Safe Passage

by Mary Burchell

  A whole week passed, and still there was no answer from Berlin. I dared not stay longer, or allow the daughter to stay longer. Her visa would not last forever, and we had strained its effectiveness as far as we should. I broke it to the Bauers that Ilse and I must go, that Mrs. Bauer must wait on alone.

  It was a hard decision for them to make: to separate after all they had been through together. But I was able to leave some money, and she had good friends; thus Mrs. Bauer was provided for during the foreseeable future until the visa came through. That it might never come at all was something we dared not contemplate.

  In the early hours of a snowy winter morning, Ilse and I set off for England. We passed the frontier safely, and complete with one charge—and the diamond brooch!—I finally returned to the bosom of my much-relieved family.

  A few weeks later, we heard that Mrs. Bauers’s visa as a domestic worker had been finally refused.

  We had to start all over again to try and get her out on a guarantee as an elderly person who would not be permitted to work. Making every effort and sacrifice, her son and daughter were sure they could support her, if only I could find a guarantee from somewhere. But where?

  And then, one of those incredible coincidences happened that occur only in real life. I never dare to put them in any romances, because people then say contemptuously, “Things like that never happen.” They do—all the time—if you do your best and look for them.

  I was lunching with a friend in an Oxford Street restaurant, telling her some of the things I had seen and experienced in Germany. Presently, to my astonishment, another woman at the table exclaimed, “Excuse my speaking to you. But I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying, and I feel I must do something to help. What could I do?”

  I must have gaped, quite literally. But, recovering myself, I said, “How very nice of you. Did you have anything special in mind yourself?”

  She explained then that she and her sister-in-law had recently talked over the possibility of taking a refugee child, but had not known quite how to set about it. Did I know of a child in need of such an offer?

  “I have everything, from five to seventy-five,” I assured her. She and her sister-in-law might make their choice from a gallery of pitiful photographs.

  She took my name, address and telephone number, promising to let me hear more. To tell the truth, when we parted, I hardly expected to hear from her again.

  I was wrong. The next day, the sister-in-law phoned from Buckinghamshire and arranged for all three of us to meet in town. When we met, photographs were displayed, and one was chosen. At that point, she added, “Before we make the final arrangements, I think I had better tell my husband about it.”

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “I should think you had. Doesn’t he know yet?”

  She smiled and shook her head, but promised to let me know the decision immediately.

  Three days later, I received a deeply regretful letter from her, in which she wrote, “I didn’t tell you before, but we lost our own little boy less than a year ago. My husband thinks that if we take another child and try—as we certainly must—to rescue the parents too, we shall simply allow ourselves to grow terribly fond of yet another child whom we shall ultimately have to lose. But is there anything else we could do to help?”

  The husband was perfectly right, of course, and I am glad to say that the little girl was taken by other people. But I wrote at once to my lady in Buckinghamshire saying that, if their essential aim was to save a life, would they give me a guarantee for an elderly woman and accept my word—though knowing virtually nothing about me—that the guarantee would not be called upon?

  They immediately gave the guarantee for Mrs. Bauer—they never even saw her—and we hauled her out, at the last minute, just before the war began.

  Here now is the other half of the story, which Louise and I heard in detail only long afterwards.

  Before we ever came into the Bauer case at all—in fact, even before the Germans invaded Austria—Ilse had been engaged. Her fiancé was an Aryan, but they had intended to marry just as soon as he could find a job. Unemployment was rife in Austria at that time, partly because it was subsidized by the Nazis from Germany. They used to pay enormous sums to corrupt officials in firms and public undertakings in order to keep the rate of unemployment high. Then, as a valuable weapon of propaganda, they could compare the large-scale unemployment in Austria with the “complete employment” in Nazi Germany.

  Ilse’s fiancé was one of these unemployed until the Germans came, when he was immediately offered employment under the Nazis. He knew, however, that once he accepted employment under them, his chances of marrying a Jewish girl were gone. Therefore he hedged, said his health was bad and that he would have to have his tonsils out. I am not quite sure whether his tonsils really needed attention or whether this was a bit of ingenious fiction. Anyway, he went into hospital and had his tonsils removed.

  Then he applied for permission to go to his brother in Switzerland in order to recuperate. Their immediate answer was that such an excursion was unnecessary—under National Socialism there was an admirable Health Service with everything provided free. He was offered a period of recuperation in one of the Bavarian convalescent homes.

  However, he contrived to plead his need of Swiss air so convincingly that he was finally given a permit to go to Switzerland for two weeks. He went off immediately, intending never to return, and promptly arranged for Ilse to be rowed over Lake Constance by a boatman who was smuggling people out.

  When the night of her departure came, bad news was brought to her. The boatman had acted once too often and had been caught. So there were Ilse and her mother stranded in Vienna, while Leo, her fiancé, was in Switzerland, under orders to return at any minute.

  At this point, Louise and I came into the story and started our efforts to get Ilse and her mother to England. Meanwhile, of course, Leo had to do something to prevent his being sent back to Austria. He went around to every consulate, making endless enquiries, and found that the only place to which he could go with reasonable ease—so far as papers were concerned—was Brazil. And to Brazil he went.

  By this time, we had Ilse and her mother safely in London, and the next thing was to engineer the final reunion. But, just as everything was ready, the war came, and there were no places available on the boat. Later, when it was possible to get places on a boat, all entry papers were out of date, and we had to start all over again to obtain fresh ones. This circular situation continued throughout the whole of the war and for a year afterwards.

  Not long before they finally left by air in June, 1946, Ilse told us that, when she parted from her Leo in Vienna in their early engaged days, they had wondered how they were going to be able to bear a fortnight’s separation. It was almost eight years before they were reunited.

  On the night before the Bauers left England, we were all in the flat—whose walls have heard so many strange and sad and mad stories—and we talked of all that had happened in those eight years. Mrs. Bauer recounted details of their earlier adventures, which even Louise and I had not known until then. Throughout her trials, Mrs. Bauer’s courage and optimism had served her well. Bless her heart, her optimism was justified. In the loving companionship of her daughter and her devoted son-in-law, she lived to a splendid old age—and long enough to see her granddaughter grow into a charming and beautiful girl.

  10

  Lulu Cossman belonged to a famous Frankfurt family. Her father, born the year Napoleon died, was a celebrated cellist and the first man to play the Schumann cello concerto. In addition to Schumann, he numbered among his friends Brahms, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and most of the great musical figures of the middle and late nineteenth century.

  Indeed, to the end of her long life, Lulu used to startle me delightfully from time to time with such phrases as, “When Tchaikovsky used to stay with us,” or “I remember Berlioz once wrote to my father that…” And once, when I took her to a film in which Liszt—compl
ete with glossy nylon hair and energetically banging a grand piano—was depicted, an angry voice beside me exclaimed, “Liszt wasn’t a bit like that! I knew him very well.”

  Lulu was seventy-five when we first met her. She was not strictly one of our cases, since all we did was to straighten out a clerical error in the last stages, but the circumstances were extremely interesting.

  It isn’t any fun to have to find a new home in a strange country when you are old. But then, there happened one of those heart-warming things that make drama out of the most everyday circumstances. From England, she received a letter, written by someone who had known her more than fifty years ago when they were girls together at the same finishing school. They had not seen each other, or even corresponded, for half a century, but her friend wrote to ask if she were all right or if she needed any assistance.

  A rapid exchange of letters made the position clear, and the English friend and her husband offered a home and a full guarantee, which were joyfully accepted. Forms were filled up and references supplied; everything was in perfect order and the officials in London stated that the necessary permit for a British visa had been sent to the head office in Berlin. But when she applied for the visas to be transferred from Frankfurt to Berlin, they were met with the reply that no such visa permission had been received.

  A great deal of futile exchange of correspondence had taken place, and nerves were growing thin, when Louise and I were asked if we would go personally to the head office in Berlin on our next trip and make enquiries. This we did, and after some discussion, we finally elucidated the mystery. The English woman, who had never known her girlhood friend as anything but Lulu, had applied in that name. Lulu, on the other hand, had made enquiries in her real name of Louisa.

  We straightened out the muddle, and in the early months of 1939, the old lady flew over to England.

  On our last journey into Germany in August, 1939, we undertook to visit her brother, Professor Cossman. The professor was enjoying a period of doubtful freedom after serving a long sentence in a Munich prison for opposition to Hitler. A man of extraordinary, one might say obstinate, courage, he refused to have any strenuous efforts made on his behalf, and we were unable to rescue him. He died in Theresienstadt concentration camp in the latter half of the war, an example of moral courage and great fortitude, from which many of his companions who survived him say they drew the utmost support.

  A very remarkable man, and one we are glad to have known, even fleetingly.

  Then there was dear Alice, soft-voiced and charming, but with her own brand of moral courage too. She was one of the most famous milliners in Berlin and, in happier days, used to make the Crown Princess’s hats. As times changed and a new “aristocracy” grew up, Frau Ribbentrop and Frau Goebbels became customers. One day Frau Ribbentrop said abruptly, “You are only half-Jewish, aren’t you?”

  Alice said that she was.

  “Well, you know,” Frau Ribbentrop told her reflectively, “if you would divorce your husband”—who was a full Jew—“I could see to it that you kept your shop.”

  With courage, Alice replied, “Thank you very much. But I think perhaps it is better I keep my husband and lose my shop.”

  No more was said at the time. But the next day Frau Ribbentrop’s manicurist came to the shop.

  “Frau Ribbentrop likes your hats,” she explained, “and wants to go on having them. But in future, she will not come to the shop herself. You’ll deliver the hats to me.”

  To which Alice, to her lasting credit, replied, “Please tell Frau Ribbentrop that I may be a Jew, but I don’t do business by the back door.”

  That, of course, was virtually the end of the hat shop. Her husband managed to escape to Holland, but at the point when Louise and I entered the story, Alice was still marooned in Berlin in such a state of despair over the prolonged separation that her relatives feared she might try to commit suicide. We were going to Berlin in any case—this was in March, 1939—and we undertook to see her, if only to have a talk and cheer her up a little.

  With her white hair, hyacinth-blue eyes, and an enchanting complexion, she was one of the prettiest women I have ever seen in my life. When she came to our hotel, she was extremely calm and composed. But no sooner had we got her up in our bedroom where we could talk in comparative safety, than the tears began to flow.

  We listened, dismayed, to yet another tragic story. She had, it seemed, finally made an attempt to join her husband in Holland, even though her papers were incomplete. She even got as far as the frontier and spoke to him—the last time she was ever to speak to him, as it turned out, for the Germans got him again when they invaded Holland in 1940—and then she was turned back. In her horror and despair, she fainted. And when she recovered consciousness, she was on the train, going back to Berlin.

  We said what we could in the way of sympathy. And then she added, “But you haven’t heard the worst. I had with me all my jewellery. It represents all my capital, in any country to which I can escape. And I was so upset that I forgot to give it to my husband at the frontier. Now the order has gone out that all Jews must give up their jewellery. It’s all I have—my only means of living even if I escape.”

  Louise and I looked at each other. We were already loaded to the Plimsoll line with jewellery for other people and had firmly decided not to take any more. But at the moment, we would both have tried to take out the Crown Jewels, I do believe. Louise gave me a slight nod, and I said, “Don’t cry any more. Will you trust it with us? And we’ll try to get you a guarantee in England.”

  Oh, Lord! The terrible, heart-rending gratitude that the offer of these not-so-very-difficult services used to provoke. With more tears, and a few from us too I expect, it was arranged that we should visit her the next morning at the flat of a friend with whom she was living.

  There were two friends there, I remember, when we arrived. At first, I thought one of them had a bad cold. Presently I realized it was just that she had been crying endlessly. She had “lost her husband in the camp,” as the terrible phrase went, only a month or two before.

  Presently, she insisted on showing us his photograph. It was of a nice, ordinary-looking middle-aged man, and while we looked at it, she kept assuring us that he was such a good man and had never harmed anyone, as though the only thing she could do for him was to make unprejudiced people realize he had not been killed for any real crime.

  At last, the other friend said, in a faint attempt at consolation, “Don’t grieve so. They’ll be punished, these dreadful people who’ve done these things. They’ll be punished. Their turn is coming.”

  But the widow said simply, in tones of lead, “You can’t un-kill people.”

  I often thought of that afterwards, in the years of slaughter that followed. You can never un-kill people.

  We took the jewellery and went back to England. There was a very bad half hour at the frontier when the Black Guard came on the train and stayed there for some unknown reason, parked in the corridor right outside our compartment. But we got away without an examination of our actual handbags, which was lucky, as we had all the really valuable stuff, quite brazenly, there.

  We had decided that, if our amount of jewellery were discovered and queried, we were going to do the nervous British spinster act and insist, quite simply, that we always took our valuables with us, because we didn’t trust anyone with whom we could leave them at home. I don’t know whether the story would have “washed,” but it is a good example of the sort of silly lie I mentioned before. It often succeeds by the sheer force of its simplicity and because it makes one look rather a fool.

  Back in England, we were faced with the task of obtaining yet another guarantee. But luck was with us all the way in this case. One morning, a very old friend of ours phoned and said, “Could you come to tea this afternoon? I have a friend coming, and I think she might be good for a guarantee. She’s awfully nice and understanding and has a very nice husband.”

  Our friend also had a very ni
ce husband, I might say. It was he who had given the guarantee for Mrs. Basch and Lisa, and it was he who pulled a string in Downing Street that time I went after the Maliniaks’ visas.

  I accepted the invitation, of course, and over tea, I launched into the story of our recent visit to Berlin. It was a wonderful afternoon! I didn’t even have to “fish” for that guarantee. The visitor looked at me kindly and thoughtfully and said, “I’m sure my husband would guarantee that poor woman if, as you say, she really has enough jewellery here to support herself.”

  With a secret sigh of relief that we had brought out the jewellery, I assured her that this was the case. In a very short time, the guarantee was forthcoming and Alice was dragged out of Berlin, with even a month or two to spare before war broke out.

  As I said earlier, she never saw her husband again. But she did make a reasonably happy life for herself here in England. And for many, many years—until she finally retired altogether—if I wanted to look especially nice, I used to go and see her, and she would make me a heavenly hat.

  The most truly melodramatic case was Walter Stiefel’s. He was the son of the elderly couple we had rescued from Frankfurt. When we were going to Berlin on that last visit, we were told about him and asked if we could help. Someone had already offered a home to his little girl. We were fortunate enough to get a home for him and his wife in the North West of England, and they got away at the very last moment. At the time, it seemed a fairly straightforward case to us. It was only about ten years ago that we heard the drama behind it all.

  Walter had made one of his rather rare visits to London, and we were talking together of old times. And I said sincerely—I was not being coy or corny—“In a way, of course, it was not really very dangerous for us, except for the smuggling.”

  Walter looked amused and replied, “It was much more dangerous than you ever imagined. What was really dangerous was when you handled someone who was in the Anti-Hitler Underground. I’ll tell you now—I never told you then—I was six years in the Anti-Hitler Underground. I was one of those who produced a secret news sheet. We printed it in the centre of a Berlin store at night, when the store was closed. No one had any idea we were there. I helped to produce and distribute it. And if, during those last weeks when you were helping me, I had been caught and made to talk—and don’t let’s pretend anything else, they could make anyone talk—not only would all my confederates have been arrested, but so would you.”