Hugo, who married, and settled in Bratislava where he finally died a few years later.

Oma and Opa Vogel at Maroubra Beach when
we still lived in Bond St

In the meantime I kept on dating Ilona, ‘Ily’ as she was called by her friends. After work I often walked from Kent Street to Strand Arcade to her father’s clothing factory to pick her up. I was introduced to her parents and invited to lots of family outings. And after a few months of this, we announced our engagement and got married on 30th of November, 1947.

The Balogs had a beautiful HMV record player. When people asked my why I was marrying Ily, I would joke that it was for her record player.

A flat was found in 35 Bond Street, Maroubra, and my father-in-law paid the key money and for the furniture made to our specifications by a Chinese furniture manufacturer that everybody went to in those days. Maroubra seemed to be closer to Melbourne than Sydney, when you took the tram there. I’ll never forget the time Marion and Paul took us out there in their car. Kingsford seemed to be the end of civilisation, and when we got past Maroubra Junction the houses stopped. There was a velodrome at Fitzgerald Avenue, and then nothing except for the row of houses which our flat was in. It seemed like it would take forever to get to work from here. But flats were scarce as hen’s teeth then.

We were married in the Temple Emanuel. I was already living in the flat, none of this living together in those days, and I took the bus into town for the wedding, in my nice little grey pin-striped suit, and someone upstairs in the bus vomited out the window, and I arrived with spew all over the sleeve of my new suit.

The reception was held at Tabud, in George Street. We were having such a good time at the reception, that at about one o’clock my father-in-law said to me “Don’t you think it would be good manners to take your wife home now?”. We were both carried out on our friends’ shoulders, and I nearly collected the door frame.

We went to the Hydro for a week for our honeymoon.