Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  That evening, I write an urgent letter to Karl, telling him that what I had feared most appears to be true.

  After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, anti-Jewish measures went into effect. Dutch Jews and Jewish refugees were forced to wear the yellow six-pointed star with the Dutch word for Jew, Jood, sewn onto their outer garments. They also had to carry identity cards marked with a large letter J. Dutch citizens like Mrs. de Jong could no longer protect the newcomers. “I had to send Martina and the little girl to the countryside, where I thought they would be safer,” Margreet de Jong told me. “As in so many cases, they were soon apprehended and sent to a Dutch transit camp. From there, trains departed daily for concentration camps in Germany and Poland. Their fate was sealed. I can’t tell you more.”

  But, I wrote frenziedly to Karl, Helga may have escaped. I then tell him the amazing story that Margreet de Jong had related to me that morning, about a little-known Kindertransport that sailed from the Dutch port of Ijmuiden to Liverpool, England, on May 14, l940, four days after the Nazi invasion:

  Karl, this journey on a cargo passenger ship called the SS Bodegraven, is known in Amsterdam as “the last Kindertransport.” It was organized by a brave and daring Dutch woman by the name of Gertruida Wijsmuller Meijer. She was known in the resistance and among those who were shielding refugees as Tante Truus, or Aunt Trudi, for she had long been helping children to escape from the Nazi’s.

  I then share Margreet de Jong’s words. “I knew Gertruida and, when I learned of her bold plan to put sixty or seventy refugee children from the city orphanage on buses, bound for the only major Dutch port still open, I contacted her immediately to see if she could take Helga. She was a strange child, often silent and a bit sullen. Martina cried and begged her to go. There was no time to lose. Suddenly she agreed. I saw her onto one of the four or five buses, and I believe that she boarded the ship. Others in the group missed it, for it sailed at very short notice. And, of course, more than two thousand refugee children in Amsterdam never had a chance to escape after the departure of ‘the last Kindertransport.’”

  Karl, my dearest friend, although Margreet de Jong has never heard a word from Helga (and seems quite put out about it), please give me hope that she is still alive somewhere in England.

  I am making arrangements to sail to England before the week is out, and will come to you at your address in London.

  Faithfully, Lilli

  Fifteen

  The taxi comes to a stop in front of a block of partially bombed-out row houses. Some are so badly damaged that you can see their naked interiors through the blasted-out windows and walls.

  “This can’t be right,” I tell the driver. “Are you sure of the address?”

  “Yes, miss,” he replies politely. He repeats the street and number I’ve given him. “It’s London, miss, after the Blitz. I could show you much worse, if you haven’t seen it already.”

  I have seen it already. All the way from the railroad station, I’ve been observing fields of rubble, the skeletons of burnt-out structures, and warnings to beware of unexploded bomb sites. What made me think that Karl would be safely tucked away in some unravaged part of the city?

  I pay the driver and ascend the steps of a house that is boarded up on one side, as protection against its crumbling neighbor. A petite woman with the face of an aging cherub answers the door. Amazingly, her name is Mrs. Sweet. Karl is at work, but he has told her about my impending arrival.

  She ushers me into a faded parlor, immediately offers tea, and tells me that she has a room reserved for me. “I reckon you’ll want to put your feet up, dear, after such a tiring journey. Was it a very rough sea?”

  “Yes,” I answer. I’m still experiencing slight nausea from the crossing, so I politely refuse the bread and jam she brings along with the tea.

  I’ve been dozing for an hour or so in my tiny room, wallpapered in a garish floral pattern that makes it seem even more confining, when there is a light knock at the door. I sit up, fully clothed, and call out, “Come in.”

  It is Karl. I am so happy to see him that I jump to my feet and reach out to him with my arms. He pats my back warmly during our brief embrace. I feel embarrassed. Karl and I, good friends that we were, never had any kind of physical contact. But four years have gone by since we have seen each other. In that time, I have become an outgoing American, used to casually hugging my friends. And Karl is no longer the slight figure with the noticeable limp. At twenty-one, his body has filled out and he has grown taller. In the dim light of Mrs. Sweet’s rented room, I can’t even make out the shiny burn scar he got when his plane was shot down over England.

  Having received my letter about Helga, Karl tells me that he has already contacted the refugee office in Liverpool, requesting that they search their documents for a Helga Frankfurter who arrived from the Dutch port of Ijmuiden on the SS Bodegraven, a week or so after May 14, l940. It is too early, of course, to expect a reply. Did Helga even have a passport? It is doubtful that any of the children that Tante Truus personally delivered to the crude freighter had much with them in the way of formal documentation.

  Karl tells me that we should go out, so that I can become acclimated to my new surroundings. In spite of having lived in England from 1939 to 1942, I have never been to London. The shock of seeing this great city in a state of near ruin depresses me deeply.

  “Ah, Lilli,” says Karl, “you should also see the photos of Berlin. It has been pummeled to the ground.”

  As we sit in a chip shop having a meal of fried fish and chunky fried potatoes (fare unknown to us at the hostel) served on a sheet of newsprint, Karl and I talk about the idiocy of war. I declare in my new American lingo that it has been, “a crazy punch-drunk slugfest in which everyone loses.”

  “If not for Hitler,” Karl remarks, “there would have been no need …”

  “If not for Hitler,” I repeat. And we are off again on one of our never-ending discussions about the nature of evil.

  *

  A few days go by while we wait for word from the refugee-records division at the port of Liverpool. I stroll the city and try to envision the London that I never knew. Although the weather is gloomy, as in Amsterdam, the Londoners seem to go about their business with purpose and even cheerfulness as they embark on the long road back to normalcy.

  Each day I stop at Karl’s office, where I’ve come to know several of his coworkers. I bring him baker’s scones and rock cakes for his afternoon tea, or a bit of ham on a roll, whatever I can find in the shops.

  One afternoon, as we are having our tea, one of his colleagues enters the office with a sheaf of photographic copies of refugee records from May 1940 that have just arrived from Liverpool. He informs us that they’ve not been read by anybody here. Karl and I divide the crude copies into two parts, and start to eagerly peruse the indistinct pages. It appears that hundreds of Jewish refugees without papers were aboard the SS Bodegraven, adults as well as Tante Truus’s orphans and—with my fervent hope—Helga.

  “This is odd,” Karl murmurs after a while. “I have here a Hannah Miriam Frank. No age is given. Only: Lodged at the Mill Road Hospital. This is followed by a footnote: Mill Road hospital destroyed by a direct bomb-hit on 3 May, 1941.”

  I gasp. “No, no! That couldn’t be Helga. That would mean she escaped from Amsterdam only to die in the Liverpool Blitz. Besides, the given names are all wrong. No, I can’t accept that.” Tears spring to my eyes, and Karl places a comforting hand over mine.

  Through a blur I finish reading my portion of the dispatches from Liverpool. Neither Karl nor I have discovered a Frankfurter on any of the lists. Can we really have come to a dead end?

  That night, I lie in my narrow bed, mulling over the names Hannah and Miriam. Neither is unusual. Yet, I have never known a Hannah. There is, however, something familiar about Miriam. In German, Miriam is spelled Mirjam. A spark of recognition sends me into a panic. Mirjam was the name of Papa’s mother, our paternal gran
dmother. She was our beloved Oma, who, along with our Opa, died in 1933, the same year that Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Helga always had a weird imagination and a stubborn will. Is it possible that she might have adopted the name Hannah for Helga, and changed the spelling of Mirjam to sound less German and more Jewish? I sit up in bed with a jolt. Helga may well be alive! If so, where is she now?

  I am up and dressed before Mrs. Sweet and Karl have appeared for breakfast. I can’t wait to test my theory out on them.

  Karl appears doubtful, reminding me that we don’t even know the age of this Hannah Miriam Frank and why she was lodged in a hospital on her arrival in Liverpool. I know that he is being cautious and doesn’t want me to have a terrible disappointment.

  “All this meandering, dearies,” says Mrs. Sweet as she proudly brings a London telephone directory to the breakfast table. “I don’t have a phone but I have the book. And it’s current too, mind you. Look ’er up, look ’er up.”

  Karl glances over my shoulder as I scramble through the F’s. I can feel his gentle tapping on my shoulder. He is trying to calm me. Then suddenly, before our eyes, is the name: Hannah Miriam Frank, with a London telephone number and an address: College of Midwives.

  A midwife! Is it possible that my sister has taken up that profession? Karl and Mrs. Sweet assure me that it’s a well-regarded practice, and that the shortage of physicians during the war has led to a great demand for women who’ve been trained in the prenatal and aftercare of new mothers, and the home delivery of babies.

  “If this person is not Helga,” Karl says to me as we part ways, he to his office and I to follow up on my tormenting hunch, “promise me you’ll not give up. You’ll remain here and I will hunt all over England with you, if you wish.” His voice is soft and comforting. Lately, I have noticed a trace of intimacy in his tone when he is talking to me, which has made me a trifle uncomfortable. I don’t want the easy nature of our relationship to change, especially now when I may be so close to finding the very last remnant of my family.

  Trembling with anxiety, I enter the building and approach a sober-faced older woman seated at a tall desk.

  “Yes?” she says, giving me a sharp, invasive look. “Student applications are off for today. You’ll have to come back next Monday. Only Mondays and Tuesdays. The course is three years. Our students live on the premises. Any questions?”

  I smile as I politely advise her of her mistake, and she begins to pore through a list of student midwives currently in training. Grimly, she looks down at me. “Hannah Miriam Frank. I’m not sure you can see her right now. She is in the laboratory. You should have rung first.”

  “B-but,” I exclaim, “I’ve come all the way from America … She is my sister, or, or she may be. You see I’m not sure. If I could just see her for one moment …”

  My gatekeeper gives me a look of annoyance, then removes herself from her tall perch. “Come through,” she says wearily, and beckons to me to follow her.

  We march through a long corridor with closed doors and dark-green walls, up a flight of stairs, and through another tunnel-like hallway. My now-heavily-breathing guide comes to a halt in front of a large wooden door marked Laboratory. She thrusts it open to reveal a well-lit room filled with work tables and sinks, snaking pipes, glass beakers, and many other sorts of laboratory fittings.

  A cluster of young women in white lab coats are working, heads down, in a far corner. “Hannah Frank,” my companion calls out. “There is someone here to see you.”

  Seven years have gone by since Helga and I were separated. The most formative period of our youth is behind us. Helga would now be eighteen; I am nineteen.

  All the girls look up. One is dark-haired. She appears to be scowling as she squints in my direction.

  I am shaken.

  Across the gap of years, we come together. “Oh, Helga!” I exclaim as I throw my arms around her. She stiffens, then slowly relaxes.

  “Lilli, where have you come from, after all this time?”

  Mrs. Sweet has been kind enough to offer her parlor so that Helga and I can retrace our lives since the morning of September 1, 1939, when we said goodbye and I left with Mutti to board the Kindertransport train.

  Helga insists that I go first. I tell her as concisely as I can about the landing at Harwich, my billet at the Rathbones, my days at the farm hostel, and my life in America. Also, about my current trip, beginning in Amsterdam, to search for her and Mutti and Elspeth. What shall I tell her about Margreet de Jong’s conviction that Mutti and Elspeth perished in one of the Nazi death camps? She doesn’t ask. Perhaps she has already guessed the answer. Instead, she bursts out with an angry accusation: “You should know, Lilli, that that beast Koeppler arranged for our so-called escape to Amsterdam.”

  “I thought it was the Bayers who made it possible?”

  “Both,” Helga replies emphatically. “They knew it was just another death trap for us. But they wanted to separate themselves from any taint of Jewish blood. I hate them all. And I am sure that Koeppler was Mama’s lover.”

  I’ve never told Helga about the night I saw Mutti in Captain Koeppler’s arms. Perhaps she is right. Mutti was so desperate after Papa was arrested, she was ready to turn anywhere for help.

  Helga goes on to tell me about Margreet de Jong. “She had a good heart but a stern manner. Her house was filled with refugees. She even owned the house beside it, also six stories high. On the third level there was a passageway between the buildings. She operated the beauty salon on the street level as a cover. One morning, just after the Nazi invasion, as I was helping Mama mop the floor of the shop, she came in and ordered me to immediately pack all my belongings. There were vehicles filled with Jewish orphans that were leaving Amsterdam for a ship in the harbor of Ijmuiden, bound for England. There was no time to waste. Mama was stunned, but she begged me to go. Elspeth was playing in our back-room quarters, and she came in and started to cry. Within minutes, it seemed, Mrs. de Jong was hurrying me through the streets and I found myself in a broken-down van, surrounded by children of my age and younger. They had been told to wear their best clothes and bring along pajamas. We boarded the ship and it sailed quickly, so quickly that some of the crude transports never made it, and many children were left behind.”

  “That ship was the Bodegraven. Am I right?” I interject.

  “Yes,” Helga replies wearily. “We were five days at sea, and everyone was sick with the pitching and rolling. We were to cross the Channel and land at Dover. But we were fired on by Nazi war planes, and there was at least one death on board. So we changed course and sailed up the west coast of England to Liverpool. What a journey. The food was rice one day and biscuits the next. There were no washing facilities. It was cold and our bunks did not have proper blankets, only flannel bags filled with rice to keep our feet or other body parts warm. We arrived in Liverpool on May 19th, most of us without documents or any other form of identification. They took us in. A miracle!”

  There was so much for me to absorb, and so many questions still to ask.

  “Yes, I did get rid of the despised Helga,” she told me when I asked about her name change. “So German!” And, yes, she had taken the name Miriam from our beloved Oma. Like many of the older orphans, Helga had been taken to the Mill Road Hospital, where they were boarded and given light chores rolling bandages and running errands for the floor nurses. Fortunately, Helga had been transferred to a London hospital six months before the disastrous Mill Road bombing.

  At the London hospital, there had been a training program for midwives. Helga decided that being a professional midwife, responsible for the care of mothers and babies, was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. “It’s one small way for me to confront the years we have lived through,” she tells me. “Now I am tired, Lilli. I will come to you tomorrow after my last class.”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “There is so much more to talk about.”

  Sixteen

  Karl has decided that we shoul
d celebrate my triumphal search for my sister, and has invited Helga and me to dinner as his guests at a traditional English chop house. He assures me that this restaurant will have a better atmosphere and a more varied menu, featuring hearty dishes like shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney pie, and even such luxuries in these postwar days as roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, then the chip shop he took me to when I first arrived in London. When I tell Helga (she will always be Helga to me) about Karl’s plan, she is agreeable, but asks if she may bring a friend along. We agree to meet at the restaurant on a Friday evening at 8:30. It’s lovely to be going out for a festive meal after the lingering gloom of the war years.

  I don’t have any fancy clothing with me, so, as the weather has turned warm, I wear a simple frock and a small hat, tipped over one eye. Karl and I purposely arrive early and take our seats at the reserved table. He wants to order drinks from the bar, but I tell him we should wait for Helga and her young man. I am so happy that she has a “friend.”

  The atmosphere is cozy, with many of the tables set into curved red-leather booths with just room enough for four people to get to know one another for the first time. I am so anxious that all will go well. I cast my eyes around the restaurant, with its oak-beamed ceilings, dark-wood wall panels, and soft lighting, and my attention becomes fixed on a lovely young blonde girl with delicate features, who seems barely out of her teens. Elspeth, if she had been spared, might have grown up to look like this.

  I am still preoccupied with this thought when I spot Helga, with a young woman! She has seen me and, together, they are approaching the table.

  Karl and I rise, and a flurry of introductions follows: