by Jana Zinser
Peter pointed to the empty spot where the beautiful wrought iron fence had been. “Hey, what happened to your fence?”
“The Nazis took it,” Hans said.
“Why?” Peter asked.
“To make guns to kill Jews,” Hans said.
A short distance away, they spotted Martin storming up the walk toward them. The three boys hurried toward the front door, to avoid a confrontation with Otto’s rigid and brutal father.
“Stop!” Martin said. The boys froze in their tracks. “I have an official letter for Anna Vogner.”
Hans turned around slowly. “She’s inside.” He pointed, reluctantly.
Martin handed the letter to him. “This is to inform her that Vincent Vogner died while in custody at the Sothausen Concentration Camp.” His voice was monotone, as if he was announcing the weather.
Hans staggered back, as if hit by a blow to the stomach, and gasped for air. Stephen grabbed him, preventing him from falling, and helped steady him.
Martin turned on his heels and hurried away.
Marla pulled her coat closed against the cold London wind and ran up the stairs of Bloomsbury House, a massive stone building in London’s West End. “So, it really is true?” she called, as Sebastian came toward her from his office. He seemed to fill the entire hall.
Sebastian smiled. “Yes, the Prime Minister and House of Commons have agreed to relax the immigration laws. The Jewish children can come to England. It’s official!”
Marla jumped up and down, dancing. “It took the horror of the pogrom to do it, but we’ll get the children out.” She grabbed his arm. “What about the States? Will the Yanks be with us? Will they take children, too?”
“We’ll see. Hopefully the U.S. Congress will do something soon. Come on, we’ve got work to do. We’ve got to get foster homes, and set up offices in Germany, and find the donations to sponsor the children. There are a lot of things to set up.” Sebastian sighed. “I’m tired already.”
“For the first time in a long time, I’m not tired,” Marla said. “The Kindertransport has begun. I better brush up on my German.”
Marla was only twenty, just a few years older than some of the children she was helping to escape the Nazis. She’d grown up privileged, not wanting for anything, but instead of being spoiled, Marla and her older brother Dwight had been raised to be daring. “It doesn’t take money to be bold, only boundless determination,” her father used to say.
Marla and Sebastian hustled along the crowded halls of Bloomsbury House. Phones rang constantly. “Be quiet, everyone, please,” Sebastian shouted. “It should be coming on.”
Sebastian went to the nearest radio and turned up the volume, so everyone there could hear the radio announcement.
“ . . . we need you to open your homes and your hearts to help these children before it is too late. Get them out. There are six hundred thousand of them calling to you for rescue. They must be rescued quickly. Either that, or abandon them finally to the fate from which a speedy death will be the most merciful release. Please contribute to the refugee fund today,” the radio announcer pleaded.
Marla and the other refugee workers cheered. Marla twirled around in celebration. “We did it!”
“We haven’t done anything, yet,” Sebastian said. “Now comes the hard part.” But he smiled.
CHAPTER 10
A PLEA FOR A FATHER
(December 1938)
Peter walked into the crowded Berlin police station next to Edelweiss Park. He hesitated. He didn’t want to be there, but his mother had made him come. She had insisted he enter enemy territory and demand his father back. She had instructed him to find the police officer with the big nose, who had served in the war with Henry.
Peter was scared of the German police officers, but he was more scared of his mother’s disappointment if he failed. He took a deep breath.
It was easy to spot the older police officer with the big nose. Peter had seen his father talking and laughing with him many times in their butcher shop, as they had discussed their days together in the Great War.
As the man wrote a report, Peter stood right in front of him and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir.”
The police officer looked up from his writing. “What do you want, boy?”
“My mother sent me. She wanted me to tell you that there’s been a mistake. You arrested my father,” Peter said.
“Is he a Jew?” the officer asked.
Peter nodded. “Yes.”
“Then there was no mistake,” the big-nosed police officer said. Some of the officers nearby laughed. The man shook his head and went back to writing.
Peter’s hands shook, but he didn’t move from his spot. “He’s a veteran of the Great War. He received the Iron Cross for bravery. He’s disabled. He walks with a cane and everything. He shouldn’t have been arrested. He did nothing wrong. Please, can you check? You know him,” Peter said, quietly.
The man looked up. “What’s his name?”
“Henry Weinberg.”
“Henry Weinberg? The butcher?” the officer asked.
“That’s him,” Peter said, although he knew the police officer was well aware of his father.
“I’ll look into it if I have time.” The officer waved his hand, shooing Peter away. “Go on now.”
Peter left the police station and hurried down the street. He trotted around the corner but stopped abruptly when he saw an even longer line outside the Red Cross building. A woman in a brown wool coat, with a scarf over her head, stood at the top of the stairs, ushering the next family inside.
“Next in line, please!” she called out in German.
The line of mostly women and children inched forward. Peter walked up to a curly-headed boy, who was playing with a yo-yo in the back of the line. “What are you waiting for?” Peter asked.
“It’s for the Kindertransport to England,” the boy said. “For Jewish children.”
“A train to England? Why would Jewish children go there?” Peter asked.
“To get away from Hitler,” the boy said.
“Hmmm. Do they let you take violins?” Peter asked.
“You can take two cases,” the boy said.
Peter motioned to the boy’s yo-yo. “Want me to show you something?”
The boy nodded and handed Peter his yo-yo.
Peter flicked the yo-yo. It shot out, twirled back on the string, and then danced along the ground.
The boy laughed. “I wish I could do that.”
“It’s all in the spin and the snap back.” Peter smiled. “Let me show you.”
The English Kindertransport woman came back out. A Nazi officer walked up to her. “So, are you the English do-gooder?” he snarled.
“I am helping to transport Jewish children out of Germany. We have Fuhrer Hitler’s permission,” the woman answered.
“What’s your name?”
“Marla.”
Peter smiled at how unafraid the woman seemed.
“I’ll be watching
you, Marla. No monkey business. Jews are very tricky.” The officer grinned. “My advice? Just kill them. It’s a much easier way out of Germany.”
Peter’s eyes widened. He quickly gave the boy his yo-yo back and ran off.
Later that night at Stephen’s house, Sylvia and Nora sat with Peter and peppered him with nonstop questions. Bruno sat at his feet, thumping his tail.
Stephen listened to them from the table, where he was eating thick slabs of rye bread with strawberry jam and drinking a big mug of hot cocoa.
“Are you sure that’s what they said? A Kindertransport to England?” Nora asked. “Are you sure?”
Peter nodded. “You go down to the Red Cross building by the police station and sign up. There’s this pretty English lady there. They called her Marla.”
Stephen stuffed the last piece of rye bread in his mouth. “Count me out. I’m not leaving Germany.”
There was a knock on the front door. Nora looked startled. She got up and slowly moved to the window, then carefully pulled back the corner of the curtain and peered out.
“Who is it?” Sylvia whispered behind her.
Nora quickly let the curtain fall back down. “A dirty man. He looks like a beggar.”
The man knocked again, this time louder.
“Can I help you?” Nora called nervously through the door.
“Nora?” the man said in a quivering, scratchy voice. “Do you know where Sylvia is?”
Sylvia stepped back in fear.
“Why do you want her?” Nora asked, cautiously.
Peter peered around Nora and looked out the window. The man was dirty and bald and clad in rags, leaning on a stick.
“Peter?” the man called, his voice cracking with emotion. “Peter, let me in!”
“It’s Henry!” Sylvia ran to the door and threw it open. “He’s back!”
Henry teetered uncertainly. Peter stepped up to him and grabbed his now thinner arm to steady him.
Henry leaned on Peter, sobbing, his whole body shaking. Peter stared at the weeping man who used to command his butcher shop. The man who knew all the cuts of meat. The man Peter relied on. The war hero. All that was gone, and Henry stood diminished, a shell of a man leaning on his son, a boy of eleven. The Nazis had taken his father and sent back a weak and broken stranger. Peter hugged his father and held up the frail man, realizing his head was bald because it had been shaved. But all Peter could say was, “They took our shop!”
Henry nodded. “I know, son, I know.”
Becca ran down the stairs and flew into Henry’s arms, nearly knocking him over. “Oh, Papa, is that you? We missed you.”
With a few solid shoves from Bruno’s paws, the door to the back room flew open, and Bruno bounded out. He barked with excitement.
“Bruno? What are you doing here?” Henry laughed, and Peter finally recognized his father.
Baby Lilly tottered to Henry with her little fingers opening and closing. “Papa! Papa!”
“Baby Lilly, my girl,” Henry said, as he picked her up.
“God brought you home!” Sylvia said, hugging her husband. “God gave you back to us!”
“Yes, it was God’s wish, but I was told it was my son’s request that brought me home,” Henry said, smiling at Peter. “I was released because of my war record. You saved me, Peter.”
Peter smiled, but he knew it had really happened because of his mother, who had sent a reluctant boy to ask after his father. Sylvia had gambled that a fellow war veteran, even a Nazi, might not be able to turn away from a child’s request. As always, she had been right.
Sylvia embraced her husband tightly. His butcher’s girth from a diet of good meat was gone. He groaned and flinched in pain.
“What did they do to you, my husband?” she asked.
Henry slowly shook his head and gently rubbed Sylvia’s cheek. “It’s the beginning of the end. May God save our people,” he said, as he wiped his wet cheeks.
The next morning, Peter ran into the room where his parents slept. He could hear his mother singing to herself in the Levys’ kitchen.
He smiled when he saw that his father was still asleep. Good, it hadn’t been a dream. He walked over and gently touched his father’s arm. “Vati?” he whispered.
Then Peter recoiled and gasped. His father’s pasty skin was cold. He shook him. “Vati!”
Henry didn’t move. Peter jumped away, his mouth open. His father, one of Germany’s bravest war heroes, was dead. He was finally free from the clutches of the Nazis, but dead nonetheless.
Peter stroked his father’s expressionless face and cried. “No! No! Not now!” He looked up at the ceiling. “Not when we just got him back.” He looked down at his once handsome father. “Poor Vati, God has taken you when we needed you most.”
He bowed his head. “May God remember the soul of Henry Weinberg, who has gone to his eternal home. May God not forget those of us who are still here.”
Then, he collapsed on the floor beside the bed, his last hope destroyed.
CHAPTER 11
THE PACKING OF A LIFE
(December 1938)
Sylvia, Anna, Nora, and Bert waited in the long line outside the Jewish organization offices in Berlin to put their children’s names on the Kindertransport list. Peter stood beside them and pointed to Marla, as she came out the door of the Red Cross Building. “That’s her. That’s the lady from England.”
Marla stood at the door beside Jules Whitmore, a German Jewish organization worker, and looked at the unending line of people wanting to get their children out of Germany. “The queue never ends,” she said. “I think it goes around the block. We’ll keep the office open until everyone is registered.”
“I had no idea there would be so many,” Jules said.
Marla smiled. “We’re going to do this, Jules. We’re going to get the children out, all of them.”
A policeman walked by, and glared at Peter. The officer tapped his gun, then held his index finger out and his thumb up in the shape of a gun. He pointed his finger and jerked it up, like it was responding from the kick of a gunshot. Peter jumped back. The officer laughed at Peter’s fear. It was all a cruel game to him.
Jules watched the officer intimidate Peter. “You need to get them out of here fast,” he said to Marla.
“How many children will a train car hold?” she asked.
“A hundred or so,” Jules said.
“We’ll need many trains. I’ll escort one train, and you do the next until we get them all out.” Marla grabbed Jules’s arm, like a child set on getting what she wants. “I wish you could remain in England with us.”
“If I don’t return, they’ll stop the transports,” Jules said. “Only those who have nothing to lose can be rebels. The rest of us are too scared to risk our families and friends.”
Marla smiled. “Maybe I’ll smuggle you out.”
“Don’t say that too loudly,” Jules said. “They will have you arrested, too.”
The next night, the light shone in the upstairs bedrooms of Stephen’s house. Nora packed her son�
��s things, as he sat on the bed, refusing to look at her. “Why are you doing this?” Stephen snapped, gesturing to the suitcase.
“So when you get approval for the Kindertransport, you’ll be ready. It could be at any time.”
“Why do I have to leave? Germany is my home,” Stephen said.
“There may be little left of it soon.”
Stephen sighed and crossed his arms. Nora patiently ignored his youthful defiance, continuing to fold his clothes lovingly and put them in the suitcase.
In another room of the house, Sylvia helped Becca and Peter pack what little they had left. Bruno watched from his prone position, taking up most of the floor.
Baby Lilly wasn’t going on the train because his mother said she wasn’t old enough to be without her. But Peter thought it was because his mother couldn’t live without someone to love. Surely, a baby would be safe from the cruelty of the Nazis, his mother had said.
“Pack only what you can carry. There won’t be anyone to help you.” Sylvia’s eyes teared up. She looked at Peter. “You’ll have to help Becca.”
“I don’t . . .”
Sylvia slipped a picture of the family in front of the butcher shop inside Peter’s violin case. “If you have your music, you’ll never be lonely.”
Peter picked up his violin and put it under his chin. He pulled the bow across the strings, making a lonely, howling sound.
“Don’t, Peter. Don’t make that horrible wolf sound. Only happy songs, please.” Sylvia frowned. “Your music will save us some day.”
Peter sighed. The sound was exactly like he felt. There were no happy songs inside him. He put the violin back in the case, shut the lid, and set it next to his small suitcase on the bed.
“I don’t know if I can go,” Peter said.
“What does that mean? Of course, you’ll go.”