Why I Just Became A Citizen of Austria — a Country that Persecuted My Family
This month, a year after submitting detailed paperwork, I was granted Austrian citizenship.
I have no intention of leaving the United States. But I pursued dual citizenship because my dad, Dr. Ernst Drenick, the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother, was born and raised in Vienna — but was forced to flee the country in 1938. His story, like that of so many European Jews, is filled with loss and tragedy — too involved to fully narrate here. In life, he was frustratingly reluctant to talk about his experiences before the war, his flight from Austria to New York or the years that followed.
