My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  My Family

  for the war

  DIAL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States 2012

  by Dial Books

  Originally published in Germany 2007

  by Ravensburger Buchverlag under the title Liverpool Street

  Edited and published in the English language by arrangement with Ravensburger Buchverlag GmbH

  Text copyright © 2007 by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  English translation copyright © 2012 by Tammi Reichel

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut (Goethe-Institut ) which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Book design by Nancy R. Leo-Kelly

  Text set in Carré Noir

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Voorhoeve, Anne C.

  [Liverpool Street . English]

  My family for the war / by Anne C. Voorhoeve; translated by Tammi Reichel.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Before the start of World War II, ten-year-old Ziska Mangold, who has Jewish ancestors but has been raised as a Protestant, is taken out of Nazi Germany on one of the Kindertransport trains, to live in London with a Jewish family, where she learns about Judaism and endures the hardships of war while attempting to keep in touch with her parents, who are trying to survive in Holland.

  EISBN: 9781101575215

  1. World War, 1939–1945—England—Juvenile fiction. [1. World War, 1939–1945— England—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Jews—England—Fiction. 4. Refugees—Fiction. 5. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—George VI, 1936–1952—Fiction.] I. Reichel, Tammi. II. Title.

  PZ7.V944My 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2011009350

  For my mother

  Table of Contents

  Book One: Survival Plan 1938–1939

  Jumping

  Richard and Ruben

  Ziska’s Flight

  New Plans

  The Voyage

  The Shepards

  Becoming Frances

  A Cinema Surprise

  Pesach

  Book Two: Blackout 1939–1940

  News

  Evacuation

  Tail’s End

  Enemies and Friends

  Moving Again

  Divided and United

  Leave

  Happy Returns

  Book Three: Returning Home 1941–1945

  Lightfoot

  Lost

  Revelations

  Light

  The End of the War

  A Phone Call

  Mamu

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Book One

  Survival Plan

  1938–1939

  Chapter 1

  Jumping

  I would never find another friend like Rebekka Liebich. She crouched on the narrow windowsill, one hand holding tight to the frame, and held the other hand stretched out in front of her, as if that would somehow shorten the distance of almost five feet between her and the trunk of the birch tree. I stood in the courtyard three floors below and would have liked to close my eyes, but I couldn’t even manage that. I stared up at her, hypnotized.

  In a few seconds I would witness my best friend plunging to her death. I could already imagine what my mother would say about that. The beating that Richard and his gang threatened to give Bekka and me if they got hold of us again suddenly seemed harmless compared to what I had coming when Mamu got her hands on me.

  My anxiety grew. Bekka was not someone who left things to chance, especially not her survival. She had only climbed up onto the windowsill after she had made sure she could jump five and a half feet from a squat.

  I managed to get a little farther than that, at least in the sand pit. But I would have crouched on the windowsill like I was glued there. Ten wild horses couldn’t get me to jump into the birch tree! I knew it, and Bekka knew it too. She had offered to go first.

  If she falls, I won’t have to jump! I thought. Ashamed, I put my hand over my eyes for a moment, as if to shield them from the sun. But on that gray September day in 1938, the sun hadn’t even made an appearance.

  Bekka rocked gently and took her left hand off the window frame. By then, my heart was pounding so loudly that I heard buzzing in my ears, and for a few seconds I actually thought the approaching drone in the air was the bursting of my own fear-filled heart. Bekka just held tight again, impatiently, and waited.

  The airplane moved away, and I saw the small black swastika that clung to its wing like a spider.

  Now! Something else flew right over my head: small, with long blond braids, and so quick that it was over in the blink of an eye. A noise, rustling, twigs and dry yellow leaves rained down on me, and there was Bekka, triumphantly perched in the branches of the birch. Perfect!

  Oh, help, I thought. Now it’s my turn!

  A window flew open on the second floor. “Have you lost your minds entirely?” Mrs. Bergmann screeched. I had never been so happy to see the old nag hanging out of her kitchen window. “Franziska Mangold and her worthless friend! Running away won’t help, I saw you!”

  Bekka clambered down from the tree as quick as a squirrel. We knew every little branch on this tree, which would save my life just a few weeks later. Well, almost. In any case, everything would have been different if Bekka hadn’t jumped into the birch tree that day.

  “Damned Jewish brats!” Mrs. Bergmann’s deafening voice bounced off all four walls of the apartment buildings surrounding the courtyard. “I’m calling the police! They think they can just jump into our beautiful tree!” I heard other windows opening. The word Jewish, especially when it was shouted, was a sure way to attract attention.

  Breathless, Bekka landed on the ground right in front of me. We took off.

  “Ziska, wait a minute!” Bekka panted behind me. But I didn’t stop until we had taken cover behind the wall of the cemetery. I was the fastest runner, always had been, even in the first grade at my old school. That school had been “Jew-free” since summer, and Monika Bär had taken my place. She won the gold medal in the race, even though I had crossed the finish line first. They couldn’t let a Jew win.

  “Jew-free” meant that Rebekka Liebich, Ruben Seydensticker, and I, the three Jewish kids in our class, had to get up an hour earlier in the morning and make the long trip to the Jewish school in Charlottenburg. Our former principal was given a commendation and got his picture in the newspaper. We found that rather unfair; after all, we were the ones who had to make ou
r way through half of Berlin twice a day to keep our previous school free of Jews, not him.

  “It’s just temporary,” said Papa.

  I didn’t tell him that apart from the long trip to school I was actually very happy about the change. In the Jewish school we were left in peace. No one spilled ink on our notebooks or forced us to play “Out with the Jews” during recess, a popular dice game that could also be played with live people. Ruben, especially, with his sidelocks, was a favorite when it came to taunting and beating. The fact that he always knew the right answers didn’t help either. Last year the teacher completely ignored him, even when Ruben was the only student who raised his hand. The teacher was more interested in measuring Ruben’s long, narrow skull in a lesson about race, to demonstrate the superior anatomy of Aryan children. Bekka and I had made ourselves small and inconspicuous in the last row, even though we both knew that our ordinary skulls weren’t in any danger, since they would have ruined the teacher’s beloved theory.

  We crept into our favorite hiding spot, a cave in the bushes. The homeless man who used to sleep here at night hadn’t been around since the spring. “Maybe they… krrrk!” Bekka made a motion at her throat.

  But I didn’t believe that. I figured he was working for the Reich somewhere. After all, we constantly heard how the Führer took people from the streets and gave them work. The actual name of the Führer was never spoken at my house. Mamu made sure of that: Anyone who said his name or even the word Führer had to put a penny in a glass. That way we could go to Cohn’s on Hermannplatz and eat an ice cream at his expense every once in a while. The only trouble was, there were just a few pennies in the glass because Papa and I never wanted to talk about the Führer.

  It wasn’t until Bekka and I were in the cave and sitting across from each other that I saw that her flight into the birch tree hadn’t exactly ended gently. She had scratches on her face and arms, nasty scrapes on both palms, and some twigs had such a firm grip in her hair that we tore out whole tufts when we tried to get them out. Bekka had long, white-blond hair. I, with my unruly mane, not really dark and not really blond, actually no color at all, was secretly envious of it.

  Without a care in the world, she licked blood from her arm, turned halfway around, and grinned at me. “The tree is closer than it looks! I didn’t need that much momentum!”

  “We’d better stay out of the courtyard for a while,” I said.

  Bekka agreed. “Do you think Bergmann will really call the police?”

  “No, she’ll just run to Mamu, like always.”

  “So what if she does? Your mother will take care of her,” replied Bekka, who thought the world of Mamu. No wonder, since she didn’t have to actually live with her!

  “It will more likely be me she takes care of,” I predicted darkly. A combination of Mamu and the gentle Mrs. Liebich, I found, would have been ideal.

  My friend took off her right shoe, removed the lining, and dug out a well-worn piece of paper—our “survival plan,” Bekka called it. She and her parents and brother had been learning English for two years. That’s because the Liebichs were going to emigrate to America soon. They were already as good as gone, just waiting for a response from a cousin who had married into money over there and would have no problem at all sponsoring the Liebichs.

  I didn’t like it when Bekka spoke English, and not only because I couldn’t understand a word of it, even though I had been plagued by it at school. No, it was much more because every English word reminded me that I would soon lose my best friend. The ranks of children in the Jewish school were dwindling. Teachers disappeared too, sold all their worldly possessions and emigrated. We never knew who would show up in the coming week, or who would be teaching us which subjects.

  Crazy, said my father. You’ll see, next year the whole fuss will be over and done with, and they’ll be stuck in Cuba and Chile and Argentina and will have lost everything!

  But “survival plan” sounded too sophisticated: The crumpled paper inside Bekka’s shoe was actually just a tiny, scribbled map of the best hiding places and escape routes in our neighborhood. With her tongue between her teeth, Bekka drew a tree in the appropriate place on the map and wrote “3rd floor, Ziska’s room” on it. Then she folded the paper together and stuck it back in her shoe. “Remind me to give you the map when we leave,” she added. As if she would ever give up the map, her pride and joy.

  I took a long time to make my way back up to our apartment. I studied the ornamental wooden carving on the door to each apartment, the glass paintings on the windows in the hall. But I didn’t dare touch the banister with my Jewish hands. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Bergmann had poked her head around the door just at that moment! Not that I had ever heard that it was expressly forbidden, but you could never be too sure. On Sunday you’re happily sitting on the park bench, and on Monday, it’s not allowed anymore. “Jews and dogs not allowed.” No, I didn’t touch the banister.

  Christine and her mother came toward me on my way upstairs. Christine’s mother looked away, as if a particularly hideous beggar were stretching out his hand toward her, even though I pressed myself against the wall in order to take up as little of their space as possible. Christine smiled at me, very quickly, so that her mother didn’t notice. She still did that, even though we hadn’t exchanged a single word with each other since public officials, including their families, had been forbidden to have anything to do with Jews. Before that I had been in her apartment often, or Christine came to ours. She was nice. I smiled back—a little conspiracy.

  I opened the door and stepped into safety. Our apartment—spacious, bright—was the place where the outside world ceased to exist. Except for a few small blank spaces on the walls where pictures used to hang, paintings my parents had recently needed to sell, everything looked just the way I had known it my entire life. I took off my shoes so I could tiptoe from carpet to carpet without making any noise on the wood floor. Their voices came from the dining room. That was good—maybe I could slink past them into my room without them noticing.…

  “We’re finished! Through, Margot, do you understand? That was it! It’s over, finito!”

  Papa’s agitated voice rose, and fell again with the last word. I had already covered half of the foyer and was past the kitchen, but I stopped, anchored to the spot. Bergmann had actually gone to the police! Thoughts raced through my head and collided with each other. We’ll lose the apartment! My parents will be taken away! Bekka won’t be allowed to go to America! This is it! We’re finished!

  “Always be careful how you behave,” my father told me. “Be polite, even if they get rough, and never talk back. Don’t speak loudly or thoughtlessly, but you don’t want to come across as too refined either—otherwise they might think you feel superior. Always wear clean clothes when you leave the apartment so no one can say we’re dirty. A single Jewish child that makes a bad impression reflects badly on all of us! The best thing to do,” he added, looking into my shocked and troubled face, overwhelmed with all that responsibility, “is not to attract attention at all, Ziska.”

  Exactly what would happen if I was noticed or behaved badly he didn’t say, because we knew as well as anyone that we couldn’t rely on one particular punishment. The Germans could do with us whatever they pleased. But I had never imagined it would come to the point that we were finished, and all because of me.

  “Finished? That’s ridiculous,” Mamu said impatiently. “Your clients weren’t paying you anymore anyway.”

  My father didn’t answer. Mamu’s voice became more strident. “Let’s face the truth, Franz. We’re already living entirely from my money now. And it’s not so surprising that you’ve been banned from practicing law. Of our friends, who is still allowed to work? Schumann, of course. But there are always SA standing around in front of his store.”

  As if led by the strings of a marionette, my feet carried me a few steps to the living room door, which stood ajar. While I pressed my ear to
the door I prayed fervently, Oh Jesus, please only let us be goners if it has nothing to do with me!

  “Maybe we should have tried to get out,” Papa said quietly.

  Now it was Mamu’s turn to not answer. Uh-oh, I thought, picturing how she had her lips pressed together. Ever since I could remember she’d been badgering Papa, Let’s get out of here! But Papa wouldn’t hear of it, even when one country after another started to close their borders to Jewish refugees. “There’s still Shanghai,” Papa said now.

  “How nice that you’re finally coming to your senses,” Mamu retorted in a frosty tone. “Ziska, you’re my witness. Do you think I haven’t noticed that you’re eavesdropping behind the door?”

  Dazed, I entered the room and looked over at my parents. They were sitting at the dining room table underneath the large oil painting of Emperor Wilhelm, and Mamu studied me with one of her scrutinizing gazes through the thick strands of black hair that half covered her right eye.

  I was all too familiar with this look, and it made me feel the usual combination of guilt, anxiety, and admiration. My mother was widely considered to be a “beautiful woman,” though in my opinion that didn’t begin to do her justice. She was tall, dark, and temperamental, with a loud voice and big gestures. And as if her appearance weren’t impressive enough, she emphasized it even more with hats and scarves in dramatic colors, wore pants and bright red lipstick. I loved, admired, and feared my mother.

  Papa sat in his place, utterly miserable, his back even more hunched than usual, and made a grimace that was supposed to be an attempt at a smile. Whatever it was that he had found out today, it had clearly been a hard blow, and I immediately thought of the photograph hanging in his office. It was of a German soldier looking confident and stern, and it was only recently that I had realized it was a photo of my father! I had never seen him like that; all the troubles that had plagued his life started soon after I was born, slowly but surely wearing him down. My mother seemed to me to grow stronger, the smaller and quieter he became, and she loved him with a devotion that made me jealous.