“When the ship started to capsize, I was so afraid, I left to seek the sunshine outside,” recalled Evan, who now lives in San Francisco.
Yet somehow Evan felt no fear at the age of 18, when his movie nightmare turned into a reality. In his recently published autobiography, “Winds of Life: The Destinies of a Young Viennese Jew, 1938-1962,” he details that day in 1940 when he unknowingly boarded a sabotaged ship, the SS Patria.
Originally traveling to pre-state Israel on cargo ships, Evan and 3,000 other Jewish refugees had been denied permission to land by British officials. Instead, they were told they would be deported to special camps.
As passengers from one of three cargo ships were joining the others on board, a tremendous explosion ripped through the Patria. Apparently, the Haganah, Israel’s pre-state underground army, was trying to block the ship from sailing by blowing a small hole in its hull, because international law forbids the deportation of shipwrecked persons. However, the plan backfired when Haganah members miscalculated the amount of explosives to use.
It was not long before the ship capsized, killing more than 250 Jews.
“I was too naive to be afraid,” said Evan, who managed to salvage his diary, photographs and a few other belongings by stuffing them down his shirt in a rubber bag. “I went out a window into the water and swam to another ship.”
Evan’s survival during the sabotage of the SS Patria marks just one of many extraordinary feats of his life. From the rise of the Nazis in 1938 to Evan’s 1958 immigration to the United States, “Winds of Life” provides a glimpse into his life of adventure.
Faced with death several times, Evan always pulled through unscathed. He even dodged a bullet — literally and figuratively — during his short 1939 stay in a concentration camp, in which “people died like flies.”
“There was a line of SS officers with rifles,” he recalled. “If you crossed between them, they didn’t say ‘Halt,’ they just killed you.”
Prior to 1938, Evan led a blissful life. He had a pleasant childhood, “free of the anti-Semitism that many felt.”
At the age of 15, however, the tables turned dramatically. On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria and a Nazi government was formed. The war broke out the next year and changed his life forever.
Evan lost his job in a factory because of the company’s “Aryanization.” And on an early 1939 morning, Gestapo agents entered his home, arresting him and his father.
“They came in black leather coats just like you’d see them in the movies today,” said Evan, who still remembers the look on his mother’s face. “They turned everything upside down and even put a gun to my father’s head — It was just a game to them.”
His family narrowly escaped that experience. But in 1940, when Evan boarded the cargo ship to pre-state Israel in pursuit of a nurse named Stella, his parents would soon perish in Auschwitz. He also never saw Stella again.
Evan eventually found himself living in Israel, again with many escapades. He married in 1952 and later pursued his lifelong dream to move to the United States.
He has been settled in America for 42 years now, with 16 years in Denver and 26 in San Francisco. Before retiring, Evan spent 17 years working in gourmet food imports.
However, adventure has followed him.
A few years ago, for instance, Evan experienced a strange twist of fate while vacationing in Prague. He and his wife had missed their bus and ended up roaming through the city center, waiting to catch the next coach.
A small shop selling souvenir dolls caught his wife’s attention. Evan asked the clerk for three in German. In Hebrew the clerk asked, “Shalosh?” Intrigued that the woman spoke Hebrew, the two became engaged in conversation.
“It turned out she was on the SS Patria, the day that it capsized too,” he said. “Can you imagine that? With a one-in-a-billion chance to miss the bus, we just happened to bump into this lady.”
Evan’s book was released this year, but he began documenting his many journeys “the minute I passed the German border,” always hoping to publish his memoirs. However, his many divergent paths postponed the book’s completion until now.
“The wind blew my life in all sorts of directions,” explained Evan. “I’ve had more than one destiny.”
While speaking of the emotion involved in the writing process, Evan’s voice slowly trailed off into silence, signaling the conversation had ended.