The Outcast Girls
A completely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 historical novel
Shirley Dickson
Books by Shirley Dickson
The Outcast Girls
Our Last Goodbye
The Orphan Sisters
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
The Orphan Sisters
Hear more from Shirley
Books by Shirley Dickson
Our Last Goodbye
A Letter from Shirley
Acknowledgements
To Wal and my lovely family.
1
Berlin. November 1938
Frieda
Frieda Sternberg sat on the floor in the kitchen of their upstairs apartment, behind the door, covering her ears with her hands. But she could still hear the shouts and terrifying screams from outside, and the noise of shattering glass as windows were smashed.
When they heard the mob ransacking their bakery underneath the flat, Papa herded the family down the back stairs. There was no time to take possessions.
Outside, in the twilight, feet crunching over shards of broken glass, Frieda took Grandma’s arm to support her. She looked around her and was shocked at the destruction in the neighbourhood. Acrid smoke billowed from buildings; flames licked through shattered windows. Eyes stinging from choking smoke, Frieda ran, keeping to the shadows. She jumped in fright as her brother Kurt, two years younger than her, cried, ‘Look, those men are setting the synagogue alight.’
Through the open heavy synagogue doors, she saw men in uniform dousing pews with petrol and setting them on fire.
‘All is lost,’ Grandma screamed, collapsing.
Mama took Grandma’s arm and Frieda helped her, together dragging her sagging body along.
‘Where are we going?’ Mama asked Papa, who was leading the way.
He looked furtively around. ‘To the only place I know that’s safe out of the Jewish quarter. My good friend Claus Unger’s.’
Papa had told Frieda many times how the friendship between the two men had begun.
‘It was when we both served during the war,’ he had told her. ‘All men like to dream, little one, and our dream was that one day, when the conflict was over, we would own a business together. Claus had the finance and I had the business acumen. I decided bread was a necessity and therefore we’d never go out of business. Our dream came true when the war was over and we started this bakery of ours. I baked while Claus delivered and the business grew.’
‘Then why did Herr Unger leave?’ she’d asked.
‘He met a Fräulein.’ Papa had rolled his eyes. ‘Gerda didn’t want a husband who went out on a horse and cart delivering bread.’ He tousled Frieda’s dark hair. ‘Even if the cart was brightly painted.’ His eyes had glazed over as he smoked his pipe and remembered. ‘I bought Claus out and the business became ours. Claus and I have remained good friends ever since.’
So, now the family stole away in the dark, making the six-mile journey from the Jewish quarter, past Tiergarten to the safety of Herr Unger’s little house.
On a cold winter’s night, weeks after Kristallnacht, Frieda was tossing and turning in the bed she shared with Kurt in the tiny upstairs spare bedroom. As the wind howled around Herr Unger’s house, she could hear his anxious voice from the living room.
‘…it’s still too dangerous for you all to return to your apartment.’
‘But isn’t it dangerous for you to be harbouring us, Claus?’ Mama’s voice implored.
‘Many Jewish men have been arrested and sent to concentration camps. It’s best for us all if you aren’t seen. If anyone asks, I’ll say the children are relatives.’
‘The troubles are getting worse. We must leave Germany,’ Mama said.
‘We haven’t enough money to flee Germany.’ Papa’s voice was gruff with emotion. ‘Or any connections.’
‘That is why I need to talk to you, my friend. The Jewish orphanage here in Berlin was torched during Kristallnacht.’ At Herr Unger’s words there followed a shocked silence for a time. ‘The orphanage has organised the children’s emigration.’
‘Where to?’ Papa asked.
‘I have made it my business to find out. Discreetly, of course. An old work colleague I play bridge with confided that after Kristallnacht the British government has agreed to temporarily take thousands of Jewish children under the age of seventeen. A network of organisers has been established and my friend volunteered to help make a priority list of those children who are most in peril.’
‘And the children leave their parents behind?’ Mama’s voice sounded shaky.
‘Yes.’
There was a sob.
‘Who will look after them in the United Kingdom?’ Papa wanted to know.
‘Agencies operating under the name of “Movement for the Care of Children from Germany” have promised to find the Jewish children homes. They’re also funding the operation and sponsorship so the refugees won’t be a financial burden on the British.’
‘Who would think our children would become refugees?’ Mama wailed.
‘Meine Liebe, it’s paramount we send Frieda and Kurt to safety.’ Papa’s tone was firm. ‘We must make arrangements for them to leave at once. First I’ll make a trip to our apartment. The shop’s weekly takings and a few precious possessions are in the safe.’
‘Must you go?’ Mama asked.
‘I’ll be careful, meine Liebe. Our children must have some kind of financial security when they leave – and a photograph as a memento of us all in happier times.’
Whatever photograph Papa chose, Frieda never found out. He never returned from his visit to the apartment. Herr Unger heard that Papa had been arrested as he left the Jewish quarter.
Now, over three months since the November Pogroms, when ‘Nazi thugs’, as Papa had called them, attacked Jewish people and property, Frieda and Kurt stood in the railway station, each of them clutching a small suitcase and the ten marks they were allowed to carry.
Amidst the noise and confusion, Kurt’s expression mutinous, he told Mama, ‘I won’t go, you can’t make me.’ He removed his cap and ran his fingers through his raven black hair. ‘Papa told me that I’m the man of the family until he returns.’ To Frieda’s dismay Kurt’s eyes glistened with tears. ‘I promised him, Mama, that I’d look after you all.’
Kurt was as stubborn as Papa’s delivery horse, who wouldn’t budge if he’d so decided.
Mama told Kurt, ‘I know, but it was Papa who wanted you to make this trip to England.’
Though it was a calculated plan, Frieda knew it broke Mama’s heart. A
no-nonsense expression crossed her mother’s face. ‘You will do as you are told and board that train. I’ll be fine here with Grandma until Papa returns. Then we will follow.’ She gave an unconvincing quivery smile. ‘Be good, children.’ She handed them each a card. ‘This is called an identity card. It allows you to enter England. It has your name, where you were born, who your parents are and where we live. Promise me you’ll always keep this document safe.’
Hearing the urgency in Mama’s voice, in unison they replied, ‘We promise, Mama.’
Numb with shock, Frieda waited in a queue of silent children, then she and Kurt climbed aboard the train. They found seats together and looked for their mother through the window.
When the train began to move, she waved until she couldn’t see darling Mama any more.
As the train chugged along the track, smoke billowing from its funnel, Frieda stared with teary eyes at the blurry scene outside. The journey was interminably long and she must have slept for hours because when she awoke it was dark and the train had stopped. Soldiers, using torches, were rifling through her suitcase.
Kurt whispered, ‘We’ve stopped at the border – they are searching for valuables.’
Traumatised, watching her suitcase being searched, Frieda was beyond tears. Even if Papa had succeeded in his mission, the family’s precious possessions would only have ended up stolen from his children.
When it was Kurt’s turn to have his suitcase ransacked, by the light of the soldier’s torch, she saw her brother’s bunched lips and glowering expression. Unlike Frieda, Kurt could be obstinate and unruly – Mama’s words to describe her son. Afraid that he would speak out, Frieda was relieved when the soldiers left and the train started up. The tense moment passed.
The train crossed the border into Holland and an older girl across the aisle shouted, ‘Hurrah! We’re free of the oppression of Germany!’
Finally, the train came to a halt at a platform and in the half-light, smiling Dutch women handed out milk and chocolate through the windows. It was the first thing Frieda had eaten since breakfast.
Later that evening, in the glare of the dockside lights, Frieda, insides quivering, followed the silent children as they filed up the gangplank, Kurt reassuringly behind. Up on deck, they made their way towards the rail. She looked below, seeing men preparing the ship for leaving the quayside.
‘I don’t want to go,’ a young boy beside her whimpered.
Frieda, not knowing what to say, put an arm around his shoulders.
She wondered if Mama was with Grandma and whether, after saying farewell to Herr Unger, they had made their way home to their apartment. At the thought of home Frieda’s pulse quickened in panic – for she and Kurt were bound for England, where they knew nobody and people spoke a different language. She shivered, not from the cold, but from apprehension.
Turning, she looked for Kurt. Her eyes searched the bewildered-looking children standing on the deck, their frightened eyes hollow with shock. But Kurt’s sturdy figure wasn’t amongst them.
A shout rang out and Frieda started. Men were pulling the gangplank onto the ship.
Quick as a flash, a figure ran down the gangplank. Leaping through the air and over the gap, Kurt’s feet slammed onto the safety of the quayside.
Frieda stood rooted to the spot.
A man shouted in a foreign language at him. But Kurt had gone, disappeared into a throng of people working on the quayside.
At last Frieda found her voice. ‘No! Please, Kurt, don’t leave me!’
2
South Shields. North-East England. February 1943
Sandra
Sandra Hudson closed the coalhouse door and, hauling up the heavy coal scuttle, made her way over the concrete backyard, through the scullery and into the warmth of the kitchen. With its gleaming copper pans hanging on the walls, scrubbed wooden table, and meaty smell wafting from the coal fired range, the room was satisfyingly cosy.
Mrs Goodwin – the cook – looked up from the pan of soup she was stirring on the range top and appraised the housemaid, inspecting her black uniform dress, white apron and cap. Sandra felt self-conscious and blushed under Cook’s scrutiny.
Cook moved towards Sandra and with a plump hand brushed coal dust from the bib of her apron. ‘I only do it for your own good, lass. Her ladyship is in a foul mood and I don’t want yi’ to get the brunt of it.’ She gave a broad, good-natured smile that showed a row of false teeth.
‘Thanks for the warning, Cook,’ Sandra replied.
It was still early morning, and Sandra hadn’t crossed paths yet with Mrs Kirton, her employer and the lady of the house. She made a mental note to be on her guard when she did.
‘The thing is, lass,’ Cook told her, ‘I know you feel awkward around Mrs Kirton but it makes you appear standoffish and if there’s one thing employers can’t abide it’s a servant who thinks she’s above her station.’
Sandra was appalled. ‘Do I really appear that way?’
Cook nodded.
Sandra felt inadequate in her employer’s presence – not good enough – but her upbringing had taught her that to survive you had to stay strong. Maybe she seemed more confident than she felt as a result.
‘I do feel uneasy around Mrs Kirton,’ she confided. ‘The thing is, I live in fear that one day she will terminate me employment. You see, I’ve no money and no one to turn to.’ She didn’t add that she would end up a homeless pauper.
Cook heaved her shoulders. ‘You’re too sensitive, lass, for your own good. Mrs Kirton knows a good worker when she finds one. Why do you think she kept you on when war started?’ She shook her head and returned to stirring the soup. ‘Mind you, it would make sense if you took that blessed apron off before you brought in the coals.’ She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘Thank the Lord, I don’t have to wear a uniform.’ Looking down at her ample bosom and wide girth, she cackled. ‘’Cos with this figure o’ mine it would have to be specially made. I cannot see her ladyship forkin’ out for that, can you?’
Mrs Kirton was very particular about her staff and their station in the house. Things had changed with this war on, though. The government’s Make Do and Mend scheme meant that Cook was allowed to dress in her own clothes, covered with a coarse apron. And these days the pair of them were the only staff employed in the Kirton household, which meant Sandra had her hands full fetching and carrying and doing all the housework.
Sandra had been brought up in Blakeley Orphanage with her younger brother under the hand of the forbidding Mistress Knowles, and she was used to hard work. The bleak days at the orphanage were tough and the mistress ingrained in all her charges the fact that they were worthless charity cases. Sandra had her pride and fought against the idea that she couldn’t do anything right. But her childhood experience at the orphanage had left her with a crippling sense of self-doubt.
When war had broken out, all of the staff, apart from Mrs Goodwin and Sandra, had left the Kirtons’ employ to do their bit for the war. Sandra had felt a certain relief when Mrs Kirton had announced, ‘Mr Kirton suggests I accompany you when you register for war work and insist you stay and work for us. After all, my husband is a solicitor and we need at least one maid to help run his home smoothly.’
Mrs Kirton’s plea to the authorities had worked and Sandra was granted permission to stay on as a housemaid for the Kirtons. The compromise was that she did a few hours’ war work every week. So, on her afternoon off, Sandra helped out with the Womens’ Voluntary Service. Her work involved standing behind a makeshift counter in the WVS clothes depot where she supplied clothes for bombed-out families or the needy. She loved seeing the kiddies’ faces when she gave them a new (albeit secondhand) pair of shoes that fitted properly. With a growing need for clothes, a local paper recently appealed to readers for donations and photographed a child being fitted out with a coat. The plea had worked and clothes had been collected around the doors and the storage shelves and boxes filled.
Whenever she worked at the
WVS depot, Sandra marvelled how ordinary folk could go places and do as they liked, voice their opinions even without fear of reprisal. Being brought up in an orphanage and then working in service had left its mark on Sandra. It felt like she’d been institutionalised all her life. And though she outwardly looked older, inside she was still the little lost girl from the orphanage trying to find her way in the world.
Deep down Sandra hankered for the courage to leave the household and her present life behind, because life was passing her by. The sense of now or never increasingly bothered her. Besides, it was her duty to do her bit for the war.
The sun was shining through the coloured glass hallway door as Sandra made her way to the front room. Entering the room, Sandra crossed the once sumptuous, now threadbare carpet, passing the gilt-framed pictures of ships that sailed the high seas, and went to the bay window. Who needed the distraction of pictures of the sea when the real thing was before your very eyes? Through the sticky paper, which had been applied to the windows to prevent them shattering if they were blown in by a bomb blast, she glimpsed the expanse of deep blue sea that met with a whitish horizon, while an eastern sun shone on glittering waters.
‘Girl!’ The voice made Sandra start. ‘You’re not employed to gawp at the view. There’s work to be done. A fire to be laid. See to it now.’
The Outcast Girls: A completely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 historical novel Page 1
