by Jonathan Coe
“And then, in October 1943, everything changed. An order came from Germany to say that the presence of the Jews in Denmark was no longer to be tolerated. We were to be arrested and shipped to the concentration camps. The Gestapo were planning to raid all Jewish homes throughout Denmark on the nights of October 1st and 2nd.
“The story of the rescue of the Danish Jews is quite famous. It was a proud moment in the history of this country. Word of the German plans was somehow passed to Danish politicians and a clandestine rescue operation began. Jewish congregations were warned of the action that was about to be taken against them and the vast majority went into hiding. The Danish people behaved heroically. They offered sanctuary and hiding places to Jewish people whom they hardly knew. Hospitals and churches were converted into places where large numbers of people could stay undetected. Then the news began to spread that King Gustav of Sweden had made an announcement, declaring himself opposed to the German action and saying that Sweden would give shelter to all Danish Jews who could find their way to his country. This was the first glimmer of hope. The problem was how to get to Sweden.
“Julius and Inger and I had fled to the country, packing as many of our belongings into the car as we could. We took two of Emil’s sisters with us, and the rest of his family followed in another car a few hours later. He had three sisters. And then, for many days, we were hiding out in barns and farm buildings in the middle of the countryside. We had no idea what was happening to our homes, whether they had been raided or whether the Germans would come looking for us. They were dreadful days, days of unspeakable terror and anxiety. Except that for Inger and Emil, although they knew the danger they were in, I think there might have been some happiness as well. To sleep under the same roof. To be together in adversity. It sounds a silly thing to say but I think this might have been the case. Things are like that when you are young.
“We waited more than a week for news. Emil’s father managed to make telephone contact with some people in Copenhagen who were involved in the resistance and in helping to co-ordinate the rescue of the Jews. At last we were told that if we could make our way to the east coast, north of Copenhagen, there were boats sailing to Sweden from many of the fishing villages there. The details were very vague. It was not clear how big the boats were, or when they were sailing, or whether the fishermen were asking for money to take people across. But we had to take our chance. There was no time to lose. The German High Command was furious that so few of the Jews had been seized, and they were instructing their officers to intensify the search all over the country. And it’s true, the Gestapo had been very ineffective, up to this point. They had turned a blind eye to a lot of the people escaping. Bribes were changing hands. They did not really have the stomach for this operation.
“Julius and Emil’s father decided that we should attempt to drive to the east coast the next night. We would set out at ten o’clock.”
Marie poured some more tea, for herself and for all of us. I noticed that her hand was shaking a little now, as she held the teapot. It had been perfectly steady before.
“The route we chose was a little dangerous,” she continued. “It meant passing through the outskirts of our town. That was one of the mistakes we made. The other was that we did not keep our families together. There was no room for Emil, and his mother and father, and his three sisters, and their belongings, all in the same car. His sisters should have travelled with us, as before. That might have been better. But Inger and Emil wanted to be together, and so it was they who travelled with Julius and myself. They sat in the back of our car.
“By ten-thirty we had almost passed through the outskirts of our town and it seemed that the first moment of danger might be over. Then we saw that Emil’s father, who was driving the car in front, had been stopped in the middle of the road. There were four German officers and they were making him get out of the car and they were shining torches on to the faces of his family. Julius put on the brakes at once and said that we should turn back. There was still time to turn back and try another route. But I stopped him and said, Look. You see what they are doing. And Julius looked and he could see that Emil’s father was handing money over to the German officers. It’s all right, I said, all they want is a bribe. We have money, don’t we? And Julius said, Yes, we have money, but not that much.
“Now Emil’s father was still talking to three of the officers, and giving them money, when the fourth one walked away from the group and came over to our car. It was Bernhard. He recognized us at once and he took out his torch and he shined it on to each of our faces in turn. He shined it on to Emil’s face for a long time. He didn’t say anything when he did this, but I could see into his eyes and I knew there was a wicked sort of pleasure there and that everything was going to go wrong and something terrible was about to happen.
“Julius said to him, Well, what do you want? Do you want money?, and Bernhard told us all to get out of the car. My heart was pounding as I climbed out but I was also aware that something was happening in the road ahead with Emil’s father. The Germans had finished their business with him and they were telling him to be on his way as quickly as possible. I could see that he wanted to wait for our car but they wouldn’t let him. Then one of them threatened him with a gun and Emil’s father looked back at us and made some movement with his hand, some kind of gesture, and then he got into the car and they drove away. One of the Germans fired a gun into the air as they left and it was a hideous sound, so loud, so shocking, in the middle of the night in that quiet little town. It was starting to rain.
“Now Bernhard had got the four of us, me, Julius, Inger and Emil, all lined up against the car and he said to my husband, How much money have you got? And Julius had to open a suitcase and count all our money and there was just three thousand kroner. So when Bernhard heard that this was all the money we had, he smiled and said, Well, we want four thousand kroner. One thousand for each person. I knew that this was not what they had asked from Emil’s father, I knew that he had just made this figure up because he could see that we didn’t have enough money. But there was nothing we could do. He took all our money and told us to get back in the car and for a moment I thought this meant that he was going to show mercy. But just as Emil was getting into the car he put his gun against his chest and said, No. Not you.
“By now the other three officers had come over to see what was happening and I heard Bernhard say to them in German, Just this one. And then Inger realized what he was doing and she began screaming and crying. She was saying, No, not my Emil, and . . .
“Well, I think you can imagine what she was saying.”
Marie fell silent. We waited for her to tell us the rest of the story. Paul put his plate back on the table. His pastry was only half-eaten.
“I don’t think I can talk to you about what happened in the next few hours. I can remember what it was like, but I cannot describe it. The noises that Inger was making, the things—
“Well. To continue. We reached the coast at about two o’clock in the morning. A little port called Humlebaek. Only Emil’s father was waiting for us there. His wife and daughters had sailed on a boat about one hour previously. He had stayed behind, to wait for Emil. When he realized that Emil was not with us, he was . . . distraught. There was another boat waiting to take the rest of us away. It was a very black night, there was no moon. We were huddled on the beach, there were about twenty of us. The boat could not wait much longer. I remember Julius took Emil’s father aside and they had a long discussion. An argument. They were both shouting. Inger was not saying anything by this time, she was completely silent. After a while Emil’s father and my husband came back and then we all climbed into the fishing boat and at last the captain could sail away. It was a long voyage. Very uncomfortable, I remember. We reached Sweden after dawn.”
Marie sat back in her chair and took some long breaths. Julius was not looking at her any more. He was still leaning on his stick, but his eyes were closed. There was no noise at all
in the room, only the murmur of the waves outside.
“There were eight thousand Jews in Denmark in the summer of 1943,” Marie told us. “Nearly all of them escaped to safety, thanks to the courage and the high principles of the Danish people. Just a few hundred were left behind. Emil was one of them.
“The captured Jews were taken back to Germany and then to concentration camps in Czechoslovakia. Some of them committed suicide on the way. I always thought that Emil might have done that. I don’t know why, it was just a feeling that I had. Inger never believed it. She always believed that he was alive.
“We lived for two years in Sweden, not very happy years, as you can imagine, and at the end of the War we returned to Denmark. We came back to the same house. It was empty, and waiting for us. Inger was eighteen by now. She waited a few weeks for news of Emil and then she disappeared.
“She was away for many years. She never told us about that time but I know that she went to Czechoslovakia first and then she spent a long time in Germany and other places trying to find out what had happened to Emil. I think she might also have been looking for Bernhard, but again, this is just a suspicion on my part. In any case, she never found either of them. Not a trace of Emil. I knew that she wouldn’t. He had died long ago, one way or another. There could be no doubt about that.
“After all she had been through, we knew, Julius and I, that our daughter would never be able to lead a completely normal life. The loss she had suffered was very great. To be so young, and so very deeply in love, and then to have that love . . . uprooted, in a word, swept away by forces over which you can have no possible control, historical forces . . . You can never recover from something like that, never reconcile yourself to it.”
She sipped her tea, which must by now have been quite cold. I was thinking of Lois and Malcolm, and I swallowed hard.
“Anyway, she returned to Denmark at last. This was in the nineteen-fifties. She settled in Copenhagen and married this man, his name is Carl, a businessman, a nice man, not Jewish, as it happens. He was very kind to her, very patient with all her difficulties. They had two sons, Jorgen and Stefan, whom you have met. But . . .” (and now she too closed her eyes for a moment) “. . . there were problems. Continual problems. She was often in hospital. Her behaviour was erratic, her moods were very strange, very changeable. She showed a violent temper, when as a child she had been always gentle and good-natured. It was very hard for the two boys. They had much to endure.
“Julius and I bought this house in 1968, one year after he retired. It had always been a dream of ours to live in Skagen, where we had had so many holidays. Inger and Carl and the boys came to stay with us, just twice, two summers, and they were happy times. Not bad times at all. And then one evening, in the autumn of 1970, Carl telephoned me to say that Inger had died. She had taken the ferry to Malmö, alone, that afternoon, and she had climbed on to the railing, and jumped. She had taken her own life. Just as I had known, in my heart, that she always would.”
Having finished her story, Marie rose to her feet and walked to the window. She pulled on the cord of the Venetian blind, and raised the blind to the very top. Instinctively we all turned towards the window, and we looked out at the beach, and when I think of that afternoon now my clearest memory is of the light we saw there, that painters’ sky, greyblue like Marie’s eyes and like her grandsons’ eyes, the colour of a pain that won’t go away.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling graciously at all of us, but especially at Rolf, “I did not intend to burden you with quite so much detail. I know it is very hard to understand these things, when you are only children. But as I said to you, my hope is that you and Jorgen and Stefan might become friends, and have pleasant times together while you are here. I think I have explained enough to make you see that it is not really because you are German that they have sometimes been unkind. Of course, they know the whole history of their mother and Emil and Bernhard—she told it to them many times—but they are not so stupid as that. The truth is simply that they miss their mother very much, and the fact that she is no longer with them makes them angry and sad. I’m sorry if they have turned some of that anger on to you. I think I can promise that it will not happen again.”
And then we left, after shaking Julius by his tremulous hand, and after each of us had received a kiss on the cheek from Marie, who then stood in her back porch and waved fondly goodbye to us even though we were only walking ten yards to the house next door.
There is little to say about the next few days.
The second week of our holiday proceeded smoothly, in a flurry of contented activity. Rolf and Paul spent more and more time together, not just swimming and playing energetic games but even holding long, low, earnest conversations on topics which to the rest of us remained thoroughly mysterious. Paul, showing that quick, interdisciplinary aptitude which has always filled me with envy, even seemed to be picking up a smattering of German. The twins and I kept our distance from each other, recognizing that there could be no kinship of spirit between us: they spent most of every day sitting at a card table playing whist and gin rummy, while I read my way steadily through the novels of Henry Fielding in preparation for my first A-level classes in a month’s time. Jorgen and Stefan were frequent visitors, and marathon games of rounders and beach cricket brought many of those long cold summer evenings to an enjoyable close. I missed our caravan in Wales, and the company of my grandparents, whatever Paul might have said. But I could not deny that this had been a charmed, magical holiday.
Things only began to go wrong again on the last day but one; and this time it was Lisa and the twins who were responsible.
Ever since her mishap with the family car in the centre of Skagen, Lisa had been reluctant to take it anywhere. Finally, however, perhaps stung into action by the gentle but persistent teasing of her husband, she plucked up courage and drove to Grenen with her daughters. Our description of the oceans’ meeting place had pricked her curiosity, it seemed; but once again, catastrophe ensued. Ignoring the prominently displayed warning notices, she had taken the car right out on to the beach, where it promptly collapsed into the yielding sand and could not by any means be extricated. The local rescue service had to be summoned; tractors, policemen and even the fire brigade were involved; and the whole incident provided a most entertaining spectacle for the procession of tourists who had come to visit this beauty spot and now had something even more memorable to record in their photo albums and their postcards home.
The same day, Rolf and Paul had taken a long cycle ride to the eagle sanctuary at Tuen, so that when he returned in the early evening, Rolf had not yet heard the story of his mother’s latest ignominy. His first intimation came from the mocking laughter of Jorgen as they walked back through the garden. I was sitting by the window, reading Joseph Andrews, and Gunther was on the sofa behind me. We could both hear every word of the conversation.
“What’s so funny?” Rolf was asking.
“Did you not hear? Your mother has really done it this time. I thought it was pretty dumb when she blocked the road with that oversized German car of yours in the middle of the town, and managed to cause a traffic jam all the way back to Frederikshavn. But today was even better.” He could hardly speak for laughter, so hilarious did he consider the incident. “This time she got it stuck on the Skaw, up at Grenen, when every stupid tourist who comes here knows that you don’t take your car on to the sands.” Through his forced, throaty chuckling he added: “Tell me, how does it feel to have a mother who can’t even get into a car without bringing the whole of the traffic in Jutland to a standstill?”
And now something inside Rolf must have snapped. He had shown that he could put up with almost any amount of abuse when it was directed at him personally, but perhaps it was simply too much to have his mother made the butt of a joke. Whatever the reason, he rounded on Jorgen and said an appalling thing.
“Well, at least my mother isn’t a filthy Jew, like yours was.”
For once
Jorgen and Stefan were lost for words, and before they had had a chance to recover their power of speech, Rolf had run into the house. He ran through the kitchen and down the corridor and was halfway up the stairs when Gunther, who had sprung to his feet as soon as he heard the insult, grabbed hold of his ankle through the banister and said something commanding and peremptory to him in German. Then Gunther followed him up the stairs and they disappeared into one of the bedrooms. I could hear them talking in quiet voices. Rolf was crying a little. It was a long time before they came out.
This was a fortnight of apologies. Last week, it had been the Danes’ turn. This time it was Rolf who, under strict instructions from his father, went out to talk to them as they sat morosely in the dunes at the back of the house, and told them that he was sorry for the thoughtless thing he had said. I watched from my usual vantage point as Jorgen and Stefan stood up and shook his hand. They were being remarkably conciliatory about it. “It’s all right,” Jorgen was saying. “It was just something you said in the heat of the moment. Don’t give it another thought. It’s quite all right.” But something in his manner made me sure that it was far from being all right.
And now I have told you everything that I know. Or almost everything. As I warned you at the beginning, there would come a point in this story when I would simply have to shrug my shoulders and admit that I wasn’t around to see what happened next. The moment when I walked offstage, or drifted into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Well, that moment has come.