My Family for the War (9 page)

The instant I set foot on the lower deck of the
Harwich II
, I started to wish I had stuffed a little less chocolate into my mouth. “I’m going to get some fresh air,” I moaned, and was already on my way back above deck.

I managed to reach the upper deck. I leaned far over the railing and took in deep gulps of air; an ice-cold smell of salt and fish reached me and I lost the entire contents of my stomach into the English Channel.

“One of the first rules of sea voyages,” said Walter Glücklich, handing me a handkerchief, “is never throw up into the wind.”

I took his handkerchief and wiped the tears from my eyes.
He advised me to stay outside. “Look at a point on the horizon, and you’ll feel better eventually!”

I followed his advice, and noticed that in a very short time my fingers were frozen solid to the railing, but my legs became functional again and I got my footing. Walter stayed right behind me, just to be on the safe side, a strange but not unpleasant feeling.

“Do you have an address over there?” Walter had to yell to be heard above the wind, waves, and the humming of the engine.

“Yes, and you?” I yelled back, totally thrilled that an older boy was talking with me.

“I’m going to join my father. He’s been in London for a year already.”

“And your mother?”

“She died two years ago.” Before I could be dismayed, he smiled again. He had cheerful eyes and brown curls and leaned toward being plump. “What’s your name, anyway?” he wanted to know.

“Ziska Mangold. And I’m going to bring my parents over too!”

“Good luck! There’s a coffeehouse in Tottenham Court Road, the Café Vienna. They might be able to help you there.”

Café Vienna, I repeated in my thoughts and could hardly believe it. I hadn’t even reached England yet, and I’d already found out about a place I could go to get help for my parents!

An especially high wave struck the ship with a loud noise, pressed the bow up, and then it came down so steeply that
water sloshed onto the deck. The winter storm on the sea seemed so perfectly fitting, almost comforting, as if God himself were responding powerfully to the turmoil in our lives. When the next wave came, I opened my mouth wide and screamed at it at the top of my lungs.

Soon! Mamu and Papa would come join me soon! In the unfettered wind of freedom that blew from the English coast, everything seemed so wonderfully simple.

Ever since we had received their address, I had been thinking about the Winterbottoms, awaiting my arrival. They were willing to guarantee, with a considerable sum of money, that I wouldn’t become a burden to the English government. Who were they? Why were they doing so much for a completely unknown child? Could it be that they were expecting something from me in return—and if so, what?

The closer our first meeting drew, the more nervous I became. After the ferry docked in Harwich, while we waited for hours for the medical examinations and another round of passport and customs controls, the Winterbottoms occupied every cell in my brain. Had they received the letter Mamu and I had written in time, or did they know as little about me as I did about them?

I furtively rubbed the small crucifix at my throat.
Jesus, if you can hear me now, please make sure the Winterbottoms like me. If it’s not too late, please let them be wonderful people, like the ones Bekka talked about.

I had a bit of a bad conscience, because I only prayed when I wanted something from Jesus. I couldn’t even be a hundred percent certain that he was responsible for me at
all. When I was still allowed to be a Protestant, I was told, “Jesus is always with you and loves you just the way you are.” But was that automatically revoked when I was kicked out of religion class? If he really had been by my side up to that point, wouldn’t Jesus know better than anyone that I wasn’t really Jewish?

Of course! If anyone knew, it was Jesus! That meant he was definitely still looking out for me, even now as our train pulled into an enormous, light-filled, columned hall: Liverpool Street Station, London. In orderly groups of four we walked through the small triumphal archway into the main hall of the station and found ourselves in a kind of warehouse that had been divided in half with rope and tarp. Friendly looking, elegantly dressed women from the local committee for the aid of Jewish refugees were already seated at tables, ready to sign us in and hand us over to the right people. We were directed to the rows of benches that took up one whole side of the hall. On the other side, a haphazardly assembled, colorful crowd of people had gathered.

A wave of expectant murmuring broke out as we entered.

Our foster parents! Most craned their necks, smiling or waving in our direction, immediately setting off a round of whispering, nudging, and guessing games on our side. I envied the children who were going to stay with their own relatives. They had nothing to worry about. Walter had been met by his father right on the train platform. I’d caught a last glimpse of both of them before they were swallowed by the crowd and I was driven along in the stream of children. Thomas Liebich had already boarded a bus in Harwich that
was headed for a collection center for children who didn’t have a permanent address in England yet.

My heart pounding, I tried to peer over the table from my place on the bench. Which of those people were the Winterbottoms? The noise level in the hall rose as soon as the adults were allowed to come over to us. All manner of sounds were directed questioningly to my face, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make out anything that sounded even vaguely like Franziska.

That is how my stay in England began—with foster parents who changed their minds. I watched as one child after another disappeared through that same door with their English people, and the hall emptied. Marcus and Hermione Winterbottom were nowhere to be seen.

“Go sit with the others, Franziska,” one of the volunteers said. When she spoke to me I realized that everyone else was looking straight at me. The ladies from the committee had gathered our guardians around a table to answer a few final questions before they had to return to Germany. There were other children there too—three of them, a girl and two boys, the only ones left waiting with me. With our bundles and suitcases and our bedraggled cardboard signs hung around our necks, we stayed well away from each another. We could have moved closer together long before. But each of us would rather have died than take a single step in that direction.

“At least come down from the bench,” she suggested.

With burning cheeks, I jumped down to the floor, filled with shame and the dull, terrifying emptiness of loss. I had been left behind. No one was waiting for me.

For a brief but intense time, the Winterbottoms had been my entire future, the only reality in a fog of “perhaps,” the only thing I could rely on. Now I had lost them as well. Maybe my letter had been too short. Maybe Mamu or Uncle Erik had mixed up an important word. Maybe they had simply woken up this morning and decided they would rather take in someone from Vienna or Prague. Maybe they had been here, taken one look at me, and left again.

I would never find out. But I did know one thing for certain: No one would have seen Bekka and left her standing there.

Chapter 6

Three weeks after arriving in London, I felt like someone had created a new planet especially for us Jewish children, one that was far removed from any real life. We couldn’t even pronounce the name of our new planet: Satterthwaite Hall. We shared it with the residents of a nursing home in the main wing of the building. We almost never saw them. Now and then a few of them sat out on the balcony in their wheelchairs, never moving, while we were allowed to play on the lawn after our English lessons.

The one thing we all had in common was that we couldn’t leave. Satterthwaite Hall, a small, enchanted castle with many little towers and gables of gray stone, was surrounded by a seven-foot-high wall. Beyond the wall lay England. We could hear its noise, smell its odors, and sometimes even sense the footsteps of people walking on the other side. But the longer I was there, the less I could envision that there really was an “outside.”

Every afternoon I walked along the wall, to the left, to the right, and all around, missing Bekka like I had never missed
anyone before. But Bekka was far away, and the other children came and went. Satterthwaite Hall was just a way station, and all any of us could really do was sit and wait—full of anticipation, hope, and fear—for Sunday to come around.

Sunday was our only chance to get out of there. Clean, well behaved, and with friendly smiles, we sat at our places in the dining room answering future foster parents’ questions in our ever-improving English, although anyone could see from across a football field that most of them were only looking for the little ones. How could this young couple, that older woman, or this family know that they weren’t making a mistake by taking someone else home with them?

With growing uneasiness I waited day after day for news of my parents. My father had been released from Sachsenhausen in poor health, but my mother didn’t write what was wrong with him. That belonged to the category of questions that you instinctively sense should not be asked. “Papa says we should have traveled to Shanghai without him,” Mamu wrote. “Now we’re waiting for approval of our new exit visas—to anywhere at all.”

Anywhere at all? I was horrified. They had sent me to England, so it seemed perfectly clear that they would come here and meet up with me! It weighed on me more and more heavily that our future depended entirely on me. But how could I get them out of Germany when I couldn’t even manage to get myself out of Satterthwaite Hall?

Everything at home seemed to be getting worse. My mother complained about how difficult life was without the car and her driver’s license, which she had been forced to give up. She wrote about money being tighter and that it
was getting harder to buy things. She wrote about Papa’s weak heart, so damaged by all these blows that she was making every effort to keep the worst of it from him. He still believed, for example, that our car was parked around the corner in the Meyers’ garage.

At the same time, she would entertain me for pages with lively descriptions of her most recent bouts with Aunt Ruth, and I pictured the two of them quarreling over the kitchen table so vividly that it seemed like I was there myself.

As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t imagine Papa in Aunt Ruth’s apartment. Whenever I thought of Papa, all I saw were his white feet in slippers and a bloody handprint on the wall, and I had to stop thinking about him at all.

February 19, my eleventh birthday, was coming up. I kept it to myself, not telling anyone. To talk about a birthday was like exposing a raw wound; even worse, admitting to myself that I was completely alone on that day, without a home and with a giant question mark hanging over the coming year of my life.

The fact that everything changed on my birthday could only mean that Jesus—the only one who knew about it—hadn’t given up on me after all, despite the disaster with the Winterbottoms and the long series of disappointing Sundays. Since the English people continued to overlook me, I needed to go out and find a family on my own.

The porter at Satterthwaite Hall was a gnarled, elderly man. He was clearly less than thrilled about having to run a refugee hostel on short notice, and we tried our best to stay out of his way. Every Sunday, just past two o’clock, he
unlocked the tall, iron gate leading to the street, hoping just as much we did that there would be fewer of us inside by the day’s end.

With the key in his hand, he stomped back to the house, passing by the compost heap next to the wall without giving it a glance. How could he know that there was a girl hiding behind it—a girl with a plan? Resolutely, I sneaked behind his back along the wall and slipped out the gate. I was in England!

I decided I would only speak to people who were on their way to Satterthwaite Hall, although at the moment there were no people in sight. Cars pulled up and others drove off. Finally, after I had been leaning against the wall for half an hour or so, a number of visitors arrived all at once, and there I was, unexpectedly confronted with a question I hadn’t yet considered. How on earth was I supposed to pick
the
people, out of all these strangers, who were right for me? I had been terrified at the thought of being handed over to the Winterbottoms, people who didn’t know me at all. Now I realized that the alternative wasn’t any less troubling. I had to make a spontaneous decision about which people I wanted to live with, and for who knows how long?

I was so completely paralyzed by the weight of the decision that lay before me that I let the first visitors pass through the gate without speaking a single word to any of them. Time went by, dragging on endlessly. Then I saw a couple walking toward me along the wall, followed by two elderly women.

This was it! Brashly, I stepped in front of them and blurted out the phrase I’d cobbled together from my dictionary: “Excuse me, you look one child?”

Without changing his expression, the gentleman reached in his pocket and handed me a coin. Not stopping for a second, the couple walked right by me through the gate.