Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET Tragedy of the Couple Watching the Carousel When the Nazis Caught Them in Vienna By BILLY ROSE Some of the sprightliest talk to be heard in Manhattan these nights is in frequented by the talented and threadbare refuges of Night after loquacious you 11 find them huddled over red and white checked and though many a cultural door has been slammed in their they remain a spirited and sociable short on but long on banter and Most of the stories spun by these continental are on the comic once In a while they come up with a yarn which leaves a ping-pong ball in your For there's the tale about the old gentleman and his greying wife during the summer can be seen almost every day on the carousel near the Central park holding hands as their adjoining ponies pump up and Who are to tell I'll have to go back several years and several thousand Shortly after BUly Rose the Nazis goose-stepped into Vienna and decency went a well-known surgeon and his both of frowned-upon were urged by friends to take their six-year-old son and leave the The surgeon needed at the he I Intend to stay as long as I can be of His came to an end a few afternoons later when t detachment of SS men rang his The who had been warned to expect led his wife and son out the rear hut as they hurried up the street a neighbor spotted them and gave the As the hunted trio turned a they came upon a small carousel which had been set up In a public square to celebrate the arrival of the German and thinking the surgeon bought three tickets and climbed aboard with his family as the battered runabout started The child was placed astride a gaudy zebra while the parents sank way back In one of those chairs whose outsides made a The SS men searched the square and were about to move on when the to whom it was all a reached and grabbed a brass ring turning to his Now I get a free Attracted by the boy's the storm troopers dragged the doctor and his wife from the carousel and were about to take the child when their a youth with a hangman's sense of stopped kid got the brass he entitled to a free As the carousel started up the tinny strains of drowned out the mother's and the last the couple saw of their son be was riding on the The surgeon was too valuable a commodity to kill right and so was his a skilled They were sent to a slave labor camp to tend those prisoners considered too healthy for the and when the Allies marched into the camp in the couple were still By this the surgeon's brain was a bit but friends in New York paid his and he and his wife were among the lucky ones who got by the immigration Ever the pair has been spending most of their summer days in the vicinity of the Central park carousel The old boy is pretty much off his but his wife continues to humor and whenever he gets agitated and I saw him on the zebra a minute she patiently takes him by the hand and maybe be got tired and went |