Safe Passage

by Mary Burchell

  We often told the family that the fate of our later charges depended on the fact that they themselves were such a fine and worthwhile family. I don’t mean by that, of course, that if they had turned out to be disappointing and unsatisfactory we should necessarily have classed all refugees together and dismissed them from our sympathies. But, human nature being what it is, one naturally finds it easier to continue an arduous task with goodheart if the first results are gratifying.

  Such is the responsibility of each one of us! The good and lasting impression made upon us by the Mayer-Lismann family bound us irrevocably to the task of helping others, whom we expected to be something like them.

  8

  When I think of how we lived in a state of high drama part of the time and continued our normal lives during the rest of the time, I marvel now. I wrote novels, and Louise worked at the office. We had holidays. We had our recurring opera seasons. We had our family interests and our hobbies, particularly our gramophone records, which were a great consolation to us between opera seasons.

  Our own collection was quite a handsome one now, but paled before the splendours of Douglas’s collection. Our friend of the amphitheatre, who had spoken to us on the night of Ponselle’s debut, had accumulated a collection of gramophone records—almost entirely vocal—that must have ranked among the first half-dozen in the country. And how we enjoyed listening to some of his treasures!

  So far as I was concerned, my collection of operatic snapshots was almost as dear to me as our collection of records, and many are the incidents I remember with pleasure.

  Martinelli, to become in later years a very dear and valued friend, was particularly charming about being photographed and was rewarded by having his snap come out as among the finest in the collection. I gave him an enlargement for his own enjoyment, which he accepted with obvious pleasure and the smiling statement, “I make you the official photographer to the House of Martinelli.”

  Gigli was more solemn about the actual taking of his photograph. But later, when we met him at some Italian reception and I produced the snap for his inspection, recalling the occasion to him, he was charmed and insisted on autographing it for me.

  The Italian stars usually entered thoroughly into the fun of being photographed and were extremely interested in the result. This was long before every fan sported a camera, of course, and long, long before people took coloured photographs by flashbulb on any and every occasion. Some of the German stars were less inclined to relax in this particular way, but usually yielded to a little tact and persuasion. Lauritz Melchior was especially cooperative, I remember.

  One of the most amusing incidents occurred when I asked Lawrence Tibbett if I could take him. At that time, he was winning golden praise for his Iago to Martinelli’s unforgettable Otello, but was also, poor fellow, greatly pestered by film fans, who cared little or nothing for his real artistic worth. The very sight of a camera and a beaming smile turned him sick. He replied to me, politely but firmly, “No. I’m afraid you may not.”

  I was a good deal taken aback but prepared to retreat in reasonably good order when out of the stage door came Mr. Evans, of Evans & Salter, who were Tibbett’s agents and had been Galli-Curci’s agents all those years ago when we had come to ask for her telephone number.

  Louise, waited at a tactful distance, then came forward and I said, “You don’t remember us, do you, Mr. Evans?”

  “No, I can’t say I do,” was the discouraging reply from Mr. Evans, who had also had his fill of the wrong kind of fan.

  “Oh, dear!” I exclaimed, feeling that our stock was sinking impossibly low. “Do you remember the two girls who crossed the Atlantic to hear Galli—”

  “For heaven’s sake!” cried Mr. Evans, wringing our hands. “Ida and Louise Cook—of course! Come here, Larry,” he called after the retreating Tibbett, “and meet two opera enthusiasts. They’re the real thing.”

  When Tibbett promptly returned, he was introduced and told something of the Galli-Curci story. We also told him how we had heard his first Simon Boccanegra and how immensely we admired him in the past.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” he said, in the nicest manner possible. “Of course, I wouldn’t have refused to let you photograph me if I’d known all this. You can take me now, if you want to.”

  In an atmosphere of general goodwill, I took my snap, a copy of which I afterwards exchanged with Tibbett for an excellent photograph of him as Iago.

  But nowadays, there was always the dark reverse side of the coin. There were plans to make, letters to write, appeals to draw up, and money to be laid out as carefully as in our less prosperous days, because every pound well spent might save a life.

  We still travelled third class on the Continent. We still sat in the gallery at Covent Garden during the season. And, except for the glorious extravagance of my flat, we continued our old style of living. Why not? It was no hardship to arrange our life as we had always known and enjoyed it. And one day, all the horror would be over, and then there would be time to make other plans.

  Some of our friends made much more trying sacrifices than we. I remember a period when Nesta walked halfway to the office each day and gave us the saved fares for postage on our work. Another friend cut her cigarette consumption by half and contributed towards the maintenance of one of our cases. Several subscribed small weekly sums to help individual cases.

  I know, from experience, that this is much more difficult than is spending lavishly from a superf luity of money, which has suddenly appeared more or less from nowhere. Nothing is easier to give than money, if you have it—or more difficult if you have not!

  Gradually, of course, we began to exhaust our own resources and those of our immediate circle. And then I had a tremendous stroke of luck. I was asked to go—as a sort of especially interested spectator—to a lecture on the refugee problem that was being given just outside London. I went, but I was disappointed to discover that, though interesting, it was on quite academic lines. More on the problem of settling refugees in general, with special mention of occasions in the past when this had been satisfactorily done. It was all rather far from the hideous, urgent problem I had left behind in Germany less than a fortnight previously.

  At the end, questions were invited, and someone asked if the speaker would explain the guarantee system under which refugees could be brought to this country.

  To my mingled embarrassment and relief, the lecturer replied, “I think perhaps Miss Cook has more personal experience of that than I have. Would she like to explain it?”

  I had never before in my life spoken in public, but I thought, This is my chance! And I’m not sitting down until I’ve said all I want to say. I stumbled to my feet, and in a rather high, squeaky and nervous voice, I described the workings of the guarantee system. I went on to explain how two or three people could band together to assume the collective responsibility for a case, so long as one of them felt sufficiently confident of the others to give the guarantee.

  It was nearly tea time, and people were getting a bit bored really, when in despair, I launched into a short account of what I had seen and I heard less than two weeks ago. I said, “I will give you an actual instance. There is a man of over sixty. His name is So-and-so, his circumstances are this and that. He has asked me to save his life. He is under sentence to go back to Buchenwald Concentration Camp—and almost certain death—unless he can be got out of the country in a matter of weeks. I have no guarantee. I have no means of saving him. He must die, unless I can find both—and find them quickly.”

  Then I sat down in the most profound and uncomfortable silence I have ever created. Once at least, I had nearly cried from mingled nervousness and the pathos of the facts with which I was dealing, a circumstance that was, of course, dreadfully embarrassing for the unfortunate audience. And I had probably committed every fault a public speaker should avoid. However, I had said what I felt I ought to say, and there was nothing more to be done about it.

  During tea, two e
lderly ladies approached me, and one asked, “Would you have time to come and speak to our church circle? We think it would create great interest and perhaps do some good.”

  I explained that I had never spoken in public before, but I was prepared to try anything that might help, and they promised to arrange the matter.

  Three days later, I received a telephone call from the initial organization’s secretary. Without preamble, and to my extreme astonishment, she began, “My husband says it’s no good—we can’t go on like this. I’ve been crying about that poor old man, on and off, ever since you told us about him. And now my husband says we’d better give the guarantee ourselves. We have some good friends who will help, and I’m sure it can be arranged.”

  It was like a miracle.

  It was also the beginning of a different side of the work. I accepted the invitation to speak to the church circle mentioned by the two ladies. And, as a result they themselves—they were sisters and retired school teachers, I think—offered me a guarantee and a place in their home for a middle-aged or elderly woman, who might be expected to fit in with their style of life.

  We found them one of the nicest people we’d ever dealt with. And she lived with them until the middle of the war, when she went to her son in America. By that time, there existed among the women a deep and warm friendship that gave nothing but pleasure to all three.

  After this very amateur beginning, I did a good deal of speaking and lecturing. I learned to conquer my nerves and to pitch my voice reasonably well, but I never adopted the methods of a professional lecturer that befitted my subject. I merely expanded what I would have said to personal friends and kept the thing on an entirely informal basis.

  About the same time, I was given my first chance to make appeals in one or two church newspapers. I knew that it was outside my province to make wide-scale appeals of a general nature. My line was to cite individual cases in such a way that someone, somewhere, would feel an urge to help. I shall never forget the result of the first article, which I called, simply, “Will Somebody Save Me?”

  I explained once more the general position and, briefly, the guarantee system, and I outlined two cases. One was of an elderly man who—judging by his quota number for America—needed three years’ hospitality and a guarantee, and the other was of a young man who needed six months’ hospitality and again the inevitable guarantee.

  The day the article appeared in print, we received a telegram from some people in Scotland stating clearly and coolly that they would guarantee the elderly man and keep him for three years. The next day a postcard arrived from an old farmer in Yorkshire, offering to do the same for the boy.

  After further correspondence, we put both cases on a definite basis, and Louise and I went off to Germany once more, with the heart-warming knowledge that we could tell two people that they were as good as rescued.

  When we arrived to interview the elderly man—who had been strongly recommended to us by a good friend, but whom we had not personally met before—we found, to our dismay, that there was also a very delightful wife in serious, though not quite equal, danger. The men were always in the greater danger, because they were outside concentration camp only by some special dispensation that could be withdrawn at any moment.

  We explained apologetically that our present arrangements covered the rescue of the husband only. His wife was completely dignified and resigned—a woman whose beauty of character shone in her face. She told us that, as it happened, we had arrived on the anniversary of their wedding day.

  “Forty years ago,” she said slowly. “We promised never to part. But now the time has come to do so. All I ask is that you save my husband. I shall be all right.”

  Deeply moved, we told her that we would willingly put her case on our ever-lengthening list and see what we could do. We added that we would try to find a home for her somewhere in Scotland, so that she would at least be in the same part of the country as her husband. More than that we could not, of course, promise; but she seemed to find even this overwhelming.

  As soon as we reached home, I wrote to our unknown Scottish couple, explaining the exact position and asking if they could, in their kindness, possibly extend the guarantee to cover the wife, too, provided I could find some sort of home for her. They knew nothing of me, of course, and would have to trust my word that I would fulfil the obligation that I was asking them to underwrite.

  They replied by telegram—they were great people for telegrams—that they were coming to London on a day trip to discuss the case. I sometimes think of them now when people say disheartening things about the human race. They were a middle-aged couple, in very moderate financial circumstances, who travelled over three hundred miles to London and three hundred back again—all within twenty-four hours—just to discuss how they could best help two people they had never seen. It is breathtaking, when one thinks about it!

  When we met—it was the only time we ever did meet, as a matter of fact—Mrs. G—explained their circumstances with commendable clarity and brevity.

  “Of course,” she said, “we shall give the guarantee for the wife, too. And of course, we couldn’t think of having them separated. We will take them into our home. But, quite frankly, though we can afford the maintenance of one, we should have to have some assistance if we take both. If you can find someone who will pay a pound a week for the wife’s keep, the matter is settled.”

  Oh, blessed light romance that kept the money rolling in! I said I could and would willingly pay that myself. And two more people could live. We brought them out on August 29, 1939.

  Years and years afterwards, when I was speaking on the subject of the refugee work in New York, the daughter of this couple came out of the audience and said, “I want you to know that the couple Ida has spoken about were my parents. And I would like Louise and Ida to know that my mother prayed for them every day until the day she died. It was almost the last thing she said.”

  It is difficult to know which cases to pick out, for each had a complete and human story attached to it. I have kept all the letters from those terrible years. They are not neatly filed. That is another of the things I have always meant to do one day—if I had time. They are packed away now in a box, because, tragic though they are, I cannot bring myself to destroy those pages out of history.

  It is inexpressibly sad now to look at them, and the photographs that accompanied them, and see face after face of the people for whom we could do nothing.

  Here are two little boys, eight and ten, who insisted on writing out their own records in round, painstaking handwriting. They beam at me hopefully from their little, faded photographs. But we were not able to help them in time.

  Here is one of the really dramatic messages. A telegram that is part of a much longer story I will tell later. It simply states, “Georg not at home. Helpless. Gerda.”

  That meant a husband had been taken away and his wife had exhausted all means of saving him. Could we do anything?

  This was the kind of message that invested the very sound of the telegraph boy’s motorbike with terror for us. It was years before I was able to hear that ordinary sound without a sense of alarm and startled apprehension.

  Here is letter after letter, beginning with anything from “Dear Madam” to Engelchen, the term a few of them used when they realized that our efforts on their behalf were succeeding. Some of them were forever to remain sad strangers, with whom we had nothing but a passing connection. Some of them now rank among our dearest and most valued friends.

  Of these Friedl was one. Her story is interesting, and it has the virtue of a supremely happy ending.

  Friedl Bamberger was the great school-friend of Elsa Mayer-Lismann, daughter of our beloved Mitia. As early as 1937, Elsa told us that her friend was desperately anxious to get out of Frankfurt; that she had been some years in Italy, but had had to return home for family and health reasons. Now, her passport had been taken away and there would have to be some definite action from outside in order t
o have it—as well as any hope of escape—restored to her.

  We were going to Frankfurt about that time, and as it was long before we had extricated all the Mayer-Lismanns, it was arranged that Friedl should come to lunch at their home and discuss possibilities.

  When I first saw her, I thought she was very positive and self-possessed. In fact, when I enquired mildly over lunch what plans she had for the future, I received the unequivocal reply, “We will talk of that later.”

  I was a bit taken aback at the implication that she would run this particular show. But, as we were to find later, she really had only a little, carefully studied English. She had learned by rote what she needed to say to us and simply had to say it in one piece. To discuss the matter chattily at the lunch table was more than she could bear—or indeed, achieve. And, calm though she appeared, she was really keyed up to a high pitch of nerves. This might be her best—it might be her only—chance. And she must not mishandle it.

  After lunch, we retired to Mitia’s music room, which was put entirely at our disposal.

  Poor little Friedl! I can see her now. She took up her stand in the curve of the grand piano and addressed us as though we were at a public meeting. Then, as her agitation got the better of her, she began to walk up and down the room, still pouring out what she wanted to say.

  As we listened, one certain thing emerged. She wanted to lean on no one. She was prepared to do any work, live at any level, sacrifice anything, in order not to take more than the barest necessities needed to maintain herself until she could struggle to her own feet in a foreign country. Long before she was through, I had made my decision, and I knew Louise had, too. It was one of the quickest decisions we ever made about anyone, and one for which we have never ceased to be thankful.

  At the end, I said, “It’s all right. I have thought of something. We will get a student’s permit in your case.” This was still possible in those days. “You will come to England, live at our flat, and be enrolled in an English language course. When that is completed, we will find some way of extending your studies and your stay. Maybe you can do translations for me, or film scripts or something.” She was already a journalist of some experience. “But, anyway, you will have an invitation to come to England and therefore a reason to demand, or have us demand, your passport. The question of final emigration need not be raised at this point.”