Peter Abeles

Otto, the Boy at the Window: Peter Abeles True Story of Escape from the Holocaust and New Life in America

As sixty-eight year old PeterAbeles confronts his ambivalence over his mother's recent death, he lacestogether his childhood memories of the prewar Austrian aristocracy his Jewishfamily belonged to, the rising tide of hate that engulfed them and their decisionto flee, and the story of his life in America. In trying to come to terms with his personal history and family, Abeles looksbeyond the immediate horrors of the Holocaust and the Diaspora to some of themore subtle effects on the reconstructed lives that followed. He gives a hard, honest account of his upbringing by a cold, demanding father and an embittered, materialistic mother . . . but he frames that account in forgiveness and redemption, imagining his dead mother as she receives a treasure box of Sefirot, the tenHebrew words that allow an individual to know Kabbalah, or wisdom. Peter Abeles and Tom Hicks haveproduced an intelligent and edifying memoir that has much to say about exileand immigration, about class, money, love and forgiveness. In Otto, the Boy at the Window, they offer readers some hard-earned shreds of Kabbalah. Praise for Otto, the Boy at theWindow:"This unforgettable book openswith the death of Abeles' mother in Long Island when hewas 68, which prompts him to reflect on his Viennese childhood in the 1930s. His mother was strict and possessive, and his father was unyielding. The father owned a thriving wholesale shoe business, and the family had servants andtutors. Abeles relives the Anschlussof March 12, 1938, when theNazis took control of Austria, and he remembers mobs of Nazi sympathizers destroying synagogues andJewish-owned properties during Kristallnacht inNovember of that year. In November 1939, the family sailed from Rotterdamto New York with only $10 leftfrom their fortune. They went to Chicago, where two sponsoring families met them. Abeles recountshis subsequent service in the U. S. Air Force, his success in the businessworld, and