My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  The young woman was practically still a girl herself, not more than early twenties, and her partner—clearly the father of the little girl, who had inherited his brown curls and round cheeks—wore a uniform, but probably only for this occasion, because it was hard to overlook that it was already tight across the chest and stomach. One of Monty’s boys! The captain saluted when he recognized the insignia of the Eighth Army.

  The coordinates they had shown him were those of the HMS Cole or the Princess of Malta, which weren’t far away. Three hours on a calm sea, he guessed. He didn’t ask which one: Sometime in the next hour the first of them would come over and tell him, and be grateful and relieved that Captain Swanson was familiar with the story of “their” ship.

  Looking out over the water, he was glad the day was calm. It made it so much easier on the relatives to see a peaceful blue sea, feel a warm breeze, and experience absolute calm in the place where “it” had happened. Those would be their memories from that point on, and they wouldn’t know how it had really been.

  The elderly captain of the small charter boat glanced over his passengers at short intervals. The men stood at the railing with the child safely between them, and the women had started to weave a wreath on a table in the rear of the boat. He saw what they were tying into it, and was amazed.

  But the younger of the two wasn’t concentrating on what she was doing. She kept looking at him, as if she was mulling over how he came to be making such a trip with them! The captain met her gaze, held it for a second, then looked forward again and discreetly went about his own business.

  “Isn’t it a wonderful day?” Amanda asked me.

  She leaned back for a minute, breathed in deeply, and I knew her cheeks were touched by more than just the wind.

  I never went to college. Three and a half months after Amanda brought me to Mamu and Uncle Erik, I returned to England together with Walter, finished my schooling, and got married right away—at nineteen, and more than ready for it! Our chuppah stood in the garden on Harrington Grove, which could just barely accommodate the wedding party: Amanda and Matthew, Mamu and Uncle Erik, all the Vathareerpurs and Mrs. Collins, Bekka’s brother Thomas Liebich, who had come from Cambridge, and Millie, who had traveled from Kent, as well as a few friends from school. From Walter’s side came three friends from the army and a whole contingent of fire brigade colleagues, who enthusiastically tried to do the dances.

  But when Walter placed his ring on my finger and Rabbi Bloom ceremoniously read the ketubah out loud, my thoughts suddenly flew to all those who should have been there, and I tried not to think of them all by name, otherwise I probably would have started crying bitterly at the happiest moment of my life.

  Walter and I also had to overlook the fact that it wasn’t Mamu’s best day. She followed the entire ceremony, which was unfamiliar to her, with cool discomfort, and later that evening I heard her say to Bekka’s brother, “Now my only daughter has really turned into one of those absurd orthodox Jews.”

  By then I knew how she could be, but some days it was just more difficult to bear than others.

  The changes had begun already during my stay in Holland. The stronger and healthier Mamu became physically, the more violently things seemed to be churned up inside her, until in the end almost all her interactions were clouded by anger and suspicion.

  Mamu went out in the streets every day. She didn’t have any particular goal except to look strangers in the face and ask herself what this one or that might have done during the occupation. She brushed away the good years with an impatient sweep of her arm, as if it had been nothing but a sham. We hoped her rage would wear itself out over time. But the neighbors started to find her unnerving. Finally, the van Dyck sisters, with whom she lived and who had made a small room available for me, tearfully asked Uncle Erik to find a different place to live. Mamu had hurled back at them that she hoped Aunt Ruth’s death, for which she held them responsible, would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

  I wasn’t there to help with the move. When I left for England with Walter, it was clear that my staying wouldn’t have changed anything. If there was anyone who Mamu felt understood her, it was Uncle Erik, with whom she shared the majority of her experiences and losses. But me? As painful as it was for both of us, the longer I stayed, the clearer it became that I hadn’t grown up as her daughter.

  I went to the synagogue on Fridays, observed Shabbat, didn’t eat pork or shellfish; that alone was fodder for countless arguments. At first she accepted it with wonder, but after several weeks it burst out of her: How could I worship a God who had allowed his own people to be annihilated? Did she really have to remind me again how my father had died, or my aunt Ruth in Mamu’s arms? Had I forgotten Evchen and Betti, and did I want to defile the memory of Bekka, my own dead friend?

  I lost all control. Mamu had shown so little reaction to Bekka’s death that I had only mentioned it a single time; I understood that her own awful memories were more than enough to deal with. But to be accused of betraying Bekka—that was the one accusation I could least bear. “Leave Bekka out of it!” I snarled at her. “Don’t act like you suddenly care about her!”

  My mother recoiled, slapped me across the face, and ran from the room crying.

  From then on, each weekend brought the same discussions, beginning with accusations on Friday afternoon and dragging on smoldering and sullen until Saturday evening. My offer to go to church with Mamu only made things worse: My mother really felt betrayed when I declared that on top of everything else, I still believed in Jesus!

  If Walter hadn’t come to visit at regular intervals, I would have been frantic.

  Mamu and I had our nicest and most honest conversations only after I gingerly shared with her that Walter was returning to England and had asked me if I wanted to go with him.

  Mamu said immediately, “I think you should do it.”

  “And you?” I asked quietly. “I always imagined we’d live together in England one day…”

  “Maybe,” she answered evasively. “Maybe Erik and I will come later. But you shouldn’t wait that long.”

  “Mamu, do you know why I came to Holland to be with you?”

  “Well, I think because…” It was clearly difficult for her to say this out loud. “It had to do with love, I assume.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Ziska, every single day, whether in hiding or in the camp or later here, every single day I thought of you and wished…” Her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry. It has nothing to do with love, that this isn’t working. You have to believe me.”

  “I know.” Now I was crying after all.

  “You’re a good girl. I’m so glad you came; it means a lot to me. But now go back and be happy. I can’t do it anymore.”

  When I went home to England with Walter, I went for good. Mamu and I phoned each other at least once a week, she came to our wedding, and once in a while I told her—half in jest—about apartments that were available nearby. But in spring 1948 she and Uncle Erik announced they were not coming to England, but going to Israel, the recently established nation of the Jews. Despite Mamu’s religious beliefs, she felt the Jews were the only people who could understand what she had lived through.

  Mamu knew her grandchild only from photographs. Rebecca Lightfoot was born on September 10, 1948, and it was her grandmother Amanda who placed her in my arms. Walter and I often joke that Becky’s first, all-important bonding can’t have been with me; she and Amanda love each other dearly, have special nicknames for each other, and since our daughter has been able to walk we’ve had to lock our garden gate to keep her from toddling halfway through Finchley to “Amma.”

  Of all the stories we and her grandparents tell her, there’s one Becky wants to hear over and over again: “Amma, tell me why Ziska wanted to hide.”

  And Amanda tells her about the little girl who always had to run away from scary people and hide, until her mother finally sent her to a foreign country to live with strangers,
all by herself, where the scary people wouldn’t find her. But the girl couldn’t believe she was safe, and the first thing the girl asked her foster parents was where she could hide in this new country. Her foster mother explained to Ziska that she would never need to hide again, that she was quite safe now, and that her new parents would do everything they could to make sure nothing bad happened to her.

  The story always ends with the same little ritual.

  “And Ziska, that’s my mummy, right?” Becky asks, smiling.

  “That she is,” Amma answers. “And I should know, because I was there.”

  And so Amanda makes me a heroine in my daughter’s eyes, but she doesn’t yet tell her that there was a second little girl in that story. I want to do that myself one day, because I want Rebecca to know whom she’s named for.

  Walter returned to the fire brigade after his discharge from the army and is in charge of his own rig, and I write subtitles for foreign films. We still rent a basement apartment near my old school, but one of the plots with ruins on the other end of Harrington Grove is for sale, and Amanda and Matthew have offered us the money that was intended first for Gary’s college and then mine. We haven’t agreed yet, but Walter and Matthew are already busily planning and drawing a little two-story house with children’s rooms, a garden, a sandbox, and swings.

  The captain, who has been observing us so intently, would surely be surprised if he knew how this family on board his ship today was patched together! He was certainly surprised when Matthew and Walter put on their teffilin and started to pray quietly after he told them we’d soon reach our destination. There probably weren’t very many Jews in the navy.

  The man’s eyes grow wide and round when Walter takes the Military Cross off his uniform and gives it to me so I can weave it into the wreath.

  “Are you sure?” Amanda asks softly.

  “Quite sure,” he replies with a smile. “I’ve been looking forward to this for years.”

  Now Becky has to touch everything one more time and ask questions, even though she already knows the story behind them: the one about the worn-out little dictionary, for example, that her mummy brought with her to England a long time ago, or the delicate strip of white lace from her bridal veil. Then there’s the key to a certain room in the Elysée and a pacifier with a little hole from Becky’s first baby tooth. And all the colorful, hand-picked fall flowers come from Amma’s own garden; she kept them moist in a box during the flight, and held her breath while going through customs, hoping she wouldn’t have to open her suitcase!

  But when we finally reach the spot, Becky forgets all about the wreath. She stands on her tiptoes with a furrowed brow, holding tight to the railing, and peers into the water without a sound, serious and steady, as if she could make out the ship that lies thousands of feet below us. It’s perfectly still out here; little waves lap against the sides and I hear how Matthew’s soft voice becomes one with the expanse of the ocean and the breath of the wind: “Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which he has created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and during your days…”

  I see Amanda bend over and whisper to Becky, just two words, but she already understands. Together they lift our wreath and let it glide over the edge of our boat into the water. Immediately Becky reaches for her Amma’s hand and holds it tightly to her, as if she wants to share her sadness.

  “This is for you, Gary, my sweetheart,” Amanda whispers, which isn’t exactly what she was supposed to say.

  Matthew says it for her. “Gary Aaron Shepard,” he states in a loud, clear voice.

  “Paul Glücklich.” That comes from Walter, somewhat more softly.

  “Lotte Glücklich.”

  “Franz Mangold.

  “Ruth Bechstein.

  “Evchen Bechstein.

  “Betti Bechstein.”

  For a moment I don’t think I can continue. But Walter steps over to me and I feel him behind me, like a long time ago, when we made our first sea voyage, a stormy crossing when we were children.

  “Rebekka Liebich.

  “Susanna Liebich.

  “Hermann Liebich.

  “Julius Schueler.

  “Frank Duffy.

  “Ruben Seydensticker.

  “Chaja Seydensticker.”

  My voice grows stronger. All these names that want to finally be spoken! There will never be another trace of the Seydenstickers and their entire family, whose history stretches back into the seventeenth century, except my voice.

  “Benjamin Seydensticker.

  “Jakob Seydensticker.

  “Beile Seydensticker.

  “Herschel Seydensticker…”

  Our little wreath bobs away on the waves, comes back toward us a little ways, as if it was looking for just the right spot, then begins to sink quickly. Out of the corner of my eye I see that the captain has taken off his cap, and just as at the start of our trip, I suddenly feel very close to him.

  We belong to those who live with the dead. They depend on us. As long as I have a voice and as long as there is someone listening, I will name them, and tell our story.

  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.

  Afterword

  Anyone who reads a novel based on historic events is bound to ask themselves: How much of it is really true?

  The kindertransports are real. The first one left Berlin via Hamburg on December 1, 1938, and the last on August 31, 1939. Another train with 250 children from Prague wasn’t allowed to depart because of the outbreak of the war, and these children really experienced what happened to Ziska’s friend Bekka in the novel: Their transport was too late by a single day.

  Apart from the many familiar personalities whose names and deeds have been recorded in history books, all the characters in this story are entirely fictional. What they experience, however, is based on true events: the hopeless, inescapable situation of the Jews in Germany and the occupied countries; the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British children from the cities to the safer countryside when war broke out; the terror of the German bomb attacks; the consequences of years of war on the life of the island population. Without the seamen of the Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy, who provided protection for the supply ships on their dangerous passage through the Atlantic—men like Ziska’s brother, Gary—England couldn’t have withstood the war.

  Walter’s wartime experiences lead him to be interred in May 1940 with other “enemy aliens” on the Isle of Man for several months. Two years later he is a soldier stationed in North Africa and then Italy, where he follows the actual route taken by the Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery (“Monty”). For dramatic reasons, I have sent him overseas nine months earlier than was actually permitted to a native of Germany who joined the British Forces.

  In Holland and later in Belgium, Mamu and Uncle Erik’s family are overwhelmed by events that unfortunately really did happen. Also accurate is the dramatic rescue of about 370,000 British and French soldiers from a beach near Dunkirk in Belgium (May 26–June 3, 1940) that brings Matthew Shepard back to his Amanda. The radio program through which Ziska learns about it didn’t exist in exactly that form.

  I hope the Jewish community in Finchley, London, will not mind that I set the main stage for this story—the Shepards’ cozy little house on Harrington Grove—in their neighborhood. Any parallels to actual people, places, or events there are purely coincidental and not intentional.

  Berlin, July 2006

  Anne C. Voorhoeve

 

 

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