Safe Passage

by Mary Burchell

  Anyway, those performances of 1937, 1938 and 1939 served to counterbalance our unhappiness during those years of the refugee work.

  In retrospect, I know that neither the war nor the raids compared with the horror of those feverish visits and the frantic attempts to save people who must die if our persistence and ingenuity were not equal to solving their particular problem.

  Our parents understood us splendidly, and pretty dim creatures we would have been without them. All through the years of the refugee work, we lived under the same roof with them. They loved us dearly, they knew exactly what we were doing, and they never put upon us the burden of saying, “You make me nervous.” That’s character, if you like!

  They were always there, representing normal existence, and this kept us fairly steady. I remember once coming back one Saturday morning, after we had had an especially harrowing time. I went straight through into the kitchen, where Mother was making pastry—which is, after all, one of the basic things of life. I can see her now, with the flour on her arms. I began to tell her what we had seen and I burst into tears.

  If she had stopped and made a sentimental fuss of me, I would have cried for hours. She just simply went on making pastry. In three minutes I was all right. Then she stopped and said, “It’s no good tearing yourself to pieces. You’re doing the best you can. Now tell me all about it.”

  Oh, the glorious relief of it all, after the madness we had experienced!

  In Frankfurt, good friends used to put a room at our disposal, and there we interviewed our cases in the later months. Sometimes, we interviewed ten, twelve, fifteen, one after another. We never refused to hear a story. Sometimes, one could keep someone from committing suicide just by listening attentively and sympathetically and promising to try to help. Sometimes, the most complicated and difficult case would resolve itself with curious simplicity. And sometimes, the apparently simple case proved insoluble.

  To this day, even when I am very happy, I occasionally recall with fearful clarity the faces of those we failed to save. It is not nice to remember that if you had been a little more ingenious or a little more persistent, perhaps someone might not, after all, have been burnt to ashes in the ovens of Auschwitz.

  It was harrowing enough just listening to the stories. Many of the people spoke English, but Louise gradually was able to interview those who spoke only German. They came, poor souls, all keyed up, ready to tell their tale. They had half an hour or, for all they knew, much less time to convince two utter strangers that their case was worth taking on. It must have seemed to them that their lives literally depended on the way they expressed themselves in the pitiful little fraction of time allowed to them.

  We tried to rid them of this dread, to explain that they could take their time, speak German, produce their papers at leisure. Some of them didn’t even hear the reassurances that we tried to press upon them. They stumbled on, in what English they had, searching frantically in their inevitable leather cases for papers, with hands that shook so that they could sort out nothing. Perspiration poured down their faces, and sometimes tears too. Not that they were not brave—many of them were incredibly so—but their nerves had been stretched to the breaking point for too long, and sometimes it was the touch of friendly sympathy that finished them.

  Afterwards, we in our turn used to retire to our hotel bedroom and cry. In this dreadful, emotional atmosphere of urgency and despair, it was difficult not to. Then, as Louise put it, we would dry our eyes, emerge sniffing and start again.

  Something rather curious happened in connection with that room in Frankfurt where we did so much of this interviewing. During the war, we heard by roundabout means through Switzerland that the brave woman of the house used it for other, even more tragic, gatherings. The night before some of the deportations started for Poland and certain death, a heroic Catholic priest was smuggled into the house; the room we had used was fitted up as a chapel, and he administered the last rites to those who, though Jewish by blood, were Catholic by religion and sought this last comfort. Both he and the woman of the house, of course, did this at the risk of their lives, but thought it worthwhile for the comfort they gave.

  When the Allied bombers laid waste so much of Frankfurt, every house in that district was flattened, except the one where this work had been carried on. A later raid destroyed most of the house. Only that room remained intact.

  As we continued our work, of course our names became known to a certain extent, both in refugee circles in England and among the unfortunate victims over there. And, since it was known that we journeyed regularly to and fro, we were often asked to take verbal messages, suggestions or instructions that could not be trusted to the censored post.

  For example, a chemist in Frankfurt had succeeded in obtaining the offer of a special post in England, but the German authorities resisted his attempts to obtain his passport. He knew just the kind of letter that, written by the important British firm who required him, would probably scare the authorities into parting with his passport. But, of course, he dared not write informing them of this. All the firm knew, on their part, was that their German chemist seemed unable to come after all.

  When we were next in Frankfurt, we were called in, learned off by heart the terms of the necessary letter, and undertook to visit the firm in England immediately on our return. We explained the only half-understood difficulties and primed one of his directors with the effective wording required. I am glad to say that the letter worked the miracle.

  A good deal could sometimes be accomplished by sheer bluffing too. I remember an occasion when a case of ours had been imprisoned in a small country town, and his mother was in despair over the possibility of his being transferred elsewhere before we could do anything for him. I promptly typed out a pompous official letter stating that a very important man in the City of London was giving the guarantee in this case and was exceedingly interested in the extraordinary methods employed in a particular town. He was arranging to have a question asked in the British House of Commons on the subject, and a good deal of public interest was likely to be taken in the case.

  I added that “in order to authenticate these statements,” I was having the letter transformed into a legal document. I then took it to an astonished local solicitor in London, persuaded him to put a seal on it, and he witnessed my signature, with the added intimidating note that he was a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Adjudicature in Great Britain.

  So far as any legal aspect was concerned, it was not worth the paper it was typed on. But it worked. The last thing a small-town German official wanted was to have awkward questions from his own higher-ups about his having attracted unwelcome attention from an important foreign country. Our man was released immediately, and presently we obtained a guarantee and dragged him out via Switzerland. It was one of the lighter moments of our work.

  Just as our name was known on this side, so, by some extraordinary passing to and fro of any scrap of hope, we were also beginning to be known among some of the frantic thousands who were trying to escape. This was brought home to us the first time we visited Vienna early in 1939.

  We had to go to the Kultursgemeinde there in connection with one of our cases. This was the official building where any business to do with emigration was transacted. I shall never forget it. In every room, in every passage, almost on every stair, crowded hundreds and hundreds of the most desperate people I have ever seen. They were of all ages, from children who could hardly walk to men and women almost blind with old age. And not one of them had any hope of justice.

  All they could hope for in life was that by some extraordinary chance, someone in the outside world had been sufficiently moved by their appeals or relationship to stretch out a helping hand. They were all there waiting—hopefully, hopelessly—thumbing over their papers, building up pitifully inadequate cases to show themselves and others that they were surely among the lucky few who had the means of escape.

  Finally, Louise and I reached the particular wa
iting room adjacent to the office dealing with our case. We were speaking to each other in English, and to our stupefaction, a man came up and said, “Are you by any chance Miss Cook?”

  We said in unison that we were, and I added, “How on earth did you know? We never set foot in Vienna before today.”

  “No, I know,” he replied. “But I have a friend in Frankfurt.” Imagine! Almost a day and night’s journey away. “She wrote to me and told me you were coming to Vienna and that you had been trying to help some of us to get out. I’ve been round every hotel in Vienna asking for you. Then I thought you might have come here. I’ve been waiting all day.”

  I find it hard to describe the terrible sensation it gave us to have this frightful and pathetic importance thrust upon us. Again and again we used to ask ourselves, “Who are we, that the mere fact of our having a little time and money and sympathy to spare transforms us into figures of overwhelming importance to our unhappy fellow creatures?”

  Sometimes this realization oppressed us almost more than anything else. And I still think the most terrible thing ever said to me consisted of five words spoken by an elderly woman who had lived a good and useful life until the remorseless tide of unprovoked, undeserved hatred and wickedness tore her from her rightful anchorage. We rescued her and her husband and brought them to England a week before war broke out. He died here during the war, but he died a free man and from what one calls natural causes. Then, not long before the end of the war, she went to America to join her beloved daughter. I saw her off from Euston Station and fumbled for the few conventional phrases that one finds on these rather trying occasions. I had almost forgotten the events that had brought us together originally and was thinking only of the future, when she leaned from the carriage window and said, with terrible simplicity, “Goodbye. I owe you my life.”

  I had long ago got over the sudden fits of crying that had punctuated the harrowing, emotional refugee days, but her words made me cry dreadfully. From her point of view, she probably spoke the truth, I suppose. But what had that dear, good, useful life cost us? Some trouble, some eloquence and some money. Nothing more. The lack of proportion between the two things is frightening.

  It is difficult now to follow the story of those immediately pre-war years in anything like chronological order, as each individual story naturally runs on over the period to its conclusion during or after the war. However, there are one or two general points about our work, which remained consistent throughout.

  For instance, as I have said, we made it a rule never to refuse to hear a story. In addition, we had no feeling one way or the other about Jew or Gentile, political refugee or what you will. As it happened, the cases with which we dealt were largely Jews, firstly because more of them were being persecuted than any other section of the community, and secondly because, since we had started with a Jewish family we were, rather naturally, recommended from one case or another. Some of them were Jewish by race only, being Catholic, Protestant or Quaker by religion. Some were practising Jews, and some of our cases, to use Hitler’s own ridiculous phrase, were pure Aryan. To us, there was genuinely no distinction. There were just fellow creatures who needed help. If a man is drowning you don’t ask him what his religious and political views are before you pull him out.

  We happen to have very definite political views ourselves, but we never allowed these to influence us in our choice of people to help. We were simply moved by a sense of furious revolt against the brutality and injustice of it all and were willing to help any deserving case brought to our notice, to the limit of our small capacity. We tried as best as we could to apportion the pitifully small amount of aid at our disposal to what seemed to us, on brief investigation, to be the most worthwhile cases. But this choice was dictated solely by the feeling that what little help we could give should be used to the best advantage.

  To those who had to make the hard and big decisions, I knew there had to be something of the policy that the young should be saved first. Only a small proportion of the whole could be saved, and the old had had their lives. I do not imagine there was ever a strict enforcement of this general principle. But, of course, there is a sort of ruthless justice and common sense about such a view, if one has to make a final and objective selection.

  Louise and I did not feel bound by this, or any other, rule. What we did try to do was to concentrate on whole families. Part of a richly happy family life ourselves, we knew that it would be poor comfort to be rescued oneself if a beloved mother or father, brother or sister still lingered in danger and the shadow of death. Whenever possible, we worked right through a family, hoping one day to reunite them somewhere in the world.

  Our twenty-nine successful cases, therefore, were largely made up of family groups, although of course we did have cases of single individuals too. When I speak of twenty-nine successful cases, I mean that we had twenty-nine completed cases and raised twenty-nine guarantees. There were, naturally, innumerable occasions when we were able to give a little help or advice, but they did not count among our actual cases.

  Sometimes people like to know about what might be called the sidelines of our work—how we brought out jewellery and fur coats, to represent money for people once they were rescued. It was fairly simple at first, but then came the time when the Hitler guard used to come on the train at the frontier and check everything you had, and when you came out you were checked again. This made things a bit awkward, but we solved it by going in by one frontier—and probably by air—wearing no jewellery at all. We hadn’t got very much anyway, but we dispensed with even wristwatches. Then, after a very short stay, we would come out by quite a different route and probably by train. So we simply could not get the same official twice, and there was no one to notice that we had become rather overdressed English girls with a taste for slightly too much jewellery.

  We were careful on detail. We never took earrings for pierced ears, because neither of us has pierced ears, and that was the kind of thing they caught you on. They would suddenly say, “Which of you wears these?” and if you had earrings for pierced ears, but neither of you had pierced ears, they knew what you were doing.

  In the case of fur coats, we had rather a good technique. We used to take one or two dress labels with us from England, begged from our few friends who patronised the really good English shops. When we arrived at the town where the fur coat was, we would go straight to the owner before presenting ourselves at our hotel. We would try on the coat ourselves while with the owner, and one of us arrived at the hotel wearing it, thus avoiding the suspicious circumstances of going out without an expensive coat and coming back with one.

  We both had rather ingenuous faces in those days—perhaps we still have!—and we were never questioned. Certainly we could not rival the experience of a young half-Viennese, half-English friend of ours who undertook to come out of Austria wearing someone’s very valuable pearl necklace.

  The currency official who came on the train at the frontier gave her a dirty look and said, “Those are very good pearls you’re wearing, aren’t they?”

  With great presence of mind and no sign of panic, she turned on him haughtily. “And why not? Do I look so shabby that I might not wear good pearls?” She rose and inspected herself in the mirror, and then turned on him again, demanding, “What is wrong with my appearance?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” he hastened to assure her, very much taken aback by her grande dame air.

  “But there must be,” she insisted, following him as he retreated to the door of the compartment, “or you would not have said such a thing. What were you trying to imply?”

  She pressed her role of insulted passenger so far that the man finally fled, covered with confusion, still protesting that he had not meant any criticism of the lady’s appearance.

  Soon after we started our refugee work, it became apparent to Louise and me that, apart from our own home, we must have some sort of clearing house or at least temporary accommodation for the people whom we brought
to England. And at this time, I acquired what I had always hoped to have since I started writing: a small flat of my own. We continued to live at home, but used the flat as the central point of our work. Occasionally, we tried to reckon how many people lived in the flat or, at any rate, passed through on the way to a new life elsewhere. But we have long ago lost count. Only—if one may be permitted to feel a little fanciful—it sometimes seems that they have each left behind a faint trace of the relief and happiness that they must have experienced in their first haven after the storm. To this day, there is an atmosphere of brightness and happiness that most people remark upon. It may be only because it is a light, pleasant place with many windows. But it certainly has been a place of great happiness to us, as well as others.

  The first person to live there was Mitia’s daughter, Elsa Mayer-Lismann—now for many years a musical lecturer of great distinction in her own right, and the director of an opera workshop of a standard that would have delighted her mother’s heart. Even now, when she returns to the flat, which she often does, she says it is a little like returning home.

  They were a very interesting family, the Mayer-Lismanns. Mitia herself was half-Russian and half-German, with a charm and humour and vivacity quite impossible to convey to anyone who never met her. She was wonderful company, and we sometimes used to say we wondered just how late we would keep on talking if natural bedtime did not intervene. Then one evening, she and I were caught out in an air raid and had to take refuge in a public shelter. We talked quite happily until just after four in the morning—so we found out our limit at last.

  I am thankful to say that all of the family escaped in time: Mitia and her husband and daughter, two of her brothers—one was already in France—her sister-in-law and her niece. Her nephew and his family escaped too, but we never met them until after the war, when we went to America.