I Belong to Vienna: A Jewish Family's Story of Exile and Return

Anna Goldenberg

jun 2020 · New Vessel Press

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A memoir of family history, personal identity, and WWII Vienna—a “well-researched, intimate, evocative look at some of the 20th century’s foulest days” (Kirkus).
 
In autumn 1942, Anna Goldenberg’s great-grandparents and one of their sons are deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Hans, their elder son, survives by hiding in an apartment in the middle of Nazi-controlled Vienna. But this is no Anne Frank-like existence; teenage Hans passes time in the municipal library and buys standing room tickets to the Vienna State Opera. He never sees his family again.
 
Goldenberg reconstructs this unique story in magnificent reportage. She also portrays Vienna’s undying allure. Although they tried living in the United States after World War Two, both grandparents eventually returned to the Austrian capital. The author, too, has returned to her native Vienna after living in New York herself, and her fierce attachment to her birthplace enlivens her engrossing biographical history.
 
I Belong to Vienna is a probing tale of heroism and resilience marked by a surprising freshness as a new generation comes to terms with history’s darkest era.

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Anna Goldenberg, born in 1989 in Vienna, studied psychology at the University of Cambridge and journalism at Columbia University. She worked at the Jewish newspaper The Forward in New York before returning to Vienna where she now writes as a freelance journalist.

Alta L. Price translates from Italian and German, and was awarded the 2013 Gutekunst Prize. Her publications include work by Corrado Augias, Dana Grigorcea, Jürgen Holstein, and Martin Mosebach.