Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  After the initial joy at seeing one another again, Alice and Robert spoke chiefly of the past. Robert had a pressing need to talk about what had happened, as he had only been released from his hiding place a few weeks before, and Alice was a good listener.

  When the Jewish community in Piešt’any told him that all Jews were to be rounded up the next day, Robert’s nurse decided on a course to save him. She pushed his bed into a little bay window in the drawing room, placed a sofa next to it and then put a large bookcase in front of the bay. Robert’s Jewish doctor, whom Anita also cared for, was hidden in the cellar of the house. In order not to arouse suspicion she took a job locally. For months no one knew anything about the hidden men except for a handful of loyal and fearless friends, and it was rare for anyone to pay them a call.

  Shortly before the end of the war, somebody told the local German army administration about the hiding place. With no prior warning three Nazis searched the house and stayed there, and Anita was interrogated day and night without a break. Robert Sachsel must have been able to hear every word from his hiding place. One problem was that when he slept he snored loudly, so Anita had to turn the radio up or put on the vacuum cleaner.

  After a few days two of the Nazi officers left while the third continued his search. By the sixth day Anita was in such utter despair that she broke down under interrogation and pushed the bookshelf to one side. Robert had neither eaten nor drunk for six days, and he was lying in his own excrement. The German was lost as to what to do at the sight of this disheveled creature and suddenly he seemed to become conscious that Robert’s state of health was his responsibility. He helped Anita to clean him up and take him down to the Jewish doctor in the cellar, who was able to provide him with the care he needed. Robert and the German remained friends for the rest of their lives.

  * * *

  EVERY DAY in Prague had its bittersweet moments. One day when Stephan came home from school there was a little dog running up and down in front of the door to the block of flats; Stephan put down his satchel and let the dog lick his hand. It did not take long for them to become the best of friends, but it was not to last long.

  A middle-aged woman suddenly stormed out of the house next door. She was shaking with rage and proceeded to reprimand Stephan. How did he have the cheek to play with strange dogs: he should leave it alone immediately. Her furious outburst had already made Stephan uncomfortable, but then she stood right in front of him, gesticulating wildly. Before he could say anything, her voice took on a sinister tone. “Are you one of those people who have come from Theresienstadt and who have taken away our homes?”

  “We haven’t taken anyone’s flat away. Someone took our flat away.”

  “It has all got to stop!” the woman screamed. “A Jewish brat and cheeky as well.”

  Stephan stared incredulously at her angry face, as she renewed the attack “They should have gassed you and your mother. Then we would finally have been left in peace.” For the first time in his life someone had wanted Stephan dead. He ran home horrified, straight into his mother’s arms. She could see that something terrible had happened and gave him the time to have a proper cry.

  So was this everyday life in Prague? Events like this led Alice to doubt whether the new republic was really the place for her. She was shaken when in 1946 she read the newspaper reports of the Polish pogrom in Kielce on 4 July. Thousands of Polish Jews then fled to Czechoslovakia in fear for their lives.5 Although they received aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“the Joint”) and were visited by emissaries from Palestine, the Czech authorities insisted that the homeless Jews should leave the country again as quickly as possible. “To accept Jews is like accepting lice, they are both God’s creatures after all.” That line surfaced in an anonymous letter which was actually printed in the newspaper Dnešek.6

  About 7,500 German-speaking Jews had survived the Final Solution and had returned to Czechoslovakia. They had little hope of being accepted as equal partners in the republic and by 1946 roughly 3,000 of them had already decided to leave their home a second time. When on 10 September 1946 the Ministry of the Interior issued a directive that “all persons of Jewish origin” were to be excluded from the “normal transports” and therefore were not to be seen as part of the German population that was being expelled, many of them were given fresh hope. Three days later, however, a decree stressed the “non-Slavic” origins of the Jews. Citizenship and reappropriation of property would only be granted if these persons had, in the past, pursued no active “Germanization.” All those Jews who had been at German schools, had read German newspapers or belonged to German associations, or if they had spread German culture, were affected. As, of course, was Alice.

  * * *

  ALICE, HOWEVER, was defiant. She was not going to let them make her abandon hope. At the beginning of 1947 she received a surprise invitation to perform in a concert in Stockholm as part of the Czech–Swedish exchange program. Czech works were to take pride of place. Alice’s mind jumped to the days of the First Czech Republic, to President Masaryk and his policy of tolerance, equal rights and freedom. Perhaps this offer was a sign that a new democracy was being created in which she and other Jews would have the right to express their opinions freely, and that they could travel where and when they wanted?

  Michael Mareš provided her with a book to read on the journey, which would take more than two days. Stefan Zweig’s memoirs Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday) had first been published in Stockholm by Bermann-Fischer, a German publishing company that was now based in Sweden. Alice was gripped from the first line: it was the story of her own generation.

  The idea that she might be heading for Stockholm as a representative of the “old order” did not appeal to her. She saw herself as an ambassador for a republic that was rebuilding itself and which, if it was to appeal to her, would be founded on the traditions established by Masaryk.

  On the day of the performance she tried out the Bechstein grand in the Stockholm concert hall and decided that its tonal color was eminently suitable for Schubert’s Sonata in B major, with which she was to open the program.

  The concert was completely sold out. Before she went on stage she looked through the crack in the dark red curtain. All these expectant faces: none of them knew anything of what had been her fate. The applause was restrained when she went on stage, but Alice was certain that she would reach the hearts of the audience with the great Schubert sonata. She particularly loved the piece, which she had studied with Ansorge at the master class. Whenever she began to play the slow movement it was as if her heart stood still. After the first applause Alice noticed that the Schubert had indeed excited the audience. Her interpretation of Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Study, Op. 13 with its ideal, romantic coloration enthralled the audience so much that there were cries of “bravo.” Alice left the stage at the interval content with her performance thus far.

  In the second half she played a selection of Czech compositions, works by Bedřich Smetana, Alois Hába and Bohuslav Martinů. Smetana’s Czech Dances had always been well received at her concerts up to now and Stockholm was no exception. The three piano pieces by Hába were just as well received as was the Martinu° dance. She ended with the Chopin Études. It seemed particularly appropriate that she should play the Études in the first concert she had given abroad since the war, convinced as she was that they had saved her life.

  One member of the audience, however, had already heard Alice play all twenty-four Études. Zdenka Fantlová, now twenty-two, had survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. “No one in the audience knew what binds me to that pianist. No one knew what it meant to live through a concert of the twenty-four Chopin Études in a concentration camp.”7 Zdenka had been freed from Belsen more dead than alive and in July 1945 she had been sent to Sweden by the Red Cross to convalesce. It was there that she learned that she was the only member of her family to survive: mother, father, sister, all of them had been murdered.


  Zdenka had made up her mind that she would thank Alice personally after the concert and tell her what strength she had given her in Theresienstadt. The door to the performers’ dressing rooms was half open and through it Zdenka could see that Alice already had a visitor, a woman she clearly knew well. Both women were in such an emotional state that Zdenka did not want to disturb them. She withdrew from the room unnoticed and it was to be another four decades before Alice Herz and Zdenka Fantlová met and became friends.

  Alice’s visitor was her childhood friend, Helene Weiskopf. It had been eight years since their last meeting just before Helene’s emigration to Sweden. They arranged to have dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where Alice was staying. The colorful memories of their childhood and the terrible experiences of the past eight years made for a moving evening. Alice could not help but notice, however, that Helene had lost her positive outlook. Her third marriage had just failed and it was also possible that Helene was already suffering from the cancer that would cause her such distress that she committed suicide in 1950.

  * * *

  THE TRIP to Stockholm provided Alice with an opportunity to inquire after Leopold’s nephew and niece. In 1939 seven-year-old Ilse and her four-year-old brother Thomas had left on a Kindertransport for the theoretically safe haven of Norway. As a doctor, their father Felix Mautner had accompanied the transport and personally delivered the children to their foster family. His plan to save himself and his wife by going abroad came to nothing. They were both deported to the ghetto in Łódź before Theresienstadt had even been opened.

  The German march into Norway was the beginning of an odyssey for Ilse and Thomas, an odyssey which took them from Norway to Sweden and from foster parents to foster parents, from camp to camp. Now they were fifteen and twelve and were living with a foster family in Stockholm.

  Alice had announced her arrival in a letter to the foster parents. They were simple, uncomplicated people; at least that was Alice’s first impression. The flat was small, modest and tidy, and the children greeted their aunt stiffly by shaking her hand. Embarrassment and insecurity were written all over their faces. Alice was a stranger to them. Ilse seemed particularly shy and insecure: most of the time she answered only with a nod, and avoided eye contact with her aunt. On the other hand Thomas soon recovered his composure. In the middle of the conversation about school, Alice was hit by the inevitable question about Felix and Edith Mautner.

  “Perhaps you know something new about my mummy and daddy?”

  Alice shook her head.

  Thomas chose this moment to ask Alice—almost to beg her—to tell his foster parents that neither he nor his sister in any way wanted to be adopted. The foster mother, who was obviously very strict and insensitive, had been pressuring the children to adopt her surname.

  “I want to have the same name as my parents,” Thomas said. “If they are alive … and even more so if they are dead.” Thomas had made his point, although he had received no support from Ilse. As a result, the children’s relationship with the foster parents got even worse.

  Alice was very sad to leave them. Her brother-in-law had looked after her both emotionally and physically when Stephan was born and she had liked him very much. Now she felt responsible for his children.

  On the day she left Sweden she received a telephone call in her hotel room: it was the foster mother, agitated as to the whereabouts of Ilse. The girl had disappeared immediately after Alice’s visit and had not reappeared since. Alice had traveled to Sweden full of hope, she returned to Prague racked by worry. Two days later she received a telegram to say the police had found Ilse. Fearing that Alice would have her put in a new children’s camp, the girl had gone into hiding.

  While the relationship between Alice and Thomas grew closer over the years, Ilse always kept a distance from her aunt. At every meeting she revealed the scars of what the National Socialists had done to her and her family. For Ilse, like so many other survivors, living seemed to be a heavy, if not unbearable, burden.

  * * *

  ALICE WAS deeply grateful for the fact that Stephan seemed to have come through the years of oppression and imprisonment relatively unscathed and that he, like his mother, had the capacity to enjoy life to the full.

  There was scarcely a week that passed when Alice and Stephan did not go to a concert together, but the boy’s life changed when he attended a performance given by the Yugoslav cello virtuoso Antonio Janegro. It had already struck Alice many times that Stephan was enthralled by the sound of the cello. As a boy of three and four he used to listen to records of Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello for hours on end. Janegro’s playing delighted him so much that he kept jumping out of his seat.

  In the break Stephan made a decision.

  “I must learn the cello!” It was not a vague “I’d like to learn the cello,” but a more urgent “I must.” It was clearly said with deep conviction and Alice believed him. The next evening Alice took him round to a former colleague, the Czech cello teacher Pravoslav Sádlo. Before the war he had played in their chamber music concerts. Sádlo had the reputation of being the best cello teacher in the city and was a man with many interests and also known as a passionate collector of historical cellos. He had already heard of Stephan’s extraordinary musical abilities and was happy to start teaching him immediately.

  Stephan had his first lesson on his tenth birthday—Sunday, 21 June 1947. Sádlo lived on the fourth floor of a majestic building in the old city. Stephan was beside himself with admiration when he saw a glass cabinet, almost as high as the room itself and stretching from wall to wall, filled with cello upon cello. He was fascinated by their beauty and variety and he busily counted them up: twenty-one instruments in all sizes and shades of wood. In the middle of the room there was a sort of podium on which the pupil had to sit during his lessons. There was a piano right next to it and Sádlo asked Stephan to play for him. The boy began with a series of two-part inventions by Bach; he then played the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique. Finally Sádlo asked him a few questions on musical theory: Stephan passed with flying colors.

  Sádlo was so impressed by the boy’s abilities that he gave him a cello that very day. Stephan was over the moon when he packed up the instrument in its cloth cover and took it home.

  “Maminka, this is the loveliest birthday present I have ever had. I am so happy,” Stephan exclaimed as they left the house. “From today I will never need a birthday present again.”

  Stephan eagerly awaited every Sunday from then on and Alice was excited on his behalf. Even after three hours he had made such progress that he was able to play a small piece by Bach and his cello teacher was finally convinced that he had discovered a great talent. A few months later he accepted him as a member of his teaching seminar at the Rudolfinum, where there was a specialized children’s department. Stephan was a model pupil. Soon, he would have the opportunity to show off his talent to his relations.

  * * *

  ALICE AND Marianne had been exchanging letters for months. One happy midsummer’s day in 1947 the twins stood facing one another for the first time in eight years: they cried for joy.

  Alice did not show how shocked she was by Marianne’s appearance. Pessimism and persistent worry had cut deep furrows in her sister’s face. Alice thought she looked old, whereas it was hard to believe that Alice herself was forty-four. Her smile was still girlish, and her eyes were brimming with courage and inner calm.

  Marianne had come to Prague with her husband and her son. Heinz had left the city as a boy of eleven, now a man of nineteen stood before Alice. Like many young emigrants he had adopted a Hebrew name in Palestine and now even his parents called him “Chaim” or “life.” Alice’s brother-in-law seemed to be basking in the light of professional success; he was now playing a key role in Palestine’s health service while maintaining his own practice at the same time.

  The sisters had six weeks together. The crux of all their conversations was whether
and when Alice and Stephan were going to emigrate to Palestine. As a piano teacher Alice had an excellent chance of establishing herself there. The Jerusalem Conservatory would be surely proud to number her among the staff. In the meantime, however, the political situation in the “Promised Land” had deteriorated in every way. Marianne told Alice the story of the Exodus with great excitement. At the end of July, just before their departure, nearly 4,000 men, women and children—the biggest group to date of Jewish refugees from Europe—had arrived in Haifa on the vast ship. The British had refused them entry and forced them to return to France, thereby provoking terrible disturbances in Palestine.

  The uncertain political situation—an economic crisis together with the British decision to terminate their mandate in Palestine—made them uncertain about making the move. Emil, Marianne and Alice were in agreement that it would be best to wait until the New Year to see if the situation calmed down. Then Alice could start making plans. The United Nations would be taking over responsibility for Palestine from the British and the country’s independence could not be far off now.

  Emil and Marianne’s political volte-face amazed Alice. She remembered Emil as an intellectual who thought about enlightenment and progress in Europe and who was a stranger to nationalism in all its forms. Before his emigration he had shown no sympathy for the Zionist movement. In the intervening years, however, he had turned into a fierce defender of Zionism. Without a country of their own, without a refuge for persecuted Jews from all over the world, without a strong defensive army, the problems of Jewry in the world could never be solved. Marianne had also turned into a passionate Zionist, something Alice had only previously encountered in Felix Weltsch. And when Chaim Adler spoke of the pleasures of the Pathfinder Movement, he awoke longings in Stephan.

  * * *

  “MASARYK IS dead!” The news was given to Alice on 10 March 1948 while she was at the grocer’s. The fifty-six-year-old foreign minister had, they said, been found by his staff in the courtyard of his ministry. The bathroom window to his private apartment on the second floor was open. Jan Masaryk was wearing his pajamas.