Link family papers

Markus and Ida Link emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Vienna, Austria, along with a number of their friends. Markus Link was in the liquor business and opened up his own store in the Hitzing neighborhood in Vienna. In 1937, Ida and Markus made their final payment on their mortgage and owned all of their properties. When the Anschluss occurred in March 1938, they stayed in Vienna because they did not think that Hitler would be a threat and were very fond of living there. Their son, Otto, a foreign correspondent who spoke five languages, would not leave his parents and remained in Vienna as well, although his brother, Alfred, had already immigrated to the United States. On November 10, 1938, two SS men arrived at the Links’ residence and asked for Otto. When they learned that he was out visiting his closest friend, Dr. Otto Lippert (who was not Jewish), they ransacked the house and threatened Otto’s parents with arrest if Otto was not there when they returned. When Otto returned, the house was in shambles, the door was off of its hinges, and there was a suitcase by the door. His parents told him that the SS was looking for him but did not tell him about the threat. His mother told him to leave Austria, and Otto left, traveling to Belgium. Once he arrived in Belgium, he applied to a Jewish organization for financial assistance. After Hitler’s invasion of Belgium, Otto fled to France where he survived by begging for food. In 1939 he was sent to the Merxplas internment camp in Belgium. In 1940 he was sent to Les Milles then to St. Cyprien and finally to Camp de Gurs. While at Gurs, Otto became friends with an elderly gentleman who did not speak the language. One morning, Otto heard Germanspeaking people and saw SS men at the camp. A few days before, Otto had discovered a section of the camp gate that did not quite reach the ground, and Otto and his friend were able to dig under this section and escape from the camp. Otto had papers and a ticket on the Holland-America line to the United States that had been given to him by a Jewish organization, but he could not find a consulate which could issue him the final stamps. Otto and his friend left France by climbing over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, their goal being the American consulate in Lisbon, Portugal. After they crossed into Spain, they ran into two policemen who thought that Otto and his friend were spies. The policemen were going to arrest them, but Otto showed them his passport that stated he was Jewish and not a spy. Otto was a collector of stamps and had kept a number of valuable stamps in his passport. One of the police officers was interested in the stamps, and Otto offered him the stamps in exchange for their freedom. When Otto arrived at the consulate in Lisbon, he was told that his papers had expired and he could not get the final stamps that he needed. Otto became hysterically upset and left. He went to a restaurant for coffee and sat there crying. A man at the next table asked him why a young man in Lisbon was so upset, and Otto poured his heart out to the stranger. The man told Otto to sit there and wait for one hour, and he would get a phone call. He made Otto promise that he would sit there for an hour. Thirty minutes later, a waitress said that there was a call for Otto Link. He picked up the phone, and the man from the restaurant told him to return to the American consulate immediately and ask for a specific gentleman. Otto went to the consulate and asked for the man who then gave him the necessary seal that allowed him to immigrate to the United States. Otto never found out the identity of the man in the restaurant. Otto joined his brother in the United States in late 1941 and kept writing letters to his parents. When the letters he sent to Vienna were returned, he asked his friend, Dr. Lippert, to check on his parents. Dr. Lippert informed him that his parents were no longer living in their home and that there were new residents there now. In December 1942 Otto was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was stationed around the United States and was finally sent to Stanford University in California to teach foreign languages to soldiers going overseas. In May 1943, while on his first furlough, he went home to Brooklyn, New York, and presented his girlfriend, Betty Kane, with an engagement ring. Betty joined him in California. Months before they were married, Otto was told that he would be sent to Europe. When Betty learned of this, she asked who had decided to send Otto to Europe, and the Colonel in charge agreed to meet with her. Betty had a long conversation with the Colonel and asked him how he could sleep at night knowing that he was sending Otto back to Europe after what he had already suffered there. Two days later, the Colonel called Betty and said that since he wanted to sleep at night, he had devised a plan to keep Otto in the U.S. After Otto and Betty were married in 1944, they reported to Menlo Park hospital for six weeks. They were at the hospital during the day, returned home at night, and, when the six weeks ended, Otto was given a medical discharge from the military. After World War II, Otto and Betty went to Vienna to look for Otto’s parents. Otto asked his friend, Dr. Lippert, if he had received any mail from his parents, and Dr. Lippert quickly said no. Every year during their visit to Vienna, Otto would badger his friend with the same question, saying that his parents had to have written to Dr. Lippert because they did not know where to find Otto in the U.S. In 1947 or 1948, during their annual visit to Vienna, the Lipperts, the Links, and Betty’s sister were sitting together in a café. Otto asked again about the letters, and finally Dr. Lippert took two postcards out of his pocket. Otto learned that his parents had been picked up during Kristallnacht and taken to the ghetto in Opole Lubelskie, Poland. They were never heard from again, and their fate is unknown.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Betty Kane Link

The postcards were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003 by Betty Kane Link, the wife of Otto Link.