Letter from my Father

by Dasia Black

  Secretly, I rubbed lemon juice into my cheeks, hoping to make them as pale as Helena’s, but with little success. Mother and Father were pleased that I was reading this famous book and we spent time discussing the various characters, especially Mister Zagloba, a funny but cunning and brave man who got away with doing outrageous things because of his ability to make people laugh.

  Our landlord Herr Gerold had been waiting for me to learn to read German script and acquire a reasonable comprehension of German. When I did, he gave me a popular children’s book, Die Biene Maja und ihre Abenteur (Maja the Bee and her Adventures). I loved it and read it avidly. I also enjoyed reading books about other countries, distant and exotic. Father bought me a beautiful book, The Seven Wonders of the World, about places such as Mount Kilimanjaro, Rio de Janeiro, the Sahara Desert and the Himalayas. He helped me find the places on a map and then tested me on my knowledge. These names sounded so romantic! I dreamed about visiting them.

  Father helped me start a stamp collection and I searched for stamps from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia and Germany from before and after the War. I stuck them neatly in an album and studied the maps he gave me so that I would know exactly where each country was. Ilonka and I were sent to matinee sessions in the city’s cinemas to see Natur filme about wildlife. Father always supported such activities. He was against ignorance.

  I loved him more and more each day and he loved me. I was so happy! To me he was the best father in the world. On his birthday I wrote him a card with loving words of gratitude. We had photos taken in front of Bet Bialik with him holding me close and admiring me. He let me comb his wavy black hair and plait it, just for fun. He also hugged me. Mother never did.

  He and I liked to walk through the birch and pine forest not far from where we lived. Father would point out various trees and taught me to observe the different shapes of their leaves. We touched the mossy stones, smelled the flowers and talked for hours.

  One day when Mother was sick and could not accompany Father to the opera, he offered to take me. This was a thrilling opportunity, beyond my wildest dreams. I put on my best dress and set out proudly on Father’s arm to the imposing Stuttgart Opera House. We saw Verdi’s Rigoletto. What a story of a woman’s love and the nasty lord’s betrayal of her! When Gilda died, tears flowed down my face. The music was stirring and I knew that this would become my favourite opera.

  That night Father opened doors for me and let me sit down first just as if I were a grown-up lady. I certainly felt like one. It was one of the best evenings of my life.

  I was now eleven years old and for our summer holiday we went to a small village called Wurzach. On the way we stopped at a lake surrounded by a pine forest. I could not swim very well, though I had been instructed at many hateful lessons at the Stuttgart Municipal Swimming Baths. But I paddled at the edges and experienced a physical thrill as I moved through the cool water amid those magnificent trees. In Wurzach I rediscovered that being free in nature made me happy. The village was surrounded by flower-strewn meadows with red and orange poppies, daisies and the bluest corn-flowers. I ran through the long grass, laughing and made daisy chains.

  When we returned to Stuttgart, my parents became preoccupied with getting out of Europe. The chances of our obtaining a prized American visa were not good. We tried so many times by making the trip to the place outside the city where migrants to the United States were being processed. We would sit waiting for hours and hours, only to be told at the end of the day to come back again later. Nobody cared that Father had taken the day off work and I had missed school. We also attended regular orientation days at the American Consulate, where one of the officials, an ignorant woman in Father’s opinion, took it upon herself to lecture us on American manners. If and when we got there, we would be able to blend in and be accepted, she told us. At meals we were not to hold our knife and fork one in each hand at the same time, as I had always been taught. No – this is un-American. We should cut food such as meat first, then put down the knife and eat the cut-up piece with the fork. We, the intending migrants, listened to her with amazement. Who was she to teach us manners? My parents pointed out later that she showed a lack of sensitivity and understanding of our world and our experience of centuries of European culture.

  At the beginning of 1949, after three-and-a-half years of waiting for some sign of an American visa, my parents decided that we would go on Aliya to Israel. I was overjoyed. They invested in a refrigerator to take with us. The day it was delivered they were out, and I spent hours polishing it, ready for their inspection. Here was proof that we were really going! I would be a Hebrew-speaking Israeli girl, living there and learning, just as I had been prepared by Bet Bialik. But heartbreakingly, it was not to be. My father was found to have kidney stones and had to go to the big hospital in Stuttgart to have one kidney removed. He was not healthy enough for life in Israel, this new young country that needed fit pioneers rather than the frail or sick, no matter how dedicated or educated.

  I was so disappointed with this change of plans that I sobbed for days and days. I had been so close to fulfilling my father Szulem’s desire that she build her life in Israel.

  By June 1949, after most of the DPs in Stuttgart had managed to get their precious visa to the New World or had made Aliya, my school Bet Bialik closed its doors. There were not enough Jewish children of school age left in Stuttgart to sustain a Jewish school. At this point, my father made an important and brave decision. At the beginning of the new school year, I was enrolled in the first year of a prestigious German girls’ high school, Morike Oberschule.

  I was the only Jewish student among 1000 other girls. It was like falling on to another planet.

  The principal of the school was a fair man who promised that I would be made to feel welcome. It was thought advisable for me to be known by a German name, so again I had to suffer a change in identity to fit in with a world of strangers. At school I was no longer Ester but Hedwig (based on Hadasa) Einleger and in the French class I was called Hedwigée. Ester sounded too Jewish. I soon learned to behave like one of them and made friends with some of my German classmates, though I never invited them home and nor did they invite me to theirs. I was Jewish and they were German, two widely separated worlds. I could talk to them about school things but nurtured a strong instinct that anything to do with my family, my Jewishness, my love of Zion, my story, had to remain hidden.

  Being different – and so different – did not feel comfortable at all. My classmates were friendly most of the time except for two occasions when the chasm between us was starkly revealed. One day when I arrived in class I saw some girls huddled together whispering. When the ever-apologetic teacher arrived, one of these girls announced that it was Hitler’s birthday and we should celebrate. Celebrate the monster, the evil man? The teacher blushed and said that this was not the time to talk about such things, before continuing hastily with the lesson. Her timidity enraged me. My heart beat faster and I could not wait to go home, to safety.

  The other incident occurred when I brought some Israeli stamps to swap and one of my classmates made a slighting comment about Israel. She was insulting my country! Something in me snapped, I answered back, she hit me and we got into a fight. We wrestled on the floor, beating each other with our fists and pulling each other’s hair. I am rather small and she was a big girl, at least a head taller than me, so I obviously came off worse. My father was most upset and went to see the principal, who behaved like a real Mensch (a decent human being). He called an assembly of the whole school and formally apologised to me. Such an incident would never be repeated, he assured us. The matter was soon forgotten at school – but not by me.

  The excellent teaching and wide range of subjects at Morike Oberschule opened a new world of learning for me into which I plunged with curiosity and real enjoyment. I felt that I was no longer a child. I was able to read and think and express myself in new, more adult ways. It felt as if my brain were actually expanding. I was now given th
e great works of German literature and improved my German to the point where I wrote my innermost thoughts in my diary in my new language. I learned about the Nibelungen saga, the story and myths of the Aryans, their great victories and disasters told in the Nibelungenlied, which we studied in great detail. It was rich with gods and heroes. We read the plays of Lessing, especially Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise), whose character was based on the great German Jew, Moses Mendelssohn. Best of all I loved reading the dramatic works of Friedrich Schiller, which we studied in depth including the tragedy of Maria Stuart. I felt so much for this noble, passionate, heroic woman, exploited by cunning Elizabeth I. My favourite poem became Schiller’s Der Ring des Polykrates, showing that we humans are not destined to enjoy unfettered happiness in our lives. I also learned sewing and embroidery, two skills vital for an accomplished German girl. But, of course, I was not a German girl and never would be.

  My whole year at Morike Oberschule was intensely lonely. I would have liked to have had a friend with whom I could talk and discuss feelings and secrets. And I did have secrets. I was growing into a woman and was discovering sexual feelings. At night before going to sleep, I fantasised about a tall, dark young man called Henry with whom I imagined myself in love. This was certainly not a topic to talk about with Mother, who appeared to have no time at all for sex.

  After school I would play hopscotch for a while with the younger children in the street and then go back upstairs to read and read. I read the vivid stories of Karl May, which my German friends were also reading. They described the adventures of the great Red Indian hero Winnetou and his fight to defend his land and people against the white cowboys of the Old West. I loved him and despised the oppressors who invaded his noble traditional world. One day when my parents came home they found me in floods of tears. I had been sobbing for hours over Winnetou’s death. They told me that I was too impressionable. I had too much empathy. This apparently was not desirable.

  Around me, there was a strange feeling of nervousness. Something worrying was going on. My parents listened to the radio with greater urgency. A war was being fought in Korea and there was increased tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. The papers were full of the possibility of a third World War. The Jews still in Stuttgart feared that Germany might rise again. We had to get out of Europe – immediately.

  Father applied for visas to Canada and Australia and was prepared to go to either country. One afternoon, while both parents were out, the application for the Australian visa arrived. I knew what it was from the envelope. I opened it and found the application form. I was so pleased that I decided I could help my parents by filling it in. I was unsure of various birthdates and other details, so when I read it over I crossed out what I had first written and changed it, or put things in brackets. It looked rather messy but I was sure the migration officials would understand my notes and corrections. Australia was supposed to be a friendly country. Then I went to bed, leaving a note for my parents: Application arrived. Have completed it.

  My parents returned home, found the childish (in their eyes) scribbling on the form and exploded. Father woke me and beat me on my legs and body and arms and kept on doing it for what seemed hours even though it probably lasted only minutes. This was not the father I knew. His eyes were bulging, his voice was hoarse and he kept on shouting. He roared that now, because of my stupidity they would have to ask for a new visa application, our departure would be delayed, and all our lives would be put in danger. On and on and on he raged. I was stunned by his reaction. It was a terrible night.

  Fortunately, the new application arrived fairly soon and was completed correctly by the adults. A few weeks later, the visas for Australia arrived. Hurray! Better still, some friends from Stuttgart were already in Sydney and offered to organise the necessary papers in our new country. My initiative with the application was forgiven and forgotten.

  V

  New Land, New Language, New Name

  Few in our circle knew anything about Australia. All that we could say for certain was that it was a country at the bottom of the world, certainly Down Under. I understood gravity and the rotation of the Earth, but still wondered how Australians kept their feet on the ground and did not fall off. This seemed silly, so I kept it to myself. But Australia was so far away from everything familiar. It was a little frightening.

  In preparation for our venture to a new land and new language, a tutor was engaged to improve my English. I learned it quite well, but spoke with a heavy Polish-German accent. My parents also tried to master this foreign language. Mother quickly picked it up but Father was hopeless. He just could not understand that the pronunciation in English differed so markedly from the way it looked. A word like therefore did not sound anything like its written form. He thought English was a crazy language.

  Using money they got from reparations from the German government, my parents bought things that were rumoured to be scarce in Australia. Quantities of soft down for filling pillows and doonas were found and Mother organised for a huge doona cover to be filled with chicken down to supply our needs for years to come. We bought bags of buttons. Father found a set of Rosenthal china with a pretty flower design and a set of sterling silver cutlery. These were for use in our future home but also to sell if times were bad.

  We set out on our great journey on Monday 5th of March, 1951. As we said goodbye to people we knew and to Gebelsbergstrasse, I was quite distressed. Though I had not always been happy at school, I hated leaving it. I had learned so much there. I knew I would miss beautiful Stuttgart which had been restored and rebuilt around us.

  We travelled by train to the Italian port of Genoa, then by a Greek ship, the Cyrenia, via Port Said through the Suez Canal and on through the Indian Ocean to Colombo. Encouraged by my father, I kept a diary recording my observations of, and feelings about the many new experiences of our journey. I noted the splendid snow-covered Alps; Naples lit up at night; and the colourful clothes and exotic wares of the Arab men and women of the ports along the Suez Canal. My father had a seemingly endless fund of information about the culture of every place at which we stopped. In April 1951 we arrived in Australia, at Fremantle.

  My diary was in German, as were all the books I had brought along. I could not remember when I had stopped thinking in Polish. It just happened. I devoured the books one after another. One was Stefan Zweig’s historical novel, Maria Stuart. Though tragic, her story was romantic and I longed for romance for myself.

  Mother suffered from stomach problems for most of the trip and seemed to be more seasick than any of the other passengers. Every day she vomited and rarely went up for meals. So Father and I dined alone. The food served was unfamiliar and we left much of what was offered. I lost my puppy fat and enjoyed my new slenderness. After we left Colombo we also became seasick as the ship ploughed through rough seas, up and down, up and down again. My stomach sank each time. It was sometimes so hot that we slept out on deck.

  The ship carried people from many different backgrounds. Each group kept to themselves and gossiped maliciously about the others. There were Jewish and non-Jewish people from Hungary, Italy and Greece as well as Poland. The adult Polish Jews did not want anything to do with those from Hungary and the Hungarian Jews felt the same about those like my parents. We younger people did not care as much. We gathered in the evenings on the top deck to sing along with the Greek officers, who off duty played the guitar and sang sad songs. Music was played through loudspeakers all over the ship, all day long. And what music! There were tangos such as Qui Saz, Qui Saz, Qui Saz and La Compersita, making my whole body yearn to join in and dance and dance.

  I made a couple of friends, also Polish, including a boy my age. I would change from one of my few outfits to another several times a day. I certainly wanted to be noticed as a young woman. After all, I was thirteen.

  I fell in love with a young Greek officer, handsome in his cap and white starched uniform with gold lapels. He had deep black eyes and when
he looked at me or said a few words, I literally tingled with excitement and pleasure. I thought he knew how I felt.

  A formal dance was announced at the invitation of the equally handsome older captain. The dining hall was decorated and music arranged for the occasion. I spent hours thinking about what to wear and could hardly wait to dance. But Father cruelly intervened. He had noticed how often I changed my dress or stood in front of the mirror arranging my plaits, as well as how I mooned about the young officer. Finally Father said: Enough. I was still a child and my behaviour was shameful. I was not to go to the dance. I cried and pleaded. Nothing worked. I was a child and that was that. I sat outside the hall during the dancing, listening to the exciting music of the tango, feeling bitter and humiliated. But I didn’t give up. Secretly I made a promise to myself to return to the ship when I was eighteen. Then I would dance all night with my officer.

  After Fremantle, the gateway to our new country, we sailed on to Melbourne to be met by the family who had sponsored us, through the Australian Jewish Welfare Society. We then took the train to our final destination, Sydney. I had grown in height during the four weeks at sea and thought of myself as a grown-up. Now I was curious and excited about the challenge of starting a new life in this faraway land. In my diary, I wrote:

  In three days we shall be stepping on Australian soil for the first time. Will this country bring us happiness? Will we be able to live here in peace and earn a living through honest work? Only the future will answer these questions.