All the affidavits were in place from the various relatives—affidavits for Tini herself, separate ones for Gustav, and for the children. The problem was getting American visas and valid tickets for travel (which had to be paid for) and having everything coordinated. Several opportunities for travel had been missed; when France remained free, it had provided a route out of Europe to America. But the German invasion in May 1940 had closed the French ports. In the fall, Lisbon in Portugal had become available to German Jewish emigrants, but the United States consulate in Vienna had simultaneously put a near‑total freeze on issuing visas. Only three or four per month were given out. Tini was close to despair.
There was friction between refugee charities and the US government.
Margaret Jones, a charity worker with the American Friends Service Commit‑
tee in Vienna—an institution set up by the Quakers—inquired at the consul‑
ate why the flow of visas had all but dried up. A State Department official told her that tensions between President Roosevelt, Congress, and the press and public over refugees had hit a sticking point. Roosevelt’s stance in favor of giving a haven to refugees had withered in the face of America’s growing anti‑Semitism and purported evidence that Jewish refugees were involved in fifth column activities. Capitulating to public opinion, the president had instructed the State Department to reduce the number of visas to near zero:
“No more aliens.”
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What particularly appalled Margaret Jones was the lack of any public announcement on policy, and no outward change in procedure. The consul‑
ate staff still called applicants for the standard succession of interviews, which was tortuous in itself, requiring expenditure of money they didn’t have for notarized documents, police certificates, steamship tickets, local anti‑Jewish taxes, shuttling them back and forth from consulate to IKG to police and back again. And then, at the final interview, when the anxious applicant had miraculously got every document in order, hoping against hope that their visa would be granted and they could go to safety at last, they were told that they had failed to show they could make a contribution to the United States, and that they were therefore likely to “become a public charge.”40 Visa refused.
As of October 1940, virtually all applicants—people who were living in constant terror and had beggared themselves in their efforts to get everything they needed—received this verdict and went away heartbroken. The consular staff found it unpleasant, but had no choice but to obey orders.41
“We have everything,” Tini wrote to the German Jewish Aid Committee in New York, “but none of us has emigrated . . . Our local consulate is not giving us adequate answers.”42 She couldn’t understand the endless frustra‑
tion; her husband was a hard worker with good skills—and a decorated war veteran—and they had affidavits in plenty.
Her only hope was for the children. At the beginning of 1941, Tini made her breakthrough. Her old friend, Alma Maurer, who had been at her wedding and now lived in Massachusetts, had obtained an affidavit for Kurt from a prominent Jewish gentleman in the town where she lived—a judge no less. And then a miracle—rare as a hen’s teeth or a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a visa for immigration. The United States was willing to make an allowance—albeit a small and tightly guarded one—for Jewish children. In conjunction with the German Jewish Children’s Aid organiza‑
tion in New York, a limited number of unaccompanied minors would be received and placed with appropriate Jewish families in the United States.
Kurt had been accepted.
It would hurt both Tini and Herta to let him go, but it was the only way to get him to safety. And there was more good news—the kind gentleman in Massachusetts would be willing to sponsor Herta as well. She wasn’t a child, but perhaps this extra step up would help Herta climb over America’s wall.
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7 The New World
BENEATH A CLOUD-PACKED GRAY SKY the Ettersberg was a white tumor in a white landscape striated with the black streaks of hedge lines, buildings, and scraped roads. On the hill, the thick covering of snow softened but did not hide the radiating outlines of the barrack blocks and the tower‑spiked fences.
Gustav leaned on his shovel. The kapo’s back was turned, and Gustav snatched the moment to catch his breath. His frozen fingers were purple, and when he breathed on them there was no feeling of warmth: no sensation at all.
He knew that when he returned to the barrack in the evening and the bone‑
cold numbness leached out of him, they would gripe and ache abominably. He could sense his bones complaining now as they gripped the haft of the shovel, but they did so silently with teeth clenched.
A new year, but nothing had changed in this world except the passing of seasons and the daily passing of lives. Smoke from the crematorium drifted foully in the freezing air over the camp and into the nostrils of the prisoners, the scent of their own futures.
Gustav, his senses trained by more than a year in this place, felt the kapo turning toward him and was already plying his shovel before the man’s eyes reached him. The work of the haulage column had been interrupted by the snow; each day the prisoners shoveled the camp streets clear, hauled the snow away, and each night nature buried them deep once more.
The light was fading. Sensing that no eyes were upon him, Gustav rested again. He looked up at the southeastern sky, marbled gray and scintillating with falling flakes, smeared with smoke from the chimney. Somewhere over there, far beyond these fences and woods, was his home, his wife, Herta, little Kurt. What were they doing right now? Were they safe? Warm or as 101
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cold as him? Frightened or hopeful? Despairing? He and Fritz still received regular letters and a little money from Tini, but it was no substitute for being there. He knew only that Tini’s world right now revolved around trying to get the children out of the country, and that her hopes were pinned most on Kurt.
With a last glance at the sky, Gustav bent his back and drove his shovel into the snow.
The sky above Kurt’s head was warm and blue as only skies in childhood memories can be, shimmering with the sunlight‑dappled leaves of horse chest‑
nuts and studded with snowy heaps of blossom. He put one foot before the other, gazing upward, dizzying himself with pleasure.
Looking ahead, he realized that he had lagged behind the rest of the fam‑
ily. There were Mama and Papa walking arm in arm, and Fritz, sauntering with his hands in the pockets of his smart knickerbocker pants, Herta strolling prettily, Edith upright and elegant.
They had spent the morning in the Prater, and Kurt was replete with delight. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d shot down the great slide—if you helped out by carrying bundles of mats back up to the top, the man in charge gave you a free ride, and Kurt and Fritz and the other less well‑off kids always took a few turns. Now, strolling along the Hauptallee, the broad avenue that ran arrow‑straight for over a kilometer through the Prater woods, Kurt was amusing himself by walking with one foot on the path and one on the raised grass bank between it and the road. His senses full, Kurt didn’t notice that the rest of the family was getting farther and farther ahead.
One foot up, one foot down, he hummed to himself, enjoying the sensation of boosting himself up on each high step. All awareness of time slipped away, and when at last he looked up again, he was alone.
An instant’s shiver of terror flickered through his chest. Before him, the rows of trees receding into the distance, the woods on either side, the families, the couples, bicycles and carriages and cars swishing by on the road; through the trees the colors of the amusement park and more people—but nowhere could he pi
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had simply vanished. Were they hiding from him? Had they forgotten him?
It was as if they had been snatched away in an instant.
The momentary terror passed, and Kurt reasoned with himself. There was no need to panic. He knew his way around the Prater like he knew the face of a friend; it was little more than a kilometer from home, about a dozen blocks. He could find his own way. And when he got home his mama and papa would remember that they had another son. He kept going along the Hauptallee, past the amusement park, close by the foot of the Riesenrad ferris wheel, and to the Prater entrance. But as he emerged from the park, he met an obstacle. The Hauptallee opened out onto the Praterstern, a huge star‑shaped interchange where six other great boulevards and avenues met, in the center of which stood the tall column of the Tegethoff monument. After the peace of the woods, it was a maelstrom of noise and movement. Trucks, motor cars, and trams streamed roaring from left to right across his vision, pouring in and out of the nearest boulevards onto the interchange; the sidewalks teemed with people hurrying, idling, standing about.
Kurt stood there, stunned by the realization that he had no idea what to do now. He had come through this place times without count, but always with a grown‑up or older sibling. He’d never needed to pay attention to how you got through this torrent.
After a while he became aware of a presence and a woman’s voice. He glanced up and found a lady peering down at him with concern. “Are you lost?” she asked. Well of course he wasn’t lost; he knew exactly where he was, but he didn’t know how to get from this where to the where he wanted to be.
He knew the direction but couldn’t figure out how to physically accomplish it. But he also didn’t know quite how to explain this complex concept. The lady frowned anxiously at him.
From out of nowhere a policeman appeared and quickly took control. He took Kurt by the hand and led him back toward the Prater, bearing left along Ausstellungsstrasse. Eventually they came to the police station, a large and extremely important‑looking building of red brick and stone. Kurt was led into a world of dark uniforms, anxious‑looking citizens, and quietly efficient bustle filled with strange smells and sounds. The policeman spoke with another officer, and Kurt was given a seat in an office. A policeman working there smiled at him, chatted, played with him. Kurt had a roll of caps, and to his 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 103
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delight the policeman, using the buckle of his dress belt, set them off one at a time, the banging echoing round the office like rifle fire.
Distracted and enjoying the policeman’s company, Kurt scarcely noticed the time passing. Then, “Kurtl!” said a familiar voice. “There you are!” He turned and saw his mama in the doorway, and his papa behind her. His heart lit up within him; he jumped up and ran toward his mother’s open arms.
Kurt woke, staring and shaking, with his heart pounding in his chest. For a moment he had no idea where he was. A rush of sound, thudding, clattering in his ears; beneath him a hard wooden bench; around him strange people; a sensation of rocking rhythmically. A train—he was on a train. Then he noticed the flat packet hanging against his chest, and remembered.1
This was the train to his new life. The old life, the familiar life, the beloved, was behind him, inexplicably, inexorably receding into a different dimension. Or perhaps it was the other way round—Vienna, Im Werd, his home, all were real and of the present, and it was he who had been pushed into this unreal existence.
The slatted wooden bench had numbed his backside, but he’d been so tired, sleep had taken hold of him, and he’d slumped against the passenger beside him. He sat up and touched the packet. He recalled his mother hang‑
ing it around his neck.
That image was vivid in his memory: They were in the kitchen in the apartment. She sat him on the table—the same worn surface where he had once helped her coat the velvety veal cutlets for Wiener schnitzel and roll up the noodles for chicken soup. He could see her face, hollowed by hunger, etched by worry, close before him, telling him how vital it was to look after this wallet. It contained his papers, and in this world now, that was as much as to say that it held his very soul, his permission to exist. He must preserve and guard it, for his life depended on it. On the front was written his name and date of birth. She smiled and kissed him. “You behave now, Kurtl,” she said. “Be a good child when you get there—no tricks, be obedient so they will let you stay.” She produced a gift for him, a new‑bought harmonica, all gleaming and sweet, and he clutched it to him.
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. . . And then she was gone. Blinking out in his memory like a light switched off.
Kurt looked around at the people on the train, glanced out the window at the unfamiliar countryside flowing by under its February frost, and wondered.
He knew in that part of his mind where he kept facts that this was the train from Berlin, where he had collected his final papers from the German Jewish Children’s Aid and the travel money he was required to have—fifty crisp green American dollars tucked safe in his luggage—and he knew likewise that he had got to Berlin from Vienna on another train, and that that train must have left from the Westbahnhof or Hütteldorf . . . but in the other part of his mind the memory of it was fading. In time, to his lifelong regret, he would be utterly unable to remember saying good‑bye to his mother, or to Herta.
Most of the other people on the train were refugees, and to Kurt most seemed elderly. There were families too, with young children. German, Austrian, Hungarian Jews, a few Poles, all crammed into their seats. Mothers murmured to their little ones while their husbands read or talked or dozed, old men with hats low on their brows stooped in their sleep, snoring and sighing into their gray beards, and children stared at them wide‑eyed. Every few stops the refugees had to change trains, gathering themselves and their luggage. German soldiers or police herded them onto whatever trains were available, and sometimes when they boarded they found themselves in luxurious first‑class compart‑
ments, sometimes second, but more often the aching wooden slats of third. Kurt preferred third class, because at least he got to sit properly; the seats in first had armrests, and the children had to perch on them, squeezed and elbowed between the adults. On a few occasions Kurt got so desperate for comfort that he clambered up onto the luggage rack and stretched out on the valises.
There were only two other unaccompanied children on the train, a boy and a girl, and Kurt gradually got to know them. Both were sponsored by the German Jewish Children’s Aid. One was a fellow Viennese named Karl Kohn, who was fourteen and came from the same part of Leopoldstadt as Kurt. He wore glasses and seemed kind of sickly and a little small for a teenager. The girl could not have been more different; Irmgard Salomon was from a middle‑class family in Stuttgart, Germany; despite being only eleven, she was taller than either of them by a clear two inches.2 Drawn together by their isolation in this train of families and old people, the three formed a bond as the train carried them farther and farther from their homes and mothers—hundreds, then thousands of kilometers slipping by.
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Apartment 16 had become a hollow shell. Where there had been family, now there were just two women: one aging, one just blooming. Tini was forty‑seven years old—an age when she should have been looking forward to a future filled with grandchildren. And Herta, two months away from her nineteenth birthday, should have been settled in her occupation and considering which of her admirers she might marry, and where in Vienna they might choose to live. They should not have been sitting here alone with each other, trapped
in this desolate apartment, with their few possessions robbed from them and their dear ones—husband, father, sons, brothers, sister, daughter—stolen or fled.
Vienna was a place of forbidden zones with all the opportunities of life withdrawn, and the apartment, which they were fortunate to have kept at all, was a prison.
Saying good‑bye to Kurt had been a pain beyond pain. He was so small, so slight, such a sliver of humanity to be sent out into the world through the press of people crowding the station. Tini and Herta had not been able to accompany him to the train—only people with travel permits were allowed on the platforms—and they had had to say their farewells outside and watch from a distance as the crowd of refugees swept him away.3
Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood, soul of her soul, gone from her. Her children were all leaving her. Kurt was her hope; not yet formed, he would have a new beginning in an altogether new world. Perhaps he would return one day, and she would see a new person in his place, shaped by a life that was wholly strange to her.
Kurt lay on his back and gazed up at the stars. He had never in his life seen them like this—a skyscape deeper, blacker, more brilliant than any other on Earth; a vault unadulterated by street lights and houselights. The ship, rolling steadily beneath him, was in blackout, and there were no other visible presences anywhere on the vast disc of starlit black ocean surrounding it.
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papers and tickets with plenty of time to spare before the voyage—had been kept waiting for weeks. There were supposed to be thirty‑eight other Jewish children joining them for the voyage to America, and they were all intended to sail in one group. Kurt and his two friends were put in the care of a young woman. Although her name did not remain in Kurt’s memory, the impression of her did; an image of prettiness. He developed a crush on her, and people teased him about it—how could an eleven‑year‑old boy take a fancy to a grown woman? He retorted that in Vienna you grew up fast, and any eleven‑year‑old Viennese would know how to respond to a pretty lady.
The Stone Crusher Page 14
