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Grandchildren’s ‘miracle’ wedding unites families who escaped nazis in Vienna

Lilly Baer and Stella Dubey both grew up in 1930s Vienna.
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July 13, 2016

Lilly Baer and Stella Dubey both grew up in 1930s Vienna. 

Both lived through the horrors of Kristallnacht.

And on May 29, both found themselves around the same chuppah as their grandchildren — Brian Faber and Rachel Warner, respectively — wed at the Four Seasons hotel in Westlake Village.

“When I found out, I just couldn’t believe that we lived in the same [area in Vienna] and our families didn’t know each other,” said Dubey, 85. “It makes all of this seem ordained, that two generations later our grandchildren would meet and start a Jewish home together.” 

Warner, a Milken Community Schools grad and fashion merchandiser, believes the history she shares with her husband’s family is symbolic of something much larger, especially for her grandmother. 

“That history is so important to her. It’s a victory in her eyes,” she said. “The Nazis tried to kill them off, and [Brian] and I still managed to find each other. That Jewish love still found its way in America is incredible to her.” 

“That’s our perspective of it, too,” added Faber, who works for a family-owned Beverly Hills-based jewelry business. “It’s a miracle. We wouldn’t have even existed if they hadn’t survived. It’s pretty amazing.”

Baer, as a teenager, and Dubey, as a child, lived through the horrors of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in November 1938 that left about 100 Jews dead, many Jewish homes and synagogues destroyed, and shards of glass littering the streets. 

“It was on a Thursday. I have never liked Thursdays since then,” said Baer, 92, who was 14 at the time. “I woke up to SS officers in my bedroom. All the men in my family were arrested. It was very scary. I was in bed for three days after. It affected me terribly.” 

Dubey, who was 8, recalls far fewer details, but said the pervading panic is impossible to forget. 

“They didn’t really explain to little kids what was happening,” Dubey said. “All you knew as a child was one emotion. You just felt fear.”

Originally from Poland before being forced to flee due to Cossack persecution, Dubey’s family lived in the poorer Orthodox section of Vienna, a stone’s throw from Wiener Riesenrad, the city’s famous Ferris wheel. Meanwhile, Baer’s family, Austrian going back several generations, lived blocks away in another neighborhood mostly inhabited by less observant, typically wealthier Viennese Jews. 

“When Hitler came, we were all the same. Poor Orthodox, richer Viennese — Hitler wanted to get rid of us all,” Dubey said. 

At the end of 1938 — the year Germany annexed Austria — Dubey’s mother registered with the German government for permission to depart for New York, where the family had relatives. Germany wasn’t at war with the United States yet, which made this feasible. Still, as she traveled to the port of Hamburg, she feared that at any moment the Germans would remove her and place her on the train her father ended up on, which transported him to his death at Buchenwald. 

From Hamburg, Dubey and her mother sailed for New York, then drove cross country to Los Angeles, where she has lived since her junior high days. The transition to American life wasn’t easy. Overcoming the death of her father, learning a new language and adjusting to a foreign culture made for a tough adolescence. 

She went on to marry Michael, now 91, a former engineer with Lockheed Martin and a tank platoon commander with the U.S. Army in Okinawa during World War II. A stay-at-home mother who has spent many years volunteering with seniors, Dubey has three children and five grandchildren, and she relishes the fact that the branches of her family tree continue to grow and extend outward. 

“I feel so comfortable knowing that Hitler didn’t win and isn’t winning,” Dubey said. “He may have tried to destroy some of us, but some of us got through and came together, and we’ll have happy Jewish lives and have happy Jewish children.” 

Around the same time that Dubey’s family was preparing to flee Europe, Baer’s mother was set on leaving Vienna, fearing the worst was yet to come. Ultimately, they left for Italy, where they stayed for 11 months before gaining permission to depart on one of the last passenger ships allowed to sail. Everyone in Baer’s family besides Baer and her parents perished in the war. 

Baer’s first stop in the United States was Ohio, where the family had relatives, but after a few years they moved to L.A. That’s where Baer met her husband, Henry, an Auschwitz survivor, at a Chanukah dance. Although Baer wishes her husband, a toymaker and designer who died at age 53, could have lived to see Brian’s wedding, she’s satisfied with getting to bear witness for the both of them. 

“I’m very happy. The girl is beautiful. My grandson is beautiful. They both hit the jackpot. Everything turned out good,” she said about the recent simcha.

Faber, 36, and Warner, 28, met while at a wedding six years ago. They first stumbled upon a shared Austrian heritage when they both recognized the tune of an Austrian nursery rhyme they heard sung by their grandmothers growing up. They even discovered both had relatives with the last name “Schwartz” at a certain point going back several generations. Then the grandmothers got to talking. 

Rabbi Ed Feinstein, who has served Encino’s Valley Beth Shalom congregation for 25 years and known the Warner family for even longer, officiated the recent nuptials. He said the broader significance of the occasion was on his mind while standing under the chuppah and staring out at family members in attendance.  

“The rabbi has a very special place in the wedding. I get to look in the eyes of the bride and groom. Everyone else sees the backs. I also get to see the eyes of the parents and grandparents,” Feinstein said. 

“To see all those eyes is to see the future and beginning. In the kids, it’s wonder. In the parents, it’s satisfaction. But to be able to see the eyes of the grandparents is a real blessing. To see the risk, the faithfulness and the prayers answered, it’s a real gift, and that’s what made this wedding so very special.”

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