The Names Heard Long Ago by Jonathan Wilson

Author:Jonathan Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blink Publishing
Published: 2019-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

Erno Erbstein remained in Turin for two months after being forced out of the Torino job but the situation was intolerable and he knew he and his family had to leave. Erbstein let it be known he was seeking work and received a reply from his former BAK teammate Ignác Molnár, who was coaching Xerxes in Rotterdam but was keen to test himself in Italy.12 Effectively they swapped jobs. Xerxes were a significantly smaller club than Torino, but Erbstein was grateful for any opportunity: he had to get out of Italy.

He arranged a flat in the Netherlands, sent his luggage on ahead and sorted out a work permit. In February 1939, the family took the train north from Turin. On the way, Erbstein read to his daughters from a book about the Netherlands, telling them about the exciting new life on which they were about to embark. But they never got there. At Cleves, a small border town on the Rhine, Dutch guards examined their papers and invalidated their visas with a stroke of a red pen – probably because of a secret arrangement between the Dutch and German governments not to permit refugees across the border.

The Erbsteins couldn’t go on, but they couldn’t go back and most of their belongings were already in the Netherlands. They had only the clothes they wore and the few possessions they carried with them. In despair, they asked at the station where they could go and were told of the Judenhause – Jew House – on Klosterstrasse; it had previously been the Clever Hof hotel. All Jews in Cleves had been forced to live there and were under a curfew but the Erbsteins, as Hungarian citizens, were at least theoretically free to come and go as they pleased.

Susanna recalls the family finding a bleak, unoccupied room on the first floor, the windows shattered by stones thrown by anti-Jewish mobs, probably on Kristallnacht when the local synagogue had been burned down. They stayed there, waiting for new Dutch visas to be sent from Italy, hoping the next time the border guards would let them across. Erbstein rang the Torino president Ferruccio Novo, the Hungarian embassy and the FIGC and begged for help. The secretary general of the FIGC, Ottorino Barassi, sent a letter vouching for Erbstein’s character and listing the clubs for whom he’d worked.13 The new visas arrived after around a month but the Dutch authorities again refused the Erbsteins entry. At that, they did the only thing they could and set off back to Hungary.

Jolán was ill with the stress while Marta fell silent during their ordeal, forgot everything that had happened before they got on the train, including her Italian, and didn’t speak for several weeks afterwards.

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