DATE: Thursday, September 4, 1997           TAG: 9709040455

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   99 lines

OLD FRIENDS REUNITE AS BOYS, THEY HID FROM THE NAZIS DURING THE HOLOCAUST.

Fifty-six years ago, Carl and Rene were ``les enfants terribles,'' and it probably saved their lives in World War II France: two best friends dodging the Germans, never doing what they were told, always finding a way out.

But they were inevitably separated. Rene thought Carl probably died in the concentration camps.

It was not until Wednesday, in an apartment off Tidewater Drive, that Charles ``Carl'' Roman and Reinhold ``Rene'' Beuer-Tajovsky embraced again.

``I was shocked, absolutely shocked,'' said Beuer-Tajovsky, 69, who lives in Norfolk. ``I expected him to be dead.''

The memories tumbled out like children's marbles, along with the unexpected realizations of crossed paths in the years since, the individual searches of their pasts.

Always they returned to that year and a half in southern France when they were the bad boys together, each 11 years old and hidden by rescuers in a French chateau.

``We were naughty children,'' Beuer-Tajovsky said. He remembered how his friend, always good with electricity, rewired their little room in the chateau so that the light went out whenever the door opened and came on when it closed.

Yes, said Roman, now 70 and living in Bergenfield, N.J.: ``We were never where we were supposed to be. If there was any mischief done, it was us. Remember the black cat in the garden we persecuted so?''

``And the dog?'' Beuer-Tajovsky laughed.

Both were Viennese children whose families had escaped to France when Hitler's troops occupied Austria. Roman is Jewish, Beuer-Tajovsky is not. But his mother's fiance, after his father died, was Jewish, and that was enough to mark him in Europe at that time.

They met at a Paris train station, two of many children being rushed out of Paris ahead of the invading Germans. They fell into instant friendship, although the bond lasted less than two years, hiding from the Germans and the collaborating French government.

They separated in August 1941, when Beuer-Tajovsky was accepted on a shipful of children sent to the United States. Roman was not. He came within a hair of going to Auschwitz, but ever disobedient, he didn't follow his father onto the train.

``I hesitated, I didn't go up,'' Roman recalled.

Roman never saw his father again. He has found out since that his father died two days later in the gas chamber.

He found his mother, he said, and they began an incredible odyssey through France and Italy, walking over the Alps, surviving an Allied bombardment, hiding in the mountains from German and Italian patrols, relying on fake papers and their wits. Nothing short of a novel would do the tale justice.

Roman told of watching from the mountains as refugees surrendered voluntarily in Italy: ``They went like sheep. There wasn't enough resistance.''

Not him. Roman and Beuer-Tajovsky would show that resourcefulness throughout their lives. Told by an official to report somewhere, they didn't. With refugee skill, they used their knowledge of languages and bureaucracy.

In the United States, both ended up in the Army in the 1950s on the West Coast, on their way to Korea, doing everything they could to avoid the war. Beuer-Tajovsky, always a hair luckier, stayed out of Korea; Roman went, but kept out of the front lines.

After the military service, Roman, still the electrician, opened an appliance repair shop in the Bronx. Beuer-Tajovsky went to college on the GI Bill and ended up in the civil service.

Each had inquired about the other. Beuer-Tajovsky found Roman's father's name in a book of those sent to Auschwitz, but not Roman's.

Roman had inquired with the Red Cross and numerous other agencies, looking for his friend, but had no luck.

Then, as computers and the Internet exploded in popularity in recent years, Roman started giving his friend's name to people who knew how to do searches. Twice they came up empty. Two months ago, he tried again, and Beuer-Tajovsky's name popped up. Roman mailed a brief note, still not quite sure it was his friend, and Beuer-Tajovsky called him.

What now? First, talking and more talking. They went to dinner Wednesday night with hopes of finding some Austrian fare.

Both are interested in the history and reunions of children saved from the Germans. They were saved by a French organization dedicated to rescuing children, ``Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants,'' or OSE.

Beuer-Tajovsky would like to find any OSE children who might be in Hampton Roads. Roman already has been interviewed for director Steven Spielberg's project to record the memories of Holocaust survivors, and Roman sent his old suitcase to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel.

``It looks like it went through a world war, and it did!'' he said.

Beuer-Tajovsky feels compelled to tell his story, as he will soon in a speech at Old Dominion University.

``Why me? Why was I saved?'' he said. ``It hit me that that was what I was passed over for, to show people what it means to be compassionate.'' ILLUSTRATION: CHARLES ROMAN

REINHOLD BEUER-TAJOVSKY

BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Reinhold ``Rene'' Beuer-Tajovsky, left, and Charles ``Carl'' Roman

were reunited Wednesday in a Norfolk apartment off Tidewater Drive.

FILE PHOTO

La Chateau de Chabannes is the school were Beuer-Tajovsky and Roman

stayed.

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