[Author: Lyonell Fliss, Vol. 81, #1, Autumn-Winter2026)
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the Summer-Spring 2023 issue of Jewish Affairs appeared Expedition “Escape” – Journey Diaries, Lyonell Fliss’ memoir of escaping with his wife Liliana from Communist Romania in 1969 and how fifty years later he revisited each step of that dramatic and harrowing journey by repeating the exact route he’d followed. Commencing in Bucharest and ending in Vienna, the article took the form of diary entries appearing alongside the author’s memories of the parallel journey taken half a century before. It stands as a stark reminder of the ruthless, sinister and fear-dominated societies which Eastern and Central Europeans behind the Iron Curtain were subjected to during the Communist era.
Five years after this memorable odyssey, the author again visited certain sites in Austria relating to his original escape to freedom which for various reasons he had failed to locate or was unable to visit during his 2019 trip. This time, again accompanied by his Austrian-born friend Franz, he also visited the Kaprun Hydro-electric power and pumping plant, in the process learning more of one of the lesser-known sites relating to the dark history of Nazi tyranny in Austria and of the largely forgotten victims of the atrocities that went hand in hand with the founding of this famed public facility.
PROLOGUE
Returning home from my jubilee expedition of September 2019, I felt satisfied with what I had seen once more – the places where half a century before, with the help of the One above, the vital turn of my own and my wife Liliana’s lives had successfully taken place, despite all the dangers endured. That being said, a shadow of regret lingered. After passing through the former Iron Curtain once more, my companion Franz Kneidinger and I had been unable to find the Austrian campsite where Liliana and I had stayed on our first night in freedom since unfortunately, I had been unable to remember the name of the campsite. I had had only a vague idea that it was near Vienna on the road from Schwechat airport – not enough information for anyone from this locality to be able to give us any guidance.
A few days after returning home, however, occurred another ‘miracle’ (to add to the long list of others that had occurred during the escape expedition fifty years earlier). While putting my archive in order, sorting through hundreds of documents and photographs, a small piece of old yellowed paper suddenly fell into my hand. I could hardly believe my eyes: It was the receipt for the night of October 30-31, 1969, for our stay in a bungalow in the campsite! It contained all the necessary information: Wien West II campsite, Huttelbergerg strasse 80, a telephone number and even the fee paid for the night’s accommodation – 50 schilling.
I looked with regret at this receipt, wishing I’d discovered it prior to leaving on the jubilee expedition. Immediately I called Franz to tell him the news and afterwards he searched on the Internet for Camping Wien – West II. He discovered a relevant website with a whole album of photos, an e-mail address and a phone number. Forthwith, we made plans that five years after our jubilee expedition, we would do another, one that would include a night at the campsite as well as visiting places on the route through Austria followed by Liliana and I that we’d omitted on our last expedition due to lack of time and our decision to also visit the Czech Republic.
A few months after our return, the Covid pandemic erupted. As a result, our expedition plan seemed to have fallen by the wayside, the whole world being in a panic for survival. But after Covid passed, in 2024 we revived our travel plan. We got in touch with the campsite manager, asking him to book a bungalow for us in September. Unfortunately, we were informed that the entire campsite was closed for reconstruction, the old bungalows having been demolished and the new buildings being scheduled to reopen only in March 2025. This news did not discourage us, however. We decided to meet the manager, Hannes Fikota, on our date of arrival in Vienna and at least to walk together on the construction site, as an act of nostalgia for the place that sheltered us on the first night on the “other” side of the Iron Curtain. This was the motivation for our second expedition: to complete the jubilee expedition with Part 2 in Austria only, from 2-11 September 2024.
2 September 2024
Johannesburg- Vienna
The flight to Vienna was done separately, Franz with Qatar Airways and I with Turkish. The reason was that having Israeli co-citizenship would have make me feel insecure when getting off in transit at Doha, knowing the hostile position of Qatar towards Israel. I thus preferred to make the transit at Istanbul, although the price of the ticket on this route was higher.
Tuesday 3 September 2024
We met at Vienna airport at the office of the Eurocar car rental agency. There we had the disappointment of not finding a Skoda car, as had been the case five years before (and in the 1969 escape trip). We therefore had to accept a VW Seat.
We telephoned Hannes, manager of the Wien West 2 campsite, and he was ready to meet us. It was not even necessary to give us directions because Franz had a GPS. As during our first expedition, Franz took the wheel for the entire duration of the trip. I was satisfied with the role of passenger, being able to fully enjoy the spectacular landscapes of the Alps.
After less than an hour we arrived at Wien West 2. It was located on a rather complicated road, even for GPS, and I wondered again how it had been possible for us to find the campsite so easily 55 years before, without any guidance and at night to boot. As I said, that was another miracle in the whole series of that memorable day of 30 October 1969.
Hannes received us very cordially and introduced us to the site. I could not recognize anything as of course all the previous buildings had been demolished; the new ones had not even started. On this occasion I presented Hannes with a copy of the receipt as proof of my first visit to the campsite. He looked at with amazement, finding it hard to believe that such a “historical” document still existed. He promised to keep it in the campsite’s archive.
At one point, Hannes introduced us to the site construction manager of the new campsite. Coincidentally, he was also a young Romanian engineer (as I had been when I first arrived), born in the same city as me, Iasi. He had been living in Austria for several years. So we also had the pleasure of conversing in my mother tongue.
After our tour of the premises, Hannes invited us to a restaurant on the site, which had a very beautiful garden. He invited two colleagues from the campsite management and when he showed them the historic receipt, they read and reread it, being unable to believe what they were seeing. At the table, with a typical Viennese menu (schnitzel) in front of us, I described the escape expedition of 55 years ago and how we had miraculously found their campsite.
On Hannes’ recommendation, we spent the night at Schoenbrunn Palace Hotel, an impressive old building in the Viennese imperial style. Being tired after the long overnight flights, we immediately went to bed, skipping dinner.
Wednesday 4 September 2024
Waking up well rested and after a hearty breakfast, we were ready to explore Vienna.
The first objective was the Schoenbrunn Palace, whose entrance to the park was just across the street from the hotel. The enormous park matches the grandeur of the palace in size and elegance. It is decorated with statues, flower beds, fountains and obelisks and has wide alleys paved with pebble stones bordered by tall well-groomed trees. It took us about half an hour to walk through from the park entrance to that of the palace.
The palace itself, originally one of the residences of the Imperial family, is now a historical, art and architecture museum. It would have taken a long time to visit it properly, so with our time in Vienna being limited, we were content to visit only the essential parts. Even such a brief visit was overwhelming.
At the counter in the entrance hall, we bought tickets for a concert in the concert hall of the palace, for the same evening. The concert, with the chamber orchestra of 19 instrumentalists and 2 vocal soloists, included two different parts, the first Mozart and the second Johann Strauss jnr. Of course, it concluded with the Radetzky Marsch. It was much appreciated by the audience and us, and we left in a very good mood. It ended late in the evening, but fortunately we got the last taxi, saving us a long walk back to the hotel through the park in darkness.
Thursday 5 September 2024
This day was devoted to visiting the Vienna city centre. To get there we took the subway that dropped us exactly at the pedestrian shopping centre with very elegant shops. There we visited the famous Swarovski crystal store, as I had a mission from a neighbour to try, if possible, to have repaired there a crystal ornament they had bought from Swarovski long before and which had since broken. In the store we were informed that these kinds of repairs were possible only at the Swarovski factories in Watterns, in western Austria, a place on our planned route. Visiting the crystal collections in the store, Franz and a saleswoman convinced me to buy a necklace with an emerald coloured crystal as a gift for my wife. She greatly appreciated the gesture and now wears it on all special occasions.
Thursday 5 September 2024
After breakfast we headed southwest in the direction of the Austrian lakes and holiday resorts. On the way we stopped to admire lake Traumsee, with its spectacular rock formations on the shores and passed the famous spa resort Bad Ischl, where even Emperors used to come for treatment, and Salzburg. We stopped to visit Franz’s sister, who lives in a village in this area, in a beautiful house. From there we headed west towards Kaprun.
It was already evening when we arrived in Bruch, a small tourist town a few kilometers from Kaprun, and we needed dinner and rest. To our surprise, all the guesthouses Franz tried were full. As I was waiting in a parking lot in the car for Franz to return from his search, I saw an illuminated sign of a guesthouse. Franz investigated and found there was a free room. What was more, the proprietor was South African! She received us very pleasantly and prepared a hearty dinner for us even though it was late and the restaurant was closed. The room was very modest and, in the basement, but we had the place to stay overnight, and this was sufficient. Actually, we stayed there for the next three nights during our stay in the Kaprun area. It somehow felt like being home in South Africa.
Friday 6 September 2024
At breakfast the owner told us that she was originally from Cape Town, which was where she had met her future husband, an Austrian professor who had come out to do research. After their marriage the couple had returned to Austria. He was currently away, on a research visit to Russia. Their passion appeared to be cinematography because in the lobby and corridors were posters of classic movies from the past.
We learned that there were two tourist attractions in Kaprun. The first one, which we decided to visit, was the hydroelectric complex, with its dam, reservoir power and pumping station. To get to the dam from the parking lot of the Kaprun National Park, we needed to take buses and a high-capacity inclined elevator on rails that in the past was used for the construction of power and pumping stations. For me, as a civil engineer, the sight of the high-altitude dam and the reservoir was most impressive. But my attention was also drawn to a strange concrete monument next to the dam. I subsequently learned that it was called “The Pagan Church” and that rendered into English, its German inscription would sound like this: THROUGH WORK AND SACRIFICE, A FACTORY.
At the base of the monument there is a commemorative plaque, with an inscription also only in German. It was translated for me after my return home and reads as follows: “Starting in 1998, an independent commission of historians comprehensively researched, analyzed and documented the fate of prisoners of war and forced laborers in connection with the construction of power plants in what is now Austria during the Nazi regime. On the basis of these findings, the association made its contribution to the reconciliation fund. In addition to the up to 4000 prisoners of war, more than 6300 forced laborers and civilian foreign workers were used to build the Kaprun power plant group. Over 120 forced laborers died on this extreme construction site between 1940 and 1945. The suffering and traumatization of these people who were often consciously forgotten in Kaprun’s success story and who were largely deported to this site by the National Socialist regime, should be remembered in a special way at this point. The memory of the terror of the Nazi regime remains alive in this place. Kaprun September 4, 2003”.
The entire Kaprun hydropower project started in the late 1930s and was completed in 2011. I later learned that this monument represents an attempt to reconcile the Austrian people with the victims of the Nazi regime and marks the beginning of a democratic era of revival of the Austrian state after WWII.
To me, as a Holocaust survivor, the visit to the Kaprun Hydro-electric power and pumping plant left a strong impression. I later learned from the Internet details of the inhumane living conditions in the Kaprun forced labour camps, where the inmates were treated like slaves by sadistic Nazi supervisors, subjected at their discretion to humiliations, torture and sometimes murder. The given number of 120 deaths out of a total of over 10 300 inmates, as stated on the plaque, seems to be a gross underestimate in view of the atrocious living conditions and treatment.
Saturday 7 September 2024
We left Bruch to visit the second tourist attraction in the area: the Alps at high altitude. It was actually a repeat of the 1969 visit when we miraculously managed to reach the peaks of the Alps by cable car. The climbing of the Alps required three stages: the first by bus to the lower cable car station and the next two by cable car in two consecutive stages. I remembered the cable car has having a few cabins like large rectangular suspended wagons. Now the cable car had been modernized, with numerous round cabins each with a capacity of eight people on two routes of your choice. The view from the terrace at the top cable car station, at 3029 m altitude with the snowed ridges of the Alps in the distance, is impressive. We had a coffee at the top restaurant admiring the landscape, a view immortalized in a framed picture which I keep on my desk.
On returning to the guesthouse, I rested but after exploring the village Franz told me that there was a cattle farmer’s annual festival that would be interesting to visit. I immediately agreed and jumped out of bed. Very close to the place of a local market, the farmers had set up a large tent divided into two sections. The first was a cattle stall full of cows fed by children with hay, and the second was full of tables with benches for the public, including a buffet where you could buy sausage sandwiches and beer. In front was a stage with a brass band playing strange old instruments and in the breaks between songs, people were served with plenty of beer, which they drank directly from large metal containers normally used for delivering milk. In front of the stage was a floor space used by couples dressed in Tyrol costumes, dancing energetically to the rhythm of country music tunes. The festive atmosphere was overwhelming. We left this happy festival in a good mood, feeling that in our modern world, there are still some who respect the age-old traditions living closer to nature.
Sunday, September 8, 2024
We left Bruch for Western Austria on Monday. I was going to return home from Zurich airport while Franz continued alone to Switzerland, Germany and back to Austria before returning to Johannesburg. On the way we passed through the ski resort St Anton, where less than two weeks before there had been a catastrophic flood with landslides due to torrential rains. We stopped at Watterns, where the Swarovski crystal factory is located in a large park with a spectacular waterfall. Again, as in Vienna, we were impressed by the artistic quality of the ornaments and jewelry, so I couldn’t help but buy a collection of crystals to remind me of this visit. I also asked if I could repair my neighbor’s ornaments. The answer was positive, but as it would take a few days and I was leaving the next day it was not possible.
Passing by Innsbruck, I remembered with nostalgia the trip 55 years ago when we visited this city, being the western end of our route at that time. In the afternoon we arrived at Feldkirche, a small city a few kilometers from the Swiss border., There, luckily, we found a place to spend the night, at a new so called Business Motel. For our last evening we had supper with enormous Austrian schnitzels at a traditional restaurant.
Monday, September 8, 2024
The 140km journey to Zurich airport was uneventful; it rained lightly all the way. At the airport we said goodbye with a hug, and I continued on my way, first to Istanbul and from there changing planes to Johannesburg. The waiting in the airports as well as the long flights, especially being alone, were the only unpleasant parts of the whole expedition, but worth it when thinking about how many interesting places I had seen again with so much nostalgia 55 years later.
Tuesday 9 September 2024
After a night flight in which I couldn’t close my eyes, we landed in the morning at Oliver Tambo Johannesburg airport. From there a taxi brought me home, where Anita and Agnes, the caretaker of the house, were waiting impatiently for me. Looking around, I couldn’t believe that a few days before I was walking on top of some of the highest mountains in Europe.
EPILOGUE
This concludes the commemorative expedition of my escape from communist Romania. When I look back and realize how many traps we had evaded during that daring venture, from the moment we decided to escape until we arrived safely in Israel, I can only find one explanation: it was a chain of wonders directed by a Supreme Force and not just chance.
The Vienna West 2 campsite where Liliana and I had stayed for our first night in freedom after crossing the Iron Curtain had been totally demolished but its reconstruction since then gives me another idea. Maybe, with the help of the One Above, I will have the opportunity to visit and spend a night there, finally concluding Expedition Escape that began in 1969.
It is just a dream , but ….who knows? Maybe …
Acknowledgements
To Franz Kneidinger my good friend and excellent travel companion. His joining me in this expedition made it possible, as I could not carry out the project alone
To Anita my wife, who encouraged me to carry out this project and understood how much it meant to me.
To Agnes our house carer, who looked after Anita responsibly, focus throughout the time I was away, , ensuring my peace of mind I needed to focus on this venture.
- Lyonell Fliss is a Romanian-born civil engineer and Holocaust survivor. In 1969, he and his wife Liliana escaped from Communist-ruled Rumania and moved to Israel. He later immigrated to South Africa, where he became chief engineer for Murray & Roberts.
