Rosa's Child

by Josephs, Jeremy

  'It seems strange to me that she should have made her way to England in 42 or 43,' he wrote. 'The Germans didn't let anyone out any more at that time. Where is your information that she came to England?'

  In answering this question Susi was pleased to be able to refer to the documents she had received from the Central British Fund, and indeed to that organization's covering letter, in which the secretary had categorically stated that Rosa Bechhöfer had come to England to work as a domestic servant in April 1943. Susi sent photocopies of the material, hoping her cousin might come to share her belief that Rosa might still be alive. But Jerry Bechhofer, always meticulous when it came to chronicling his family's history, was not impressed.

  'What is the C.B.F.?' he asked in a subsequent exchange of letters. 'It occurs to me that perhaps this was just an application from her to come to the U.K. Or do you have knowledge that she actually came to England? If she did then it should be possible to trace her. In those days one had to register, even if one was an alien.'

  Another cousin, Senta, the daughter of Susi's newly acquired aunt, the sprightly 94-year-old Martha, likewise made contact to suggest that Rosa was no longer alive, contending that she had had breast cancer at some unspecified date, after which she had been deported to a camp.

  'Impossible,' Susi wrote in her diary. 'I say no. I can't bear this thought; this has to be the worst scenario. I will prove otherwise.'

  If Susi was stubbornly refusing to countenance the idea that her mother had perished along with a number of other Bechhöfers, so was her son, although their perspectives differed. Now busy working for his final examinations at St Catherine's College, Cambridge, Frederick had from the outset displayed little enthusiasm for the venture. What good could possibly come of it, he wondered. 'If my grandmother went to a concentration camp,' he declared, 'then that is something that I just don't want to know.'

  The organ scholar was equally dismissive when Jerry pointed out in one of his letters that in the eyes of Jewish law Frederick was a Jew himself, born as he was of a Jewish mother. 'Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?' was his initial response. Yet, despite his repeated protestations to the contrary, Frederick would in time develop a keen interest in the issues raised by his mother's search for her roots.

  On 18 May 1989, fifty years to the day since the twins had arrived in England, Susi flew to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to meet the American Bechhofers for the first time. Before she left, Alan had continued to play the role of devil's advocate, warning his wife: 'You don't know what these people are like. You don't know what their customs and beliefs are going to be.' Not that it mattered to Susi, because whatever their religious practices or idiosyncrasies, they were her family now.

  Although she was nervous about flying, Susi dismissed from her mind the idea that the plane might crash, telling herself over and over that her mission was too important for that to happen. Deprived of any blood ties since the death of Eunice, she had often fantasized about what long-lost relatives she might have, and now the moment was at hand when she would see her family face to face.

  Relatives! The very word was music to her ears. Even so, after an eight-hour flight and a long delay in Immigration, she was more than a little keyed up as she hurried to meet the welcoming party at John F. Kennedy Airport. She had had scarcely any contact with the relatively assimilated Jews of England, let alone a group of fundamentalist orthodox Jews from New York. Unsurprisingly, they displayed none of the British reserve that she was so used to.

  The first thing she saw was the big banner they had made. 'WELCOME SUSI,' it said, putting her at ease right away. Today she recalls that she had in her mind the idea that, because of their strict religion, the men might shun physical contact and, strangely, she cannot remember whether they touched her or not. Whatever the truth, as her new family introduced themselves one by one, the warmth of their words and their smiles touched her feelings deeply. 'They all wanted to know everything at once, and bombarded me with questions unanswered for fifty years, even though I was dog-tired from the journey,' Susi remembers. 'Understandably, they were just as curious about me as I was about them.'

  In a complete whirl, Susi was whisked off to her cousin Senta's apartment in the suburb of Kew Gardens, where the whole clan was to enjoy a kosher meal together in Susi's honour. Orthodox-Jewish life was completely unfamiliar to Susi, and among the many questions in her mind was why they were eating off paper plates and using plastic cutlery. The simple answer was that the Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, demanded it.

  The family talked well into the night, and partly because she was exhausted and partly because they were so many of them, she put aside for the moment the questions she wanted to ask and instead tried to answer theirs. How had her quest to find her mother's family begun? they wanted to know. What did it feel like to have no blood relatives? Why had it all taken so long?

  Susi's upbringing and expectations of family life could hardly have been more different, and yet she could see that here was a real family: interdependent, trusting and secure. For a while her thoughts grew sad as she asked herself where all the years had gone, and reflected on how much of her life had gone by without knowing these fine people, many of whom, like her, were now greying and middle-aged.

  The life of the Bechhofers could hardly have been more different from the cold, severe world of Welsh Baptist non-conformism in which Susi had spent her childhood. Judaism was the driving force of their lives. In fact, the Bechhofers remain followers of a particular form of orthodox Judaism. Unlike the Jews of the Reform movement, who believe that Judaism ought to be tailored to meet the requirements of modern life, dispensing with various inconvenient rituals in the process, the Bechhofers maintain that the law should be adhered to, since it was given by God on Mount Sinai. In particular they are ardent followers of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the father of modern orthodoxy, and each one of them practises the principle of Torah im Derech Eretz: living by all the commandments of the Torah, albeit within the context of the modern world. Hirsch, long recognized as one of the great Jewish thinkers, had developed the system of Neo-Orthodoxy, a theology which had helped to make orthodox Judaism flourish in Germany in the nineteenth century.

  Jerry Bechhofer was very proud of the fact that his late father-in-law was the grandson of the sainted Rabbi himself. Jerry's father-in-law, Rabbi Dr Joseph Breuer, had not only lived to the age of ninety-eight, but had also founded a school shortly before the end of the Second World War: the Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. It was to this school that the Bechhofers devoted the greater part of their time, energy and love.

  Among the enduring relationships that Susi was to forge on that trip was one with Sonya Loeb, Jerry's sister and so also a first cousin. Like her brother, she had been most warm and welcoming from the moment they had first met. 'And don't you ever think,' Sonya had commanded in a letter to Susi before her visit, 'as you sometimes indicate in your letters, that we will ever tire of you, or of your being with us. We will not.'

  Everything that Susi did with the Bechhofers was to bear out the truth of that promise. Sonya and Senta had arranged a busy schedule for her. This came as no surprise, for again and again one relative or another had said how much time they had to make up after all the lost years. Among other engagements, Susi accompanied Senta to several fund-raising luncheons for Hadassah, a charity that lends financial support to hospitals in Israel. It was on such an occasion that she heard the Israeli national anthem for the first time, and was moved by the selfless dedication to their cause of this group of elegant and capable women.

  There followed a visit to the Jewish Museum and, with each day seemingly hotter than the last, exhausting trips to see the sights of New York. Maceys, Bloomingdales and Manhattan's other big stores were also on the itinerary, as was an attractive shopping mall in New Jersey, the like of which Susi had never seen before. When it came to eating in restaurants with her hosts, Susi was struck by the fact, for all the city's amazing culinary cho
ice, there were very few available to them, since they could eat only in strictly kosher establishments approved by Beth Din.

  On bank holiday Monday cousin Ernie and his wife Edna gave a barbecue so that everyone could meet Susi, either again or for the first time. Susi talked with Leo, who had been in the concentration camps and whose mother, Sophie, had perished there. She found it difficult to imagine what Leo must feel on looking back, and wondered if she, with her story of flight from Germany, was a painful reminder of that nightmare. Yet in the end she could only marvel at how well adjusted, indeed relaxed, he seemed. Nor was he the only one to have assimilated the past so honestly and to live so fully in the present.

  To Susi, the pace, the sights and the sounds of that huge city were at first quite alien. At times she longed for the safety and peace of home, for the familiarity of St Andrew's Parish Church in Rugby, where throughout her quest she had continued to play the organ and sing hymns, together with Hazel Bell and a small group of friends. And yet she had wanted earnestly to find her family, sometimes with an all-consuming force. And here, in suburban New York, was where they happened to be.

  While doing her best to acquaint herself with and respect the many laws of the Torah, she nevertheless slipped up more than once, carrying a spectacle case here, ringing a door bell there. Such acts are among those forbidden on the Sabbath, although these minor transgressions did not irk the Bechhofers in the slightest, merely bringing wry smiles to their faces. For they knew very well that they could hardly expect Susi suddenly to conduct herself like an orthodox Jewess.

  'They are all lovely,' Susi recorded in her diary while in New York, 'but I still can't help feeling like a fish out of water.' Here is my family, part of her felt, and this is where I belong, but another voice inside her said that she most certainly did not. How could she, with fifty years of English Christianity instilled into her, feel at home in what she saw as a 'ghetto of orthodoxy'? One thing was clear: she needed time and space to sort out her true feelings.

  Jerry was particularly sensitive to his cousin's plight. The existence of cultural and religious differences between them had not prevented intense feelings from surfacing, right from the outset. Even before Susi's arrival, Jerry had not hesitated to express his joy at learning of her existence. 'We, the family, have talked much about what it must have been like for you before you were married,' he had written, 'to be literally alone in the world and now to find that there are people who are your own flesh and blood and who love you. Surely no one else who has not been in a similar position can properly feel how this must be.'

  It was while in New York that Susi Stocken metamorphosed into Susi Bechhöfer. And a Susi Bechhöfer who could point to a large and loving family. This was for her the most exciting aspect of the whole trip. After so many long and lonely years, it was as if a gloriously bright light had been switched on. Now, after nearly half a century, the little German Jewish girl who had been left to fend for herself in Munich's Jewish orphanage, had been resurrected. And there were more miracles: not only had she been brought back to life again, but she was now an altogether more cheerful and better-balanced person, far more at ease with herself than Grace had ever been.

  There was one other revolution in her life too. Susi had finally become a daughter: the daughter of Rosa Bechhöfer. For again and again she found herself being addressed as such, her mother being likewise referred to by name. How different from the days of her childhood: no more dark secrets now. Now she could ask about her mother as much as she liked - and she did. Kind-hearted, happy, stylish -she loved and knew how to use colours - were some of the descriptions of Rosa she was given. 'You look just like your mother,' was something she heard again and again - from Jerry, Aunt Martha and everyone else old enough to cast their mind back half a century. 'She had such beautiful hands. I notice yours are not the same!' said someone with the characteristic candour of New York's Jews.

  Rosa seemed to live among them as they evoked her presence, and Susi seized the opportunity to be her daughter to the full, for the simple reason that she had never received her fair share of mothering. True, she had had a foster mother. But Irene Mann's energies had been expended almost exclusively on Eunice, especially - and understandably - during the long years of her illness. In addition, the Reverend Mann had always made it quite clear that he wished to play the central role in Susi's life. And his theory had been put into practice to the letter, for he had seen to it that all others were excluded, including his wife. He had his own reasons for wishing to feature so prominently in his daughter's life. But whatever his motives - sexual, psychological or otherwise - the result was that there had been very little space in which Irene had been able, or indeed allowed, to operate as a mother. Therefore to become Rosa's daughter once more tasted particularly sweet, even though so many years had passed since Susi had lain in her mother's arms as a baby.

  A remarkable family reunion was taking place. 'I had had this name Bechhöfer in the back of my mind for all these years,' Susi said at the time, 'and now finally I have met up with my family. They thought I had perished in the Holocaust. But here I am. It's like a fairy tale come true.'

  There was no denying the fact that Rosa Bechhöfer's life had been anything but a fairy tale. However, when the question of her attempts to reach her family in the United States came up, Susi remained characteristically pragmatic. All that, she told herself, belonged to the past, and she was not interested in voicing recriminations against anybody, least of all elderly relatives who had themselves been damaged by Hitler's regime.

  Before Susi had gone to America, she had received a remarkable gift from her new family. 'When I saw these photographs of my mother I was quite simply elated,' she explains. 'I had always thought that if I could just have one photograph, then my life would feel totally different. Yet at the same time I could hardly bear to look at them.'

  Her heart thumping and her hands trembling, Susi forced herself to concentrate on the image she had so long wanted to see. As she looked into that face memories began to stir in her - the pallor of her mother's skin, her straight black hair, most often scraped back in a bun, and the laughter that was hidden deep in her tired eyes. And then, bizarrely, came a flood of recollections of Miss Bennett, her headmistress all those years ago. Susi saw in an instant why she had felt such a fierce love for her; why, even at the risk of angering her, she had tried ceaselessly to win her attention.

  Unaware at the time of what she was doing, she had sought the love her mother might have supplied. In her mind the images of her mother and Miss Bennett had long been merged. Now, holding in her hand the means to separate them, she understood so much about her childhood behaviour and the longing for a mother's love that had been with her throughout her life. It was too late to possess the love of the woman whose face she saw before her, but now she had something at least as precious: she had a focus for the daughterly love she wanted to express. She began to understand that to give is indeed a greater thing than to receive. And, in finding her mother and her long-buried feelings towards her, she was beginning to find herself.

  Aunt Martha understood very well the significance of the pictures. 'If I had not kept these photos, Susi would not have any,' she said when Susi visited her and her daughter Senta one day at her apartment. 'I'm not superstitious, but I do think it was meant that I kept the photos. It was inspired by God. I have lived a long life - long enough to hand over the photos. Isn't that a miracle? Thank God for this.'

  Back in Rugby, scarcely accustomed to being home after a flood of new experiences in America, Susi headed for a shop where she was now a well-known customer: the picture framer's. As well as the photographs of Rosa, which were now her most precious possessions, she had some prints of members of the family from the last century which had been given to her by the Bechhofers. Before long these photographs were on display in Susi's living room.

  Pleased though he was that Susi had discovered relatives she never knew she had, Alan could not see the poi
nt of making the home a shrine to these gloomy images of the past. It was all rather overpowering, coming into the room and being confronted by a gallery of strange men in flat hats, long coats and big, bushy beards. He began to feel crowded out of his own home, and made no bones about it.

  Awaiting Susi on her return was a letter from the Home Office. It was in reply to her earlier request for details of her mother's date of entry into Britain. The reply was bitterly disappointing: there was still no trace of Rosa whatsoever. Susi's diary reads:

  I am beginning to wonder if she did come to this country after all. Perhaps the CBF document was just a registration number sent by post, as Jerry suggested in his letter. I have reached a blind alley in my search. But I must persevere, turn every stone until I find out what did happen to Rosa. This is the single most important aspect of the whole search.

  And persevere she did, for she promptly drafted an advertisement and then forwarded it to the CBF for inclusion in its magazine, read by thousands of Jewish former refugees. Persisting, despite all the evidence to the contrary, in the belief that Rosa had indeed reached England, she made a simple plea that concealed a lifetime of longing:

  INFORMATION REQUIRED

  ROSA BECHHOFER. BORN 7.7.1898. REGISTERED AS A DOMESTIC SERVANT 30.4.1943. MOTHER OF TWINS. ANYBODY WHO REMEMBERS HER PLEASE CONTACT BOX NUMBER 82. URGENT.