Safe Haven

by Anna Schmidt

  Now standing together under a broiling sun and cloudless azure sky, Theo watched as his mother released his dad and unfolded the letter with shaking hands. “It’s only a couple of sentences,” she said, squinting at the thin paper. “But there is no doubt that this is my brother’s hand. Paul, see how he has written it?”

  “Franz always did have a fine handwriting,” Theo’s dad replied as he took the paper and shaded the words with one of his large, dirt-encrusted hands so he could scan the contents.

  “When do they get here?” Theo asked, and Dad handed him the letter:

  My dear Ellie,

  Little time to explain. We are scheduled to arrive in New York tomorrow and from there travel with the others to Fort Ontario in a place called Oswego—also in New York. Ilse and Liesl send their love.

  The letter’s contents raised so many questions—when was “tomorrow”? Who were “the others”? Why were they going to this Fort Ontario, and where was Oswego?

  But when Theo voiced the questions, his mother cupped his cheek. “Answers will come,” she said. “The important thing is that they are alive, they are safe, and they are here.” She took the letter from him and carefully folded it to fit back in the envelope. “I should call Matthew,” she said, no doubt already making a mental list of what would need to be done.

  “He had that big delivery of lumber this morning,” Paul reminded her. “Call Jenny.” Theo’s brother owned the local hardware store. Their sons’ careers had been predetermined. Matthew would take over the family’s hardware business after his dad’s brother—a lifelong bachelor—retired, and eventually Theo would take over the farm. Matthew had taken to his assignment like a duck to water. Theo was a born farmer, but he was also restless and wanted to find some way that he might make a real difference in the world. In the thirty years that he had been alive, there had been not one but two world conflicts. To Theo’s way of thinking, that trend needed to change, and he was pretty sure that what he really wanted was to be a part of that change. He just had to figure out how.

  “I’ll call Jenny, then,” his mother continued. “She’ll be home. I want them to come for supper so we can decide what to do next.”

  It had always been their way to gather together whenever a member of the family faced a new and potentially complicated decision. Theo recalled when they had decided that Beth should go to Germany. Shortly after Liesl’s birth, his aunt and uncle had visited them on the farm in Wisconsin and were preparing to return home where Franz was a professor at the University of Munich.

  Ellie had worried about Ilse’s inability to bond with her new child and had suggested that Beth—freshly graduated from high school—could return to Germany with them to help out. “It will be an adventure,” Theo remembered his mother telling Beth. In those early days of Hitler’s rise to power, no one could have imagined how terrible things would become. And lately as his sister’s letters spoke more freely of the journey she had taken since leaving the farm, they were beginning to understand what an adventure it had been—Beth had met this German doctor, married him in the middle of his trial for crimes against the Nazi government, been sentenced with him to a prison camp in eastern Poland, escaped with him and their friend to Denmark, and from there moved to Belgium to await the birth of their daughter while they ran a café. Now they lived in England.

  The truth was that Theo was more than a little envious of all that Beth had seen and done. Although he fully appreciated that a great deal of it had been horrible and terrifying, he admired his sister more than he could say for the courage she had shown in the face of such challenges.

  Here at home he’d faced his own challenges. In school—even in the years he’d spent studying political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison—he had had to deal with those who shunned him because of his German heritage and ridiculed him because his Quaker faith did not permit him to enlist. The truth was that he did not believe war was the answer to anything. And if he could, he would dedicate his life to finding ways to show that peace—not war—was the only way to go.

  Theo wanted so much more than taking over the family farm.

  Ilse Schneider allowed the rhythm of the train to rock her daughter, Liesl, who was finally asleep with her head on Ilse’s shoulder. She was almost ten, and years on the run had changed her from an over-exuberant child to one who looked at the world through eyes shadowed with caution and fear. It occurred to Ilse that her daughter was becoming so much the way Ilse herself had been just a year earlier—suspicious, fearful of her own shadow, certain that the world held nothing good.

  Liesl was dressed in a thin cotton dress two sizes too small for her, and her hair was braided into a single plait that hung all the way to her waist. She was too thin—they all were—and like most of the children they had crossed the Atlantic with, she had no shoes, her last pair having been destroyed by the process of disinfecting their clothing once they arrived in New York. As they boarded the train in Hoboken, New Jersey, that would take them north to Oswego, someone had found a pair of mismatched socks and given them to Liesl to wear.

  Satisfied that Liesl would likely sleep through this endless night, Ilse allowed her gaze to drift to her husband’s profile. This proud, quiet man had aged a decade in only a matter of months. His hair was thin and gray, his complexion sallow, and his face etched with lines that spoke of worry and fear and defeat. He wore the jacket of the suit he had been wearing the day they boarded a different train—this one in Munich, leaving their apartment and the city for the last time and starting what was to become the new normal for them for the next year and more. In this new life, they were constantly on the move as they tried without success to get to a place of safety until the war ended. His shirt collar was frayed, as were the cuffs of the shirt that was now too large for his diminished frame. His shoes, Ilse knew, were lined with newspaper to cover the holes in the soles, and they had long ago used the laces for some other purpose. The socks that she had knit for him as a birthday gift years earlier were long gone. He, too, was sleeping, his cheek pressed against the window as the train raced through the night.

  In fact, most of the passengers in their packed car—one of several that had left Hoboken the day before—were sleeping. Their journey, which had begun the day they were taken onto a troopship in Italy, had been long, and their many questions had found no answers. Once again they were rushing toward the unknown. Ilse sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. She, too, wore the garb of a person whose life had been ripped apart. She, too, was exhausted and frightened and confused. But she—like her daughter and husband—was not the person she had been back in Munich before the war, in the days when their lives had seemed so settled and the mundane details of their routine had seemed so very important.

  What a silly woman she had been! How she had wasted the happy times she could have shared with Franz and Liesl! Too often she had been so very unkind to Beth—the child of her husband’s sister and the girl who had taken over whenever the war and life overwhelmed Ilse.

  And where was Beth now? She and the young German doctor who had taken up residence in the attic space above their apartment in Munich had been supposed to come with them that day—had been supposed to get on that train. But they had not arrived in time, and Franz had suddenly believed that the young man he had admired and trusted enough to let live with them had in fact betrayed them. That had been the first sign of Franz’s paranoia, and he blamed himself for whatever had happened to Beth. Ilse brushed away a tear as she wondered for the thousandth time what had become of the vibrant and beautiful young woman who had willingly stayed with them even after their two countries were at war.

  No, Ilse had been a foolish woman in those days—selfish and fearful—but no longer. She smoothed the collar of her cotton dress, shrunken now by that same process of de-infestation that had ruined Liesl’s shoes. On her feet she wore a pair of slippers, their leather cracked and peeling and the soles coming loose. She was embarrassed by the way the sk
irt of her dress barely grazed the tops of her knees when she stood up and by the fact that she was not wearing stockings or a slip.

  More foolishness, she thought as she glanced at the other women crowded into the seats of the railway car. She wondered what they had been through. She wondered if some of them would become her friends and she theirs. They were mostly Jewish, and their ways were different from her Quaker faith. But what did that matter in a world gone mad? One of the younger women glanced over at her and smiled. She was traveling with her husband and two young children. The two women had spoken briefly on the voyage from Italy, and Ilse had learned that the woman’s name was Karoline and that her marriage to Geza was her second. Franz had learned from the husband that Karoline’s first marriage had ended badly and that her ex-husband had insisted on keeping the two children from that marriage with him. Karoline and her family were Jewish, and Ilse understood how worried the young woman must be for the children she had left behind.

  Franz snorted. The air was heavy with humidity, and what breeze could be stirred by the movement of the train was hot and seemed to cling to their skin. Franz swiped the back of his hand across his upper lip to dry the sweat that had formed there. He looked over at her and then at their sleeping daughter.

  “I can hold her while you sleep,” he offered.

  Ilse smiled. Franz still expected to see the old Ilse, the woman who could not cope. “She’s fine,” she assured him and then stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “She’s probably dreaming of the Statue of Liberty. I have never seen our daughter struck speechless before, but when she saw that—‘the lady,’ she called it …”

  Franz’s eyes filled with tears as they had when the passengers crowded onto the deck of the troopship to get their first look at the famous landmark and whispered in their own languages but in unison some version of the word liberty. “We’re free, Ilse,” he murmured. “Free and safe. I just wish that Beth—”

  “Sh-h-h,” Ilse crooned. “Perhaps she made it out. Perhaps Josef’s father …”

  Josef, the medical student who had boarded with them and fallen in love with their niece, was the son of a powerful member of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo. Despite his position, the man had helped them on more than one occasion—first replacing without question the visa that Beth had claimed to have lost but in reality had given to a friend fleeing the country and then again when he had come to the university to warn Franz that he was about to be fired and perhaps taken into custody. Still Ilse had not trusted him—or his son.

  “It’s true. I don’t think I have ever seen two people more in love than they were—or than I thought they were.”

  “I have,” Ilse whispered as she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “No one could love you more than I do, Professor Schneider, and I know you feel the same.”

  Franz linked his fingers with hers. “I’m so sorry, my love,” he whispered. “So sorry for what I have put you and Liesl through. If I had stayed away from those young people …”

  “But you believed they were doing the right thing.”

  “I had a family to worry about. They did not. And I trusted Josef—he had been one of my brightest students. …”

  “You stood up and spoke out against evil. This is what we do—what our faith leads us to do. I only wish that I would have been so brave.”

  Liesl sat up and rubbed her eyes with her fists. “How far is this place?” she asked.

  “Soon,” Ilse assured her.

  “And we can start our new life in America?”

  “For now, Liebchen,” Franz said. “But you must remember that—”

  “You must remember that everything will take time,” Ilse interrupted. She was not going to allow her husband to worry their daughter by reminding her of the paper they had all had to sign stating that once the war was over they understood that they would be sent back to wherever they had called home in Europe. She was sure that very few people on this train speeding along to Fort Ontario could imagine they had anything left in Europe to call home. Surely the paper had been a formality. Surely once the Americans understood the realities of their situation, they would not be held to that promise. Surely they would be allowed to stay.

  PART 1

  OSWEGO, NEW YORK

  AUTUMN 1944

  THEY COME TO THE FENCE

  OSWEGO N.Y.—The fence is chain link capped by three taut rows of razor-sharp barbed wire, and it surrounds the entire compound. The Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter is in fact—at least for now—a place where people who have been running for their very lives for the last several months or years are now incarcerated.

  A polite term may be “quarantined,” and it has been going on for a month. They may not leave the fort nor may relatives and friends who may already live here in America visit them inside the fence.

  On one side of the intertwined wire are the “guests” of President Roosevelt—982 men, women and children brought to this small town on the shores of Lake Ontario from war-torn Europe. On the other are a mix of curious townspeople, relatives of someone inside, and do-gooders from agencies that specialize in such work.

  Through the small openings in the wire, townspeople might offer a cigarette or a Royal Crown Cola or a stick of gum as a gesture of welcome. In some cases they practice language skills they learned in school, offering halting words and phrases of Italian, French, even German. The relatives are immediately recognizable, their heads bent close to the fence, close to the face of their loved one. The do-gooders come bearing boxes of clothing, toys and candy for the children, books and magazines, as well as newspapers to tell them what is happening back where they came from—where they must return once the war ends.

  Those in charge have elected to ignore a hole the young people have created to get down to the lake on hot days or to leave the shelter to meet the friends they have made from town, or to shop for soda and treats at the little grocery store just outside the fence. The grocer says nothing about these illegal forays into his business, and often he adds something to the purchase—a piece of fruit, a box of crackers.

  But at the end of the day, those who have escaped the shelter for a few hours return. Amazingly no one has tried to leave for good. No family member on the outside has attempted to orchestrate a permanent getaway. The refugees remain inside and wait. And therein lies the real story. When the war ends, FDR’s guests have agreed to leave America and return to what?

  CHAPTER 1

  The first thing Theo noticed when he arrived in Oswego and walked through residential neighborhoods until he reached the fort was the fence. Chain link seemed to run on for miles—certainly it surrounded an area of several acres. Six feet tall. Capped with three rows of barbed wire stretched tight. Behind the fence, rows of whitewashed barracks sat along the cliff that overlooked the lake. Some brick houses positioned on a hill, a small cemetery, and in the background the remnants of the actual fort remained as reminders of a site that had been so important to the security of a young America—through the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and even the Civil War. Theo guessed that other buildings might house offices and dining halls, a laundry and a chapel, as well as an infirmary and maybe a recreation center. But overall with the fence surrounding it, the place looked less like a military fort than it did a prison.

  Theo had arrived after an overnight bus ride. In their family meeting with Matthew and Jenny back in Wisconsin, they had sat in silence, waiting for guidance as they decided the best way to bring Franz, Ilse, and Liesl home to the farm. After making several telephone calls and scanning the national newspapers in the local library, his father had learned that the refugees would need to remain at the shelter until the war was over. And although with the landing at Normandy in June the tide of war seemed to have turned in favor of the Allies, no one thought for a minute that it would end quickly.

  “Well, we can’t just leave them there among strangers,” his mother had said, her lips set in a tight line that meant she intended
to do something for her brother and his family immediately. She had already made plans to reassign the bedrooms of the farmhouse to make room for them. In the end it was decided that Theo would go to Oswego, find a room in a boardinghouse, and do everything he could to persuade the authorities that Franz, Ilse, and Liesl did not need to stay in the so-called shelter—they had a home and family right here in the United States.

  The boardinghouse part had worked out fine. Once the owner—Selma Velo—learned that he was Quaker, in spite of the fact that her regular rooms were all filled, she had offered Theo a cot and dresser in the attic in exchange for him mowing the yard and weeding her garden and taking care of other household repairs that her son usually handled. Her son was serving in the Pacific. After supper—shared with the other boarders less one woman from Washington, DC, who had not yet arrived—he had followed his landlady to the basement and unearthed an old fan in need of a new electrical cord.

  “My late husband’s workshop is out in that shed behind the house. Can you fix this?”

  “If I can find the right parts, I can,” Theo assured her. He was grateful for the possibility of a fan, because in spite of the fact that he’d propped open the three small attic windows and there was nearly always a breeze off Lake Ontario a couple of blocks away, it was oven hot up there.

  “There’s a hardware store down on Ninth Street on the way into town,” Mrs. Velo explained as she led him to the workshop. “I run an account there. It’s closed up for tonight, but tomorrow if you need something …”