Living on

Alfred Seiler in an eyewitness interview from 2007

"At 10 a.m. the first house in the village of Little Trostenez began to burn." [1]

Wolf Seiler's report ends with this sentence. In a video interview from 2007 with Wolf's son Alfred, the history of the family can be further reconstructed, despite the incomplete report. In addition, Alfred has published a book that also describes the history of his family's persecution.

Five days after the barn fire, Soviet troops reach Maly Trascjanec. Before that, Wolf Seiler managed to escape together with his wife and two children.

The family escaped via Minsk to Moscow. After a long stay in a suburb of the city, the Seilers were taken to the Krasnagorsk labour camp in Kazakhstan, where they had to perform forced labour.[2] The report presented here is said to have been written during Alfred Seiler's time in camp there.

The family was released at the beginning of December 1947, but they only returned to Vienna via Romania on 21 February 1948. Received by the Jewish religious community at the railway station, the family was taken to accommodation in Döbling.

"On the way to Döbling they took us past Kurzgasse. There I said to the man: 'Stop, stop a moment' And I got out and looked at the house where I was born. It took 10 years before my Odyssey came to an end. [...]" [3]

The family left Vienna for the USA at the end of 1949. The destination was Philadelphia. Wolf, Chaje and Mary set up a clothing business in Philadelphia called Seiler & Weisz; Alfred Seiler went to New York after a year in Philadelphia, where he also worked in the clothing industry.[4]

In an interview, Alfred Seiler was asked how he dealt with the past these days. He answered:

"The experience of that time is always with me – day and night. It is always in my subconscious or conscious mind."[5]

Like many survivors of the Shoah, he was also concerned with the question: why did I survive? Why exactly me? Although Alfred Seiler struggles with this question for the rest of his life, he finds an explanation, a meaning:

"Am I chosen to tell the story? Probably.” [6]