Searching for Lottie

by Susan Ross

  Charlie fetched a pair of scissors and cut the box open. Something big was covered in layers of bubble wrap and brown paper. She slowed down and carefully tore away the wrappings. When she saw what was inside, she stepped back, trembling.

  Jake appeared at the top of the stairs. “Hey, who was at the door?”

  “Wait,” Charlie commanded. She reached into the box and pulled out an old leather case.

  “What’s that?” Jake demanded.

  “Not sure.” Carefully unclipping the rusted latches, Charlie lifted the cover and peered inside. A violin lay on matted red satin. She touched the top of the instrument with her fingertips, then slowly took it from the case. The wood was smooth and finely carved; the back of the violin was etched with a dark maple flame. Squinting through the f-holes, Charlie could make out a yellowed label: CSINÁLTA SZEMERE.

  Jake came bounding down the stairs.

  “Hold on.” Charlie slid her fingers along the soft satin bottom and pried opened a small compartment. A folded piece of brown cardboard cut in the shape of a heart was wedged behind an ancient chunk of crumbling rosin.

  “Open it,” Jake said.

  Charlie unfolded the faded cardboard. A spark skipped across her shoulders and down her spine and into her heart.

  Charlotte, szeretlek, Istvan. She showed the note to Jake. The corners of Charlie’s eyes were beginning to well up with tears.

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means this belonged to Lottie,” Charlie answered softly. She looked down at the instrument and whispered, “This is your new violin, isn’t it? The one that Istvan promised you after the war, when you were going to have your baby, Arpad.”

  Charlie wiped her eyes with a sleeve. She darted into the living room and returned with her new bow. Carefully lifting the violin, she placed the instrument against her shoulder. The wood felt smooth as silk. The violin floated between her chin and left hand as she tuned.

  Standing on tiptoes, Charlie pulled the bow across the strings. The tone was clear and mellow, unlike any violin she had ever played. She began with the first part of a Beethoven sonata, switched to a Strauss waltz, and ended in a flurry of Mozart. The sweet sound rose into the hallway, up the stairs, through the ceiling.

  Without even thinking, Charlie hadn’t missed a note, not a single one. How was that possible? She stopped and looked at Jake.

  “Not bad!” Jake grinned at Charlie and whistled. “Not bad at all.”

  Mom sounded breathless as she came down the stairs with Dad right behind her. “I was on the phone, did you answer the door?”

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked. “What was that fantastic music?”

  “Come here, you’ll never believe this!” Charlie exclaimed. “Cousin Charlotte and her family sent me Lottie’s violin.”

  “Was that you playing?” Mom gasped. “I’ve never heard you play like that.”

  “It was me.” Charlie beamed. The beautiful violin rested on her arm. She glanced over the smooth wood, the maple flame, and the delicate scrollwork. With a little smile, she added softly, “Me—and maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit of Lottie, too.”

  Lottie pulled herself up off the simple wooden cot and rubbed her hands. She peered out the window of the tiny shed to the gnarled grapevines bent along a sloping field. Chunks of dirty snow stuck to the fence separating the field from an orchard of skeleton apple and plum trees.

  Lottie had been hiding in the Buda Hills for several weeks. Jews in Hungary had been rounded up into ghettos, but with false identity papers, Lottie had found refuge with the Bartos family, who took her into their small apartment in Budapest despite the great risk. Over time, her bond with the son, Istvan, had grown deeper. Now, with so many Jews being hunted down and deported, Lottie worried that staying in the apartment would threaten the Bartoses’ safety, so she had taken shelter in an old shed set in a garden plot above the city.

  Dusk was falling, and far below, Lottie could see the twinkling lights of Budapest. She buttoned her worn jacket and tamed her long dark curls into a braid that reached her waist. Shivering, she sat on the bed to wait. A few moments later, she heard a rap at the door.

  “Istvan!” Lottie lifted the bar across the door made of splintered boards and rushed into the young man’s arms. Istvan’s round face beamed with pleasure as they kissed. But then he looked worried.

  “You ought to be more careful, my love! Don’t ever open the door like that without asking who it is.”

  “I knew it was you.”

  “Still, it’s not safe. Come…” Istvan took her hand, kissed her again, and then led her carefully down the steep pebbled path in front of the shed.

  “Any news?” Lottie asked eagerly.

  “Very little. We’ve had to bury the radio for days. The police searched the apartment again. But we know the Allies are gaining ground; the war cannot last much longer.”

  “How I wish it would end!” Lottie exclaimed.

  “We must take care. It’s more dangerous for you now than ever.”

  “Any word of Herr Hinkleman?” Lottie looked carefully at Istvan’s open face.

  “No,” he said firmly. “Nothing.”

  “Please don’t lie to me,” Lottie said. “I can tell.”

  “His family has been taken,” Istvan answered slowly. “It happened last week.”

  “But Herr Hinkleman was a soloist with the symphony!” Lottie gasped. “Head of the music academy. And his wife and children aren’t Jewish. How would the Nazis dare?”

  “It doesn’t matter who they are,” Istvan replied. “The world’s gone mad.”

  “Johann could do nothing?” Lottie asked softly.

  Istvan shook his head. “We tried. I am so sorry, my love.”

  “If the Nazis would murder Herr Hinkleman, then there’s no hope for my family.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth.

  Istvan reached around Lottie’s thin shoulders and pulled her close. “No matter what happens, I will be your family now. And never forget how many people we’ve saved.”

  The path emptied into a narrow alley. Lottie and Istvan picked their way along the cobblestones as the light waned. On the slope above them, an emaciated cow swayed in the shadows. Rats scurried across the path. At last they came to a small stucco barn. Istvan knocked twice on the heavy wooden door.

  “Who’s there?” a voice called out.

  “It’s Johann!” Istvan answered.

  “Say the password again?” the voice insisted.

  “Johann Schmidt!” Istvan replied.

  “Show us!” The door creaked open to reveal the rusted barrel of a rifle. Istvan fished in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small pendant on a chain. He flipped it over in his hand. JS was inscribed on the back. Lottie took a matching chain and pendant from the pocket of her jacket. They handed the chains through the crack in the door.

  “Come in,” the voice commanded.

  A group of six or seven young men and women sat on milking stools around a soot-covered stove.

  “There’s an order for Jews to be rounded up from the Budapest ghetto at the end of the week.” A teenage boy wearing a ragged sweater spoke first.

  “Have we a plan?” Lottie asked.

  The boy shrugged. “We’re trying to obtain identity papers, but it’s becoming more and more difficult.”

  “How many do we have?” Istvan sighed.

  “Not nearly enough,” came the answer.

  “I’ll give mine,” Lottie offered. “I’m safe enough hiding in the hills, and liberation will come soon! It won’t be long until—”

  “No, you can’t,” Istvan interrupted her. “The police have been searching, even here in the farthest city gardens. If they find you without papers, you’re as good as dead.” He gave Lottie a sad smile and squeezed her hand. “We cannot do without you.”
r />   “But we must act,” Lottie insisted.

  “Perhaps we can find more hiding places in the countryside.” The young man with the rifle spoke. “I know a wealthy man who is sympathetic and could take two or three families at his vineyard near Lake Balaton.”

  Several people murmured in agreement.

  After the meeting, Lottie and Istvan walked silently up the hillside in the dark. Lottie paused to search the stars beginning to appear above the city. A tear formed and clung to her eyelashes. It had been nearly seven years since she had left her parents and sister in Vienna. “I want to call our first child Rose,” she whispered suddenly.

  “If it’s a girl,” Istvan answered, his fingers finding hers. “If it’s a boy, I’d like to name him Arpad, after my father.”

  “Yes, of course.” Lottie nodded. “If we have a son, we will remember your father.”

  She thought back to the days in Vienna, safe in her parents’ apartment. It seemed another lifetime entirely. Her little sister, Rose, had liked to hear fanciful stories about princesses and magical creatures. She was especially pleased when the stories had a happy ending: a wedding, or better yet, a miracle.

  Reaching deep into her pocket, Lottie felt for the chain and pendant. It had been her cousin Nathan’s idea to inscribe a pendant for each member of their resistance group and to use a common German name as their password. Nathan was one of the fortunate ones; he had disappeared after his parents were taken from their village, but Lottie had heard that he was safe in America.

  Lottie rubbed the pendant and closed her eyes. In Vienna, she had inscribed the back of a Mogen David with the code, JS. It was of course too dangerous now to possess a Star of David, but Lottie still thought of the pendant as a place of memory; she pressed it against her heart whenever she imagined her family.

  Lottie reached up to Istvan’s cheek and traced his soft lips with her fingertips. Istvan’s family was not Jewish, yet he and his mother and sister had taken her in, sheltered and protected her. Lottie had come to love them like her own family.

  “When the war is over, I’m going to buy you a beautiful violin.” Istvan’s lips curled in a wistful smile. “You will play Mozart for our children.”

  “Szeretlek.” Lottie kissed her darling’s mouth. “I love you.”

  Someday, Lottie thought, someday beyond the madness of this time, there would be music and joy again in the world, and, yes—she smiled—yes, a miracle for her lost little sister—a baby filling the void in her heart with goodness and love.

  The people in this book are my family. That is to say, while all the characters are fictional, many of them are based upon family members whose lives were forever changed by the Holocaust. My grandparents, Herman and Aurelie Lencz, lived in Vienna when the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. My mother and her brother were able to obtain visas to come to the United States, but my grandparents and most of the rest of my mother’s family were unable to escape and perished. My middle name was given in memory of a lovely young cousin named Lotte (or, in English, “Lottie”—short for Charlotte), who was deported and presumed dead. I grew up looking at photos of her bright smile and wondering what her life might have been. Another relative, Magda Szemere, had a brilliant career as a young violin soloist but was killed along with her husband and small son.

  My mother arrived in America at age twenty with no money and few friends. She became an American citizen, married, and had five children. Like Nana Rose in the book, Mom rarely talked about the Holocaust; it was too painful. She strove to bring her children up in a world of warmth and love. Just like Nana Rose, Mom had a special saying for nearly every occasion, and these were always full of encouragement. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” was one of her favorites. My mother constantly emphasized that the world is a positive, kind place, full of interesting experiences and wonderful human beings. In this way, she surmounted the terrible loss of her family and gave us the gift of love and hope.

  * * *

  —

  Charlie’s search for Lottie takes place in 2010. This was when I rediscovered family papers that included Magda Szemere’s journal filled with glowing reviews of her performances as a young soloist and realized that with the help of the Internet, I might be able to find out more about my lost relatives. I Googled Magda’s name and was stunned to find entries that were not from a Holocaust or genealogy website—rather, there were eBay listings of her gramophone recordings for sale. Magda’s and her family’s lives had been taken, but her music lived on. To my astonishment, I later discovered that recordings of her music had been preserved in archives in Europe and America.

  In 2010, it was still possible that Charlie might find Lottie alive. As time goes on, this ending will of course no longer be feasible. Nevertheless, with the ever-increasing genealogy resources available today, there are limitless opportunities for kids to research and learn about their own family histories.

  Most important, however, remain the conversations kids can have with parents and grandparents, sharing family stories and experiences to honor and preserve precious memories. In this way, it is indeed possible to keep the spirit of a lost loved one shining bright.

  My relative Charlotte Kulka with her diabolo.