My paternal great-grandparents lived in Vienna, they had a two-story antique store with an internal elevator, they lived a good life, but with the invasion of the Germans in Vienna everything changed. When they arrived, they sent the Jews to ghettos, but my great-grandfather, Alberto Nagel, did not obey. He had an apartment in the building in front of the SS headquarters and from there he planned his family’s flight for their freedom, with the help of his relatives. They got Chilean passports and visas and bought a sleeping car (something that was forbidden for Jews) to go to Marseille, where they would take a boat to South America. Their heroic fight for freedom is the reason why I chose to base my work around this train, since for my family it represent the escape towards life and survival, but it also represents the memory of millions who did not have the same luck and were killed by barbaric Nazis.
My family story
By Manuel Hirsch Grosskopf