March 10, 1938 was my 15th birthday. On that sunny day, I was King of the Mountain. After a glorious week in the Austrian Alps, I had won a slalom skiing championship! I had beaten all of "them!" Not even my high school teacher's remark: "I wish the Jewboy didn't won!" could dampen my euphoria as we carved serpentine grooves into Semmering Mountain's powdery slopes.

We swayed and crouched to tease the last ounce of speed out of our heavy, wooden skis, as we had to be at the foot of the mountain in time to catch the train that would take us to one of Vienna's palatial railroad terminals. We skied down into the railroad station just as the train chugged to a stop, threw our skis, poles and rucksacks into the baggage compartment, and piled in.

Steam rose from our clothes, tears stung our eyes and our cold noses ran, but we were deliriously happy. Racial, ethnic, social differences were forgotten. Until we pulled into the terminal where my parents, bless them, waited to welcome their baby boy back home.

My father, every inch the tall, extremely elegant, impeccably dressed textile mill owner; the aristocratic ex-captain of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire he still longed for. My mother, the ultimate professional, eminent physician, beautiful to a fault, wrapped in a luxurious fur coat, stood out, and apart, from the crowd like a pair of regal pines in an oak forest.

I cringed as I felt the other kids drifting away from me. Once again, I was the "different one," the Jew who should "go back where you came from!" The one with rich, obviously crooked parents who must belong to the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy.

But that was the Jewish experience in most of pre World War II, anti-Semitic Europe. One accepted it, lived with it, and, unlike my parents, most kept a low profile. "Assimilation" was the current buzzword.

As I stored my equipment in the trunk of our car, I was aware of the envious stares and the angry whispers. Well, that's life.

After celebrating my birthday, we stumbled, exhausted, but very happy, into the cold night. The darkness was occasionally relieved from pools of light by the ornate cast-iron streetlights.

It was eerily quiet, when suddenly, like a steam-belching locomotive out of the mouth of a tunnel, a big truck blasted out of a side street. The open-bed vehicle was loaded with men in brown shirts, jodhpurs and boots, screaming unintelligible slogans, and waving large red flags with black swastikas on a white circle. It roared by so close that I could see the contorted faces belching guttural screams, and heard the crack of the flags whipping in the wind. They turned another corner, were gone, and it was still again.

My parents came out of their trance, threw me into the car, and sped home. Not a word was said, my father's face turned to stone, my mother stared straight ahead. I was petrified.

Two days later, the Germans "invaded" - translated "were welcomed by the delirious masses" - Austria. The next day, my father's car was confiscated, and a few days later, the textile mills were "bought" by the Nazis, and my mother's medical/dental practice was taken over by her "loyal" assistant.

With Jewish kids all over the city, I was transferred to a separate, segregated "Jew School." It happened fast, almost as if it had been pre-choreographed, which in fact it had.

Soon, rumors of "the raids" surfaced. In addition to humiliating Jews by destroying their livelihoods, making them clean city streets on hands and knees, beating them up in broad daylight, or arresting them willy nilly, armed Germans were combing apartment houses in an organized manner. Many Jews, even entire families, were arrested and carted off. It seemed the raiders knew exactly where to look, down to the house or apartment number. But these sweeps were only rumors, of which there were many, and besides, we had more immediate problems.

A few months into the "Anschluss," we sat one evening in our apartment. The radio spews Nazi propaganda and martial music with lyrics like: "Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt" (When Jewish Blood drips from Knives), with censored and distorted news programs. We just learned that the immigration quota to "Amerika" is filled for the next three years. Actually, we had no American sponsor to vouch for us to begin with.

Then we hear the squeal of tires and the screech of brakes! My father jumps from his chair, hits all the light switches, the apartment is pitch dark, and we rush to the windows to look down on the wide, cobble stoned street three stories below us.

The unthinkable has happened! It is a raid! The streets are blocked by huge trucks, out of which tumble the roughest, meanest looking, black clad, armed soldiers. With well-rehearsed precision, they fan out, then form into small groups, and storm into every apartment building in sight. My father rips the blackout drapes shut, grabs and drags me, along with mother, to the farthest corner in the farthest room away from the entrance to our apartment. There we cower, defeated, resigned to the inevitable, and I descend into a sort of confused stupor. Yet, I am keenly aware of the sights and sounds around me.

I hear the thwack! of gun butts hitting flesh, and the sharp cracks of splintering wood as the raiders beat down those doors that don't open on command. Not every door is shattered, and it seems as if a preconceived plan is followed, as if the storm troopers have precise information as to where their victims reside. Rifle shots echo through the halls - at least I think that's what they are - and then begins something I have never heard during my sheltered young life, the sounds of human beings in great distress. I hear sobbing, terrified, deep sobbing, and instinctively, I can tell whether it is a man or a woman. Screams fill the air, shrill screams that have no gender.

I choke with fear. I am trapped, there is no escape, and even if I wanted to flee, I can't move, it is as if I am paralyzed. The yelling, screaming, and gun butts hitting bodies petrified me. The noises of the hunt, of splintering wood, of panic, of bellowing thugs come ever closer, and I expect our front door to cave in with a crash at any moment. The pounding of hobnailed boots hitting the tiled floor of the corridor approach they are at our door!

But they pass us by! The impossible has happened, we were spared. I shake like a leaf as I sneak to a window, and lift the blackout drape a bit.

Below me, men, women, even some children spill into the dark street, driven by men in the hated black uniform. They herd their prey into a holding area, like driving wild animals towards the inevitable net. A few of the stunned victims wear street attire and are carry small suitcases, but many are still in flimsy night shirts or even underwear. The captors divide the unfortunates into smaller groups, ignoring the mother's scream for their children, or husbands for wives, working the "herd" like cowboys on a cutting horse, and crowd them into the waiting transportation. The thugs work fast, throw their captives into the back of the trucks, clubbing those who don't move fast enough. They pull down the canvas sides of the vehicles, and roar off into the night. Stillness descends once more on our neighborhood. It is over.

We were passed over, literally! My heart still cries out for my fellow Jews, and I know not why we, of all people, were saved. If this was a Passover Miracle, it was the first in a long line of "miracles" that allowed me to write this story