The Lost Boy

by Kate Moira Ryan

  From her limited command of German, Slim realized that this was an old friend from Marlene’s days in Berlin.

  “Schnecke? Sind das sie?” She reached up and pulled him close and began to cry.

  “Ich war mir nicht sicher ob sie mich erkennen würden,” he whispered.

  “Nein, nein, nein. Sie schauen genau so gut aus wie an dem Tag wo ich sie getroffen habe,” she said, crying with him. “Sie sind schön.”

  For a moment, the two old friends wept together and Marlene promised to visit again.

  On the ride back, Marlene looked out the window and was silent.

  “Who was that, Marlene?” Slim asked.

  “Oh, Schnecke, was such a handsome man, so beautiful; always falling in love with the wrong men, like me. Those bastards slapped a pink triangle on him and threw him in Buchenwald. Look what they did to him. Animals. How was my voice?” Marlene asked.

  “You did not have to sing ten songs, Marlene,” Slim said.

  “No? When am I going to have such a captive audience again?” She winked at Slim and took her out her cigarette case. “Mark my words, that doctor is going to fix our Daniel.”

  With a snap of a gold lighter, she was surrounded in smoke, celebrating a job well done.

  ✽✽✽

  The next day, Slim had Daniel transferred to Hôpital Psychiatrique Sainte Anne on Rue Cabanais. She spent the rest of the week helping Felice organize the office. Each day, she received an update from the nurse in Dr. Delay’s office. Daniel is stabilized. Daniel is starting on the new medication. Daniel seems less agitated. Daniel has remembered who he is. Daniel had a setback. Finally, it was time for Slim to come to see Daniel with Tiny. When Felice relayed that message, Slim called back to make sure Tiny was allowed to come. She could not take any chances with Tiny’s safety. Dr. Delay confirmed. Slim was to bring Tiny. As Françoise drove Slim to the hospital Tiny slept quietly in Slim’s arms. Anxious thoughts raced through Slim’s mind. What if Daniel did not recognize her? What if Daniel did something to the baby? What if, what if, what if, was all Slim could think about. When they arrived, Françoise stayed in reception, while Slim and Tiny went upstairs. They met with Dr. Delay, before seeing Daniel.

  “Ah, Madame Cohen, you have brought the baby Adrienne,” he said, coming over to admire the sleeping infant.

  “I call her Tiny. How does he know the baby is named after his late sister?” Slim asked.

  “He said you showed him a picture of the baby,” Dr. Delay responded.

  “I showed him a photograph of the baby, but he thought it was of his sister, Adrienne.” Slim had a sinking feeling that, perhaps, Daniel was still out of it.

  “Come, bring the baby,” Dr. Delay said, helping her up by the elbow.

  Slim followed him into the sunroom where Marlene had recently sung. In the corner, by the window, she saw Daniel sitting in a chair. He was staring out the window.

  “Go to him,” Dr. Delay whispered.

  Slim went up to him, “Daniel?”

  She saw his shoulder heave and heard him sob.

  “Slim, I am so sorry,” Daniel said, “I am so ashamed that I left you. Please, please forgive me.”

  Slim handed the baby to a surprised Dr. Delay and went around to this broken man whom she loved so dearly and said, “Daniel, my love, all that matters is that you are here now.”

  He buried his head in her hands and wept. When he was done, he looked at her and said, “May I see little Adrienne?”

  Slim nodded to Dr. Delay who handed her the baby. She placed the sleeping baby in Daniel’s arms. As if on cue, the baby opened her eyes and gazed at her father for the first time.

  “She is so beautiful, Slim,” he said, letting the baby grab his finger. “What is her full name?”

  “Verity after my mother, Nora after my father’s mother, and Adrienne after your sister,” Slim said, “but we call her Tiny.”

  “Tiny? No, she must have her own name, a real name. How about Adi?”

  Slim remembered her dream where Daniel had said the baby was to be called Adi. It was as if the fates had named this small baby.

  “Adi Cohen,” Slim said. “But…”

  “What is it, Slim?”

  “I had her baptized. Margaret told me if anything happened to Tiny, I mean Adi, she would wind up in limbo, so I had her baptized.” Slim watched for Daniel’s expression. She knew she should have waited, but how did she know if he was going to come back?

  “Of course. You had her baptized. I was expecting that. Your faith is so important to you. As long as we can celebrate Hanukkah, Passover and the major holidays, you can raise her Catholic. She will also be Jewish and I never want her to have to deny that. She can go to your beloved Trinity College.”

  Slim and Adi sat with Daniel the rest of the afternoon. She found out that he remembered getting the wedding cake, then nothing after. A chunk of his life was missing. At first that concerned Slim, but then she realized it was for the best. He had been through so much. He did not need to remember all the terrible things that had happened to him.

  At the end of the visit, Dr. Delay explained to Slim that Daniel would stay on his new drug, and also receive psychotherapy to help him adjust to everyday life. “He never really dealt with what happened to him and his family in France during the war. Since he never dealt with the enormity of his loss, it manifested itself into anger and a desire for revenge. I am hoping with the combination of this new drug we have been administering and talking through his experiences, he can come to a better place in his life.”

  “That sounds very Freudian,” Slim commented.

  “Although I am a great admirer of Freud and was psychoanalyzed myself, I do not think psychoanalysis is in his best interest for recovery. While his unconscious mind is most likely filled with contradiction and torment, it is his conscious mind we must fix. He does not have years to get his life sorted. He must accept what has happened and make peace with it. And what happened to him is not only tragic, but it is also catastrophic. Yet, we have seen millions of people rise from the ashes. Perhaps he will as well. Madame Cohen, it is going to take months, maybe even a year, for your husband to get back to some semblance of himself, but I believe he has a very good chance of recovery.”

  That night, Dr. Delay’s words weighed heavily on Slim’s mind. Even if Daniel was able to accept what happened, surely there would be consequences. How would those consequences affect his wife and child? Slim had brought Adi into this world knowing full well what Daniel’s defects — if you could even call them that — were. Now she was learning that while Daniel might accept his past, he might not be able to overcome it fully. Slim heard Adi cry and went into the nursery to pick her up. As Slim held Adi, she noticed that the baby was beginning to fill out and look less like a newborn.

  “I suppose I should sing you a lullaby, but my mother never sang me one to me.” She looked down at the sobbing baby. “But my father did. Let’s see if I remember how it goes,

  Over in Killarney, many years ago

  My mother sang a song to me in tones so soft and low

  Just a simple little ditty in her good old Irish way

  And I'd give the world if I could hear that song of hers today

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral

  Too-ra-loo-ra-li

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral

  Hush now, don't you cry

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral

  Too-ra-loo-ra-li

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral

  That's an Irish lullaby

  Adi stopped crying. She looked straight into Slim’s eyes, and for the first time, smiled.

  “Ah, you’re a true Irish gal, you like all that treacle. You are a true Moran.” Slim smiled back at her daughter and believed from that moment on, everything would all right.

  ✽✽✽

  Days went by until it was November. Felice and Slim worked on a variety of missing persons’ cases. Adi rolled over. Felice moved into Françoise’s apartment. Daniel made small improvemen
ts, then had a setback. Once again he slowly improved. Every once in a while Pasha would call to check in. The second week in November, Slim walked into the cafe and saw Françoise nuzzling Felice.

  “Do you two ever stop?” Slim asked smiling. “Felice can you extricate yourself from Françoise’s arms and come here. I want to talk with you about the Metter boys.” Felice had been trying to track down two unaccompanied children who had been on the 1938 Kindertransport from Berlin to England.

  “I think I might have a lead. Also, yesterday, this came from Chicago,” Felice said, handing Slim an airmail letter.

  “It’s from Lena,” Slim said, smiling. She opened the letter and quickly read it, “Emil wrote it for her. Let’s see, Karl — is enrolled in high school in a town outside of Chicago. He has an English tutor. There have been a couple of adjustment problems with the kids calling him a Nazi. He has gotten into a few fights, but he has also made a few friends and is now on the track team. Here’s a picture of him,” Slim said as she handed over a black and white photograph of a grinning boy wearing jeans and a track sweatshirt. “He looks like an all-American boy. What else? He likes most food, especially hot dogs and Coca-Cola. He loves to go to the movies and read comic books. Emil does worry about him because he is waking up with night terrors, but Emil has introduced him to his wife and young children. Lena is going to school to learn English, and is volunteering for a Polish relief agency in Chicago. She is happy. That’s it.” Slim smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done. “Now tell me about the Metter boys. Do you know what Kindertransport train they were on?”

  Felice opened her notebook and began to rattle off the information she had found.

  And then the door opened, a tall, handsome red haired, freckled man in his late twenties walked in. Slim grabbed Felice’s arm.

  “What is it Slim? You look like you have seen a ghost.” Françoise said with concern.

  “Slim?” the man said with a craggy smile. “Is that you?”

  Slim stood up. “Patrick? Patrick?”

  She reached for him.

  “Slim, I’m so sorry. I’m James. Patrick’s brother,” the man said, while he steadied her.

  He and Felice helped Slim to a chair.

  “Of course, you are,” Slim said, and turned to Felice. “Patrick McCarthy was my fiancé who was shot down over Germany during the war.”

  “Are you one of the McCarthy’s?” Felice asked.

  “I’m one of them,” he said, flashing an Irish smile. Wealthy and deeply connected politically, it was always said that the first Catholic president would come from the family.

  “You are the spitting image of Patrick.” Slim reached out to hug James.

  “All the McCarthy boys look alike. May I have a seat, Slim? There is something I would like to talk with you about.”

  Slim nodded. James pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “This is my assistant, Felice, and my business partner, Françoise,” Slim said. “How about something to drink? We have Coca-Cola and café au lait, or if you want anything stronger…” She knew the McCarthy boys like to drink.

  “Coca-Cola is fine with me, I am the teetotaler in the family. So here’s the thing, Slim. Pops is running Sean for the Senate in Massachusetts, with an eye towards the White House. That’s if the Kennedy’s don’t beat us to it.”

  The Kennedy’s were another ambitious Irish Catholic family, albeit a bit more cut-throat.

  “Patrick was supposed to be the one to be running for Senate,” Slim said wistfully.

  “And he would be if his plane had not gone missing. I always idolized Patrick,” he said.

  Slim remembered him running around after his older brothers, always wanting to be included in everything.

  “Well, I don’t know how to say this, Slim, without sounding like a truly awful son.” James pulled on his tie and bit his lip.

  “What is it, James?” Slim asked, reaching over and squeezing his hand.

  “I want to know how and why Patrick died,” James said.

  “Why does that make you an awful son?” she asked feeling confused.

  “I want to know if Pops had anything to do with Patrick’s death,” James said without any hint of irony.

  “What?” Slim asked. “How could you think your father had anything to do with Patrick’s death?”

  James shrugged and then said, “About a year ago, I was rummaging around Pop’s desk trying to find Patrick’s Navy Cross he had been awarded after he went missing, and I came across this envelope. It was a letter. Now, Slim, I don’t know how to say this without you getting sore, but Pops never wanted Patrick to marry you.”

  Slim was stunned. “Your father was always so welcoming to me. Your mother, not so much, but I just figured it was because she was such a strict Catholic and I was the daughter of a movie star….”

  “I think Dad sent him on that mission over Germany to get rid of him and line up Sean to be the heir presumptive.”

  “James, four years have passed. Why is it so important for you to know?” Slim asked.

  “I want to become a priest, a Jesuit. My father wants me to go to law school and help Sean when, and if, he gets to the White House. If my father had anything to do with Patrick’s death, I can walk away from him.”

  “Why don’t you just become a priest?” She asked.

  “I can’t walk away from my family and my destiny without some sort of reason,” James said. “One of us will become the first Catholic President of the United States and the next in line after Sean is me.”

  “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Slim noted.

  “I would rather wear a collar than a crown. Please find out why my brother died and whether my father had anything to do with it.”

  They spoke some more and then James left.

  Slim took a sip of Coca Cola and watched the world of Paris walk by. She had come to Paris to find out what happened to Patrick and when she couldn’t, she alleviated her loss by finding the lost. She had pushed Patrick to the back of her mind and moved on with Daniel. Yet, in the end, she could not escape what brought her here. She needed to find Patrick McCarthy. It was time to go back to America where she first met Patrick and find her lost pilot.

  acknowledgments

  Why did I choose to write about the kidnapped children of Poland? I saw an image online of a Polish child being torn away from her mother by a member of the SS. The image haunted me and compelled me to find out why this child was taken. It took me on a year and half long journey of writing and research. Along the way, I made some startling and also, inspiring discoveries about human nature. Why did the Germans steal these children in the first place? It was simple: They were losing too many men on the battlefield, and dead men can’t reproduce. So, if the master race was to survive, it needed to be replenished. What better way to do that than to steal a nation’s greatest treasure — their children.

  Children have always been displaced during wartime. What is extraordinary about the stolen children of Poland, is that it was done on such an enormous scale. Two hundred thousand Polish children were kidnapped and Germanized during the war. Then again, the Nazi regime was very good at destruction on a massive scale. During the war, Poland lost six million of its citizens, three million of whom were Jews. Poland was treated as a slave state by the Nazis. It was also a dumping ground for a plethora of concentration camps. The kidnapping of children was considered so egregious that the leaders of Lebensborn were tried for war crimes during the 8th Nuremberg trial. After the war, Poland was a nation in ruins under Soviet control with little hope of regaining its sovereignty. To rebuild, it needed its children back. While many were repatriated, most were not. The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen is still trying to reunite children who were stolen from their parents, and there are still thousands of children in Germany and Austria who do not know their real origins.

  In this book, I have used both real and fictional names. Journalist Gitty Sereny’s account of wo
rking for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRAA) as a child search agent has been dramatized for this book. Wilhelm Brasse was indeed a photographer and prisoner of Auschwitz. His photos of Polish children taken before they were gassed are particularly harrowing to view. The staff at Alpenland, the Lebensborn house, is accurate. Housemaid, Elfriede Simanovski who was imprisoned for being a Jehovah’s Witness was a real person. While I could not find much about the SS Waffen Kurt Heinze, I was able to trace him at the end of the war to the SS Waffen training camp at Dachau. He was indeed a recipient of the Golden Party Pin. As far as I can ascertain, he was never charged with war crimes. Anneliese Jansky was mentioned in several documents I found and not favorably. After the war, Jansky was not cooperative with the Child Search Agents, and in the reports I saw, she changed the names of the children so they would be untraceable.

  The Count and Countess Zamoyski were two members of Poland ’s wealthiest family with young children, who risked their lives to save children who had been forcibly taken from their parents. They could have left the country like many other noble and wealthy Poles did, but they stayed. After the war, when the Soviets essentially ran Poland, the Count was imprisoned for seven years for being an enemy of the state. Then even more remarkably after Poland’s communist regime fell, he served in the government. They are virtually unknown outside of Poland, and I wanted more people to know about their acts of courage.

  Who is Karol? He is a composite of the children who were abducted in Poland by the Germans. For his account in the Hitler Youth, I relied heavily upon Armin Lehman’s chilling report of meeting Hitler before his suicide. His book, HITLER'S LAST COURIER, was an incredible resource. For the record, I did find one Jewish member of the Hitler Youth, Solomon Perel. The film EUROPA, EUROPA was based upon his experiences.