by Moya Simons
Time froze as Gertrude and Heinrich stood together in the middle of the room, Gertrude with a tea-towel in her hand, Heinrich with his head lowered, both barely breathing. The soldier hesitated for just a moment then leaned forward, ruffled Freddy’s white-blond hair, stared into his clear eyes, then stood to attention. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he saluted.
‘He looked for a moment,’ Freddy told me, ‘at my grandparents. His eyes ran over them, then back to me. How could he suspect my grandparents of anything? They are too old. He saluted me again, then turned and left.’
Freddy, why were you so brave after all you have said to me?
He guessed my unsaid question. ‘I took an awful chance,’ he said. ‘I could have been sent to one of those terrible places people whisper about if I’d been caught out. Lots of shocking things could have been done to me if they’d found you. I thought about that, then I thought about them taking you away, you with that long silly scarf and your sister’s journal and no voice, being forced into a truck, and disappearing forever.’
He took a deep breath. ‘How could I let that happen? I need someone to boss around.’
Chapter Fourteen
FREDDY TOLD ME about himself. ‘My father is in Russia. He is a fighting man. My mother died when I was little. She’d been sick since she was a small girl. I don’t remember her, but I have a photograph. Here, look at this. You can see that she was beautiful and my father was good-looking too. It’s sad that I don’t remember her. Gertrude and Heinrich are her parents. They don’t like my father, maybe because my father believes in Hitler’s war. I miss my father sometimes, but war is war. Everyone has to make sacrifices.’ He turned away.
Sometimes Gertrude spoke in a low voice about the changing times. ‘Hitler cannot ignore this anymore. The war is lost. The bombs are coming from the Americans, the British, Russia and their friends. They will bomb Germany out of existence, but it will end the war. Meantime, we have to wait it out. There is nowhere to go.’
I thought about what Gertrude had said. Yes, bombs shattered lives, but the only way this war could end was with more bombs. It would take many Allied soldiers and bombs to stop Hitler’s evil.
Gertrude asked me many times to speak to her. Just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would do she said. I couldn’t. Papa would tell me when it was time to speak.
‘You are my small bird,’ Gertrude said. ‘One day you will be free and fly away somewhere, although I wonder where, for there seems to be no safe place for Jews.’
Freddy told Gertrude, ‘Rachel speaks to me in her way.’
There were grey hollows under his eyes and the bones on his cheeks stuck out now. He smiled at me. I knew that he had finally forgiven me for Jesus being Jewish.
ONE DAY IN 1945 the bombs were never ending. We hid, hands linked, under the bed. Nobody knocked on our door anymore to ask us where we were when the bombs fell. It had reached the point where nobody worried about anyone other than their own family and themselves. The bombs were dropping without discrimination—a flash of light, a terrible noise, fire, smoke.
Then it happened. Our building was hit. The roof started caving in. We stumbled out from under the bed as the walls groaned and fell around us. There was dust and smoke everywhere. A heavy chair hit by a crumbling wall suddenly fell and pinned me to the floor.
Freddy called out, ‘Rachel, Rachel.’
He appeared through the smoke haze, coughing, and lifted the chair off me. Gertrude, limping and with a bloodied arm, found us. Coughing and crying, her face and hair bleached by white dust, she took our hands.
I couldn’t leave yet. I had to find Mama’s longest scarf in the world and Miri’s journal.
‘Come, Rachel. The building will collapse,’ Gertrude begged.
I looked around. I pushed away Freddy’s hand. Ah yes, there was the scarf, sticking out from under a section of caved-in ceiling, chalk coloured from broken plaster.
‘Let it go, Rachel,’ Freddy called out. ‘We’ll be killed.’
I couldn’t. I grabbed on to the scarf, pulling it out from the rubble. Miri’s journal? It was all I had of her. Wasn’t that it, poking out from a fallen beam? Freddy pushed me safely away as I picked it up just before the remaining ceiling groaned and fell around us and coated us in plaster.
Where was Heinrich? He must have gone on ahead of us.
The three of us stumbled to the broken door and then crawled down the cracked staircase. As we reached the bottom other people joined us—mothers and children, old men in singlets and pants. A child stopped to pick up a doll she’d dropped on the landing. She opened her mouth and stared at me.
‘Hurry, hurry,’ her mother said, and the child grabbed her doll and ran ahead.
I had a doll once too, but I had to leave her behind.
The woman from the upstairs apartment glanced at me with complete disinterest as we crushed against one another, everyone trying to get out of the building.
The smoke thickened. Gertrude said she hoped the rotting wood would hold as we stumbled to the front door. I was both terrified and fascinated by the sea of people around me. I hadn’t been with others for so long, it seemed strange. Nobody cared about me. Someone tripped on a child’s shoe and cursed.
‘Mr Heinz,’ Gertrude said. ‘I would be obliged if you would stop shoving me. You only make things worse.’
‘We are going to die in here if you don’t move quickly,’ he replied. ‘Move, move, move. You children, you have young legs. Get out of here. Move.’
The front door was split open like a gaping wound.
We pushed our way through it, scrambling into a night which was made bright by fire. ‘Opa?’ said Freddy, pulling at Gertrude’s coat. ‘Where is he?’
‘I am going back for him,’ said Gertrude, her hand on her throat as she gasped for breath. ‘He was hurt. He told me to get you children out first. Here, hold this.’
She handed me a frying pan. Mama’s frying pan. It was covered with dust. Why had she taken it from the rubble?
Suddenly there was an almighty roar followed by the collapse of the building. Everyone scrambled onto the road, across the road, anywhere, everywhere. Walls, bricks, wood and tiles thundered and fell around us.
Gertrude stumbled back. As we all grouped, trembling, in rubble near the skeleton of a building opposite, Friedrich stared back at what had been his home—at the blazing fire and ruin. He wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
‘Heinrich?’ Gertrude called into the smoke around her. ‘Heinrich?’ she asked the heavy fingers of fire burning where we had once lived.
Freddy coughed, then vomited his insides out. Poor Freddy.
I know what it feels like, I wanted to say to him, to have someone you love taken from you.
Cut off from everything but his own grief, Freddy buried his head in his hands and his shoulders heaved as he cried for the grandfather he wouldn’t see again.
All around us people limped, ran, hobbled and stumbled, although no-one seemed to know where to go. We, too, wandered aimlessly. Finally we took shelter in a building left standing, not just standing but with every room untouched by shells.
I am just like everyone else now, I thought. Nobody looks twice at me. I am just another child caught in war, looking for food and shelter. I am no longer hidden, yet it seems to me all of us here are hiding from some bigger monster.
And then they came—the men in tanks and jeeps rolled down the streets. The soldiers in them wore different uniforms, but they were still soldiers.
People gathered outside the broken buildings. A trickle of bewildered men and women seeped out of our building, and then more poured out when it seemed safe. There were no gunshots. Gertrude, Freddy and I stood beside the rubble and watched the soldiers.
‘Are they Americans or Russians?’ someone asked.
‘Americans,’ someone else answered, ‘but the Russians are close by too.’
Were they going to round us up and kill us? It was so long since I’d felt safe t
hat I could only look at the soldiers suspiciously. I reminded myself that these soldiers had come to fight Hitler, not to support him. Hitler’s enemy had to be our friends.
The soldiers stared at the people and the shattered buildings. The people stared back. One man waved his fist at them, but mostly people just stood there, wondering what was going to happen next. There was nothing to say. But my mind was racing. Was the war over? Could my family come home now? Where was home? All I could see were destroyed buildings and dust and the glass of broken windows.
The soldiers didn’t look unfriendly or even frightening. One child waved to them. A soldier in a jeep waved back, smiling. The mother of the child pulled him away, and they disappeared into the crowd.
Freddy looked uncertainly at these new soldiers in their jeeps and trucks, and put his arm around me. He was the man of the family now. I clutched Miri’s dusty journal and held on tightly to the world’s longest scarf.
PART TWO
Tell me, where shall I go?
Chapter Fifteen
THE STREETS WERE filled with people searching and calling out to each other. I watched all this, in my silent world, trying to understand what was happening.
‘There is someone alive here. Quickly, help me,’ an old man yelled from a crumbled building.
Freddy and I ran to him and tore at the rubble with our hands, though Gertrude tried to pull me back. I cried silently with happiness when a man was pulled out from a pile of broken bricks and grey dust. His mouth was caked with blood, but he was alive. I saw his dusty Nazi uniform, and, bewildered, stood back. Freddy took my hand and we walked away.
I found myself staring at children who were about my age with their shaggy hair, torn clothing and dirty faces. Some were with adults. Others quite alone. Were we still children? I didn’t feel like a child anymore. Since Heinrich’s death I felt childhood was far behind me.
People were on the move, in carts with horses if they had them, but mainly just walking out of streets that didn’t look like streets anymore. Some held placards with photos of missing family. ‘Have you seen this boy? His name is Fritz Müller. He’s nine years old with fair hair and blue eyes. Was last seen in…’
I looked around for a face I knew. Would Miri suddenly pop out of a crowd and claim me? Was that Papa over there, that stocky man with a beard? No, that wasn’t Papa. That man’s eyebrows did not reach out to shake hands with one another.
Would they recognise me? I was twelve years old. No longer a nine-year-old with bows in her hair. My hair was matted with dust and my face was dirty. The blue dress I wore was bleached dull grey by mortar dust and smoke.
In the building where we sheltered no-one asked or cared whether I was Jewish. I was just another child of the war. Nobody cared about the dirt on their clothing or having a bath. Many cared about seeing a doctor, for there were so many injured, and everyone cared a great deal about food and water.
Food parcels were brought in by the soldiers and the Red Cross, but the heavy trucks could never bring enough food. Those people strong enough queued at food stations twice and got twice as much. The weak depended on the strong, who didn’t always care about hungry people.
A baby boy was born in the building where we sheltered. I went to see him, all red and screaming and so tiny, nestled in his mother’s arms. Later, someone told Freddy and me that the baby did not live.
For the first time in so long, I began to cry. Tears streamed down my dusty cheeks. Gertrude tried to comfort me. ‘It’s the hunger, Rachel. Mothers are not healthy enough to have healthy babies.’
Freddy blinked away tears. ‘I wonder about my father,’ he said to me. ‘Is he still alive or has he too been swallowed by the war?’
Occasionally, soldiers threw chocolate and biscuits to us from their trucks. One soldier smiled at me, but I was scared and quickly looked away.
‘We have to be careful. Don’t take the chocolate, Rachel,’ Freddy said, holding me back. ‘I heard a man at our building say that it’s poisoned. They’re trying to kill us.’
Gertrude heard him. ‘Freddy, only the Nazis do that.’ She caught a bar of chocolate in mid-air. ‘Here, have some.’
She opened the bar and gave us each four squares of chocolate. The taste was heavenly. I let a square settle in my mouth and sucked it slowly.
Freddy reddened. ‘I have learned a lot,’ he told me as he ate. ‘A lot about the damage lies can do. A lot about Jews. But how can I trust anyone now? If the Führer told lies, how can one trust these new soldiers with their flashing smiles and chocolate?’
‘Ah, Freddy,’ said Gertrude, ‘we’ve been living with lies for so long. It will take a while to trust again.’
As we sucked the chocolate, Freddy asked me, ‘Why is it that Leipzig is occupied by men who came to stop the war but can only do it by firstly bombing buildings and killing? These new soldiers bombed a building that killed my grandfather. Hitler has killed millions. That’s what I’ve heard. Do we have to fight war with war?’
I shrugged. There was no answer to his questions. I didn’t understand either.
His lips smudged with chocolate, he looked at me seriously. ‘I have decided, Rachel, that it’s time for me to hate war. All war. It doesn’t matter who starts it. War only brings death and suffering.’
I nodded. I took his hand and squeezed it. I feel the same way.
Much later, Freddy told Gertrude and me that people were saying that Hitler had killed himself, his wife too, in his Berlin bunker, when the Russian army arrived in May 1945.
‘Everyone was talking about it. Hitler used poison, then he shot his wife and himself. Just to be sure there was no trace, the Nazi guards burnt the bodies, Rachel. How foolish. Everyone knows that Hitler left plenty of traces.’
THE DAY THAT Gertrude handed me over to the Red Cross started as a day like every other. Streets were being cleared, trucks were taking away the bodies found in the bombed-out buildings and Germans were queuing for food at stations set up by the Red Cross.
Gertrude spoke to a Red Cross nurse for quite a time. The nurse wrote notes in a book then Gertrude turned to me. ‘My darling, the time has come for you to reclaim your life. Somewhere out there your family will be looking for you. The Red Cross will look after you. They will find your family, those who are left. You are old enough now to search for them.’
I clung to Gertrude. Don’t you want me anymore? But she was right. I was old enough to understand. Somewhere out there was my family. I hoped so much for that to be true. The Red Cross would find them. Gertrude had said so. It was time for me to leave her and Freddy.
Freddy held me too. He hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. He had never been so affectionate before, and I felt my cheeks redden.
‘Silent one, I will miss you. When we meet again you must call me Freddy.’
‘Your life is in front of you, Rachel,’ said Gertrude, wiping her tears away. ‘It will be a good life. A better life. Don’t forget us, though. We will write to you through the Red Cross. And one day, when you are safe and sound, I will send you your mama’s frying pan.’
I looked down at the frying pan oddly clutched in Gertrude’s hand. Both Mama’s hand and Gertrude’s had used this old copper pan. I also reached out and touched the pan before I was pulled away, and in that last moment I felt Gertrude’s hand upon the pan and my mama’s too, and the hands of generations of my family, including my great-grandmother’s whose painting had hung in our old home.
Then I was taken, gently but firmly, and put on a bus with other children, and several nurses. Although my stomach was knotted with fear and grief at leaving Gertrude and Freddy, I thought that maybe this was the way the war ended. Families, torn apart for years, found each other again.
The more I clutched the world’s longest scarf and felt the small weight of Miri’s journal, the more I began to feel that somewhere, my family was alive. The Red Cross would surely find them.
On the bus, young children wailed and were comforted by th
e nurses. I, on the other hand, felt the tight muscles at the side of my mouth relax, and for the first time in ages, I smiled.
I would find my family. It would happen. It must happen.
Chapter Sixteen
THE BUS RATTLED along. With my nose pressed against the window I looked out at ruined towns, where the broken buildings were being knocked down before they collapsed. Women with scarves wrapped around their faces to protect them from the dust were shovelling rubble into carts. There were men there too but mainly women. Where were the men? Killed in the war? Heavy machinery moved twisted metal. Soldiers were everywhere.
The faces of the people were heavy. They knew that the war was over. Ordinary Germans were the unhappy survivors. No homes, their families lost. I wanted to feel some pity for them but I couldn’t. I remembered the walks along the street with my parents, the sneers and the little girl who’d spat on me. I wondered if I’d forgive them one day.
Eventually the bus arrived at a village. Most of the buildings had been flattened, but at the end of a lane I saw a winding driveway that led to a large two-storey brick home with a slate roof. It had been turned into a hospital. How strange, I thought, that some buildings remained whole while others had been flattened. ‘How did the bombs miss it? A miracle,’ a Red Cross nurse said.
‘Rubbish. There are no miracles, just good luck,’ said another nurse.
I overheard them talking as we left the bus. ‘This place belonged to a Nazi general. It was his country home. He was killed. What would he say if he knew his precious home was being used to care for war orphans, many of them Jewish?’
The first thing I noticed in the house was the separation of the well children from the sick. Part of the mansion had been turned into a long dormitory for healthy children who did not have family to care for them. Another section with numerous bedrooms was being used as a hospital. Most of the children were survivors from the concentration camps. Many of them had awful illnesses and were suffering from starvation. They had been put in camps towards the end of the war and had just enough energy to see the war out before the camps were liberated. Red Cross vans had brought as many sick children to the home as they could carry. There were also children who had been hurt in the bombings.
