by Bodie Thoene
When the air raid sounded that afternoon, my mother was pushing Katie’s pram through Regent’s Park. Charles and Louis skipped stones across the boating lake. While I sheltered in the basement of the BBC, Mama hurried with the children into the deep underground of the Baker Street tube station.
Even in the depths of the BBC bomb shelter, we heard the distant concussions. In that terrible moment we realized every horror England had hoped to prevent had finally come to pass. We raised our eyes to the concrete ceiling and prayed for the safety of our loved ones. My heart raced through every minute as I wondered about Murphy, my mother, and our children. In my fear, I remembered the painting in St. Paul’s Cathedral of the angel guiding two small children across a bridge. Could the Lord keep my little ones safe beneath a sky raining fire and brimstone?
O God, protect them! Put Your angels around the ones I love!
Before one hour passed, the Luftwaffe emptied its deadly cargo, shattering forever the lives of citizens in the great city I had come to call my home.
A phone call after the all-clear alerted me that Mama and my little ones were alive and well and headed back home. We musicians picked ourselves up and resumed preparation for the evening concert as news of the devastation to the surrounding city trickled in. Fires raged in the East End. The rumors were horrific, but reality was worse.
Should tonight’s concert broadcast go on the air in the face of such widespread tragedy?
The head of the BBC consulted with the British War Office. It was concluded for the sake of British morale, in spite of devastation and danger, the night’s BBC performance must be aired without fail.
Churchill proclaimed, “It will send a message back to the Nazis that their bombs cannot and will not interrupt our lives or break the will of our island home.”
I was in the practice room of the BBC when Mama rang me a second time. My mother’s voice, almost always full of good cheer, was barely recognizable.
“Oh, Elisa!” she cried. “The house! The house is gone! Lori’s little boy has been killed in the bombing! And her dear mother. Your aunt Helen. Yes, Helen dead too!”
I held the receiver for a long moment without speaking. Only the night before we had laughed and joked at the dining table. Could it really be true that their joy was silenced forever?
Other members of the BBC Orchestra surged around me, aware by my expression that personal tragedy had struck my family in the Luftwaffe’s first great assault on London.
“Mama! Can this be?”
“Lori’s darling baby boy. And Helen too. Gone! I can’t bear it. I cannot bear it!”
My knees grew weak. My first thought was how lucky we were that Mama had been out for a stroll with my three children. The next thought slammed into my senses like a hammer blow. “Mama! Where is Lori?”
“St. John’s Church is gone too. A stick of five bombs meant to strike the canal across the road. Instead, the bombs fell on the houses along Prince Albert Road…one after another. Starting with our house and ending with the church.”
“Mama! Where is Lori? Where?” My panic drew a circle of friends close around me.
“Lori came back home and…she would not leave. Refused to leave the house until they found the bodies. She fought to get inside, in spite of the flames. They had to hold her back. And then they found them—Helen and Alfie. Oh Elisa! The poor girl. Poor dear girl! Her mother and baby boy…how will she ever forget such a sight? Lori was up the hill in the village, shopping for a few dinner things. She came home and…everything gone. She asked to be taken to the shelter where Loralei works. St. Marks, North Audley. I’m going there now.”
Loralei Bittick, our Texas-born cousin, worked in a refugee center near the American Embassy.
I asked my mother, “Call Murphy for me, Mama. Ask him please to come to the church straightaway. I’ll meet you there with the children.”
I hung up. My hands were trembling. I knew I could not play the violin.
Fearing I might pass out, I handed my instrument to Henri Golden, the Jewish concertmaster, who had escaped from a half-dozen countries one step ahead of the Nazi army. Henri took stock. Still and wide-eyed, he pieced together what had just happened.
“Your children, Elisa?”
“Unharmed.”
“Thanks be to God. Your home?”
I quietly replied, “Gone.”
“Brick and mortar can be replaced.”
“Henri, I won’t be performing tonight. Our home…gone! A house is nothing. But my cousin Lori Kalner’s little boy and my aunt—they were in the house.”
His dark Sephardic eyes flashed. “Bombed.” Not a question but a fact. “So very sorry. So very, very…”
I nodded and leaned back against the wall. Hands over my face, I tried to draw breath. I felt the room spin around me. Little Alfie dead. Aunt Helen too. What if Mama had been there with Katie and Charles and Louis? What if Mama hadn’t taken them for a walk in the park at the moment she did? She and Katie and Charles and Louis would be dead. The loss would be unbearable, as it must be now for my sweet cousin.
On that first day when the skies were darkened with enemy aircraft, 1,364 civilians died; 1,666 Londoners were seriously injured.
Those hours were a foretaste of what lay ahead for us. Staggering numbers of dead and wounded are mere statistics. It is only when the numbers of dead are reduced to an ordinary person like you or me that the mind can comprehend the meaning of loss. How could we believe on that first evening that in the months following over 48,000 Londoners would die in the havoc raining down upon us? The reality is even more incomprehensible when I write the names of other target cities in Britain: Coventry, Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Plymouth, Liverpool, Blackpool…
Too many to record each heartache and loss. Yet as I close my eyes, I see the smiles and hear the laughter of two precious souls who were part of my own family. When I consider the meaning of the Blitz, I remember the smoke-blackened face of Lori Kalner, who had to be prevented from running into the flames in a futile attempt to save her little boy and her mother.
In the evening I met my mother at St. Mark’s. She was praying in a side chapel. My children slept on a pew behind her.
Mama rose slowly and embraced me. “Loralei is in her office with Lori. You three girls. Always so close. I am praying you will find some word of comfort for poor Lori. After so much heartache, losing her father in Germany. Now this. Now this. I have no comfort to offer. I am broken. Broken.”
I found Lori in Loralei’s office. Both petite and nearly the same age, they had often pretended to be sisters when they were young. Years of persecution in Nazi Germany had strengthened our family ties.
Lori’s shoulders hunched forward. With her fair hair, clothing, and skin covered with soot, she seemed very small and fragile, like a once-loved doll left in the rain. A cup of tea and toast were untouched at Lori’s right hand. Loralei sat with her arm around her. Lori glanced up when I entered. Bright blue eyes were wide with bewilderment. Lips parted as if to ask, How could this happen?
“Lori,” I whispered.
Lori shook her head. Her voice cracked as she tried to speak. “They’re gone, Elisa. I only went to the market and…they’re gone. I wish—I wish they would have come with me. The baby was napping. Oh, Elisa! I wish I would have stayed with him!”
Loralei, eyes brimming, pursed her lips and looked away.
“I know, Lori. I know, darling. I am so sorry.” I sank down beside my cousins, and we three shed tears together.
What had happened in Spain, Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France had followed the flood of refugees here to the island fortress of Great Britain. Where was our hope? What hope for us now?
Lori wiped her eyes. “Oh, Elisa. You must get your babies to America if you can. Get them to America!”
We had no place to sleep, so Loralei gave us her house key and sent us to her flat. She offered to share her clothes with us. We just had time enough to bathe before the ai
r raid siren sounded again. We hurried away to the Camden Town tube station as a fresh storm of incendiary bombs began to fall on London. I do believe Lori would have welcomed her own death that night. And, for all of us, this was only the beginning of sorrows.
Perhaps this is enough to help you understand why those of us who lived in England that year looked at our children and were able to answer the question, “Would you rather your babies be bombed in London or risk being torpedoed on the North Atlantic?”
“Six days to cross the Atlantic! Naval escorts will surround the evacuee ships. Only six days of danger before our kids’ll be safe on a far shore!”
After that first day of the Blitz, the sight of a baby’s tiny coffin made my reply certain. “Perhaps in a ship bound for America our children will have a chance. A crossing of only six days and then…LIFE!”
The morning of the funeral service for Helen Ibsen and little Alfie, Murphy sent a wire to his parents in Pennsylvania, asking Sean and Rosie Murphy for their help.
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
PSALM 27:1 KJV
BERLIN, NAZI GERMANY
DECEMBER 14, 1936
I am afraid. It is raining when I step out of the taxi. Now the terrible red swastika banners of the Third Reich flutter from the windows of my father’s store. I sense I am being followed—observed, as I walk into the building and through the bright holiday decorations of our department store. When I stop at the perfume counter and pretend to sample the scent of Chanel No. 5, a man watches me with cold, dull eyes. I know he is Gestapo. He scribbles notes in a small notebook as I climb the stairs and walk toward Papa’s office. I pretend I do not notice him. I pretend he does not matter. But I feel a heavy dread in the pit of my stomach. I did not expect the danger would come so soon.
Mama and my brothers have gone ahead to Kitzbühel in Austria.
Once we’re home, Papa says he is glad they are safe. We must leave as well. Three hours until the train. Papa opens the window, and I play my violin for the last time for him in our beloved home.
I ask, “Oh, Papa? Can we ever come home again?”
He does not answer. He tells me I must take away only what I can easily carry. He selects from his library a first-edition copy of Goethe’s Faust, the story of the man who sold his soul to the devil.
I think perhaps that Germany and the German church have become like Faust. For the sake of Herr Hitler’s empty promises they have sold their souls to the devil.
3
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND
SUMMER 1940
Sean and Rosie Murphy made the long journey from Pennsylvania, crossing the Atlantic on board a neutral American ship to take our children home with them to the safety of their dairy farm. Less than a month passed as we waited for my visa, so I could travel with them, but it didn’t come.
My baby was sleeping when I laid her in Rosie Murphy’s arms and kissed her farewell on the deck of the crowded ocean liner that would take them all from England to America.
“You know I’ll care for the children like they’re my own,” my mother-in-law tried to comfort me. “Elisa, darlin’, your Katie will be our little princess until you join us in America.”
I nodded and, unable to speak, embraced her and my baby girl.
The ship’s steward clanged the final warning bell. “All ashore that’s going ashore!”
Murphy hoisted Charles and Louis up in his arms one last time and instructed our boys, “Be good lads, now. Take care of your baby sister. And help Grandma and Grandpa milk the cows too.”
Charles furrowed his brow. “When are you coming?”
Murphy smiled, then mussed the boy’s hair. “Soon.”
Sean Murphy, my husband’s iron-jawed father, plopped his fedora down on Charles’ head. Sean was suddenly in charge. “So, you’re Charles. In America we’ll call you Charlie. You wear my fedora, like William Powell in The Thin Man. You like detective movies?”
Both boys nodded in unison.
Sean continued, “Great. And you, Louis—we’ll call you Louie, eh? I’ll have to get a second hat. To tell you boys apart.” He stooped low. “What kind of hat would you like, Louie?”
Louis managed a crooked smile. He rubbed his upper lip where surgery had corrected a cleft palate. “Cowboy.”
“Then a cowboy you shall be.” Sean placed large square hands on the boys’ shoulders. “But you mustn’t switch hats unless you tell your grandma and me, eh?”
Murphy embraced his parents. We said tearful farewells, promising to come to America soon. Murphy took my arm, leading me toward the gangway. Had I ever known such emptiness as that moment?
The ship sailed, and the great White Star Line passenger shed emptied out. We lingered as the crowd of well-wishers dispersed. Small sounds echoed beneath the vast shelter.
The band members put away their instruments. Janitors swept confetti and crushed flowers from the quay. Members of the press—Murphy’s friends and colleagues—hailed him, then phoned in to their respective news sources the latest passenger list containing the names of great and small among the exodus of Americans from England.
“You heard me, Mac,” one of Murphy’s colleagues said. “Yeah, No kiddin’! The entire clan of American Ambassador Joseph Kennedy has just been shipped back home to America.”
“Shipped? It was more like a stampede,” Murphy said. “But who am I to point fingers? I send my kids home to my folks in Pennsylvania while Mister Ambassador Appeaser shivers in his bed at night for fear some stray Nazi bomb is going to land on the American Embassy. So Kennedy sends his kids back home to Hah-vahd. Bet he’ll skedaddle home soon hisself.”
I resisted the urge to comment how much going home to Harvard sounded like “going home to Tara.” The world I had known as a child was quite gone with the wind.
After two years of marriage to John Murphy, I had mastered American, which is quite different than the language spoke in England. “I want to skedaddle. Okay, Murphy. I know your mother will take care of our babies. Little Katie. Every day is something new with a baby. And the boys. Charles and Louis. Growing so fast. I must get my visa soon and follow to America or my heart will break.”
Murphy and I remained on the dock of the White Star Line and watched until the great ocean liner vanished into a fog bank. Had we done the right thing? Sending our baby and Charles and Louis to America with Murphy’s parents? How long would it be before I saw them again?
I said quietly, “Churchill thinks people who evacuate their children to America are cowards.”
“We know better, Elisa. The idea is to get the kids out of range of the Nazi bombers.”
“I was in line for ration books—fewer rations now that the children have gone. A woman behind me asked if I’d rather have my children bombed in England or torpedoed on the Atlantic.”
“Cheerful soul. What did you tell her?”
“I said I’d rather they celebrate Christmas on my husband’s farm in Pennsylvania, where there are no ration cards and we can churn our own butter. But, Murphy, I’m scared.”
“Everyone in England is scared for their kids, Elisa, and with good reason.”
I pressed myself against him and wept against his shoulder. “Oh, Murphy! Why won’t America grant me a visa? Why? First it was refugee quotas and now…”
“Now there’s a war on. You came from Germany, Elisa, and the Nazis hate you and your family. I mean personally. You’re on a list. The kids need to be far across the water and out of harm’s way.”
I whispered through my tears, “I know. I just wish I could be with them.”
“You know the drill. But here’s the deal. My mother’s got six days on the same boat with Rose Kennedy. And Mom is a Murphy, as Irish as the Kennedys. Rosie Murphy, she is. That’s two roses on the same ship. Irish mothers stick together. No accident they’re on the same ship. Mom’ll put Katie in Rose Kennedy’s arms and tell her all about Charles and Louis—and you, Elisa. A talented Jewish concert violi
nist on the run from Hitler who’s stuck here in the UK because some pencil pusher delayed.” He dabbed my cheeks with his handkerchief. “It’ll be okay, honey. You and I will be together. Mom’ll write every week. And when you get your visa…”
“Then you’ll come too? Come home to Pennsylvania? To your parents’ farm? With me?”
He did not reply, and sorrow passed through me like a sword. His arm remained around my shoulders as we left the empty passenger shelter for the drive back to London.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.
PSALM 23:4 KJV
TRAIN COMPARTMENT 7A
GERMANY/AUSTRIA BORDER
DECEMBER 15, 1936
The shadow of death is dark tonight. Gestapo and SS everywhere on the train from Berlin to Austria.
Papa is taken off the train for “questioning.” What can I do? Oh, God! Papa is not with me as I cross the German frontier into Austria. Will I ever see my father again? What will Mama say when I come to Kitzbühel, and he is not with me?
An American news journalist named John Murphy, a young handsome man who has no fear, saves me from being arrested as well. Mr. Murphy crosses his arms and stares at the Nazi officials. He will not leave as the SS officers search my luggage. My clothes are dumped on the floor and trampled. The Nazis search the violin case I am carrying back to Vienna—the most precious Guarnerius violin belonging to Rudy Dorbransky—but miraculously they do not damage the instrument. Finally they find this diary.
I am a fool for writing down any names in this book before being safely out of Nazi Germany. Eben Golah and my uncles’ names are written within. Yes, I am certain I have put everyone in peril by writing down their names and the things discussed at our holiday party. I can hardly breathe as the man opens this diary and frowns and reads aloud this Bible verse, then throws the book hard against the wall. See, the red roses on the cover are scuffed by the force of his rage. John Murphy’s presence as an American reporter intimidates those who threaten me. Mr. Murphy tells them he is going to interview Hitler. They believe him. Mr. Murphy’s fierce, mocking questions directed toward the Gestapo agent, Herr Müller, prevent the officers from taking me off the train. And perhaps there is also something more. I think it is as if the Gestapo agent is blinded by the power of the verse on this page from the Heilege Schrift, the Holy Writ. He hates God’s Word and hurls it away as if the words are fire to burn him.
