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Survivor & Witness |
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| Choosing to Remember from the Shoa to the Mountains | |||
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After Trude safely arrives in the United States, Max visits her in N.Y. (ShP25)
Name: Max Heller Date of Births: May 28: 1919 Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria Parents: Israel and Leah Hirsch Heller Siblings: Paula. Children: Three Grandchildren: Ten Great-grandchildren: Four
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Max's father, Israel grew up in Brzozow, Poland while his mother, Leah was
from Lubachow. After their marriage they
started a business in Vienna hiring salesmen to go door-to-door selling
fabric for bedding and tablecloths; Israel collected the payments. They
were Orthodox Jews and Max has wonderful memories of spending Shabbat with his family.
Leah and Israel
anonymously provided lunch on Saturdays for those less fortunate. Max
remembers that Leah would say, "God
helps those who help themselves.'' Israel would say, ''Don't worry, God
takes care of everything.'' From the age of eight, Max had a Hebrew
teacher and eventually learned to translate the Torah.
Max's childhood also included theater, sports, school and work. Israel and Leah took their children to the Yiddish theater. From the age of thirteen, Max participated in the sport of wrestling (Greek-Roman style, and at age seventeen, he won the junior wrestling championship (Jugendmeister) of Austria. After attending a private gymnasium for four years, Max worked for his parents for a few months. He remembers much anti-semitism in Vienna and the street fighting that it incited. For three years Max attended a school of commerce. In the mornings he apprenticed at a Jewish-owned company, with about seventy employees, which supplied five-and-dime stores with a wide variety of merchandise including house wares, toys, and clothing. During the first year, he worked in the shipping department. Each afternoon, after work, he attended classes at the business school. One course included the business of importing such items as tools, porcelain, and toys. By the second year Max was the foreman in the shipping department. Finally, during this three-year apprenticeship, Max became a buyer for the company. He earned about ten dollars per month. Max was eighteen early in the summer of 1937 when he met fourteen-year-old Trude Schonthal at an Austrian resort called Voslau. He told Trude that they would marry some day… Max returned to Vienna and happened to go to a dance. A chaperoned group of girls from Greenville, South Carolina were at this dance and Max met and danced with one of them, Mary Mills. Neither teenager could speak the other's language, but they met the next day for a walk and Max asked Mary for her address. The next year, on Friday, March 11, 1938 Max left work and witnessed the Nazi take-over. Austrians were on the streets jubilant in their support for the Nazis. Jewish synagogues and property were being burned and vandalized. By Monday Max remembers that signs were posted in the park forbidding Jews to sit down on the benches. At work on that first Monday following the Anschluss, fellow employees arrived wearing Nazi uniforms. A few days later, a former employee (who earlier had been helped by Max's boss to start his own business) walked into the company building with several Nazis who demanded that the ownership of the company be turned over to them. The owner was away at a trade fair in Czechoslovakia. Of the Jews working for this supply company, only four were allowed to stay; Max was one of them. The Nazis gave a receipt for this expropriation before they left that day. After the Anschluss in March, Max immediately began drafting a letter to Mary Mills - using a German/English dictionary. On May 9th or 10th he received a return letter from Ms. Mills. She wrote him that a Greenville man named Mr. Shepherd Saltzman would send him an affidavit. When Mary had first read Max's letter seeking a sponsor, she had asked her father for advice. Mr. Mills suggested that she ask Mr. Saltzman, a Jewish man who owned Piedmont Shirt Company in Greenville. Shepherd Saltzman told Mary that he would sponsor Max, and said something like, ''If you (Mary) who are Christian are trying to help a Jew, how can I refuse to help?'' Meanwhile the lives of Vienna's Jews were increasingly threatened. Max and the other Jewish employees (at the five-and-dime supply business) were ordered to train the non-Jewish workers who would soon be taking their places. Then Max lost his job. Israel and Leah's customers stopped paying them, so they sold their silverware and jewelry to survive. Uniformed Nazis ganged up on Paula but she managed to escape. Max asked. Mr. Saltzman if he would also sponsor his sister. Max remembers long lines of people waiting to apply for visas at the American Embassy in Vienna. Max and members of his family stood in line all night, trying to get a chance to apply: Young Nazis drove by harassing the Jews: throwing waste on them. Shepherd Saltzman had sent an affidavit for Max and, after hearing from Max again, wired the Embassy to include Paula in the affidavit. Saltzman also agreed to sponsor any additional family members who Max wanted. Israel and Leah had written to Leah's sisters in the USA but had not yet heard from them. They were trying to find their own sponsor. Before being issued a visa, Max needed a clearance from the police to prove that he had no record of misbehaving, etc. The German working at the police station told him that some records were lost and that it could take weeks to find them. A young German woman, also working in this police station, noticed Max and had overheard the conversation. She came over, pulled aside her colleague, and told him that she would spend the rest of the day looking for Max's file. When Max returned to the police station, the man he had spoken to earlier told him that he had not realized what a bad situation the Nazis would create, and that he wished Max luck and wished that he could also leave - but to not tell anyone that he had said this. The next day Max returned to the American Embassy with his mother and sister for his and Paula's visas. A woman there noticed Max's mother and that Max and Paula were minors, so she asked Max if his parents were going to join them in the USA. Max answered that they would as soon as their affairs were straightened out. This woman put some extra information in the Heller file, which, most likely, gave Leah and Israel "preferred visa" status. (Leah and Israel immigrated to Greenville in November 1938). Max and Paula left Vienna together and traveled on the "Ile de France." From New York Max immediately took the train to Greenville, and Paula stayed with relatives for two weeks before joining her brother in South Carolina. Mr. Saltzman met Max and took him to lunch, but Max would not let his sponsor pay for it, saying, "After I am able to take you to lunch, then you can take me." Right away he began sweeping and working as a stock boy at Piedmont Shirt Company. In the summer of 1941 he went to New York to visit Trude for the first time since they had parted in Vienna. They were married in August of 1942. About a year later, Max became the general manager of Piedmont Shirts. In 1946 he co-founded a shirt company but sold his interest in 1948 and started Maxon Shirt Company. Max and Trude had always been involved at their synagogue Beth Israel, and they became increasingly involved in community affairs and public service. In 1969 Max was elected to the City Council and served as Mayor of Greenville from 1971 until 1979. He was one of the main leaders in the revitalization of downtown Greenville and in bringing new businesses into the city. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. Congress. For Governor Richard Riley, he served as the Chairman of the SC State Development Board. Max has served on numerous boards and has received several honorary doctorates. Max and Trude's family is closely-knit and loves reunions!
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