The Dark Legend of Vienna. past of Wanda Kuchwalek

Until 1955, erstwhile the Red Army left Austria, the 2nd territory – Leopoldstadt – was a russian business zone. Wanda was born in January 1947 in a post-war winter, in a circus shack in the ruined Prater amusement park. She was not an expected kid – mother, circus acrobat, snake whisperer, got pregnant with a russian soldier. Wanda never met her father. The Prater, destroyed during the fighting in April 1945, was a sea of rubble, ruins, interesting “playgrounds” for feral children; besides russian bastards. Stacks of bricks, blasts, guns, helmets, scrap metal. There they played “Gschroppen”, children let loose a self-belt, and almost all 12-year-old waved a found weapon.