"The first stop on our escape route was Vienna. At the train station, we were arrested by the Gestapo and brought to spend the night in the notoriously infamous Hotel Metropole, the Gestapo’s headquarters.
Harald Feller had organized this to protect our little group. Our mother spent the night in fear and panic. I remember the shiny boots, the German shepherds leashed to the officers, and the gigantic swastika in
the marble entrance hall"
Eva Koralnik-Rottenberg was born in Budapest in 1936. Her mother, Berta Passweg, was from St. Gallen, but had lost her Swiss citizenship after marrying a Hungarian national, Willi Rottenberg. Thanks to the efforts of embassy secretary Harald Feller, Eva, her mother, and her six week- old sister Vera escaped from Hungary into Switzerland in October 1944. Eva Koralnik headed the international literary agency Liepman in Zurich. She is married, has a son, a daughter, and four grandchildren.