Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  Finally, all the forms were completed. The Weltsches, together with the Adlers and Max Brod and his wife Elsa Taussig, were in a party organized by the Prague Zionist Society of around 160 families which would leave Prague on 14 March and would arrive in Romanian Constanza at 1 P.M. on the 17th to catch their ship. The Bessarabia would take them via Istanbul, Pireaus, Crete and Alexandria to their goal, their worldly goods having preceded them on the long journey weeks before.

  There were huge crowds on the station platform. Hundreds of people, including many children, friends and relations, were there to say goodbye. The grown-ups were tense and anxious: the newspapers that morning carried reports that President Hácha had gone to Berlin for a meeting with Hitler. As long as they are talking, nothing can happen, said some, while others feared the worst. Scarcely anyone, however, thought it meant they were on the brink of an invasion. Songs were sung in the hurly-burly, turning everyone into one massive family. Alice was sad and moved: when would she see her dear ones again? Most importantly, would she be able to visit Marianne? “Write immediately,” she told her twin sister.

  At 11 P.M. the train rolled out of the station. When it reached Mährisch-Ostrau (Ostrava) on the Czech-German border at four in the morning, the Germans had already occupied the town and were heading for Prague. Many of the passengers had no idea what was going on, even when they were faced with soldiers wearing swastika armbands. “It is hard to explain why this sight caused me no fear,” Max Brod said. “I think it was because I was so tired and had thought I was still dreaming.”

  The soldiers had orders to let the train go. Later they learned that it had been touch and go. In Cracow they heard that Prague had been occupied. While the train was still crossing Galicia, members of the Gestapo were forcing their way into the offices of Selbstwehr.

  “Where is Felix Weltsch?” they demanded.

  “He left last night.”

  * * *

  MARIANNE’S FIRST letters from Jerusalem sounded confident. As a farewell to Europe they had visited the Acropolis and except for Felix Weltsch everyone had been seasick on the way to Palestine. Alice needed good news. Since the occupation of Prague, the city rang with rumors of Hitler’s next move. Since Poland had rejected the Führer’s demands to hand back Danzig (Gdańsk) and allow the building of motorways and railway lines to connect East Prussia with the Reich, everyone was simply waiting for an attack on Poland. Would Hitler dare to march into Poland? How would the British react this time? Would they finally hit back? Alice remembered the Great War and thought with horror of the many million dead.

  However uncertain the situation was there was no doubt about one thing: the threat to the Jews in the Protectorate. One by one, their rights were stripped away. One sunny late afternoon in 1939 Alice made a spot decision to go swimming, and leave Stephan alone with Leopold. Since her earliest childhood Alice had been passionately fond of swimming. She counted it among her greatest pleasures. Fumbling for her purse outside the swimming pool she spotted a sign written in German and Czech: “Forbidden to Jews.” Shaken, she retraced her steps.

  A few days later, after the German invasion of Poland on 1 September, Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. It was war, a war which affected everybody. On 23 September 1939 all Jews were required to hand in their wireless sets within the next few hours. It seemed quite silly, as there were bigger things to worry about, but Alice could not help feeling bitter as she saw Leopold heading off with the object under his arm. She felt cross that she would be cut off from the news from now on, and, even worse, she remembered all the concerts she had given for Radio Prague during the past six years.

  The next blow was the decree that Jews might not own telephones anymore. One day there was a dial tone, the next one not. The next step came a few days later. It was a normal working day but Leopold came home before lunch. Alice was sitting at the piano as usual when he walked into the room: “I have lost my job,” he told her. For several years he had been working for a Prague chemical company. It was well paid and they could afford a car. “More and more people are going to be dismissed.”

  In moments like these, Alice was always strong and she tried to comfort Leopold: “It can’t last much longer. And while it does we can live from what I get from teaching the piano.” Alice had risen to become one of the best-known and most sought-after piano teachers in Prague. Even at the age of nineteen she had taught around twenty children a week. Now she could choose her own pupils, who came from the richest families in Prague. She earned a good living.

  “Sadly, Alice, it means you too. From now on Jews may not teach non-Jews,” Leopold told her.

  “But that cannot be,” Alice cried in fury, “how will we pay the maids?”

  “That’s a redundant question, Alice,” Leopold replied, making an effort to sound sarcastic. “From now on Jews are not allowed to employ Aryan servants.”

  Alice’s world literally fell apart, the world she had constructed for herself in order to apply equal intensity to practice, teaching and performing, and which was still so important to her.

  She had taken on Anitschka, a Czech the same age as herself, immediately after her wedding. She did all the housework. She went shopping, cooked, cleaned and did the washing. A few months after Stephan was born Alice decided to look for a German-speaking nanny. She appointed Marianna, a sixteen-year-old Sudeten German girl. She took Stephan out in the pram, cooked his meals and played with him. Both girls lived in the Sommers’ three-room flat. Anitschka set up her camp bed in the kitchen every night, and Marianna slept in the tiny cubbyhole next door. The two girls were treated like members of the family and although it was crowded in the flat there was a warm and pleasant atmosphere.

  As they dined together that night Leopold explained the situation that had been forced on them. It was a sad farewell. Anitschka had run the household for eight years. She left the house the next day in tears: “I have had the happiest time of my life with you.”

  * * *

  THE YEARS between 1939 and 1942 were a time of farewells for Alice, saying goodbye to possessions, friends and freedom. The fact that bit by bit the Jews were deprived of their material wealth made her angry, but she was not too shaken by it. As early as 21 June 1939, on Stephan’s second birthday, all Jews in the Protectorate were ordered to sell their gold, platinum and silver jewelry and objects to the state-owned agency Hadega; needless to say, way below their market price. All shares, letters of credit and other assets had to be handed over to the bank. Cash had to be lodged in a closed account, from which the owner could only draw out a limited monthly sum, which was hardly enough to manage on.

  So as not to leave themselves with nothing, Alice and Leopold had kept a few things: three oil paintings, a few carpets, a gold watch and Alice’s valuable necklace. Alice was particularly sad to say goodbye to a pretty ring, set with two diamonds, as it symbolized the close ties she had with her mother-in-law: “This ring should always remind you that you are the most beloved of my children,” Leopold’s mother had told Alice when she gave her the ring shortly before her marriage to Leopold.

  It hit Alice harder that gradually more and more friends and relations were saying goodbye. In the course of 1939, even Alice’s best friends from school left the country. Helene Weiskopf, whose brother had inspired her leanings to communism, emigrated with her third husband to Sweden. Trude Hutter had received a visa to enter the United States with her husband Paul and their nine-year-old son Bruno. Out of approximately 120,000 people in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia defined as Jews by the Nuremberg Laws, 26,000 left the country legally or illegally before the doors were closed to them in October 1941.

  Alice left the house less and less. Freedom of movement for the Jews had become more and more restricted; there were curfews and they were not allowed to go to the theater or concert halls. Also, until the Jewish Community office finally set up a kindergarten, Alice had to spend all day with Stephan. During this time she rarely played the piano
, but Stephan was determined to try out various scales with just one finger and to play tunes, often for hours on end. He particularly enjoyed Bach’s Concerto in E minor which Leopold often played. Stephan patiently sought out the first note of the concerto. He hit key after key until he got to E. He was beside himself with happiness and called out to his mother: “Maminka, I have found it!”

  One morning when he was about three Stephan dashed out to the piano in his pajamas to try out the major chords. His hands were still too small to hit all three notes of a chord—the first, third and fifth of a scale—simultaneously. For this reason he needed to play two notes with his left hand and one with his right. He began with C and played the C major chord. Then he went one further and played the D major. Then he repeated it with E, F, G and A. At B major he suddenly became troubled—the chord did not come out in the usual way. Stephen tried once again but still couldn’t get it to sound right. Alice was in the kitchen preparing breakfast while he was playing the piano and Leopold was shaving in the bathroom. They dropped what they were doing and hurried into the drawing room to listen to their son properly, Leopold’s cheeks still covered in shaving soap.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” said Stephan and looked at his parents with a puzzled expression. He was right too. In contrast to all the others the B major chord requires going twice as high: that is from D to D sharp and from F to F sharp. Alice and Leopold looked at one another in amazement. That their child had worked it out all by himself showed that he had an extraordinary musical talent.

  From then on Stephan often demonstrated to his parents how musical he was. As the Protectorate’s Jews were officially banned from using public transport, Alice and Leopold used to put their little son in his pram when they went to other parts of town—although he had long outgrown it. Once a week they visited their new friends whose son, like Stephan, was at the Jewish kindergarten. To do this meant three-quarters of an hour’s walk across Prague. The route went past several churches.

  At around six they were walking home. Just as they walked past a church, the bells chimed. “G flat,” piped Stephan from his pram, and pointed to the church tower. When the bells rang in the next church: “D flat,” said Stephan decisively.

  “Listen to that, Leopold, he has perfect pitch.”

  Alice had to rely on pleasures of this sort to make life bearable, as the German occupiers had ever new forms of bullying and humiliation up their sleeves. Part of Stephan’s daily routine was a trip to the playground in the Baumgarten Park near their home. He loved it there. He could climb, swing and dig. At the beginning of 1940 the Nazis hung up signs at the entrance to the park: “Forbidden to Jews!” in both German and Czech. Alice had to make a considerable effort to suppress her anger when she saw the sign for the first time.

  “Let’s go back, Stephan,” she said with sangfroid, “the park is closed.”

  “But I want to,” answered Stephan with childish insistence and squeezed Alice’s hand.

  “There is sadly nothing I can do, my love.” Alice tried to convince her son: “Look, the sign, it is written there.”

  “What’s written there?”

  “It’s being rebuilt,” Alice lied. “That means the park is going to be repaired.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell her son the truth.

  “Go on, stand over there,” she said, rather than taking Stephan away, and she made sure he was standing next to the sign. Alice took out her camera, which she often carried with her when she went out for a walk with Stephan. “We’ll take a picture for papa.”

  At the time Leopold Sommer was in Belgium. In the autumn of 1939, he had traveled to Brussels with a friend. The anti-Jewish laws, the ban on employing Jews in the Protectorate and the news of the first deportations (to “retraining centers,” as they called them) had made it only too plain to the Sommers that they and their child were in danger in Prague. Belgium was a neutral country, and at that point it looked as if it would remain neutral for the rest of the war.

  A friend had convinced Leopold of the potential of joining forces and starting up a business dealing in cigarette and sweet machines for stations. Leopold’s aim was to bring Alice and Stephan over as soon as he had earned enough money either to offer them security in Belgium or even to emigrate to another country, possibly South America or Palestine. He borrowed the money to start up the business from his mother-in-law. Although Sofie Herz was mistrustful by nature she knew Leopold Sommer was a fundamentally decent and exceptionally reliable man. The sum she lent him was a fortune for her: a large part of the money remaining from the sale of the factory and the inheritance she had given Marianne and Irma before they emigrated. While Leopold was away Alice rented out the flat in the Sternberggasse and she and Stephan moved back into her mother’s flat. The rent, together with her income from the few Jewish pupils she continued to teach, was just about enough to live on.

  With every passing month it became more difficult to obtain food and other provisions necessary for everyday life. From September 1939, sugar, tobacco and textiles could no longer be sold to Jews. Ultimately National Socialist civil servants introduced ration cards with the unwieldy name of “Lebensmittel Bewirtschaftungs Bestimmungen” (literally “Food management requirements”) stamped with the letter “J,” with which, from then on, Jews had to do their shopping. There were coupons for everything. Everything meant potatoes and bread. Meat, eggs, biscuits, fruit, jam, cheese, milk products, fish, poultry, game, yeast, stone fruits, sauerkraut, onions, garlic, alcoholic drinks, honey or sweets were all forbidden to Jews.

  In their despair the Jews turned to their Czech fellow citizens. Some showed themselves ready to help and provided their Jewish neighbors with food, but quite a few of them made money in the process. Alice was glad that the porter’s wife in the Sternberggasse had offered to get her “anything she needed.” It was only later that Alice realized that she was charging precisely twice the market price. It wasn’t long before a large part of the hidden Herz and Sommer family money had been used up.

  Alice went to Brussels to visit Leopold at least once while he was there. She used the opportunity to give a concert and paid for the journey with the fee. But when she got there, the news was less and less encouraging. Leopold’s venture had failed and his mother-in-law’s money was lost. Sofie Herz took the loss badly and showered Leopold with accusations. As Alice later said, whether it was down to Leopold’s character (his high-mindedness or his lack of fighting spirit) or the arrival of the German army in Belgium on 10 May 1940, Leopold was forced to return to his family as quickly as possible.

  * * *

  BY 1942, Sofie Herz had been living in a Jewish old people’s home for some time. For the first time in her life she was away from her family. She had been forced to sell her property in Bělsky Street against her will and for less than its value, and moved just two streets away to Veverka Street to live with her son Paul, but relations between mother and son were not good. Paul had married a Hungarian woman, Mary, who was poorly educated but made up for it with her decisiveness. She was the caretaker of the block of flats they lived in, had left her first husband and child behind in Hungary, and shared Paul’s love of gambling and drinking. Sofie could not put up with their lifestyle and moved out, first to stay with Alice for a few weeks, and then to the old people’s home. Sofie’s opinion of Mary was not influenced by the fact that Paul, like 7,000 other Jews in the Reich, was by virtue of his marriage “related to Aryans” and thus (at least for the time being) protected from deportation.

  Alice visited her mother in the home twice a week and each time found her weaker and more depressed. When she arrived on the morning of 11 July 1942 Sofie could not even manage to say hello to her daughter. Instead, she silently pressed a letter into her hand: it was a deportation order for Theresienstadt (Terezín). Attached was a list of the objects she could take with her in a rucksack.

  Alice read the letter over and over again. When a transport had taken Edith Kraus away a few days before, Alice
was able to console herself that her friend was being drafted into some sort of work. When, a week before, Leopold had accompanied his mother and her sister to the prescribed collection point at the Exhibition Hall, Alice had cried. Her mother-in-law was seventy-five, Leopold’s aunt two years older. What sort of work service could they do? And now her own mother: a woman suffering from a thrombosis. Mechanically, she helped her pack.

  Alice returned the next day to take her mother to the Exhibition Hall. The enormous building, like a railway station, was only a short distance from the old people’s home.

  “You will need your coat,” Alice said, even though it was summer outside, and she picked up the heavy object. As she did so, her eyes fell on the yellow star with its black, Hebrew-style letters: “Jude,” which had been neatly sewn onto the left breast. Sofie Herz had always been meticulous with her needlework.

  Jews had had to wear the Star of David for nine months, and every time Alice set eyes on it she was incensed. At the beginning of September 1941 all Jews from the age of six had to obey the order to obtain the yellow star and to carry out the regime’s instructions “to handle it carefully and with due attention and while sewing it on to the article of clothing to attach the border at the same time.” No decree upset Alice quite as much as this one. She felt humiliated; chosen from the pack by the Nazis, isolated and outlawed. Her one consolation was that Stephan did not have to wear the star.