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people lived politics; they were ready to die for their beliefs. But our group mostly talked.
    There were two boys, Fritz and Franck, who played Ping-Pong incessantly but never too strenuously. The steady, indolent beat of their game captured nothing of the outside world’s mad rhythm.A couple of the girls brought cake that their mothers had baked. Another boy brought records for dancing. Pepi contributed his chess set. He and Wolfgang and I played all the time. Occasionally, I even beat them.
    “Oswald Spengler says that our great cultural achievements are over,” Pepi mused, moving his rook. “He says we’re all just sinking into materialism and becoming philosophers instead of men of action.”
    “Ah, the Nazis must love him,” Wolfgang said, looking over my shoulder, silently planning my next move, “since they consider themselves men of action.”
    “The Nazis have banned Spengler,” Pepi commented. “They don’t like anyone who says the worst is yet to come.”
    “For them the future is beautiful,” I chimed in, deftly cornering Pepi’s king. “They anticipate a thousand-year Reich in which they will be the Übermenchen and everybody else will be the Untermenschen and do all the world’s work for them.”
    “And what do you anticipate, Edith?” Fritz called from the Ping-Pong table.
    “I anticipate having six children, all sitting around the table for lunch with big white napkins tucked in their collars, saying, ‘Mama, this strudel is yummy!’”
    “Who’s going to bake the strudel?” Pepi joked. “What if Grandmother Hahn is busy that day?”
    I poked him. He squeezed my hand.
    “Did you hear that Hitler is taking children away from their mothers?” Wolfgang said. “If they don’t teach National Socialist doctrine, they lose their kids.”
    “But surely the courts will not agree to that!” I exclaimed.
    “The courts have been packed with Nazis,” Pepi answered.

    “How can a gang of pompous little men so quickly destroy the democratic institutions of a great country?!” cried Wolfgang, pounding on the table in frustration, making the chess pieces topple.
    “Freud would tell you it is a triumph of the ego,” Pepi said. “They think they are big men and their belief in themselves creates a light so blinding that all around are dazzled. The trouble with these Nazis is that they have no self-critical faculty, so in their efforts to achieve greatness, they achieve nothing but a parody of greatness. Caesar conquered nations, took their leaders captive, picked their brains, and so enriched his empire. Hitler will burn down nations, torture their leaders to death, and destroy the world.”
    We sat stunned and silent at Pepi’s prediction. Our friends stopped dancing and chattering. The Ping-Pong game came to a halt.
    “So what should we do, Pepi?”
    “We have to fight for the rule of law, and have faith in the inevitability of the socialist paradise,” Pepi answered, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “One class. No masters. No slaves. No black. No white. No Jew. No Christian. One race—the human race.”
    How can I describe my pride at that moment? To be Pepi’s girl, to be the chosen consort of our undisputed intellectual leader—this was exactly the place I wanted in society, and his vision was exactly the future I wanted for humankind.
     
    W HILE I WAS attending the University of Vienna from 1933 to 1937, we had endless political turmoil in Austria. Chancellor Dollfuss, determined to preserve us as a religious Catholic country, outlawed the Socialist Party. The socialists responded in ways that I, a socialist myself, often found downright foolish.
    I went to an illegal socialist meeting. I seem to remember that Bruno Kreisky was the featured speaker. Our leaders had received permission to use the hall by declaring that we were holding a rehearsal of a choral society. They told us that if the police came, we must immediately begin singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”