My Family for the War (7 page)

We rarely got to see Uncle Erik, Aunt Ruth’s heavy, jovial husband, since he had saved himself from being arrested by riding back and forth in streetcars all night. Now he had a monthly ticket and rode around all day, all over Berlin, and found shelter at night wherever he could with different friends. “Kindertransport… hmm, I’ve heard about that,” he said.

I enjoyed the attention and answered lots of questions: where to sign up
(at the Jewish Community Center), who paid for it (the Refugee Children’s Movement, an organization that was founded in England just to help us), how many trains were leaving (one or two each week, from different big cities each time), and how old the children had to be (at least four, no older than sixteen). I was amazed that they wanted such detailed information about everything. When I was done, there was a long silence in the room.

“Might be our only option,” Uncle Erik finally said.

Not comprehending, I looked from one adult to the next.

“Evchen and Betti are too little,” Aunt Ruth whispered. Her haggard, pale face seemed to fall apart.

“No, Evchen is four,” Uncle Erik said softly. “It would be possible.”

Another long silence. Gradually I felt the import of his words registering in that part of my brain responsible for putting things together, but I refused to believe what I had just heard.

When Mamu pushed back her chair with a clatter, we all jumped. “We should each discuss this for ourselves,” she said. “Ziska, will you step outside with me?”

And as we left she did something completely unexpected: She took Aunt Ruth’s chin in her hand and gave her intolerable sister a kiss!

I only found my voice again when we were in the bathroom. “They want to send the girls away with a transport?” I asked, incredulous. “Alone? Have they lost their minds?”

“It may be that Papa can’t join us in time, Ziska.”

“How can they even think of such a thing, sending their children away? What kind of parents are they?”

“If I hand in the tickets tomorrow, we’ll get back part of our money and can try again later.”

“You have to talk to them, they can’t do that!… What did you just say?” My chest suddently tightened. “Give back the tickets? You mean for the ship to Shanghai?”

“If they don’t let Papa go by next Tuesday, we can’t leave.” Mamu’s voice trembled.

“Why wouldn’t they let him out?” I cried. “We have all our papers together! They’ve let everyone who wants to leave the country go!”

Now she was fighting tears. “I did something dumb, Ziska. I said that we have to leave early next week. How could I have been so stupid? The way that man looked at me! ‘Whether and when we release your husband is our decision, and ours alone!’ Oh, Ziska, I blew it, it’s all my fault!”

My mother pressed her hand against her mouth. Her face twitched. I sat motionless and tried to grasp what she was trying to tell me. They wouldn’t let Papa go in time. Our emigration to Shanghai had fallen through. The ship would sail without us.

“I’m so, so sorry, Ziskele,” Mamu sobbed.

I sat next to her on the edge of the bathtub and leaned against her shoulder. I wanted to cry right along with her, but instead I heard myself saying in a determined tone, “Then we’ll just exchange the tickets for places on the next ship, and we’ll keep doing that until they let Papa go.”

Mamu was already calming down. “Or until we run out of money,” she said. “Which could be very soon, the way things look. We’ll have to get new exit visas too. But you’re right, we won’t give up. I just wonder…”

She stopped. “What?” I asked.

“Whether we should count entirely on Shanghai or if we shouldn’t pursue every single possibility that’s available to us.”

“That’s what we’re doing. We’re already on every single list there is.”

“Well,” Mamu said, “except for one.”

She hardly dared to look at me. “No,” I said weakly. “I won’t do that.”

“Ziska, you have no idea what it would mean to me to know you were safe.”

“But I won’t go alone! You can just forget it!” Now I did have tears in my eyes. “You don’t want to leave without Papa, but I’m supposed to… to…”

It was too painful to say it out loud. Mamu turned to me and took my hands. “Papa needs me now, Ziska. He’s counting on me, I have to get him out of there. But you’re a big girl, a strong girl! A girl who jumped into a tree in the dark! So many times recently, it’s been you who’s told me what I should do.”

I could hardly see her through my tears. “Mamu, no! I’ll do anything you want, but please, please, don’t send me away!”

“I won’t do anything against your will, Ziskele,” she said in a tired voice, letting go of my hands. “But when you’re making your decision, please also consider what you could do for your parents. You could try to get a work permit in England for Papa and me. Then it wouldn’t be long at all and we would be with you again—and all three of us safe.”

I panicked.
If only I hadn’t said anything! Bekka had wanted me to keep it to myself, but no, I had nothing better to do than broadcast the news right away!

“We might be able to follow you very soon,” Mamu repeated. “Think about it.”

The first thing I noticed when we entered the building was that no one was laughing. Dozens of children and their parents
stood in a long line. I looked around and recognized several girls I knew, but no one waved to me.

“You see? There are lots of kids here who are younger than you,” Mamu said quietly.

I didn’t answer. Since she had turned in the ship tickets and I knew there was no way around it, I felt old. Mamu was counting on me. I would get my parents out of Germany. That was the only thing that made the pain tolerable.

Bekka’s reaction had made me uneasy. “The two of us, in the same kindertransport? That would be a miracle,” was her opinion. “We have to be happy if we get to go at all.”

I wouldn’t have dreamed that so many parents would send their children away. The sight of the line of people waiting made my throat tighten up.

“You know what would be the best?” Bekka had added with a crooked smile. “If you got my spot!”

“I’d like to travel together with a friend,” I said to the man who introduced himself as Herr Weitz and took my application. “Rebekka Liebich. She signed herself up last week already.”

“What about your father, Franziska?” he asked. “Is he still in Sachsenhausen?”

“Yes, even though we had tickets to Shanghai at one point. They just won’t let him out.”

Mamu, who was sitting next to me, nodded at me as if I had given the right answer on a test.

“The fact that your father is in a concentration camp improves your chances of getting a spot,” Herr Weitz commented. He had a pale, tired face and deep, dark circles under his eyes.

“If my father weren’t in the concentration camp, I wouldn’t need to go in the first place,” I replied indignantly. Surprisingly, a smile flickered in his exhausted eyes.

Mamu, who hadn’t seen it, couldn’t stand it anymore. “We are very, very grateful to the Refugee Children’s Movement for their efforts!” she interjected.

“It’s okay, Frau Mangold,” Herr Weitz said. “I know how hard it is. My daughter is on the list too.”

How we survived the following weeks, I couldn’t say. I was with my mother, and at the same time, I wasn’t anymore. In my thoughts I was in England, and yet I couldn’t be, since I didn’t know what it looked like, nor if I would ever really arrive there. Mamu kept herself perpetually busy, spent much too much money on new clothes for me, and sewed little strips of cloth with my name on them into everything. I felt uncomfortable in her presence and had the impression that she felt the same way. Soon I was just as scared that I wouldn’t get a seat on the kindertransport as I was of getting one.

For the first time, I received a letter from my father addressed only to me.

I read the letter over and over again. It was so formal that I felt very important. From Mamu I knew that Sachsenhausen had a better reputation than the concentration camp at Buchenwald. I couldn’t quite imagine my father working on a construction site, but he optimistically wrote that this way he was gaining experience in a practical field.

The thought that my father felt stronger because of me made me happy. My mother sent him packages, clothes, and money, and ran around tirelessly trying to have him released. Soon I would be able to do something for him too.

“On Thursday already!”

“What do you mean, don’t bring any valuables? What about her watch, does that count? She can’t travel without a watch! And here:
Apart from 10 Reichsmark, no money
should be sent with the children
! Am I supposed to send my daughter to England as a beggar?”

The adults all spoke at once in agitated voices. I hadn’t been allowed to take more than a brief glance at the letter from the Jewish Community Center myself, as it was immediately snatched out of my hands. Uncle Erik, who was there to do his laundry, read the instructions, which were included on a separate piece of paper, out loud in a booming voice. There was a buzzing in my head like in a beehive.

On Thursday! Only four days! Four days that would stretch out endlessly. I would have preferred to get it over with the very next day. My heart was balled into a fist; I was aware that this was a decisive moment in my life, and I expected to feel something. But there was nothing. Aunt Ruth must be right, something was wrong with me.

My otherwise composed mother, on the other hand, abruptly grabbed the paper out of Uncle Erik’s hands while he was still reading from it and started crying loudly. The tears streamed freely over her distorted face and I, who in the last few weeks had wondered about her love for me, should have been pleased by this outburst of emotion. Instead, I resented it, she had no right to it, and I heard myself shouting: “Be quiet! You said I should go and now I am going, no matter how much you cry!”

I left behind three stunned grown-ups when I slammed the door and ran out.

The moment I saw her I could tell something was wrong. Her face was pale and shiny, her smile frozen in place. “You’re
just in time to celebrate with my family,” Bekka greeted me. “Thomas has a seat on the kindertransport.”

I followed her into the apartment. It was like going back to the apartment I had just left. The same excited voices came from the living room, reading the same letter. As I walked past, I caught a glimpse of Thomas, who sat silently in the rocking chair and moved back and forth as if it were mechanically controlled.

Bekka closed her bedroom door behind us and we sat on her bed.

“When does the next transport leave?” I asked, more to gain some time than anything else. Already I could feel a separation between Bekka and me growing.

She shrugged her shoulders. “On Thursday, and then again at the beginning of February, I guess. But the chances are getting smaller, I tell you. Word is spreading like wildfire, and suddenly every Jew in Berlin wants to get their children out.”

I just wouldn’t tell her! On Thursday I would suddenly be gone, and I’d write to her from England that it was a big surprise, and practically at the last minute I was able to take the place of another child in our building who had gotten the mumps!

“It’s just plain cruel,” Bekka erupted. Her carefully composed good-loser expression collapsed, and her eyes glittered with anger. “Thomas doesn’t even want to go! Why did they take him? Because he plays the piano? Crap, I should have told them how well I draw!”

She kicked the wastepaper basket, and its contents emptied onto the floor. I sat next to her like a bundle of misery,
choking on the tangle of excuses and lies that were already perched on my tongue. For the first time I realized how many ways there are to divide people from each other, and that the Nazis would tear Bekka and me apart in a way that would never have occurred to me.

An idea flashed through my mind:
What if I offer her my spot?

I know the old Ziska would have done it. She wouldn’t have betrayed anyone, and certainly not her best friend, not at any price.

The new Ziska thought about herself. The new Ziska’s voice was strong as she responded: “I have a spot too, Bekka. I leave on Thursday. But I promise you, once I’m in England I’ll try to find a family for you so you can come too.”

And the new Ziska stood on the street not five minutes later and thought,
Well then, too bad, you dummy. If you’re mad that I’m leaving and trying to get my parents out, just like you wanted to do for yours, if you accuse me of something that isn’t my fault at all, if your last words to me are that I took the place that should have been yours, then you can’t be my friend!