The Runaway Family

by Diney Costeloe

  “My mother’s coming to live here,” Peter Walder said. “But it needs spring cleaning first. The previous owners – ” he hesitated, “ – have gone.” He took her into the kitchen. “The whole place needs airing,” he said. “Every inch of this needs to be scrubbed.” The faintest aroma of food lingered in the air, a familiar breath of spices that Ruth recognised at once. Now she knew for certain. This had been a Jewish kitchen.

  “And the bathroom, of course” – Peter led her further along the passage – “has to be totally refurbished.” Ruth stared into what had been the bathroom, now completely gutted, no bath, lavatory or basin. “They’re fitting the new bath and things tomorrow,” he said, “and then the floor must be scrubbed, the walls washed and the tiles polished.” He took her through the whole apartment, telling her what had to be done in each room. “And when you have cleaned it,” he said, “I will pay you.”

  “How much?” whispered Ruth, staring round the huge apartment, recognising how much there was to do.

  “Enough, but you’ll have to trust me for that, won’t you?” His face broke into its cheerful grin. “Don’t worry, Ruth, I won’t let little Peter starve. You’ve a week to get this place habitable, and, who knows, if you’re any good, my mother might just keep you on.”

  “A new bathroom, Mother, simply because Jewish bottoms had sat on the lavatory!” exclaimed Ruth as she told her mother later that evening all about her encounter with Peter Walder. “Can you believe that?”

  “Just be grateful for the work,” Helga said, wearily.

  “Oh, I am, believe me I am,” replied Ruth. “It’s just that he’s such a strange mixture. One minute revelling in the new Austria, and the next finding work for a Jew… when he clearly doesn’t like us.”

  “Don’t question his motives,” advised her mother, “just take the work on offer.”

  Ruth spent the next seven days at the Walders’ apartment. She scrubbed floors, polished furniture, cleaned windows, washed curtains, beat rugs, swept and dusted. Many of the ornaments she cleaned were clearly valuable, and she wondered which wealthy Jewish family had lived there and had had to leave all their treasured belongings behind. Clothes still hung in the wardrobes, and when she asked Peter Walder what she was to do with them he said they were to be burned.

  When he saw her reaction to this, he said, with a sort of casual generosity, “You can have them if you want them, just get them out of the place.”

  The next day Ruth took their two suitcases over to the apartment and filled them with as many of the clothes as she could. She carried them home to Helga, who marvelled at the quality.

  “These are beautiful,” she said, feeling the softness of a cashmere jumper, admiring the cut of a dark blue winter coat. “Imagine just leaving all these behind.”

  “They had to leave everything behind, Mutti,” Ruth said sadly. “Not just their clothes. Everything.”

  They selected a new coat each, a skirt and blouse, some underclothes and a warm jumper.

  “It’s a pity there are no children’s things,” Helga sighed as she sorted through the rest of the clothes.

  “But we can sell all these,” Ruth pointed out, “and then get some winter clothes for the children with the money.”

  By the end of the week, the work on the apartment was finished. The new bathroom was fitted, and the whole place smelled of beeswax and lemon. Peter Walder came to inspect what she had done, and then, keeping his word, paid her. It was little enough, but Ruth pocketed the money gratefully. Another week’s rent and a little over for food. With the money she had made from the sale of the remaining clothes, she knew that she and her family would eat for another couple of weeks.

  Frau Walder moved into the apartment and sent for Ruth. She was a grossly fat woman, but her grey hair was expensively coiffed, and her jowls heavily made up. She had a small pug nose, and small eyes that peered out at the world through folds of flesh. They studied Ruth now, assessing her, faintly contemptuous.

  “My son tells me that you are a good worker,” she said. “I shall have my maid, of course, and a cook, but I’ll need someone to do the rough work. Be here each day at six-thirty in the morning, and you’ll be told what to do.”

  Ruth thanked her and promised to be there at half-past six the next day. With the new Jewish curfew ending at six in the morning, she knew she could just get there in time. There had been no mention of pay.

  “But her son paid me,” Ruth said to Helga, “so I have to trust her, too.”

  With the small amount of money Frau Walder paid and the occasional pound note in Kurt’s letters, they survived; September slid into October, and the weather grew chilly. The girls had gone back to school, and found it crowded with new pupils; children expelled from the state schools, no longer allowed into mainstream education. The classrooms were crammed with children, the teachers struggling to teach so many and the parents continually worried about them. How long would it be, they wondered, before even the Jewish schools were closed?

  Many Jews, forcibly ejected from their homes, had been forced to move into the increasingly overcrowded Jewish areas, Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau, working-class districts on the island between the Danube and the Danube Canal. There was nothing like enough accommodation and still they crowded in, many living several families in an apartment too small for even one. Rumour was rife; rumour fuelling fear, fear fuelling rumour. And always new directives to be complied with; everyone scrambled to comply… obey the rules and you might be safe, but there was no certainty. No certainty about anything. No prospects for a Jewish child.

  There was no question of university for any Jew now, nor entry into the professions, and many of the older children left school immediately. The Jewish Community Office organised practical courses, training plumbers, mechanics, electricians, trying to equip young Jews with skills still needed in Vienna, skills that might make them “useful Jews”, offering slight protection, and providing them with a trade should they ever have the chance to emigrate.

  More directives were announced; all Jews must disclose their wealth and assets, Jewish firms must register with the authorities, all males over fifteen must apply for an identity card, the addition of Sarah or Israel as middle names for every Jew. All Jewish ration cards and passports must be stamped with the letter J.

  Ruth had to take her passport and all their ration cards to be stamped with a large red J, and again she, like hundreds of others, had to queue for hours, simply to comply with this new directive.

  As the autumn went on there were more arrests and skirmishes. Jews began to disappear again, and the fear that had eased a little during the quieter, summer months returned again, escalating to panic in many quarters. Although most of the borders had been closed and few countries were still prepared to take refugee Jews, the desperate wish, the desperate need, to leave the country drove hundreds to queue for hours outside the foreign embassies and consulates in the vain hope of getting visas or permits to enter their countries. Even though Ruth knew that Kurt was doing everything he could to bring the family to England, she queued outside the French and Belgian consulates, the American and Swiss. At each her name was taken, her family noted and absolutely no hope was given of a visa to travel. She knew the wait had been in vain, but she still felt that she had to do it.

  “Supposing there was even the slightest chance, Mother,” she said to Helga. “Supposing just one place said yes, they had a place for us.”

  “We’re too many,” Helga said. “You shouldn’t even mention me.”

  “I’m not likely to leave you behind, Mutti,” Ruth chided her gently.

  “Well, you may have to,” replied her mother. “It is you and the children who need to get away most. They have their lives before them, mine is almost over.”

  “Mutti, don’t say such things,” cried Ruth.

  “Even if things were following their natural course I’ve only a few years left,” said Helga. “The children are the future. I thought that maybe th
e worst was over, that things were settling down a bit, but they’ve been getting bad again these last weeks. I know Kurt is doing his best, but you’re right to explore every avenue.”

  Helga was right, too, things were getting worse. Several times recently there had been fights on a Friday night, when the brave souls who ventured out to go to the synagogue were attacked by young Nazis lying in wait for them on the way home. Old men were beaten up by bands of thugs, who attacked them with impunity, while others cowered in their homes, their doors locked and their windows closed to the cries for help and the shouts of glee from the streets outside. Jews were being arrested, disappearing off the streets, simply not coming home one evening. Several of the men who shared their courtyard had just vanished, leaving their distraught wives trying to discover what had happened to them and where they had been taken; trying to provide for the families left behind.

  Once again fear stalked the streets. If it were a Jew who was attacked, the police made no move to intervene, they simply stood aside and watched the violence taking place, walking away from the battered body left in the gutter. More and more Ruth kept the children at home, only allowing them out to go to school with Helga. Not that Helga, she knew, could do much to protect them if they were set upon by one of the bands of young Nazi thugs that had taken to roaming the streets.

  Monday 31st October 1938

  We had another letter from Papa, yesterday. He is working as a servant in London. He says the house is very large and the people who live there entertain a lot, so he’s always busy. He has to clean the silver. He says it’s the forks that are the most difficult because the silver cleaner gets between the prongs. I can’t picture Papa cleaning silver. I can’t picture Papa at all anymore. It’s funny because I know what he looks like, only I can’t see his face in my mind. I talked to the twins about him yesterday when the letter came, but they weren’t interested to hear about him. I don’t think they remember him at all.

  Oma is very tired today. She keeps falling asleep when she’s supposed to be looking after the boys. I know she can’t help it because she’s very old, nearly seventy I think, but the boys are so naughty, she needs to stay awake.

  Mutti says Papa is trying to find people who will help us go to London to live with him. It would be an adventure to go, but only if we all went. How would we manage, we don’t speak English?

  I have a new friend at school. She is called Sonja Rosen. Her papa is a dentist. He is only allowed to look at Jews’ teeth now, but he hasn’t got anywhere for his surgery. They have had to move out of their nice house and now they live across the courtyard from us. We always walk to school together. Her mother takes me and Inge too, so Oma doesn’t have to. Mutti doesn’t like her taking the boys out.

  Ruth got to know the Rosen family quite well, and it was a relief when Anna Rosen offered to see Laura and Inge to school each day. Daniel Rosen was no longer allowed to practise as a dentist except on Jewish patients, but, when forced to leave their home, he had also been forced to leave most of his equipment in the room he had used as his surgery. He still looked at people’s teeth if they had toothache, but there was little he could do to help them, and most of the time he worked as a street cleaner. Anna couldn’t find any work at all.

  Ruth knew that she was one of the few lucky ones, with a regular job to go to. Frau Walder did not need her all day, just to do the rough work first thing in the morning, but Ruth had soon slipped into a routine, and although the work was heavy, she never complained; it put food on her table.

  Every night she prayed that Kurt would write and say he had found sponsors for them, every morning she woke to face another day of uncertainty and fear.

  17

  As before it was the shouting that awoke Laura. She heard the chanting, the animal roar of a crowd in search of prey. She sat bolt upright in the darkness, petrified, as the terrifying sounds brought memories of the riot in Kirnheim flooding through her.

  “Oma! Oma! Wake up!” She reached over and shook her sleeping grandmother. “Oma! Wake up!”

  Helga stirred and then, as she heard the noise from the street outside, was instantly awake. “Wake your mother,” she said. As Laura rushed from the room, Inge began to scream.

  Ruth grabbed the twins and some clothes. “Get dressed,” she instructed, “all of you.” Moments later, dressed, all except Inge, with whom Helga could do nothing, they were in the kitchen. Ruth sat with the boys beside her, but although they had grizzled a little when awoken from their sleep, they now leaned drowsily against her, each holding his rabbit, apparently unaware of the fear in the room or the noise outside it.

  Perhaps they don’t remember, thought Ruth. Perhaps they’re too young to remember.

  Inge remembered. Helga held her in her arms, trying to soothe her, holding her close and rocking her like a baby. At last the little girl’s screams dwindled to wails and then whimpers, as she buried her face in her grandmother’s shoulder, rubbing her little piece of silk scarf against her cheek. Helga slid a comforting arm around Laura as the child stood close beside her. Laura’s eyes were wide with terror, and fighting the urge to cry like Inge, she nestled against her grandmother, her whole body trembling.

  The noise outside grew louder, there was the sound of smashing glass, and cheering, bangs and crashes and more broken glass, and all the time the growing snarl of a hunting animal. “Jews out! Jews out! Jews out!”

  Beyond the tenement roofs etched black against it, the night sky was spiked with red and orange. The dancing glow of numerous fires filled the sky, and lit from below by the very flames that produced it, clouds of thick black smoke roiled above the rooftops.

  Ruth, holding the twins close, looked across at her mother. “Should we try and escape?” she whispered. “Fire…”

  “No.” Her mother was adamant. “It’s further over, on the main street. They may not even come down here.”

  “We must get out!” Ruth’s voice rose in panic as the memory of fire at her back, the hiss of it, the smell of it, the heat of it, rose to engulf her. “We could be trapped again! We must get the children out!”

  “Where to?” snapped her mother. “Into the street? Into the path of that mob? Listen to them, Ruth. They’re already baying for blood. Don’t give them ours!”

  Ruth went to the window and looked down. The courtyard below was lit by the single lamp above the archway. Most of the apartments now had lights on; one or two, as if unoccupied, remained dark. Ruth reached over and switched off their own light, and as the room was plunged into darkness, Inge began to moan again.

  “Ssh, ssh,” Helga soothed her. “It’ll be all right, darling, we’re all here.”

  That’s what Papa said, thought Laura, before they took him away. There was no papa with them this time. She pulled away from Helga and went to join her mother at the window.

  “What’s happening, Mutti?” she whispered. “Is it like before? Will they come here?”

  “I don’t know, darling,” replied Ruth, who, though trembling, had mastered her panic. “But Oma’s right. It would be very stupid to go out into the street now. They may not bother with our little courtyard, there’s nothing worth anything here.”

  “Jews out! Jews out! Jews out!” The crowd was closing in now, and even as Ruth watched from the dark window, a crowd of men streamed under the archway into the courtyard, carrying staves and axes and sledgehammers. Others brandished flaring torches, held aloft to light the yard. Behind them, in less unruly fashion, followed armed SS soldiers. As windows of the ground-floor apartments were broken, and locked doors were smashed open with axes, the SS went into each apartment and reappeared, dragging out any men they found inside.

  “They’re taking people, Mother,” Ruth’s voice was a croak. “The SS. But it’s just the men… I think.”

  As she watched, Daniel Rosen appeared at the door of the flat opposite, pushed out at gunpoint, his hands in the air. His wife Anna came running out, and although Ruth could not hear what she was cryin
g, she was clearly pleading with the soldiers not to take him.

  One of the mob shouted something, and the rest of them turned on her. A man with a pickaxe handle hit her on the head, crashing the heavy wood down hard against the side of her skull. She crumpled to the ground, and would have received a further beating or kicking had not Daniel dived forward, covering her with his own body. The men surged towards them, but the man with the rifle bellowed, “Leave him! We’ve got this one. See if there’re any more hiding in these other flats.”

  The men paused for a moment, then dispersed round the courtyard, running up the staircases to the upper levels.

  At that moment their own front door flew open with a crash. Ruth spun round in horror to find an armed man striding into the kitchen. He flicked on the light and surveyed the little family cowering away from him. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but he had the arrogant bearing of not just a soldier but an officer.

  “Where’s your husband?” he demanded.

  “Not here,” Ruth replied, her voice quavering. “He’s away.”

  “Search the place, Neumann,” the man ordered another behind him, and while he stood, his gun trained on the twins, who surveyed him solemn-eyed, a second smaller man went into each of the three rooms, flinging open cupboards, upending beds, and peering into corners that clearly could conceal no one. As he passed the kitchen dresser, he swept his hand along the neatly arrayed plates, dashing them to the floor in a heap of broken china. Inge began to scream again, and Helga clamped a hand over her granddaughter’s mouth as the man with the gun swung it round to point at her.