My Family for the War Read online

  Chapter 5

  The Voyage

  There were so many important things to do. The printed packing list needed to be filled out—two pair of pants, two skirts, three sweaters, three blouses, one coat, two pajamas, six underpants, six pairs of socks, two pairs of shoes—and in the line “Name of the emigrant,” with a trembling hand, was written Franziska Sara Mangold. My children’s identity card also had to be stamped with a large red J for Jewish.

  I wrote to my host parents. We had received their address on the same day as the letter of acceptance. Their names were Marcus and Hermione Winterbottom, and they lived in London. Mamu wrote a much longer letter than mine, and Uncle Erik translated it into English. I chewed on my pencil, but couldn’t think of anything to write.

  “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Winterbottom,” I wrote in my best handwriting. “Thank you that I can come to you. I come Saturday. Yours truly, Ziska.”

  “But they know that already,” was Uncle Erik’s opinion.

  I was terrified of the parting at the train station. I was relieved when word came: “Please take leave of your children in a room at the Jewish Community Center. The children will be brought to the train station by bus to avoid any interruption of normal activity.”

  The noise in the big room was deafening. Our departure was set for late evening, probably to spare the general public from the scene that Mamu and I encountered when we arrived shortly after nine, one of the last families to get there. I took one look in the hall and said, “Please, Mamu, we’re not going to cry! Otherwise I’ll go straight back home again.”

  “There’s no reason to cry,” my mother replied with a determined voice. “We’re just glad that you were accepted. Do you know how many children would like to be in your shoes right now?”

  I know one, I thought to myself. I hadn’t told Mamu how Bekka and I had parted ways. It was so awful that I just didn’t want to relive it. “Do you think Uncle Erik will keep his word and wave to me from the Wannsee train station?” I asked quickly.

  “You can count on it,” Mamu said with a smile.

  We stood in one corner and pretended I was heading off to summer camp. Someone started calling out names in alphabetical order. As each name was called, a cardboard sign with a number on it was hung around the child’s neck, they took their suitcases, and moved toward the group that was waiting near the exit. The names starting with C were called, then D. Fear filled the air. Parents were reassuring crying children, or broke out in tears themselves, anxiety, tension. I noticed that my entire body had begun to tremble.

  “I have something for you.” My mother reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a silver chain. A small cross hung from it. “I got this for my confirmation. It will protect you until we see each other again.”

  She opened the clasp and stepped behind me, gently moving the hair on my neck to the side. “I’ll never take it off!” I vowed. “Not even to wash!”

  We held hands and waited. Mamu’s hands were icy cold.

  The letter L. Thomas Israel Liebich. Had Bekka come with him to say good-bye? I felt a short, sharp stab of pain and hope too; maybe we could still see each other one more time after all! But I only found the gentle, round face of her mother.

  “I have to say good-bye to the Liebichs!” I called, upset, and tore myself away.

  “Ziska!” Mamu yelled, and ran after me.

  I saw Frau Liebich open her arms as I ran toward her… she wasn’t angry with me! I broke out in tears. “I am so sorry!” I sobbed into her neck.

  “Franziska Sara Mangold!”

  “Ziska, come, it’s your turn!”

  Mamu was behind me and pulled a little too roughly on my arms. I let go of my friend’s mother, someone put the sign with my number over my head. Desperately, I slapped away the strange hand that wanted to push me toward the other children and tried to stop crying. I knew I must have hurt Mamu terribly; I couldn’t leave before I explained everything to her! But the only thing that came from my mouth was a loud, embarrassing wail.

  “God bless you, Ziska!” my mother whispered, briefly put her arm around me, and pressed the suitcase into my hand. I stood with the others by the door. Cold night air blew in on us, and two buses were already waiting.

  It was much worse than I had imagined.

  Germany slept. Outside the train windows lay darkness once we had left Berlin, darkness and the regular clickety clack of the wheels crossing wooden railroad ties. It represented terror and comfort at the same time, separating us from our parents and yet bringing us to safety. There could be no greater contradiction.

  I saw myself sitting in the train compartment, where out of the throng of children individual faces became distinguishable. Greta, Luise, Vera, Fanny, Gabi, Marion, and Jette. We younger ones smiled at each other shyly. Greta immediately began to write a letter. She had already declared herself the oldest in the compartment, and therefore in charge. Her first move was to usurp the window seat that I had taken in the mad rush onto the train. I hunched over in the seat next to the door, as far from her as possible. My stomach was turning somersaults. I had hugged the wrong mother good-bye. Could there be any mistake more bitter?

  In the aisle the young woman in charge of our car of the train walked up and down holding the hands of children who hadn’t yet found a seat. Our compartment door opened and I sat at eye level with the fearful faces of the youngest ones.

  “Look, Tessa, there’s still room, you can sit here.”

  “And where will my mama sit?”

  No one answered, and I pushed the door closed behind the little girl. Inside, Fanny lifted Tessa onto her lap right away. Luise took a teddy bear out of her backpack and made a funny voice. “Hey, everyone, this is Tessa! She’s so brave, she’s riding the train all by herself!”

  The girl laughed and stretched out her hands for the teddy bear. The rest of us laughed too, even Greta, so we wouldn’t have to hear the whistle that meant we were leaving. As the train started to move, only Jette craned her neck and eagerly peered out the window; maybe she had forgotten that our parents hadn’t been allowed to come to the platform with us.

  The rest of us only looked out the window after we had left the train station behind us. The lights were turned off in the compartments, and we waited for them to go on again. No one was supposed to notice the train taking hundreds of children out of Germany in the middle of the night.

  Somewhere out there, our parents were on their way home—without us. I had a sudden, vivid, unbearable image of my mother alone in the subway. It was one of those images that you have to get out of your head immediately.

  “Can I look out the window when we get to Wannsee?” I asked Greta politely. “My uncle Erik will be standing at the train station waving.”

  “But he won’t even see you. We’re only passing through.”

  “He knows that, but he’ll be there anyway. He promised.”

  “Then we’ll all wave!” That decided, Vera slipped past me out of the compartment and I heard her telling the children next door, “There will be someone waiting and waving to us in Wannsee. Will you wave back?”

  The darkened train carried us all away, a hundred and twenty fearful and curious, sad and excited children from Berlin. We would double our number after a short stop in Hamburg. Germany slept and no one noticed our trip. The only person who waved at our train was a round, good-natured bald man at the train station in Wannsee who had positioned himself under a lamp so that I would be able to see him. He was completely overwhelmed when children appeared at every window of the train rolling past, all of them leaning out, waving their arms and calling to him, “Good-bye! Good-bye, Uncle Erik!”

  When I woke up I noticed that we must be close to the Dutch border. There was no other way to explain the restlessness in the train. This was in the early hours of the morning, and a current of fear spread among the older children. “What if they send us back again?”

  With my eyes closed, I leaned back against the partition betwe
en the aisle and the compartment and listened to Greta and Vera whispering with each other. “We can’t move a muscle, that’s the most important thing! Just don’t even look at them when they come in.”

  “I’ve heard they make one of us from each compartment go with them for questioning,” Vera replied nervously.

  “Then hopefully they’ll take her there, with the cross,” Greta said spitefully.

  It took a moment before I realized she was talking about me. “Ziska is all right,” Vera offered, but her brief hesitation was unmistakable.

  “How do we know whether she’s even Jewish?” Greta retorted.

  “Jews aren’t the only ones on kindertransports. Some are children of communists, or resistance fighters who are stuck in prison.”

  “Well, I think they should only take Jews,” Greta grumbled.

  I opened my eyes. “I am Jewish,” I said angrily. “If you don’t believe it you can look in my passport.”

  I could tell that Greta had words on the tip of her tongue, but just then we felt it: The train was slowing down! None of us uttered a single word as we slowly rode into the lighted station, and the tall figures in brown and black uniforms that awaited us came into view. The stiff black caps bearing the death’s-head symbol of the SS glided past the window as if in slow motion. The train stopped with a screeching of brakes, lights went on, and we heard the heavy treads of boots in the aisles and the opening and closing of compartment doors. Strangely, there were no voices. It was ghostly—as if they made their way through an empty train.

  I was staring at the floor when the door next to me was opened abruptly. A pair of highly polished boots appeared, stood in place, and stopped moving. Several seconds passed. I looked up. The Nazi looked down at me—he had a face that looked like it was chiseled in stone—and made an impatient little gesture with his hand. Two of us at a time had to stay in the compartment while our suitcases were searched, while the others waited outside in the aisle. With stiff knees I squeezed myself past the giant, who practically filled the doorframe. A small, still crowd was already waiting outside the compartment doors. I could hear some of the children’s teeth chattering.

  “Stay calm,” said a boy next to me. “They’re just looking for anything valuable. They don’t care about us at all.”

  I looked sideways at him. He was big and strong, probably about the same age as Thomas, but he carried himself almost like an adult already. He noticed my glance and winked at me.

  All at once I felt better. “I have a necklace,” I whispered. “I hope they don’t take it away from me.”

  The boy whispered back, “You can have a diamond from me. If you put it in your suitcase, right on top, I can guarantee no one will notice your necklace!”

  As scared as I was, I had to laugh. The boy didn’t look like he had ever even been near a diamond. Lots of the children had been dressed in new clothes from head to toe for the trip, but he definitely wasn’t one of them. He was wearing a long, well-worn coat, and boots that had already been mended on the side.

  “You’re not from Berlin, are you?” I whispered. I couldn’t remember having seen him in the meeting room of the Jewish Community Center. Somehow I had the feeling that I would have seen him, if he had been there.

  “Walter Glücklich,” he answered quietly, “from Hamburg. And before you ask, yes, that’s my real name!”

  Walter Glücklich, I repeated to myself, remembering that Glücklich meant “happy.” It was one of the few English words I could remember. It was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard!

  The door to our compartment opened. Two SS men pushed their way through the aisle, examining our passports and comparing the smiling children in the photos with the faces that looked up at them now, frozen with fear. One officer stood in front of me, studying me for a long time. I felt an icy cold rise inside of me as if everything that was warm and alive was being sucked into the shadow under his cap.

  Jette and I didn’t look at each other when it was our turn. The man who searched our belongings just made piles of clothes next to our suitcases, without a word, feeling everything, pressing things down, and gliding his hands into every pants and jacket pocket with practiced motions. I almost passed out when I remembered that Mamu had sewn a 20 Reichsmark bill into the hem of my pants, but the money wasn’t noticed. Without comment, instead he took a stamp album out of Jette’s suitcase and set it aside. I saw how she couldn’t tear her eyes from it. The Nazi clamped it under his arm as he left the compartment; maybe he had a child at home who collected stamps.

  Silently, our traveling companions crowded their way back into the compartment. Greta opened a package of cookies and held them out to us, even me. She was probably sorry for saying she wished I would be questioned on top of everything. I took a cookie even though my throat was shut tight, and chewed on the first bite as if it were sand.

  It didn’t even register when the train started moving again. I didn’t understand where the noise came from, a roar that suddenly swelled and rolled from one compartment to the next like a wave. It took me a whole minute to recognize that it was the other children, who were no longer sitting in their places, but hopping wildly around, celebrating, and took turns pulling each other out of the compartments into the aisle.

  We were in Holland. We had made it. We were free.

  The contrast couldn’t have been greater. We had just stood in front of the Nazis, who had managed to spread paralyzing fear without speaking a single word. Fifteen minutes later, the train stopped again at a station beyond the border and smiling women with great big baskets climbed on board, handing out apples, whole bars of chocolate, and hot tea. They had wonderfully kind faces, spoke to us in warm, throaty voices, and took up the younger children in their arms. Welkom, welkom! We didn’t have to know Dutch to understand that.

  The Nazis were the nightmare we had gotten used to. Much more shocking were the Dutch women with their chocolate. None of us could have imagined that such a completely different world began directly across the border from Germany. I finally understood my mother’s hopes for me when she sent me on the kindertransport against my will.

  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 pla
ce 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?