W hat is the link between elite girls’ football in the UK and the treatment of Jews in pre-war Austria? Bear with me. Let’s start with the football.
My middle child Viola (I have three for my sins) started playing football aged four, after I was roped in to coach the children’s primary school team in Blackheath, south London.
Just as good as the boys, Vi progressed from school, to district football, before signing (yes, there was a contract) for Millwall Girls U12, a moment of such intense pride for me that I still can’t believe it actually happened. From there she moved on to Charlton Athletic U14 and to Kings Hill, teams with which she still trains and plays.
She has played against top sides such as Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs, and with girls who, I’m sure, will go on to become household names. Vi loves her football, the world she is involved in throws up so many surprises in her young life.
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Lucky escape: Adam Baron’s wife Naomi’s grandparents Johannes (Hans) and Franziska (Frances)
Last week it threw up the biggest surprise of all, but to tell you about it I need to go back to Vienna in 1938 (yes, really). Living there then were a courting couple: my wife Naomi’s grandparents. Johannes Smerd and Franziska Stiasne thought of themselves as Austrian.
They assumed they would live out their lives as Viennese citizens.
By 1938, however, they knew that they had to leave, and they got lucky. Franziska’s sympathetic employers arranged for her to be transferred to their London branch. Johannes was able to follow but they both left behind relatives, who would perish in the Holocaust; homes, and their Austrian citizenship, which, as Jews, was duly stripped from them.
Hans and Frances (as they became) married. When war broke out, Hans had to endure internment in Canada, but afterwards he and Frances built a happy life in the UK.
Hans became a successful engineer and Frances had two children: Peter and Helen. Grandchildren followed including my wife, Naomi. This extended family settled into British life.
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Naomi’s grandparents Hans and Frances in later life
Hans and Frances always told them stories of their Viennese past, and the couple never lost their Austrian accents, but, after their deaths, was the Austrian connection lost from their descendants for ever?
Not quite. After Frances died, Helen visited Vienna with Peter’s daughter, and three of her own, including Naomi. They stood outside the house where Frances grew up.
They sat in the sandwich shop where Hans and Frances had their first dates, and tried to imagine the two of them, happily in love, walking the streets of Vienna before Europe exploded.
The experience inspired my latest novel for children. Oscar’s Lion is an oblique look at how the dark fingers of the Holocaust reach down through the generations, touching us even now.
It will be published by HarperCollins in November. Before it comes out, however, there will be another visit to Vienna, and for a very different reason: girls’ football.
In 2020, the Austrian government announced a welcome change in policy. Direct descendants of Jews who had had their citizenships revoked, could apply to have it restored.
Naomi took up the offer for herself and our kids and, in 2022, after a very long process, we were all standing in the Austrian embassy to celebrate. My daughters tried out snatches of German, learned at school.
We all listened to stories of other Jewish families with Austrian connections, and were delighted to meet a young embassy official named Mila.
Mila asked Vi what her interests were. Vi, of course, said football (she also plays violin but that tends not to be the first thing that leaps into her mind). Mila and Vi then bonded because Mila loved watching women’s football.
She was amazed at Vi’s playing career and said she had a question: would we mind if she got in touch with the Austrian FA to tell them about one of their newest citizens? We said sure, and didn’t think much of it.
Two weeks ago, however, the Austrian FA sent me an email, asking for Vi’s details. These duly sent, they then requested videos of her in action. I sent clips over and, very soon, received a wonderful invitation: would Vi like to come to Vienna at the end of April, to trial for the Austrian Girls National Team?
My children never met their Austrian great-grandparents. We will, nevertheless, all be thinking of Hans and Frances, Johannes and Franziska, when, as a family, we visit Vienna in a few weeks’ time.
We’ll think of them as we sit in their favourite café, and stand outside their old homes, but also at the NV Arena in St Pölten, half an hour from Vienna itself, as we stand on a touchline with our fingers crossed.
I hope Vi gets a place — how cool would that be?— but, whatever the outcome, I can’t help thinking what a wonderful legacy this is for her: a gift from two people who managed to escape a country that now seems truly sorry for what it did to them.
How wonderful that a thread of connection to their heritage, which seemed so likely to break, has managed to get stronger in the most unlikely of ways. Meanwhile, Vi has a question for her German teacher: what is the German for GOOOOAAAALLLL!?
