ABSTRACT
Moses lived in a dark, damp ground-floor room in a poor area of the twentieth district, part of the Matzesinsel, the ‘island of Matzot’, the second and twentieth districts of Vienna between the Danube and the Donaukanal, home of most Viennese Jews, especially immigrants from Galicia such as his parents. Like most boys in central Europe before the war, Moses was enthralled by the Karl May novels. His father would read him Hebrew Bible stories, including the delightful chapters on Samson in the book of Judges, which he was soon reading by himself. The seventeenth district did not have many Jews and synagogues, and his father was asked to be chazan on the High Holy Days. According to Jewish religious law, it is forbidden to tell a non-Jew directly to perform work on Shabbat.
