by Moya Simons
We healthy children ate in a big dining room and the sick children were fed in the hospital. The nurses were very careful not to feed them too much as their stomachs couldn’t take it. They fed them tiny amounts of watered milk and sugar and small amounts of food every few hours, and slowly increased their food until they could digest proper meals. I found this out by listening to the talk of the nurses and Red Cross staff who helped care for us.
I heard one nurse tell another that one and a half million Jewish children had been murdered, most of them under the age of six. It was such a big number. The nurses looked shocked. Someone else said six million Jews died. Nobody seemed to know the exact figure. The number seemed impossible. No-one could imagine such a number. Then I listened as they talked about all the deaths from the war—some said twenty million, others said thirty million. I tried to string together faces in my mind—children from the street I lived in, my own sister, my cousins. I ran to the corridor and vomited into a basin there.
Normally, when the nurses spoke of these things they made sure no children could hear them, but as I was mute, they often didn’t notice I was there. I moved so quietly I seemed to dissolve into the walls. Being mute made me an excellent listener, and I replayed their information in my mind, trying somewhere in their stories to find news of the Jews of Leipzig and what had become of them.
I was curious about the other children and wished I could speak with them, as they talked nonstop to one another. One child called Ursula told me how she’d been hidden in the woods by a farmer. She’d slept in a barn and he came in each day with a bucket of water for her to wash with and another bucket for her to use as a toilet. Inside his coat he carried food. She’d been alone for seven months with no-one to speak to. She had no idea what had become of her family.
I learned through the nurses that, when the death camps were liberated by the Americans, the British or the Russians, some of the survivors wanted to beat up the Nazis who had been their guards. The survivors didn’t care if they used their last ounce of energy. At once concentration camp they were stopped by a rabbi. ‘Don’t become like them. Stay human.’ So there are survivors from the camps, I thought. My family must be among them.
At the home, I slept in the long dormitory with other children who were healthy. At night a tiny girl called Sarah crept into bed with me. I didn’t mind at all. This little girl was a comfort. She reminded me of how I’d cuddled up to Annie.
One night I woke up as I heard a whistling noise. Was it bombs falling? Together, Sarah and I crept under the bed and curled up together. We took our pillows with us and I covered her with the world’s longest scarf. We weren’t the only ones. While the whistle broke the silence of the night, children silently crawled into bed with one another.
The next day I saw a boy, younger than me, blowing a toy whistle. I pulled it away from him. ‘It’s all I have,’ he said to me, his face scrunched with fear. Maybe the whistle had been under his pillow and somehow he’d leaned on it causing it to screech in the middle of the night. Either way he’d scared us. I couldn’t throw it away, though I wanted to. One of the girls told him how whistles, sirens, loud noises and even the barking of dogs terrified us. The boy, who’d been hidden on a remote farm and not had our experiences, nodded and kept his whistle in his pocket from that time onward.
Outside the building there was a patch of green grass and even some swings. Those of us who were strong enough used the swings.
Once when I was on the swings I noticed a child in the hospital part of the home watching me through a window on the ground floor. I stopped the swing and curiously walked over to her.
I had never ever seen anyone so skinny. Her face was not like that of a child; it was so gaunt and bony that only her huge eyes showed expression. Her brown hair was short and thin with bald patches between fine tufts of hair. It looked like it had fallen out and started growing again. For a long time we just stared at each other through the window. Then she coughed and a nurse came and took her away. That was when I realised how lucky I’d been that Gertrude and Heinrich had found me and taken the risk of hiding me.
I could not imagine what this child had been through. With all my heart, I wished her better, and that soon she would be outside in the garden sitting on a swing and skipping on the grass.
ONE DAY SOMEONE came to get me from the garden. I was taken to an office. A woman sat opposite me, her black hair carefully folded in waves, her hands clasped together. She smiled at me. She had powder on her face and ruby lips and looked like a movie star.
‘Ah, Rachel, the child who does not speak. Do you know any English?’
I shook my head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said in heavily accented German. ‘You’ll learn. We are sending you to England in an aeroplane, Rachel, to a wonderful place there. It’s an orphanage for Jewish refugees. England has agreed to take a thousand Jewish refugees and about twenty-seven large homes are being used to house child refugees, before they are either adopted or placed with surviving relatives. If you have any family left, the Red Cross keeps good records and they will be found. Maybe you have aunts or uncles somewhere?’
I wished I could tell her about the long table for the Sabbath, the bread throwing, my cousins and aunt and uncle, Miri, Mama and Papa.
I would be leaving Germany, I thought. Would the Red Cross still look for my family if I left?
As if reading my thoughts the lady said, ‘Don’t worry. If you have family left then leave it to us. It will take time, but we will find them.’
I began to wonder. Perhaps this was the place I had to go to before my parents could pick me up. Hope began to swell in me. Yes, I’d go to this other place, England. The lady told me the plane would look like a whale with wings. I would sit inside with lots of other children.
If I keep travelling far enough I’ll find them all, I thought, and one glorious day, I will have a party and invite Gertrude and Freddy, so my parents can properly thank them. I missed Gertrude and Freddy more than I thought possible, and gruff old Heinrich, now buried somewhere in the rubble of Leipzig.
Chapter Seventeen
AT THE END of 1945, with the tiny girl who had slept with me at night, we went by train to Prague and from there flew in a former war plane to England. With other children from different countries, many from Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague, I flew in the belly of the silver-grey whale with wings. I carried a small case with a little clothing given to me by the Red Cross, and put Miri’s journal inside. Around my neck, tied double, trailed the world’s longest scarf.
There were two long planks inside the aircraft on which we children and two adults working for the Red Cross sat. A Red Cross lady told us that men had jumped out from this plane in parachutes to fight the Nazis. I thought about how they would have dropped slowly and dangerously to the earth, unable to avoid being hit, praying to reach the ground safely, their parachutes billowing like pillows above them.
The Red Cross had gathered about twenty Jewish children from many nations to fly to England. Another group would follow soon. Some children were being taken by train back to their homelands to surviving friends or relatives. Still others were going to other countries. I sat listening to languages I did not understand. The one great comfort was that we were all Jewish, we didn’t have to wear a yellow star on our clothing and no-one made nasty comments.
Some of the children delighted in the occasional dipping of the plane and the groan of the engine. Others turned pale and told each other they felt sick.
A boy clutched his stomach and said something that had to mean, ‘Here it comes.’ A paper bag was handed to him in time, but the smell lingered. We pulled faces and children uttered about the smell in different languages, holding their noses or pointing and laughing, understanding each other perfectly.
One child began to sing and the others joined in. They forgot their giddiness and sang their own songs in different languages to different melodies. I had no voice and no song
to sing. I tried to remember our Sabbath songs from long ago, but they’d vanished.
The tiny girl, Sarah, looked at me and asked, ‘Gehörst du zu mir?’ (Are you mine?) She pulled at strands in her hair and asked everyone around her the same question. Eventually an older girl stopped singing and put her arms around her. ‘Ja.’
I wanted to feel part of this group. We had so much in common. I wanted to join in the singing, to add my own song. The war was over. No more Nazis in trucks, no more bombs. That was something to sing about. I strained my throat. Nothing happened.
There was laughter among the girls and boys as the plane swerved and we were tossed together. I snuggled up to a girl next to me. She wore a floral dress and a red cardigan. There was a small white bow in her wavy brown hair. Her pale eyes were too large for her face. There was something about her that reminded me of myself at a younger age. She said something to me in another language. She couldn’t speak German. She put an arm around me. This was a language we both understood.
I wondered what was going on in the minds of the other children. What were their memories? How had they survived? Had they been hidden like me?
Hours passed. The plane touched down with a bump that woke me. The girl next to me no longer had her arm around me. She was sitting upright, her eyes shining. The lady who had accompanied us shook me gently and said to me in German: ‘We are here. We are in England. Wake up, sleepyhead.’
Out we tumbled one by one, from the hatch of the air force plane. We were on a runway, where other planes sat, left over from the war. We were herded onto a bus and driven from the airfield along neat streets where buildings were still intact and trees and flowers bloomed and people walked freely.
Some older girls tried to talk to me in their own language. I shrugged politely and pointed to my throat: I’d talk if I could, but I can’t. They nodded. There was no teasing, no surprise on their part, but I longed to talk to them.
The stocky woman who spoke to me in German was called Martha. She had grey hair, parted down the centre, with pins holding it in place on each side of her face, and pink cheeks. She told the children, ‘This is Rachel. She can’t speak yet but one day she will.’ She said this in several languages, ending in German.
Papa, please, I want you to tell me that it’s okay for me to speak now.
As we drove through larger towns bomb damage became obvious. Sometimes whole streets were levelled but other streets were untouched, just like in Germany. In the countryside cows grazed in meadows and thatched cottages were unmarked by war.
We stopped at country inns to eat and use the bathroom. The inns were old with low ceilings and white stone walls. We ate sandwiches. Butter was still being rationed, so jam was spread across the bread. We drank milk. Ladies with cheeks the colour of rosy apples served us. They spoke in English, this strange language that I would have to learn. The other children all said, ‘Thank you,’ in English as we’d been taught on the bus.
Towards evening, when our eyes were tired and I, in my silent world, felt lonely and cut off from the other children, we arrived at the outskirts of Hartfield village. Peter, our driver who could speak many languages, pulled up by the side of the road. Martha moved from her seat and stood near Peter at the front of the bus.
‘All right, children, I want you to listen.’ She paused while Peter translated quickly into several languages. ‘Hartfield is a beautiful English village, a whole thousand years old, in Surrey, about two hours by bus south of London, the capital of England. Hartfield House is where you will be staying. It has been kindly donated to house Jewish children war refugees while we get you settled. You must be well behaved. You are on your way to a new life.’
The children were sitting in groups according to the language they spoke. French girls sat together. Hungarians had become inseparable. Italian and Polish children had found someone to sit next to who spoke the same language. I sat near the back of the bus beside a German girl.
‘My name is Greta,’ she said.
Greta chattered nonstop, smiling and pointing out of the window as we had travelled from the airfield.
After Martha had told us a little about Hartfield, the bus rumbled along the street again. Twilight had turned into evening, and the night lights showed a small village with a row of shops, lines of old houses, a church and a pub.
‘My aunt and uncle live in England,’ Greta explained. ‘They will come for me. They shall be my new parents. Look, I can just see some cows in the meadow. At least I think they’re cows. It’s getting dark quickly, isn’t it? That is a very long, long scarf you are wearing. Is it a scarf or a rope? It’s long enough for you to use it to swing from a tree. I shall live in a big house again, and have my own horse. Our house is next to Buckingham Palace, and I shall ride each day with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. They know I am coming and any day now will send a royal coach to collect me.’
I nodded, but although I was a lover of daydreams, I thought it very odd that she knew the royal family and that they would send a royal coach.
‘We shall all learn English, Rachel,’ Greta continued. ‘You will too. When your voice comes back you’ll speak perfect English. In fact, I have started to forget German. After all, I am English now, and soon to be reacquainted with the royal family. Did I tell you that the King and Queen of England have invited me over for dinner as soon as I am settled?’ She sighed. ‘I shall have to get some new clothes, I suppose.’
She patted her frayed cardigan and smiled as the bus turned a corner and I fell against the side of her, but not even a bump would stop her. Greta continued talking on and on about her royal connections.
I remembered how I used to curl up in the wardrobe and make up wonderful stories of fairies and farms and cows and meadows. It made me feel better. I even believed my stories. But Greta was too old for fairy stories.
‘In the palace, they have some of my father’s artwork. He was a famous painter, you know. His work hangs in all the major galleries throughout Europe.’
Nothing would stop her chatter.
Sarah sat in her little floral dress, a bow in her hair, with Martha in the front of the bus. In the driver’s seat sat the sad-faced man called Peter. He wore a speckled grey coat and a tweed cap. Occasionally he translated words from one child to another. Greta told me that he spoke every known language in the world, and it had been told to her that he could even speak Martian, should there be an alien landing.
I smiled. This was so funny. Imagine serious Peter welcoming a little green man to Earth. Greta looked puzzled, then annoyed. ‘I don’t know why this is so amusing for you,’ she said in a haughty voice. ‘It is all quite true.’
At the end of a lane we turned into a winding driveway. The twin lights of the bus caught the outline of a grand house. We rattled down the driveway to the entrance where Peter parked. Martha stood up and cheerfully said to us, ‘When you are rested and settled and have learnt some English you will attend school in Hartfield village. This is to be your home for now.’
School? A real school? With desks and a teacher? I thought of Miri, Mama and Papa. I hadn’t seen my family in three years now. Freddy had become my teacher and I was a really good writer and reader. In German. Now I had to start again. Learning a new language. And I couldn’t even speak.
Lights had been turned on inside the mansion and as we stepped down from the bus, we could see quite clearly that it was like a house from a fairy tale. It was three storeys high and had tall chimneys and large, friendly windows. Vines trailed around the brickwork. Beautiful trimmed hedges and flowers framed the house, and Martha told us that beyond the house were woods and orchards. So much space. I couldn’t wait until morning when I could see everything perfectly. If I could have dreamt of a fairy castle when I was in hiding, Hartfield House would have been it. The only thing missing was my family.
‘Oh.’ Greta took in a deep breath. ‘It’s wonderful. Just like I imagined. I wonder how long it will be before the royal family will com
e to visit.’ Her laughing blue eyes twinkled with hope as I tweaked one of her fair plaits. Falling in behind the others, everyone talking at once, we filed through the open front door into our new life.
We walked into a glorious wood-panelled hall, heavily decorated with paintings, and with a big chandelier hanging on a golden chain from the ceiling. Martha told us, ‘The war is over. This is now your home. You are safe. However,’ she went on, ‘I want you all to remember that the English people too are on strict rations. You must eat everything on your plate and be grateful, for the authorities have raised rations for Hartfield House. You are lucky.’
Tiny Sarah attached herself to Martha’s dress and sucked the material. Martha picked her up and Sarah buried her face in Martha’s neck.
Lucky? We children stared at each other, each taking in her word. Lucky because so many had died and we’d survived?
Chapter Eighteen
OTHER PLANES WOULD bring more children but we were the first group to arrive at Hartfield House. There were two dormitories, one for boys and one for girls. As the dormitory for girls was larger, some of the smaller boys slept in our dormitory as well. Bright-coloured quilts covered the beds, and the walls had flowered wallpaper on them. On each side of the dormitory were wardrobes and chests of drawers, and at the very end was a large window overlooking the garden. Even now, at night-time, we could see a silhouetted tree doing a shadow dance outside.
‘Look,’ Greta said to me. ‘Our names are on our beds. And clothing and hair ribbons too. Rachel, our beds are side by side. That is because we are friends, like sisters. Would you like to be my sister? Just until I find my family, of course, then we shall go our separate ways.’
