by Alex Gerlis
Mihalis was a tall man, and with his expansive raincoat open he cut a large and imposing figure as he walked into the apartment followed by a woman. The three of them stood in the narrow, dimly lit corridor, Mihalis leaning against the wall, the woman standing still behind him.
‘You’re Perla Kamhi?’
She nodded. By now Klara and Benvenida had half emerged from the sitting room, their heads poking out from the doorway.
‘And you’re Alvertos Kamhi’s wife?’
Beyond the slightest of nods Perla was unable to respond. She was terrified – so the deportations had started. She was surprised the Germans were leaving it to the Greek police rather than doing it themselves, and she was also surprised there wasn’t more noise in the street. Perhaps they were the first.
‘I’m pleased to meet you at last.’ He smiled and bowed slightly and reached out to shake her hand. ‘My name is Mihalis Theodoropoulos. I’m a police lieutenant here in Thessaloniki. And this is my wife, Thalia.’
The woman stepped forward and also smiled.
‘And the ladies behind you – may I ask who they are?’
‘My mother and mother-in-law – this is my mother-in-law’s home.’
‘I know that, but perhaps they would allow us to talk privately for a few minutes?’
Perla was confused: Mihalis was polite and seemed to be genuinely pleased to meet her. His wife appeared slightly embarrassed but friendly. This was not how she imagined it would be: she assumed there’d be shouting and dogs, not a man and a woman coming round as if for a social visit. She turned round to Klara and Benvenida: could they leave the sitting room, please? The two older women hesitated.
‘Where shall we go?’
Perla responded in Ladino, the dialect of medieval Spanish most Jews in Thessaloniki spoke. ‘Please, this is important – go into the bedroom.’
‘But what if we wake the children?’
‘That won’t happen if you’re quiet.’
They shuffled out of the sitting room and into the apartment’s only bedroom at the other end of the corridor. The policeman, his wife and Perla went into the sitting room.
‘Do you know where your husband is, Mrs Kamhi?’
The question she dreaded. She shook her head. She was concentrating hard on not appearing too frightened.
‘Look, what you must understand is that I’m here to help you. Do you know where he is?’
The tiniest of nods.
‘My information is that he’s been out of Greece since the summer of 1941, is that correct?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘What I am going to tell you now is very difficult and distressing, but you must concentrate. Tomorrow the Germans are going to seal off the ghetto and it will be impossible for Jews to leave this area. Soon after that they’ll start deporting all the Jews in it to special camps outside Greece, probably in Poland. I have no idea how long you’ll be there.’
Perla could feel tears welling in her eyes and an anger rising in her. She felt fear along with a desperate sadness for Moris and Eleonora. The anger was for Alvertos, the man who assured her he was the best black marketeer in Thessaloniki and she was not to worry, he would take care of everything.
‘Are you sure? I thought the reason the Germans had moved us all into this area was so they’d know where we are… all this talk of us running our own affairs? In any case, how do you know this?’
Mihalis and his wife were sitting together on the same small sofa Klara and Benvenida had shared a few minutes earlier. The policeman looked flustered. He’d already removed his hat and raincoat.
‘The Germans expect us to do much of their dirty work for them. It’s embarrassing, to be honest, they’re turning us into collaborators. We had a big briefing this morning – they brought in all the officers of my rank and above from throughout the city and the surrounding areas. A few of my colleagues expressed their reluctance to get involved and they were dismissed on the spot. I know of at least five officers who’ve gone off since then – probably to join the partisans in the mountains. Look Perla, Alvertos and I have had our… run-ins over the years. I have to admit, he’s always managed to stay one step ahead of me. However…’
He hesitated, glancing at his wife in a sheepish manner as if she’d brought him along to reluctantly confess to something. From his inside jacket pocket he removed a packet of cigarettes and lit one. ‘In August 1941 I arrested your husband. I’d been investigating the theft of some cargo from an Italian freighter in the port and this time I had a good case against him, a very good case. Your husband was very calm, Mrs Kamhi – it was as if he was expecting this. What happened next could take a long time to recount, but let me tell you briefly. Alvertos bribed me to drop the case. He ended up giving me the equivalent of a year’s salary in cash which I am ashamed to say I accepted – we had recently moved house and I’d bought a car and we had some financial problems. Alvertos seemed to be aware of this. Although I accepted the money I did so on the condition he left Thessaloniki and ideally the country. The last thing he said to me was that I now owed him.’
Mihalis shook his head in apparent disgust at himself. ‘You have two children, don’t you, Mrs Kamhi? How old are they?’
‘Moris is six and Eleanora is two – two and a half actually.’
‘I have a proposal. The Germans intend to deport every Jew from the ghetto, even the children. My wife and I are prepared to take Moris and look after him. Her family have a farm on the Kassandra peninsula, he’ll be safe there.’
‘But what about Eleanora?’ Considering she was being asked to hand over her son to a stranger, Perla felt strangely calm.
‘I’m afraid it can only be the boy. I have papers for a boy of that age but if it’s the two of them that could cause suspicion. In any case, a boy of six can be trusted to learn his new name and take instructions more than a two-year-old girl.’
‘And you’re prepared to do this just because my husband bribed you? I don’t understand – after all, you said you have evidence against him for the theft from the docks.’
Thalia spoke now for the first time. She spoke softly, her accent not from the city and her voice suffused with emotion. ‘I am a religious woman, Mrs Kamhi. Before I met Mihalis I considered a life of devotion to the Church. The Church is strongly opposed to what the Germans are doing to the Jews. They say we are all Greeks and it is our Christian duty to save Jews. The archbishop visited our church last Sunday and implored us to do all we can to save even one life. Mihalis doesn’t bother with church, but when he came home this evening and told me about the German plans, I insisted he do something.’
‘There’s something else, Mrs Kamhi.’ Mihalis looked at his watch and then at the clock on the mantelpiece, as if time was not on their side. ‘I’m no fool, I know what is going on in the war – there’s a good chance the Germans will lose it. Last month they were defeated at Stalingrad. To be blunt, I don’t want this war to end and then find I’ve been on the wrong side because I’ve been a member of a police force that was made to collaborate with the Germans.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, I…’ Perla was crying now, holding on to the side of her chair. The enormity of what she was being asked to do was beginning to overwhelm her.
‘Let me spell it out – I want Alvertos and Moris to be my insurance policy as well as saving a life, as Thalia says. Are you all right, Mrs Kamhi, are you listening to what I’m saying?’
Perla nodded. There’d been so many rumours about where they’d be deported to and what would happen. She tried not to listen to what people said, but if the policeman was talking about saving the life of her son then the implication was clear about what the fate would be for them.
‘This is what I propose, Mrs Kamhi – and I am aware I’m asking you to place a lot of trust in me but this is necessary to save Moris’s life. I want you to write a letter to Alvertos and give it to me and tell me where he is. In the letter you are to use information only you and h
e will know, so he realises the letter is genuine. You are not to use my name, but he’ll know who you’re talking about. You’re to say that if he acknowledges I am no longer in his debt and that I have helped the Jews and worked against the Nazis then I will return Moris to him when it is safe to do so. I will then arrange for the letter to reach him and if I receive a letter back from Alvertos promising what I ask for, then Moris will be safe. You will have saved your son, Mrs Kamhi.’
Perla didn’t answer. She realised she had little alternative, but to be expected to hand over her son was too much to contemplate. Thalia came to kneel beside her, placing her hand on Perla’s.
‘You must trust us, Mrs Kamhi. I give you my word Moris will be protected and looked after. It may sound as if Mihalis is only doing this to protect himself but I promise we also see this as our moral duty. The farm on Kassandra is remote and safe and he’ll have a wonderful time there. I intend to spend more time there, especially if Moris goes there.’
Mihalis stood up and lit another cigarette. ‘Mrs Kamhi, we don’t have much time. We need to leave soon, while it’s still safe to do so.’
Perla looked up, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘And when will you come to collect Moris?’
‘We need to take him now, Mrs Kamhi.’
Chapter 4
Reading, England
May 1943
Since they’d moved to Reading his commute to and from work had become considerably more onerous. It wasn’t just that it took much longer – the walk to the station, the branch line from Reading West to the mainline station and then the inevitable wait for the train to Paddington – but it was altogether far more fraught. Great Western Railways seemed to be more of a target for the German bombers than Southern Railway, which he’d used previously. One morning a fellow commuter remarked how the tracks must be magnetic to attract the Luftwaffe’s bombs, which he assumed was an attempt at humour, though for a few days it did disconcert him.
These days it didn’t take much to disconcert him.
He’d taken to leaving the rented house in the suburb of Southcote just before six o’clock in the morning in order to have a chance at being at work at the Ministry by nine. The journey back tended to be slightly easier, but it was still nearly seven o’clock by the time he arrived home.
This meant that during the week he hardly saw the boy at all unless he woke during the night, and even then it would usually be Jean who dealt with him. At the weekend, he and the boy seemed like strangers to each other, which is really what they were.
This wasn’t how it was meant to be.
This wasn’t the plan.
Not that they had had much of a plan to begin with – at least not as far as he was concerned.
* * *
Colin Summers and Jean Batley had married in 1935, a year after meeting at a dance in the church hall. They were both twenty-eight and it was a first marriage for both of them. She liked to introduce him to people as a civil servant, but in truth he was little more than a clerk at the Ministry of Transport. Jean worked in the accounts department of a furniture shop but gave the job up when they married because: ‘…that is what one does.’
For a couple of years there were occasional fumbled attempts at starting a family, but these were unsatisfactory in terms of both performance and outcome. By the time the pair turned forty and without the matter ever having been discussed as such, it was assumed they would remain childless and the fumblings ceased, to the obvious relief of both of them.
Jean seemed happier that way. They lived in a small town in Hampshire close to Jean’s elderly mother. From the start of their marriage, Jean had managed to exercise a degree of control over Colin’s life, which he accepted with his usual lack of fuss. He knew people would describe him as meek, but he couldn’t see what harm there was in avoiding trouble.
With the onset of war Jean began to do some voluntary work, but it was occasional and half-hearted at best. However, as the war went on it became increasingly untenable for a woman in her forties, in apparent good health and with no dependants, not to be working. Even the vicar remarked on it.
Colin Summers had returned home from work one evening in the summer of 1942 when she announced she had something important to say. He’d barely had time to remove his shoes and put on his slippers, let alone loosen his tie, before she ushered him into what she liked to call the best room and informed him of their decision to adopt, which was most certainly the first he’d heard of it.
‘There’s a desperate shortage of couples willing to adopt. I read an article about it in the Daily Mail.’
‘And the children… are their mothers unmarried?’
‘The war has created many orphans, Colin, or women who have a child they simply cannot cope with. We have a house and could offer a home to a poor child who’d otherwise be in the care of a local council.’
‘But surely we’re too old to adopt and do you think we’d cope with a baby at our age? And apart from any other consideration this could take ages – the war could be over by the time we find a child!’
‘I’ve heard of an agency, Colin.’ She dropped her voice and looked around her, as if someone might be listening in. ‘In return for a larger fee this agency makes it easier for couples like us. They’ll even ensure we don’t have to use our real names on all the forms – that way we can maintain our privacy.’
‘This all sounds illegal – I’d lose my job!’
‘It’s not illegal, Colin, stop being so negative. It’s an agency which simply expedites the process – apparently a number of them do it. Remember, we’re giving a home to a child, that’s hardly committing a crime!’
Colin Summers had sat in stunned silence for quite a long while, not sure of what to say. His wife had a confident smile on her face, knowing she had an answer for everything.
Despite his considerable reservations, Colin Summers went along with it because to do otherwise would upset the apple cart. But he was disconcerted, not to say bemused. He’d never detected any maternal instincts in his wife and he couldn’t see how her almost obsessive desire for everything to be neat, clean and tidy would be compatible with having a child in the house. Nor did he think he’d be terribly good father material. He had no hobbies to share with a child. When he was at home he liked a quiet life. They seemed happy enough together. He couldn’t see how having a child could improve their lives.
As they embarked on the adoption Jean did begin to express some reservations: this sudden and unexpected change to their lives would need some explaining, she told her husband. Some people may feel it emphasised the fact that they’d been childless not through choice. The whole business was, she said during an uncharacteristically frank conversation, slightly embarrassing.
Colin could see now why she wanted a child. It would give her a social status she felt she – they – otherwise lacked. They would be more like normal people. And Jean had a plan. Adopting a child would mark a fresh start, she told her husband. With her mother having passed away the previous year they had no reason to remain in Hampshire. They would be able to move to a larger town where no one knew them. That way people wouldn’t suspect that their child was adopted.
‘Is that really necessary, dear, going to all those lengths? I’m sure people don’t—’
‘It’s still something some people take a… dim view of, Colin.’
‘And the cost of all this, Jean?’
Jean had an answer for this too. The small inheritance they’d received would fund the adoption and the move, even though her husband had rather hoped they could use it as a deposit for a house of their own.
* * *
The agency was based on the top floor of a Victorian building otherwise occupied by solicitors and accountants in the centre of Birmingham. They spent an uncomfortable couple of hours there in January with what Colin Summers took to be the principals: a severe-looking woman with staring eyes and a smaller man, quite asthmatic and with a nervous disposition. They sat at a table in
the centre of the office, surrounded by filing cabinets, piles of paper and their accompanying dust. They agreed that in the paperwork they would be called Terence and Margaret Brown. The agency advised staying at a boarding house in south London after collecting the child and using that as their home address on the forms.
Money changed hands – an excessive amount, in Colin’s opinion – and Jean Summers asked how long it would take. The asthmatic man muttered something about further fees and how he hoped they’d understand… before he was interrupted by the severe-looking woman. If they were prepared to pay an extra fee – ‘for our time’ – then the adoption could be sorted in a matter of weeks; otherwise it would be months. Another cheque was written and the severe-looking woman told them to go home and await a telephone call.
Colin Summers rather hoped that would be the end of it but in early February, the phone call came. They were required to present themselves the following day at St Christopher’s hospital in London. A child had been found, a boy aged around three and he was ready to be handed over.
He telephoned the Ministry to say he was unwell – again – and at the hospital they were met by the severe-looking lady who reminded them what to say, which essentially was as little as possible. They were to stick to the story: they were Terence and Margaret Brown, with an address in Croydon in south London.
‘Don’t volunteer any further information. I’ve sorted everything with the matron.’
The meeting with the matron had been awkward. There was, she told them, a further fee to pay for which cash would be preferable. And after that matters moved quickly. A visit to the ward where the boy was handed over by a tearful young nurse who was soon sent on her way by the matron.
