My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  For Amanda, Walter’s internment was a turning point—not only of the war, but in her entire life up to that point as an obedient Orthodox housewife. She hadn’t been able to prevent her son from going off to war, nor her husband from setting off on an adventure that had recently become life-threatening. But the fact that a sixteen-year-old boy who had been entrusted to her care was torn away from her and suspected of espionage was the final straw. Literally overnight, my foster mother came to the conclusion that she had held her peace long enough.

  “We are not going to accept this. We’re going to get him out of there, you’ll see.”

  “Get him out? You have no idea! Ask my mother what it’s like trying to get someone released from a camp!”

  “This isn’t a concentration camp, love. We’re not in Nazi Germany. There’s a certain amount of hysteria in the air at the moment, but when the public grasps who they’ve locked up there, Walter will certainly be freed!”

  In the following weeks, my foster mother discovered a new activity: protest. She wrote to the government and to individual officials, wrote letters to the editors of every newspaper and radio station—and through her efforts learned that she wasn’t the only one fighting against the internment of foreigners. Various groups and individuals had dedicated themselves to the same goal. They even banded together for a demonstration.

  Almost unchecked, the Germans were marching toward the English Channel, cutting off our troops fighting in Belgium and northern France from the units stationed farther south. The momentum of the German blitzkrieg overran everything in its path, and two weeks after the invasion began, we had no indication at all where Uncle Matthew and his frontline theater might be.

  The uncertainty about Uncle Matthew caused Amanda to step up her efforts on Walter’s behalf. It distracted her from brooding and helplessly waiting. More than once I woke up during the night and noticed that she lay next to me sleepless, staring at the ceiling. I had inferred from some comment of hers that my foster parents had exchanged harsh words as they parted, and the thought that she might not be able to take them back tortured Amanda.

  Now I had her all to myself—and I couldn’t have been more depressed. Afternoons in the theater I wished for nothing more fervently than to be able to get annoyed about Walter jealously guarding the projector. With a heavy heart, I stared at the movie posters on the walls of the projector room, the bits of dust caught in the projector’s light, or the humming reels as they turned. The fact that after watching how it was done several times I could, indeed, exchange the reels without the film being projected crookedly or catching on fire wasn’t the slightest consolation.

  While Uncle Matthew had only recently been exposed to immediate danger, that had been the case for Gary since the beginning of the war. Day and night, German U-boats hunted the ships of the Merchant Navy that supplied England with provisions and items essential to the war effort. Gary served in one of their convoys, and ever since I had seen images of the impressively threatening convoys in the newsreels, all illusions about the romance of life at sea had vanished.

  The enemy lurked especially along the most important route of the British merchant ships, in the Atlantic between North America and Europe, and while the British Expeditionary Forces were hopelessly surrounded in France, the navy lost many ships to torpedoes and U-boats. We listened, tormented, as yet more attacks on convoys were announced on the radio.

  Had I really thought the war wouldn’t be all that bad? Sometimes I asked myself whether my presence was a relief for Amanda, or a burden—whether she was happy not to be alone, or if it was an additional strain on her nerves to stay in control for my sake. “Stop staring at me like that!” she blurted out, and once she even locked herself in her room for hours. But I couldn’t stop myself—with every new report I nervously scanned her face, looking for signs that would tell me whether it was a small, medium, or big catastrophe this time. A small catastrophe was good news. It didn’t get any better than that.

  What, for example, should I make of the news that so many British soldiers had been taken as prisoners of war? For the captured soldiers, it was probably only a medium catastrophe; they wouldn’t see their families for a long time, but they were still alive, and the war was over for them. There were strict regulations about the treatment of POWs that even the Germans had to adhere to. But what if the prisoner was a Jew?

  And what should I think about the Royal Air Force bombing German cities? Did I really want my former hometown to go up in flames? For Bekka to be in danger, and Christine?

  Weeks passed before it occurred to me that I had a clever friend I could ask about the war. I had been wanting to visit him for a while, and wasn’t even sure I would still find him.

  “This is the first happy day in a long time!” Professor Schueler told the waiter as he ordered my hot chocolate. “My young friend is back!” Meanwhile, I furtively scanned the room and tried not to show my dismay. I remembered the Café Vienna as a loud, lively place, and I couldn’t have imagined it any other way. But now lots of the tables were empty. No one I saw was younger than Professor Schueler.

  “It’s quite a change, isn’t it?” the professor commented with a bitter smile. “Let’s not talk about that. So you are back from your evacuation, I see. Did it go well for you? What news is there from your family?”

  I told him everything about Tail’s End, the Stones, Hazel, and Adolf. “And your family?” he repeated.

  I hesitated. Did he really want to hear that Papa was no longer alive, Uncle Matthew was missing in France and Walter imprisoned on the Isle of Man, that Gary was being hunted down by U-boats in the Atlantic, and that I hadn’t heard anything from Mamu in weeks? “Mrs. Shepard and I are running the theater by ourselves now!” I dodged his question.

  Professor Schueler’s face clouded over immediately. “Oh, dear,” he murmured. “What has happened?”

  After just a few words I realized how good it felt to finally talk about everything. I didn’t even have to cry. When I was finished, it was quiet for a moment.

  “I often think that my mother could be here if I had tried harder knocking on doors,” I admitted with a heavy heart.

  But Professor Schueler shook his head energetically. “You are not responsible for your mother, Ziska! It’s the grown-ups who have to make the decisions. At one point, your parents made what seems to have been a bad decision, to stay in Germany. But the wonderful thing is that they also made another, very good decision—they were able to save you! Now it’s your job to do everything in your power to make sure the good decision prevails.”

  “How?”

  “Live!” he said. “And live well! That is the only thing you can do for them.”

  Someone turned the radio up. I heard an agitated voice speaking English and a quiet murmuring in German: “What’s he saying? What was that?”

  “Do you speak English, child?” someone called, and suddenly everyone turned toward me.

  “She speaks beautiful English!” said Professor Schueler proudly. Obediently, I stood up and walked over to the radio. The old men got very quiet and looked at me eagerly. It didn’t take long for me to understand the news—but a full, dreadful minute passed before I found my voice again.

  “Our troops are pulling out of France,” I finally heard myself say. “The units are retreating from the entire country toward Dunkirk on the Belgian coast. The navy is gathering every available ship in the English Channel to rescue the soldiers. Thousands of British and French troops are lined up on the beach, and they’re sitting targets for the German fighter pilots.”

  The men groaned in horror. “The RAF is in the air as well… appalling scenes are unfolding,” I continued to translate, now simultaneously with the voice on the radio. “The ships that were able to depart are being shot at by U-boats and low-flying planes as they make their way across the channel. They had calculated evacuating about fifty thousand soldiers, but the extent of this rescue effort is clearly much larger… will likel
y last several days… and I’d like to go now, please! I have to get home right away!”

  “Thank you!” several of them called after me. I waved to Professor Schueler, burst onto the street, and ran to the subway station. The news was spreading like wildfire: The Brits are retreating from France! Now all that was left was to defend England. But I had just one thought: Was Uncle Matthew among those being saved?

  It was Saturday, just before the end of Shabbat, and when I didn’t find Amanda at home I knew she had heard the news too, and decided to go to the synagogue. The women in the balcony made room for me to get through to her. I hadn’t genuinely prayed in a long time, but that night I learned that you can always take it up again, in any language.

  Dear God, please spare Uncle Matthew, who is a good person and loves you, and is missed and needed. Give him back to us, especially Amanda, who still needs to make peace with him. I won’t complain about anything ever again, and I’ll go back to Hebrew school too.

  “School is canceled until further notice,” Mrs. Holly greeted us on Wednesday morning. “The classrooms are temporarily needed for the war effort. Please go back home and take all your belongings with you.”

  Somewhere in the school building I heard younger children cheering; they had probably just heard the same news. Unlike them, we older students exchanged worried looks.

  On my way home, I saw something else across the courtyard: a big military vehicle driving up to the gym. Boy Scouts jumped out and began to unload it. They handed each other what looked like blankets, and there were some tables, and large metal canisters. I stood rooted to the spot. “Soldiers from Dunkirk are going to be brought here, right?” I asked.

  “We can’t talk about it,” said one of the boys dismissively.

  “But I’m waiting for someone… please!”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes!” I affirmed.

  “Sorry. Only Frenchies are being brought here, almost a thousand French soldiers.” Disappointed, I left.

  Your father, eh? Are you out of your mind, Ziska? I ran home without answering Bekka. It was the fifth day of the retreat from Dunkirk. When would the last train arrive? The first two days I had been very optimistic and expected to see Uncle Matthew any minute, but with every hour that passed, I lost a little more hope.

  Amanda was in the yard wearing pants and an old jacket, hacking at the earth and energetically pulling weeds from the vegetable patch. She had a cotton cloth wrapped around her head and used the end of it to wipe the sweat from her forehead. When I stepped out of the kitchen door, she sat up, surprised to see me.

  “School is closed, they need it to put up soldiers. No, no!” I added quickly as she startled. “I already asked! It’s only French soldiers.”

  “French,” she said. Her eyes shone in a peculiar way. “I think that’s exactly where he might be!”

  If the scouts had seriously believed they could quarter a thousand Frenchmen in the school without the public getting involved, they certainly knew better by now. The schoolyard was abuzz with people. Boy Scouts, teachers, housewives who had brought teapots, and men from the Home Guard greeted the overwhelmed soldiers, offered them something to drink, and handed out blankets. Children wandered around and marveled at the foreigners, giggling about their language. But most of the soldiers just stood around, confused and exhausted, as if they couldn’t grasp what was happening to them.

  We ran alongside the buses, Amanda on the right side, me on the left, trying to spot Uncle Matthew. Amanda talked to some of the soldiers in the courtyard, but no one seemed to know anything about my foster father. I pressed on, peering into unfamiliar faces, and felt Amanda’s disappointment creeping into my heart, even though I hadn’t for a second seriously believed we would find him here.

  Next to the entrance to the gym a cluster of soldiers was gathered around two bearded men, who offered them paper and pens so they could write a few lines to their relatives. The pens were practically being torn out of their hands, and as I went by I recognized one of them vaguely, probably from the synagogue. He spoke French with the soldiers as I made my way past them into the gym.

  Inside, the Boy Scouts were ladling soup from enormous kettles, served with bread and coffee or tea. The soldiers slurped loudly right from the bowls, greedily tearing off huge chunks of bread and dunking them in the soup as if they hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Ask your mum for some old clothes of your dad’s,” one woman told me, “and best bring them right away.”

  “I will,” I replied, and hurried out, energized by the desire to make a useful contribution too. I was so intent on my errand that I didn’t look left or right and didn’t know at first from which direction someone suddenly called my name.

  “Frances? Frances! Frances!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around breathlessly. Uncle Matthew… ? But I couldn’t spot him anywhere, only the bearded man from the synagogue gave his stack of paper and pens to his colleague and rushed toward me with long strides.

  And I, now that I had finally recognized him, was so shocked that I turned right around and ran away! “Amanda!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Ziska and Frances, masters of the inappropriate response, champions of flight.

  But my response didn’t matter anymore. Amanda saw me coming, Uncle Matthew right behind me, and I saw right away that the fight they had had before his departure was a thing of the past. They threw themselves into each other’s arms, disbelieving, joyous, shaken, and then tried to do everything all at once: laugh, cry, kiss, whisper. I stood next to them, torn between fascination and deep embarrassment—the moment when a film would have cut to the next scene was long past!

  “I’ll head home, then, and put on the tea,” I finally said. But it didn’t seem to interest anyone in the least that I was still there.

  So I started off, thinking about how unsettling and difficult it was to be at the mercy of love, and thoroughly convinced that it would be better to do without it during wartime.

  Uncle Matthew and the man who sold stationery in Finchley, whose idea it had been, made sure that the soldiers’ letters were sent off quickly. Then he came home, slept almost twenty-four hours straight, shaved off the beard that had made him seem so unfamiliar, and was finally “back” for me too.

  “Say, what would you think of a little walk, Frances?” he suggested the next morning.

  “Alone?” I asked, astonished and a little unnerved, because I had assumed he and Amanda wouldn’t want to be apart for even a minute! But Uncle Matthew said, “You and I haven’t seen each other for so long—I think there are a few things we should talk about.”

  It took an unexpectedly long time to make our way down the street. Every few yards someone came out of their house to greet Uncle Matthew and ask him the same questions: Had he really been there at the beach and in the boats, was it true that the British had been forced to leave all their military equipment in France, and why had the Germans been able to beat us in the first place? Uncle Matthew patiently explained to each of them that he had stood belly deep in the English Channel while bullets splashed into the water all around him, that they had been shot at from planes for sixteen hours a day prior to that without any British fighters appearing in the sky, and that in his opinion, England had entered this war woefully inadequately prepared.

  The more often I heard it, the more horrified I was, because only then did I understand what a miracle it was that Uncle Matthew had come home unharmed! I was glad when we finally reached the next street, where no one knew us and no one asked questions.

  “Frances, I want to tell you how deeply sorry I am that you’ve lost your father,” Uncle Matthew began, and he looked at me with such sadness that much to my chagrin, tears welled up in my eyes. To not be able to cry for Papa and then to tear up because someone expressed sympathy for me—that was absurd!

  “I’ve seen a lot of men die in the past few days,” he continued, “and believe me, it’s something I’ll never forget. B
ut I also saw many, many men praying—to God, to Jesus, to Mary, to the saints. God is so much greater than we can ever imagine. So why shouldn’t he appear to different people in different forms? Your father was a Christian, but he was also a Jew. He was one of us. We want to ask you if it would offend your parents in any way if we prayed a kaddish for him.”

  “Oh, Uncle Matthew, definitely not! That would be so wonderful… and I couldn’t be at the funeral in Holland, you know…”

  “Exactly,” he said kindly. “So that’s settled.”

  I hooked my arm into his. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

  “So am I, with my whole heart! I heard the most amazing things about you—you being here was the only thing that kept Amanda from total despair. I should never have left against her will. But one word—la France!—and there was no stopping me.” He shook his head remorsefully. “And now look what I’ve done! My expensive equipment is gone, I barely escaped with my life, and am more than grateful that my wife will have me back at all.”

  “And now?” I asked, letting go of his arm again.

  “We’re still at war. I’ll help take care of the Frenchmen and then sign up for the Home Guard. And Amanda wants to go back to helping her old people at the nursing home at least once a week in addition to working at the Elysée. We’ll have to see how we manage everything. While we’re at it, do you have any wishes?”

  “No!” I replied, and laughed. “I just want to stay with you. Otherwise I don’t care about anything.”

  “That would be my next point,” Uncle Matthew continued in a serious tone. “We’re facing a power that will go to any lengths—I hardly need to tell you that! Over in France they ran right over us, and if they should attack here in the next days or weeks, we don’t have much left to fight them off with. Frances…” He hesitated a moment and then decided to speak openly. “There’s no reason to think they’ll spare the Jews in this country. Under the circumstances, it would be better for you not to be staying with a Jewish family.”