A new year, but nothing changed in this world except the passing of seasons and the daily passing of lives. Smoke from the crematorium drifted in the freezing air, bringing into the prisoners’ nostrils the scent of their own futures.
Gustav sensed the kapo turning towards him, and was already plying his shovel before the man’s eyes reached him. The work of the haulage column had been interrupted by the snow; each day the team shovelled the camp streets clear, hauled the snow away, and each night nature buried them deep once more.
The light was fading. With no eyes upon him, Gustav rested again. He looked up at the southeastern sky, marbled grey and speckled with falling flakes, smeared with smoke. Somewhere over there, far beyond these fences and woods, was his home, his wife, Herta, little Kurt. What were they doing right now? Were they safe? Warm or cold? Frightened or hopeful? Despairing? He and Fritz still received letters from Tini, but it was no substitute for being there.
With a last glance at the sky, Gustav bent his back and drove his shovel into the snow.
בן
The sky above Kurt’s head was warm and blue, shimmering with the sunlight-dappled leaves of horse chestnuts studded with snowy blossom. He put one foot before the other, gazing upward, dizzying himself with pleasure.
Looking ahead, he realized that he had lagged behind the rest of the family. His mama and papa were walking arm in arm, Fritz sauntering with his hands in his pockets, Herta strolling prettily, Edith upright and elegant.
They had spent the morning in the Prater, and Kurt was replete with delight. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d shot down the great slide – if you helped carry bundles of mats back to the top, the man in charge gave you a free ride, and Kurt and Fritz and the other less well-off kids always took a few turns. Now, strolling along the Hauptallee, the broad avenue which ran through the Prater woods, Kurt was amusing himself by walking with one foot on the path and the other on the raised grass bank between it and the road. His senses full, he didn’t notice that the rest of the family were getting farther and farther ahead. He hummed to himself, enjoying the sensation of boosting himself up on each high step. All awareness of time slipped away, and when he looked up again, he was alone.
An instant’s terror flickered in his chest. Before him, the ranks of trees receding into the distance, the woods on either side, the families, the couples, bicycles and carriages and cars swishing by on the road; through the trees the colours of the funfair and more people – but nowhere could he pick out the familiar shapes of his parents or his sisters or Fritz. They had simply vanished, as if snatched away.
The momentary terror passed. There was no need to panic; Kurt knew the Prater like he knew the face of a friend; it was little more than a kilometre from home. He could find his own way. The Hauptallee opened out on to the Praterstern, a huge star-shaped roundabout where seven boulevards and avenues met. After the peace of the woods, it was a maelstrom of noise and movement; trucks, motor cars and trams streamed roaring from left to right, pouring out of the nearest boulevards on to the roundabout; the pavements teemed with people.
Kurt realized that he had no idea what to do now. He had come through this place times without count, but always with a grown-up or older sibling. He’d never needed to pay attention to how you got through this torrent.
After a while he became aware of a woman’s voice. He glanced up and found a lady peering down at him with concern. ‘Are you lost?’ she asked. Well, he wasn’t lost; he knew the way but couldn’t figure out how to physically accomplish it. He also didn’t know quite how to explain this complex concept. The lady frowned anxiously at him.
A policeman appeared and quickly took control. He took Kurt by the hand and led him back towards the Prater, bearing left along Ausstellungsstrasse. Eventually they came to the police station, a large and extremely important-looking building of red brick and ashlar. Kurt was led into a world of dark uniforms and quietly efficient bustle filled with strange smells and sounds. He was given a seat in an office. A policeman working there smiled at him, chatted, played with him. Kurt had a roll of caps, and to his delight the policeman, using the buckle of his dress belt, set them off one at a time, the banging echoing round the office like rifle fire. Distracted and enjoying the policeman’s company, Kurt scarcely noticed the time passing.
‘Kurtl!’ He spun round at the sound of the familiar voice. ‘There you are!’ There was his mama in the doorway, and his papa behind her. His heart lit up; he jumped up and ran towards his mother’s open arms.
בן
Kurt woke, staring and shaking, his heart pounding. For a moment he had no idea where he was. A rush of sound, thudding, clattering in his ears; beneath him a hard wooden bench; around him strange people; a sensation of rocking rhythmically. He noticed the thin wallet lying on his chest, and remembered.1
This was the train to his new life.
The slatted wooden bench had numbed his backside but he’d been so tired, sleep had taken hold of him, and he’d slumped against the passenger beside him. He sat up and touched the wallet. He recalled his mother hanging it round his neck.
That image was vivid: they were in the kitchen in the apartment. She sat him on the table – the same worn surface where he had once helped her roll up the noodles for chicken soup. He could see her, face hollowed by hunger, etched by worry, telling him how vital it was to look after this wallet. It contained his papers. In this world now, that meant it held his very soul, his permission to exist. She smiled and kissed him. ‘You behave now, Kurtl,’ she said. ‘Be a good child when you get there – no tricks, be obedient so they will let you stay.’ She produced a gift for him, a new-bought harmonica, all gleaming and sweet, and he clutched it to him …
… and then she was gone. Blinking out in his memory like a light switched off.
Kurt looked around at the people on the train, at the unfamiliar countryside flowing by under a February frost. He knew that this was the train from Berlin, where he had collected his final papers from the German Jewish Children’s Aid and the required travel money – fifty crisp green American dollars tucked safe in his luggage – and he knew likewise that he had got to Berlin from Vienna on another train … but the memory of it was fading. In time, to his lifelong regret, he would be utterly unable to remember saying goodbye to his mother, or to Herta.
The old life, the familiar life, the beloved, was behind him, inexorably receding into a different dimension. Or perhaps it was the other way round – Vienna was real and of the present, and it was he who had been pushed into this unreal existence.
Most of the other people on the train were refugees, and to Kurt most seemed elderly. There were a few families with young children. German, Austrian, Hungarian Jews, a few Poles. Mothers murmured to their little ones while their husbands read or talked or dozed, old men with hats low on their brows stooped in their sleep, snoring and sighing into their beards, and children stared wide-eyed or drowsed against their parents.
Every few stops they all had to change trains, herded by police or soldiers on to whatever trains were available. Sometimes Kurt found himself in luxurious first-class compartments, sometimes second class, but more often the aching wooden slats of third. Kurt preferred the benches, because at least he got to sit properly; the seats in first had armrests, and the children had to perch on them, squeezed between the adults. On a few occasions Kurt got so desperate for comfort that he clambered up on to the luggage rack and stretched out on the valises.
There were only two other unaccompanied children on the train, a boy and a girl. Kurt gradually got to know them. One was a fellow Viennese named Karl Kohn, aged fourteen and from the same part of Leopoldstadt as Kurt. He wore glasses and seemed rather sickly, and was a little small for an adolescent. The girl could not have been more different; Irmgard Salomon was from a middle-class family in Stuttgart; despite being only eleven, she was taller than either of them by a clear two inches. Drawn together by their isolation, the three formed a bond as t
he train carried them farther and farther from their homes.
אמא
The apartment had become a hollowed shell. Where there had been family, now there were just two women: one ageing, one just blooming. Tini was forty-seven years old – an age when she should have been looking forward to a future filled with grandchildren. And Herta, two months away from her nineteenth birthday, should have been settled in her occupation and considering which of her admirers she might marry. They should not have been sitting here alone in this desolate apartment, their few possessions robbed from them and their dear ones – husband, sons, daughter, father, brothers, sister – stolen or fled.
Vienna was a place of forbidden zones, and the apartment, which they were fortunate to have kept at all, was a prison.
Saying goodbye to Kurt had been a pain beyond pain. He was so small, so slight, such a sliver of humanity to be sent out into the world. Tini had not been able to accompany him to the train – only people with travel permits were allowed on the platforms – and she and Herta had had to say their farewells outside, watching from a distance as the crowd of refugees swept him away.2
Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood, soul of her soul, gone from her. Kurt was her hope; he would have a new beginning in an altogether new world. Perhaps he would return one day, and she would see a new person in his place, shaped by a life that was wholly strange to her.
בן
Kurt lay on his back and gazed up at the stars. He had never in his life seen such a sky – deeper, darker, more brilliant than any other on earth: a vault unadulterated by man-made light. The ship, rolling steadily beneath him, was in blackout, alone on the vast disc of starlit black ocean.
He felt like the last survivor of a great exodus. After the train arrived in Lisbon, he and Karl and Irmgard had been kept waiting for weeks. There were supposed to be dozens of other children joining them for the voyage to America, but when the time came to sail, it was apparent that the others weren’t going to make it. They were presumably trapped in the bureaucratic tangle of emigration. Kurt, Karl and Irmgard were taken to the dock, where their ship waited, tall as an office block, moored alongside the quay with great ropes and gangways. SS Siboney wasn’t the largest passenger liner afloat, but she had a certain elegance: two slender funnels and upper decks lined with arcaded promenades. Along the hull were identification markings to protect her from German U-boats: AMERICAN – EXPORT – LINES in giant white letters, flanked by the Stars and Stripes.
The majority of people aboard appeared to be refugees – many of them familiar faces from the train journey – with a few returning tourists and commercial travellers among them. Kurt and Karl went in search of their cabin, eventually finding it in the depths of the ship, where it was unpleasantly stuffy and the engines throbbed loudly. Returning to the fresh air, they watched as Siboney pulled away from the dock and, with engines thrashing the water to foam, turned her bow westward.
Kurt stood at the rail for three hours, looking out across the expanse of the ocean. Lisbon shrank to a smear, then Portugal to a sliver, then all of Europe dwindled and sank beneath the horizon. Out of sight, beyond the northern sea, convoy after convoy of merchant ships dragged slowly eastward towards Britain with Royal Navy escorts circling like nervous herdsmen; in the east, U-boats slid out from their pens and cruised the vast ocean with torpedoes couched in their tubes. All Siboney had for protection was her painted markings.
Despite his tiredness, Kurt slept badly that first night in the noisy, overheated cabin, and the next day was marred by seasickness. All he could keep down was fruit. Reluctant to spend another night in their bunks, Kurt and Karl took their blankets and sneaked up on deck. There was nobody to stop them; Nurse Sneble, a compact middle-aged woman from New York, was supposed to look after the children, but she was occupied with the elderly passengers.
It was chilly in the night air, but wrapped up and reclining in deckchairs the two boys were warm enough. They luxuriated in the quiet and the fresh air. Kurt watched the stars overhead, wondering at this new situation and the place he was going to. He knew a tiny smattering of English from school; he could say hello, yes and no, and OK, but that was about all. His class had learned the rhyme ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man’ by rote, but in Kurt’s mind the words had little meaning. To his ears, the Americans on board just spoke gibberish.
Somewhere back there, beyond where the eastern starfield met the black line of the ocean, were his home and family. The bright new harmonica, his last physical link with his mother, was gone. While he and the other kids were waiting to change trains somewhere in France, some German soldiers had chatted and played with them. Kurt had shown them the harmonica, and they took it and wouldn’t give it back. Maybe they figured a Jew shouldn’t have such nice things.
בן
A cloud lay over Europe, roiling and flickering with lightning. Somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, Siboney steamed out from under it and into a bright American dawn.
Kurt and Karl, asleep on their deckchairs, were woken by a dash of cold spray – not sea spray but a splash from the mop of a sailor swabbing the deck. Gathering their blankets, they retreated indoors.
Somehow Nurse Sneble found out about their night al fresco. They were reprimanded, and ordered to sleep in their cabin from then on. They continued to have the run of the ship all day long, exploring, playing games, making friends with the sailors, distracted for a while from what they had left behind and the uncertainty of where they were going.
After calling at Bermuda the ship turned northwest, leaving the warm tropics behind. Kurt sensed a changed atmosphere aboard; people were preparing for the most momentous arrival of their lives. Around noon on Thursday 27 March 1941, with every man, woman and child lining the rails, Siboney passed between Staten Island and Long Island.
Kurt pressed between the others to watch the grey waters and distant shores slip by. Off the port bow, the glittering outline of the Statue of Liberty grew from a little spike until she towered above the ship, pale green and magnificent. The ship steered into the Hudson past the skyscraper skyline of Manhattan. Children and adults chattered and pointed, wreathed in smiles. Many had been given little American flags and held them up, fluttering in the wind, tiny, fragile offerings of hope.
בן
Kurt’s senses were nearly drowned in the immensity of New York. Canary-yellow taxicabs with flared black wings stuttered at the kerbs and barked their way angrily into the streaming, screaming traffic, disputing the 42nd Street intersection with bell-ringing trams. Broadway and Times Square were like the innards of a racing engine with the throttle wide open. Kurt clutched the hand of the lady from the Aid Society like a lifebelt as they waded through the sidewalk crush of skirts and overcoats, swinging umbrellas and canes, flapping newspapers and flying cigarette ash.
This was nothing like Vienna. New York was all modernity from foundations to sky, a town built out of automobiles and glass and concrete and people and people and people and still more people who themselves seemed more of the modern world than any in Europe. Kurt and his friends were aliens in every way.
After Siboney had docked at the pier, and following a medical inspection,3 the children had disembarked and been met by a lady from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which partnered with the German Jewish Children’s Aid in helping refugees. Only Kurt had definite arrangements in place. Karl and Irmgard had no friends or relatives here; the charity had arranged places for Irmgard in New York and for Karl in distant Chicago. After a night in a hotel the time came for them to part. Kurt never saw either of his friends again.4
דוד
The strange place names ticked by, meaningless to Kurt’s Austrian eyes. Each spoke of a previous wave of religious immigrants yearning for their home towns: Greenwich; Stamford; Stratford; Old Lyme; New London; Warwick. The railroad traced the coast through Connecticut to Providence, Rhode Island. There the main line ended.
When Kurt disembarked, accompanied by the suitcase that
had travelled with him all the way from Im Werd, they were met by a woman about his mother’s age, but more expensively dressed. To his surprise, she greeted him in German, introducing herself as Mrs Maurer, his mother’s old friend. Waiting with her on the platform was a middle-aged man accompanied by a woman, both regarding him with reserved benevolence. In respectful tones, Mrs Maurer introduced the gentleman as Judge Samuel Barnet, Kurt’s sponsor.
Judge Barnet was around fifty years old and rather short and stocky, with grey, receding hair, a large, fleshy nose, bushy eyebrows and deceptively sleepy-looking eyes.5 He had a rather grave demeanour, even a little frosty. The lady with him, who wasn’t much taller than Kurt himself, was the judge’s sister, Kate: neat and solidly built like her brother. Mrs Maurer explained that Kurt wouldn’t be staying with her; instead she had arranged accommodation with Judge Barnet himself.
From Providence they drove into Massachusetts, across a seemingly endless succession of rivers, bays and inlets. Eventually they reached their destination: New Bedford, a large town on an estuary. This southeast corner of the state was a dense little patch of immigrant England whose traces were visible on almost every road sign for miles around, from here to Boston by way of Rochester, Taunton, Norfolk and Braintree. All Kurt knew was that New Bedford was even less like Vienna than New York had been – a town of river ferries and small, genteel public buildings, cotton mills and long avenues of suburban homes of grey shingle and white clapboard, where automobiles hummed, children played, and sober citizens went about their business with decorum.
The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz Page 11
