The Runaway Family

by Diney Costeloe

  “No one here,” reported Neumann as he stamped his way across the remains of the china and peered out of the window. “Got some more down there, though.”

  “Right, next floor,” ordered the officer, and without another word the two men stalked out of the flat.

  For a split second nobody moved, then Ruth ran to the front door and pushed it shut, wedging a kitchen chair against it as both latch and lock were broken.

  Not that it’ll keep them out if they come back again, she thought. But somehow it made her feel safer to have a closed door between them and the madhouse outside.

  She returned to the window and watched as several men were marched away by the SS soldiers, Daniel Rosen among them. There was blood streaming down the side of his face, but Anna was no longer lying on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Ruth wondered what had happened to her.

  The last few rioters streamed out of the courtyard in search of further prey, but not before one of them had smashed the light above the arch, and another had tossed a firebrand into a pile of smashed furniture pulled from one of the lower apartments. For a moment the fire flared, a blaze of hatred in the middle of the yard, and then it was being doused by women running in and out of their apartments with buckets of water, and all that was left was a column of drifting smoke carrying the message of hate into the night sky.

  The howl of the crowd had faded somewhat as the rampage had moved on. The courtyard, now empty, was left in darkness except for faint illumination from lighted windows. Above the rooftops the sky was on fire and the dense black smoke hung in an impenetrable cloud.

  It was still dark when Ruth ventured out the next morning. Although she was afraid of what she was going to see after the night of rioting, she did not dare be late at Frau Walder’s apartment.

  “I don’t think you should go,” Helga told her, in no uncertain terms. “It’s madness.”

  “Mutti, I can’t afford to lose the job.”

  “And we can’t afford to lose you,” replied her mother.

  “Don’t let the children out of the flat today,” Ruth said. “We don’t know how widespread the riot was last night, or what’s going to happen next.”

  “Which is why I wish you wouldn’t go to work either,” insisted Helga.

  “Mother, I have to. We still have rent to pay, food to buy and we need fuel for the stove. If I lose my job now I may never find another… and then we’ll starve.”

  Ruth went down the steps into the courtyard and glanced across at the broken windows of the Rosens’ apartment. Once she had resettled the children last night, she had crept down and across the yard to find out what had happened to Anna. The door was hanging slackly from its hinges, and she pushed it open to find Anna lying on the floor, her head on a pillow, and her daughter, Sonja, sponging her forehead. The child leaped to her feet, the colour draining from her face, as Ruth pushed open the door, but then relaxed as she saw who it was.

  “Is your mother all right?” Ruth asked softly, and was profoundly relieved to see Anna’s eyes open at the sound of her voice.

  “Is that you, Ruth?” whispered Anna.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Ruth replied. She knelt down beside the woman on the floor and took her hand. “Oh, Anna, thank God you’re not dead.”

  “Just knocked out for a minute or two,” answered Anna. “That SS man let Daniel carry me inside before they took him away.”

  “He stopped the crowd from finishing you off, too,” Ruth told her.

  “Perhaps he has a Jewish grandmother,” said Anna bitterly.

  Ruth had stayed for another half hour, helping Sonja get her mother into bed.

  “Don’t go out tomorrow,” Ruth had told the girl as she went back to her own apartment. “You look after her here, and I’ll come in again later in the day. But don’t go out.”

  I seem to have been telling everyone else not to venture out today, thought Ruth as she skirted the remains of the fire in the courtyard and hurried up the winding lane leading to the main street. And here I am out before dawn myself.

  When she turned out of the lane and began to walk along the street towards the bridge, what greeted her almost made her turn back. She had smelled the smoke still hanging heavy on the air as she came out of her own front door, but as she emerged from the lane, the acrid smell engulfed her, making her cough. The pavements were covered in glass, smashed from the shop windows. The few shops and businesses owned by Aryans were left untouched, while their Jewish neighbours had been wrecked, left open to the street and the looters, jagged shards still projecting from window frames, doors hanging askew. Brickwork daubed with paint demanded Jüden Raus! Jews Out! The light from the streetlamps glinted on the shattered glass and cast shadows on the damaged buildings, on the sticks of broken furniture, on small, personal possessions, photographs, ornaments and family heirlooms, dragged into the street and then tossed aside by avaricious looters; and hanging over it all was the thick, black, suffocating smoke.

  Horrified, Ruth stared at the small synagogue on the corner of the street. It stood stark and jagged against the lightening sky, its roof gone, its windows smashed, its door lying flat in the doorway. From its blackened rafters smoke continued to rise in a straight, dark column. She picked her way along the pavement, pausing at the next street to look down the road towards the school building that she had scrubbed and repainted in the summer. It, too, had been attacked; its windows and doors broken open, the remains of a bonfire of books smouldering in the schoolyard. She need not have told Helga not to send the girls to school this morning, there was no school left to send them to.

  A few other people were beginning to appear on the streets now, staring in silent horror at the devastation that met their eyes. Keeping her head down, her eyes fixed firmly on the pavement, Ruth hurried onward to Frau Walder’s apartment. She dared not be late, but all the way through Leopoldstadt she was confronted with destruction, the havoc wrought by the incited mob. Rubble and glass and splintered timber littered the pavements, evidence of the violent use of sledgehammers; the contents of shop and office were strewn across streets, trampled in the dirt by a thousand rioting feet. Fire still smouldered among the ruins of businesses, pouring smoke into the early morning air. An inferno raged unchecked in one large synagogue, the flames leaping with crackling abandon through its upper windows, streaking the grey dawn sky blood-red and orange. Ruth was stunned to see firemen standing by, watching the building burn while making no effort to put out the fire. For a moment she stared at them in disbelief, but as one man turned towards her, a fire-axe in his hand, she turned and scurried away, dodging a heap of broken chairs as she hurried onward, out of his sight.

  As she left the Jewish quarter, the streets returned, suddenly, to normality. There was no more broken glass, no further signs of destruction. The mob’s violence had been confined to the predominantly Jewish quarters of the city. As if, Ruth thought when she turned the final corner and reached her destination, there had been lines, drawn on a map, a battle plan.

  It was a long day. Ruth was greeted with usual silent resentment she had come to expect from the other servants, and on the one occasion when, carrying a scuttle of coal to the drawing room, she saw her employer that morning, she was met with a lifted eyebrow, but no greeting at all. Ruth had no idea why Frau Walder continued to employ her, especially in the face of such opposition from the rest of the staff, but she was eternally grateful to her, and carried out everything she was asked to do without comment or complaint. Today she was kept late, far later than usual, and it was almost dark before she was able to leave. She walked briskly through the darkening streets, but as she drew nearer to home, the way seemed, somehow, sinister and unfamiliar. Smoke still hung in the air, and although some of the pavements had been cleared of the debris that had covered them that morning, others were still treacherous. Even now fires smouldered, gleaming red in the gathering dusk as the evening breeze stirred the ashes. There were people about, but all kept their heads down, never making
eye contact, anxious not to draw attention to themselves. Ruth did the same, but as she neared the lane that led to their courtyard, she heard, once again, the dreaded chanting, the clatter of boots, and before she could duck into a doorway, a group of youths pelted round the corner, knocking her flying into the gutter before trampling over her and disappearing into the next street.

  For a long moment she lay there winded, unable to regain her breath, her ribs aching from the casually aimed kicks delivered in passing; her hands were bruised where booted feet had stamped, her cheek slashed wide by a metal toecap. No one came to her aid. Neighbours scurried by, faces averted, terrified of being caught on the streets by another marauding gang.

  Ruth struggled to her feet and dragged herself into the lane, and using the high walls that enclosed it to steady her, she edged her way into the courtyard and up the steps, home.

  The days that followed were little better. Each day Ruth ran the gauntlet of the Leopoldstadt streets on her way to work, and each afternoon she returned, her ears strained for the sound of approaching feet.

  It was as she was leaving Frau Walder’s apartment one day two weeks later that she almost bumped into Peter Walder, coming up the staircase two at a time.

  “I always seem to be crashing into you, Ruth,” he cried cheerfully as he put out a hand to steady them both. Then, as she drew back from him, he looked at her more carefully. “What happened to your face?”

  Ruth touched the partially healed gash on her cheek. “The streets aren’t safe for Jews anymore,” was all she said, and pressed herself against the wall to allow him to pass, but Peter Walder did not move on.

  “You should get young Peter out,” he said. “Things are going to get worse for you from now on.”

  “Thank you.” As if she didn’t know! Ruth struggled to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “But it’s impossible.”

  “It may not be,” Peter said. “I’ve been working with the Jewish Emigration Office recently. We’ve just heard that the English are prepared to accept a certain number of unaccompanied Jewish children. Lists are to be made at the Jewish Community Office. You should go and see them… get his name down.”

  “Unaccompanied?” repeated Ruth faintly. “They’re too young.”

  Peter Walder shrugged. “It’s a chance to save them,” he said. “We don’t want Jews in Austria anymore. I don’t want Jews in Austria anymore, but the round-up of Jews last week…” He left the words hanging between them, then said, “Go to the Jewish Community Office and register his name, all their names. If the English want them, let them have them.” Then as if he realised that he had said far more than he should have, his arm shot out in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” Opening the front door of his mother’s apartment, he went inside.

  “Unaccompanied!” echoed Helga, when Ruth told her about the children who might be allowed to leave the country. “How could you send children so young? Where would they go? Who would look after them?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Ruth, “but I intend to find out. And remember, if they’re being sent to England, Kurt is already there.”

  The word had spread like wildfire. When Ruth reached the Jewish Community Offices the next day, there was a queue of desperate parents out of the door and down the street, all determined to register their children for the children’s trains to safety, the Kindertransports. When, hours later, Ruth finally reached the front of the queue she gave the names of all the children. “Only two from each family,” stated the man. Ruth stared at him in horror. How could she choose whom to send, whom must stay behind? She had only just convinced herself it would be all right for the twins to go, even at the age of four, because they would have Laura to look after them, and now she had to choose.

  “Which two, Frau Friedman?”

  Ruth closed her eyes. “Laura and Inge,” she replied. “Laura and Inge.”

  The man entered their names, ages and address on a form. “Your application will be considered, and you will be informed if it has been successful. Please be ready to supply photographs of each girl and her birth certificate.”

  “I didn’t know what to say,” Ruth told Helga later that evening when the children were all safely in bed. “Laura could go, and if the boys went she could look after them on the journey, but we can’t split them up. Inge… what do I do about Inge? She’s the one who worries me the most. She’s not my Inge anymore. How can I let her go? How can I let any of them go?”

  “How can you not?” asked her mother gently. “If it were you, I’d want you to go. Like I wanted Edith to go. It broke my heart, but I knew she had to go. There’s nothing left for us here, and in the end we shall all have to go… somewhere.”

  “They may not be chosen,” Ruth said. “There are a limited number of places. The English still insist on sponsors, but there are more and more groups coming forward with sponsors, the man said. There’s a rabbi in London who is finding Jewish families to take them and give them homes.” She looked at her mother in desperation. “Oh Mutti, I don’t know what to do.”

  The next time she visited Anna Rosen, Anna told her that she had registered Sonja for the Kindertransport as well.

  “At the Jewish Community Office,” Ruth said.

  “Yes, but at the Palestine Office, too,” replied Anna. “Gives you a double chance.”

  “But I don’t want the children to go to Palestine,” cried Ruth.

  “Better there than stay here,” said Anna flatly. She had heard nothing from Daniel since he had been arrested on the night of the pogrom. Making light of the orchestrated rampage, the Nazis were calling it Crystal Night, the night of broken glass.

  “More than broken glass,” Ruth said bitterly. “Broken lives and broken hearts, more like.”

  Following Anna’s advice, she went to the Palestine Office and registered the children with them as well.

  Within a week she received a message. She was to come to the office, bringing the children with her, bringing birth certificates. She left the boys with Helga and took Inge and Laura across to the office. Once again the queue of desperate parents waiting with their children already stretched down the road, but eventually, after more than three hours of waiting, Ruth and the girls reached the front. They were shown into a large room furnished with several desks, and at each of these sat a man to take down details and to conduct the interviews. The interviewer who called them forward to his desk was a young man with fair hair and startlingly blue eyes. He smiled at the two girls and asked them their names. Laura answered up well, but when Inge was spoken to she simply turned her head away, looking round the room and smoothing the fragment of silk scarf against her cheek.

  “Come along, darling,” coaxed Ruth. “Don’t be shy. Tell the man what your name is. He wants to know. And he wants to know when your birthday is. You know that too, don’t you? We made a special cake for it the other day, didn’t we?”

  Inge looked at the young man with solemn eyes and he smiled encouragingly at her.

  “I’m eight,” she said at last, “and I’m called Inge.”

  Ruth could have wept with relief. She’d been sure if Inge didn’t answer her name she wouldn’t have been included. “You will put them both on your list, won’t you?” she begged. “Their father is waiting for them in London. Please, please, put their names on the list to go.”

  The young man gave a sad smile. “It’s not up to me,” he explained. “All I’m here to do is fill in the forms and do the paperwork. Now, Frau Friedman, we have a photographer here to take their pictures and a doctor ready to check them over, to see if they’re fit to travel.” He gave Ruth a reassuring smile. “There will be several trains going in the next few weeks. Don’t despair if they aren’t on the first one. I promise you we’re doing all we can to get the children out.”

  Several weeks passed, and Ruth had almost given up. She had been to the Community Office again and again, only to be told that lists were being collated, and if the girls were chosen she would be infor
med. She had gone back to the Palestine Office, but had received the same answer. If her daughters were chosen she would be told. She should have them ready to leave at short notice, just in case.

  Ruth had written to Kurt, telling him what she was trying to do.

  I know you are doing your best for us from your end, she wrote, but this may be the only chance we have to bring the girls to safety. I wish I could come too, and bring mother and the twins, but the transports are only for unaccompanied children. They’ll only take two from each family, and anyway the boys are too young to come on their own. As soon as we know when the girls are coming, I will write to you so that you can meet them in London.

  “When” not “if”. Ruth refused even to contemplate the thought that Laura and Inge might not be chosen.

  I know they can’t live with you, she wrote, but you’ll be there to meet them at the station. You can introduce them to their foster parents and keep in touch with them. Oh, my darling, I am so glad you are in London waiting for them.

  It was the middle of January when Ruth was summoned to the Palestine Office. She had not met the man who dealt with her this time, an older man with thin grey hair and sad eyes.

  “Your daughters will leave on the next transport from the Westbahnhof,” he told her, reading from a list. “In ten days’ time. Here are their permits, issued by the British.” He handed her an identity card for each girl, to which her photo had already been attached. “And their exit permits, allowing them to leave Austria.” He passed across two more pieces of paper, each stamped with an official Nazi stamp.

  Ten days! Ruth put the precious permits into her bag and went home to tell the girls.

  “You’re going to London, to see Papa,” she said.

  18

  The Westbahnhof was a cavern of noise; the shriek of a train whistle and the hiss of the steam into the echoing canopy of the iron roof reverberated with the clamour of voices. Ruth and her family arrived to find the platform thronged with people. Parents and children crowded together in an anxious and bewildered swarm, under the steely eyes of the SS soldiers ranged round the station, waiting for the slightest excuse to lash out at troublemakers.