'I didn't know what "kosher" meant,' Grace recalls. 'Seder night and so on - it all meant nothing to me. As far as I was concerned, Jews were people who lived in the East End of London. They were tailors who had gone on to make a lot of money.'
Bertha again suggested that Grace should apply to the Central British Fund in London for documentation on her and her twin sister. She was convinced that there would be a record of their having come to Britain on one of the Kindertransports. And, because the organization was sure to hold a record of their having been fostered, there might also be more about their earliest years - and perhaps about their mother. The CBF requested that Grace travel to London, since such matters were best dealt with in person. On a grey November morning Bertha met her from the train at Euston Station, and for the first time Grace saw the kind face that she had tried so often to imagine.
At the CBF Grace met the secretary of the Jewish Refugees Committee, Heather Salmon, whose pleasant and assured manner put her at her ease from the start, despite the difficult nature of what they were there to discuss.
Rosa Bechhöfer, the penniless, unskilled and unmarried Jewish mother, was desperate to save her children from an unknown fate under the Nazis.
Otto Hald was a great womanizer. Whilst the nature of his affair with Rosa remains unclear, he did not hesitate to abandon her upon discovering she was pregnant with his twins
The Antonienheim Jewish orphanage in Munich was the first home for Rosa's children. She visited Susi and Lotte regularly on her days off as a housemaid.
This photograph of Susi and Lottes first birthday at the Antonienheim was discovered in Israel over fifty years later among the personal possessions of a former staff member.
The bewildered twins, too young to understand their fate, were taken from Liverpool Street Station to their new home in Wales by their foster parents, Reverend Edward Mann and his wife Irene.
The records of the Antonienheim show Susi and Lotte Bechhófer leaving the orphanage for England on 16 May 1939, three and a half months before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Susi's entry permit to the UK was secured by the Central British Fund, a charitable organization attempting to secure the safe passage of Jewish children out of Nazi Germany.
The twins, now with new identities, adapted to their new British life protected by the care and concern of their new foster parents.
Irene Mann divided her time between bringing up the twins and carrying out duties within the Baptist Church. From the outset she bonded more closely with Lotte.
Their early life with the Reverend Mann and his wife was happy. It was only after the diagnosis of Lotte's tragic illness that Susi's life at home took a sinister turn.
Susi (centre with glasses) at the Park School in Yeovil brooded over her relationships at home and resented the attention lavished on her sickly sister by Mrs Mann which left Susi at the mercy of the Reverend.
Lotte (seated centre), aged 22, received the Award for Fortitude in the face of her illness.
It was only when Susi left home to train as a nurse that the enormity of the injustice she had suffered dawned on her.
Brigitte Hald, living in Munich, coincidentally shared the family name of Susi's natural father, Otto Hald. Moved by Susi's tale she vowed to help her search for her roots in Germany.
Martina Uhlitzsch, the final link to Susi's past, was discovered by Brigitte Hald living in Dresden.
Jerry Bechhofer (far left with his family) living in New York was the relation unearthed by Susi's search. In a letter to her he asked 'So, are you our cousin? If so, are you not one of the twins?' When Susi wrote back he replied 'Of course you are our cousin ... It's very simple. Your mother was our Tante Rosei ...'
Susi Bechhofer, a practising psychotherapist, now lives in Rugby. Pictured here with her husband Alan Stocken and son Frederick, Susi has laid to rest the events of her tragic life. But the memory of Rosa, the mother she never knew, will always be with her.
Heather indicated that there was unlikely to be any problem with the release of the papers and that the committee's formal approval was only a week or two away. However, before coming to the records themselves, she advised Grace that she should set aside time to study Judaism before meeting her new-found cousin and his extended orthodox-Jewish family. She then explained how the organization's records were compiled and stored, and that sadly in some cases material that had once been held was now lost. The details of the Manns' fostering of the Bechhöfer twins were there in the records, and particularly poignant for Grace were the claims that the couple made for financial assistance during the early days of Eunice's illness.
At one point in the meeting, as if in the distance, Grace heard Heather ask: 'Do I call you Grace or do I call you Susi?' Grace's immediate reaction was to reply: 'Grace, of course.' But then she paused, acutely aware of two things: first, she was not who she thought she was; second, she had a choice in the matter of her identity. 'Maybe Susi-Grace, in the circumstances,' she answered.
By the time she got home that evening she had made up her mind: Grace was to be abandoned without further delay. 'When Grace came in and announced that night that henceforth she wanted to be known as Susi, I just burst out laughing,' recalls Alan. 'I couldn't help it. Because I had become used to her mood swings, I assumed this was just another one. I did know that she never liked the name Grace though. So I thought that the best thing to do would be for me to call her "dear". I find that's the easiest way out for me.' In fact Alan did not really mind Grace becoming Susi; it was the possibility of his wife's adoption of the alien-sounding Bechhöfer, supplanting his own surname, that he objected to.
But for Susi the issue of names was just as serious, if for different reasons. If she could dispense with the name Grace, could she not jettison too the feelings that had troubled the bearer of that name? In time she was able to convince Alan that she had no alternative, and that adopting a new name, strange and springing from nowhere as it seemed, was an essential part of reclaiming the identity she had lost.
Now, as throughout his wife's search for herself, Alan provided the support she desperately needed. Loyal throughout the years of Susi's quest, he possessed a calm objectivity that was the perfect foil to her occasional overenthusiasm. He could stand back and tell her candidly what he thought, but she knew that whether or not he agreed with her latest line of enquiry he would not impede her, far less pass judgement.
As the preparations for the Kindertransport reunion continued apace Bertha was contacted by Sally George, a talented television producer working for the BBC. Sally had been commissioned to produce a documentary about the Kindertransport movement. Her provisional title was 'No Time To Say Goodbye', a phrase which, although not conceived with the Bechhöfer family in mind, could not have been more apt. Bertha insisted that Sally and Susi should meet, convinced that here was a story to capture the imagination of the public.
Susi was currently engaged in some additional research, but it was hardly the stuff of television documentaries. As usual, her approach was to gather information assiduously. How else could she evaluate the religion into which she had been born? Setting aside a couple of hours a day for study, she worked her way through a pile of books with titles like A Dictionary of Judaism and Being Jewish. What Susi was learning about the Jewish identity and experience was bringing about a revolution in her feelings. The Kindertransport story, for example, proved an eye-opening lesson in her personal history and that of the Jews. It was also an extremely painful one, but who better to confide in than her diary?
I am walking down the corridors of childhood again. I've got to recapture this childhood I was denied; my Jewishness, my heritage too. We Kindertransport children have carried invisible labels around our necks for fifty years. Only now are we being recognized. Of course it must have taken courage to put us on the trains and boats. But the screams still echo in our hearts today.
On 13 October 1988 Susi was to issue a scream of an altogether different kind - o
ne of unrestrained joy. It was on that day that she received the information about her mother for which she had been waiting so patiently. Heather Salmon had now reviewed the files and wrote to Susi: 'We have been able to find a few record sheets and registration cards in our archives relating to yourself, your late twin sister Lotte and your mother, Rosa Bechhöfer, who came to England as a domestic servant, though the date of her arrival in this country is unknown.'
Susi would later recall that on that day:
I was just staggered that she could possibly be in this country. And I worked out that she'd be ninety or ninety-one. I thought that meant that she was unlikely to be alive - but that there was a chance. So I felt this most enormous sense of urgency to do whatever I could to find her. I was also thrilled to think that she would have avoided being sent to a concentration camp, because that eventuality had always been at the back of my mind. That meant everything to me. I felt that I knew precisely what had happened. She had somehow managed to escape from the Nazis and come to this country in order to find her daughters. Perhaps she been unable to find us because we had had our names changed.
Given a massive boost in resolve by this breakthrough, Susi redoubled her efforts and telephoned every single Jewish old people's home in the country. In each case, after apologizing for being a nuisance she would simply state that she was trying to track down an elderly woman by the name of Rosa Bechhöfer. She would then furnish the few facts she had been able to learn about her mother. But it was all to no avail. No one had ever heard of her.
Undaunted, Susi contacted the Domestic Services Visa Department of the Home Office in London, which had processed the relevant applications in the first instance. She cited the reference number and date of her mother's visa application by the Home Office - DOM 36572, 30 April 1943 - information now available to her thanks to the release of the CBF documents. Although Susi knew that the date referred to the day the Home Office recorded receipt of the document, rather than the date on which Rosa had dispatched her application, she felt sure that those facts would give the bureaucrats something concrete to work on.
Susi's hopes soared on receiving confirmation that the British government was still processing such applications in the spring of 1943. But still there was no trace of Rosa Bechhöfer.
SEVEN
Otto
Otto Hald was never more at ease than when he was in his workshop. There he would spend hours meticulously analysing one metallic substance before rejecting it in favour of another, all the time wondering if he would one day strike lucky by inventing a substance which he could patent and promote. An unlikely combination, Otto's three great passions were wine, women and welding.
Rosa Bechhöfer was but one of the large number of women with whom Otto had become involved. Ever since his hasty departure from Munich in early 1936, in the fifth month of her pregnancy, he had done his utmost to put both her plight and his guilt out of his mind - not always successfully.
Otto himself had not had an easy childhood. The youngest of four children, he was only ten when his mother, Mathilde Hald, died. He might have had time to adjust to that tragic blow had not his father remarried so soon afterwards. As it was, within a year Otto found himself in a strained relationship with a forty-year-old stepmother. But if all this had led to any instability in Otto, he disguised it well, for by the time he was in his teens he was an effective communicator, and he grew up cultivating the image of a creative person effortlessly exuding great confidence; an outgoing, dynamic personality with a healthy appetite for life.
A few years later Otto would need no reminding that to many women he was very attractive indeed. His attraction lay just as much in his sparkling wit and easy banter as in his dark, swarthy good looks and his penetrating brown eyes. Nor did the fact that his version of events was often at odds with reality seem to deter his admirers. The elderly Gertrud May, from Göppingen, where Otto was born, contacted BBC researchers after they advertised for information on Susi's father. Possibly the only person still living who knew him, she gave the lie to the impression Otto gave of being from a wealthy family, although she did not deny his success with women:
He was a Casanova! Always up to mischief. Always after the girls. That was his main hobby. Poor as a church mouse, but always talking big. Always showing off, yet none of it was true. Like boasting about a big factory. That kind of thing. You know: 'My father owns a big factory. I live in this grand place' - both of which were simply not true. He was a good-looking chap, though, a really handsome man. So the women chased him all right, but not half as much as he chased them.
Rosa Bechhöfer had fallen for Otto's undoubted charms. Once carrying his twins, however, she learned that their relationship, already outlawed by the Nazi legislation on mingling Aryan and Jewish blood, was to come to an abrupt end. She was also made painfully aware that her lover's behaviour was not as charming as she had once thought -not least because he could not even muster the courage to tell her face to face that it was all over. Instead he simply packed his bags and left Munich for pleasures new.
Later on, as a private in Hitler's army, Otto served the Fiihrer faithfully, although like many Germans his heart was never in the war. Nor could its ravages diminish his enthusiasm for the opposite sex. During the autumn of 1942, just as the great turning points of the war were taking place at Stalingrad and El Alamein, he met Luisa Lehmann. Otto was twenty-eight, and Luisa some seven years younger.
The couple married in January 1943, but after six years Luisa could tolerate Otto's ways no more. Devoted to him as she undoubtedly was, his womanizing and drinking were too much to bear. He had ignored her desperate ultimatum and so she initiated a divorce. Unaccustomed to rejection, Otto sought solace not just in drink, a familiar enough refuge, but in the fact that the time he had spent experimenting in his workshop seemed at last to have paid off. For by the early 1950s, as Germany embarked on a period of rapid and sustained recovery after the devastation of the war, he was confident that he had concocted a welding substance second to none. He could hardly get to Leipzig's patent office quickly enough to register the product he called Sepa-Ha.
So successful was Otto's innovation that within two years of its arrival on the market he found himself with a problem he had never had to confront before: two massive tax demands. He had set aside no money at all for such an eventuality, and there was no way he could pay. Otto's solution to his problem had a familiar ring: during the early hours one morning he slipped out of Leipzig and made his way to West Germany. Never again, he vowed, would he return to the East. True to character, Otto invited his housekeeper to accompany him on his journey into the unknown, thus ensuring that his new life as a tax fugitive would not be too lonely. Having been his mistress for some years, she was more than happy to agree.
The couple settled in the town of Marl, in the Ruhr industrial district, where the combination of the many chemical factories and West Germany's soaring post-war economy kept Otto amply supplied with work. But, in one extravagant gesture after another, he soon frittered away the money he had earned from patenting Sepa-Ha. Nor had he given his ex-wife a single pfennig in maintenance, steadfastly refusing to pay.
It was in 1988 that Susi began her search for her father. She was not sure whether he was alive or dead - so far the only information she had been able to gather was his name. Unlike the dossier on her mother, which seemed to grow by the day, there was nothing at all on Otto Hald. It was precisely because she had so little hard information on her father that Susi continued to indulge in a string of romantic illusions about him and his relationship with Rosa. She noted in her diary as she was about to begin the search for her father:
What I know instinctively is that it was a love affair. I think that they were very much in love and it was partly due to the times of oppression and darkness and not knowing what tomorrow would bring that must have enhanced their actual relationship. I think that my father might have said: 'It's okay, you know, we love each other, so let's do what we
can for today' And that had it not been for the situation prevailing in 1936, then they would undoubtedly have got married.
Susi was at a loss as to how to begin the task of finding out about her father. So she did what had become second nature to her: she started firing off letters, to begin with to the tracing organizations she had contacted about her mother. Might the International Welfare Department of the British Red Cross have any information on Otto Hald? No, they did not. The German Embassy in London? The German Red Cross? Or its International Tracing Service in Arolsen? As one negative reply after another dropped through her letterbox, Susi realized that a completely different approach was called for. It was very unlikely she would make any progress based as she was in a small town in Warwickshire. What she needed was an ally in the field, a Bertha Leverton figure, German-speaking of course, who would rally to her cause with the same degree of enthusiasm as the organizer of the Kindertransport reunion. But how to recruit such a friend?
Could there be any Halds in Munich? British Telecom's international directory enquiry service informed Susi that three Halds were currently listed in that city: Krystal, Nicholas and Brigitte. Instantly she plumped for the last, making a note of her telephone number and address. Never shy when it came to seeking information on her parents, Susi drafted a letter to Brigitte Hald that same evening.
Dear Mrs Hald
I obtained your name and address from International Telecommunication Services and am writing to ask your help in a personal matter. I wish to trace Mr Otto Hald, who will now be aged between 70 and 80 years. I know that he had a connection with Miss Rosa Bechhöfer in 1935/6, but have no other information. It would mean a great deal to me to be able to make contact with Mr Hald or any members of his family. I appreciate that you may be unable to help me with this request and, if not, would be grateful if you would give me the names and addresses of any other persons in Munich with the surname Hald.
Rosa's Child Page 9