Angela's Biography, as told to Lou Greenblatt & Joan Dobbie

My Life Story*
By Angela Thaler as told to Lou Greenblatt (1973)
and Joan Dobbie (1997 & 2001)


I was born Angelika Henrietta Brill on November 30, 1913, in Vienna, Austria. My father was a prominent lawyer, my mother, one of the first female graduates of Vienna University. I have one brother, Heinrich ("Bobby") born 1917. My parents were Jewish, but very assimilated. That we were Jewish was rarely mentioned, maybe by my grandparents while they were alive, but otherwise I didn't have much contact with it.

I spoke fluent French because I had a French governess. I played piano. I went to a humanistic secondary school where I studied Greek, Latin, and all sorts of other "very useful things...." When I was about 16 though, in high school, I joined WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) where I learned some Hebrew and got a little bit caught up on my Jewish background.

After high school I decided, partly because I was a member of WIZO and wanted to eventually emigrate to Israel, that something more down to earth would make sense and instead of going directly to the University I went for 2 years to the Academy for Designing and Dressmaking. I later became a language teacher.

I met my husband, Max Thaler, then a young physician, at a lecture in the "Urania" (planetarium, science, art center) in 1934. What attracted me to him first was that he was so completely different from all my other boyfriends (and I had plenty of them). He was from a strictly orthodox home. And whatever he did and said and thought, was to me like coming from China or Tibet or some other very strange place I never heard of before. He wrote beautiful, touching poems and talked for hours of his theories in medical research. He had a sincere purity that contrasted sharply with the wisecracking cynicism of my crowd. And, we had two things in common: love for the opera and for the Viennese woods.

We started going together against the will of his whole orthodox family who considered me as something very, very frivolous. I smoked cigarettes, I didn't even know what Kosher was... I was just not right. But we stayed together and gradually interest turned into deep commitment for both of us.

In March 1938 our world caved in. Hitler and his Stormtroops fulfilled the wish of many Austrians in a bloodless coup, the "Anschluss" of Austria to Germany. Jewish citizenship was annulled. All Jewish businesses were closed, bank accounts confiscated... homes invaded and everything desirable taken or destroyed. I remember them burning "enemy" books in our (my parents') home, i.e. Tolstoy, Heine, Dickens, etc. and confiscating my mother's cookbook, written in shorthand, as proof of spy activities..."

The moment the tumult started was the end of all objections and petty quarreling. Because if you're not married you're bound not to have the same passport... and even if you do escape, the bureaucracy will tear you apart. (We did not yet realize that no passports were given to Jews. )We were married on June 8 in the basement of the synagogue along with seven or eight other couples.

On November 8, 1938 the Nazis began moving in for the kill, the final solution to the "Judenproblem." All males were rounded up and transported to concentration death camps. (Women and children were taken the year after.) My father escaped from the local gathering point when a former client, now in Nazi uniform, guided him through a back alley. On November 11, my husband, Max, was found in a laundry hamper in our bathroom and taken. I must have followed them when they took him because I brought him home three hours later. How I managed to get him out I honestly can't remember..

The next day we bribed a train attendant and stowed away to the Swiss border. It took us over eight days to get across the half mile border. There were guns, bloodhounds, there was the Rhine River to cross... We had all kinds of adventures worthy of a John Wayne movie... but finally we were in Switzerland and permitted to stay. (Many refugees were sent back by the Swiss authorities to their death.)

We were assigned to the orthodox refugee camp in Degersheim, Canton St. Gallen. Max was put in charge of health care for this and 2 other nearby camps and I was to help establish and teach a school for the camp's children. Because of these (unpaid) jobs we were "super-refugees" and had an apartment of our own, together with Max's brother and sister who had also made it across to Switzerland.

In the orthodox camp, I got what would have made my in-laws very happy if they would have survived Hitler. I learned Yiddish songs. I learned to cook kosher. I even taught Hebrew School! But for the first year, at least until I wised up, I was used as the Shabbas Goyta! On Saturday everybody came to my house for a cup of tea. And, I cooked a cup of tea innocently and was pleased about all the company I had! So, they played tricks on me. But I learned, and we got along very well and we liked each other. And later on, the next few years, I was more than the Shabbas goyta. Because one of the hardest parts of being in a refugee camp is the idleness, that you don't know what to do with yourself. And, I was always organizing games and theatre plays and teaching school and keeping the people as busy as I could. We had in our camp former trapeze artists, university professors, former rich bankers, an old rag dealer from the ghetto.. people from all walks of life all thrown together. It was hard to find a common denominator. And, there were unhappy times, and happy times, exciting times and boring times... ten years of life.

And, those ten years gave us three children: Max's niece, 9 year old Blanka Kanczucker, who was found in 1942 wandering the streets of Milano, Italy, and shipped to our care by the Red Cross, Elfrieda Agathe, who later became "Ellen" (born 1943) and Joan Adele (born 1946). And they gave us also a love for the simple life in the country. A love for the mountains, the glaciers, the meadows...

How is it that Max and I survived when so many others died? I firmly believe a Guardian Angel watched over us! Who knows, maybe in the remote, far distant future one of our descendants is destined for some divine purpose? And, not only did we survive, but both my parents and my only brother survived...

My parents had gone to the United States in 1939, and my brother joined them in 1940. Our aim, all those years, was to come to the United States and join my family. This was not only because we missed them, but because there was a law in Switzerland that every would-be emigré had to prove every year that he or she was doing everything possible to emigrate. Which we did. But it took until 1948 before we were finally granted permission. Blanka, whose parents had also survived, had to wait one more year.

We crossed over on the Queen Elizabeth. If you ask me about the Queen Elizabeth, I can tell you they had beautiful bathrooms.... In Switzerland we had an outhouse with a big hole in the middle. And here I was on the Queen Elizabeth with a two year old and a four year old who were fascinated with the whole Atlantic Ocean rushing through the ship's toilet. So when everybody else rushed up to see the Statue of Liberty, I was down below, admiring the flush toilet of the Queen Elizabeth. We arrived on February 22, 1948 --my mother's birthday! -- and a public holiday: Washington's birthday. (As my mother's name was Martha, I felt very patriotic from the beginning.) I didn't see the Statue of Liberty until almost two years later.

We stayed nearly two years in my parents' tiny Kew Gardens apartment while Max worked as intern and prepared for his state board as MD. He worked 36 hours straight and then came home to sleep for 12 hours. (I didn't see much of him but I heard him snore frequently.) And, it wasn't easy. But my whole family supported us.. (I don't mean financially, the Committee for the Resettlement of Foreign Physicians and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, gave us the necessities) but, they encouraged us. An aunt,
for example, gave Max the key to her apartment so that he could study because in our tiny place, with the two children, he certainly couldn't get one word straight..

By 1950 Max had passed his exams and we had learned to speak English. Now we were ready to start our new life. We settled (along with my parents who rented a house down the street) in Parishville, a small northern New York hamlet in the foothills of the Adirondacks, just south of the Canadian border. Max opened his medical practice, working day and night as country physician and as staff member in the nearby Potsdam Hospital. At first I taught German in the local high school, but then I took a degree as Medical Assistant and joined him in the office. For 39 years we served 5 villages in a vast rural area. TV's "Northern Exposure" reminds me of our early years in the North Country.

In the beginning, we were the only Jewish family in town, and I must say we never encountered antisemitism of any kind. Gradually times changed. The colleges and universities of neighboring Potsdam and Canton expanded. More Jews came into the area. A synagogue came into existence: Beth El in Potsdam, New York.

In September 1953 our son, David, was born. In March of '55 we had a third daughter, Susanna. We lived in a century-old New England style house with a back yard that led past raspberry bushes and swing set down to the St. Regis river. Our home was usually swarming with children, ours and their friends, then our grandchildren, and their friends.

In 1980 Max retired as Parishville School Physician and we were presented with a plaque of thanks for our 30 years of service to the town of Parishville. In 1988 we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with a huge family reunion and a real wedding this time, with over a hundred guests and three days of joyful celebration.

On September 9, 1989 Max's heart failed. His body lies in the Jewish cemetery in Ogdensburg New York, next to the graves of my parents. Thus ended 55 years of strong, loving and mostly happy togetherness.

In January 1990 I opened the next chapter of my life. After daughter, Susanna, her husband, Bruce, their one year old daughter, Lauren, and I journeyed to Bali together, I came to live with them (and later, son, Kirk) here in Boulder. (My granddaughter, Dawn, also was living in Boulder at that time.)

In 1997, after nearly a decade of sharing the Drogsvold’s home and family, I decided it was time to move on once again, this time into my own space. I discovered Golden West and put in my application. In 1999 I moved into my beloved Penthouse apartment!

In May 2001 I was diagnosed with “terminal” cancer. The love and friendship of my 4 children, my near-children, my son-in-law, my brother, my cousin, my 7 grandchildren and my dear friend, Irving, are my joy and strength in the time left to me.

August 2001

*A version of this life story appeared in "Life Stories of the Old and Young,1997" and this later version appeared in "Angela's Artwork", 2002.