by Jana Zinser
A dog barked somewhere nearby.
“That sounded like Bruno,” Becca said, tilting her head to listen like Bruno had.
“It’s not Bruno,” Peter snapped. He thought of how Bruno had been murdered and placed under a bush in Stephen’s backyard, an utter humiliation for a dog in a dinner jacket. “Let’s go, Becca! England’s not going to wait for you.”
Then they boarded the boat bound for Harwich.
CHAPTER 17
WE SUFFER FOR GOD
(January 1939)
A rundown Berlin house, made into apartments with broken windows and no electricity, stood as a hollow reminder of the power Nazis held over Germany and the Jewish people.
Inside his ransacked apartment, Arnold Beckman, wrapped in a tattered blanket, sat on the side of the couch where Charlie slept. Evelyn, wearing an oversized robe with a coat over it and well-worn boots, walked into the room and rested her hands gently on her husband’s shoulders. “Have you been in here all night?”
Arnold reached up and patted Evelyn’s hands. His eyes were puffy and red, and his cheeks were wet from tears. He nodded. “Evelyn, I have been sitting here wondering if God will forgive me my selfishness for taking Charlie off the train.”
Evelyn shook her head. “They will arrest us if they find us living in our own apartment. I don’t think God is even watching us anymore.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. We suffer for God,” Arnold said, as his breath blew smoky in the cold air.
“Perhaps, then, suffering together is better than suffering apart. Forgive yourself, Arnie.” Evelyn wrapped her arms around her husband. “Charlie has.”
After many days of waiting at the police station for deportation, Anna, Oma Greta, and Eddie were packed into a crowded train and returned with a vengeance to Poland. Greta slumped asleep on Anna’s shoulder.
Eddie tapped Anna’s other shoulder. “But we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know. I know,” Anna said. “Eddie, please stop saying that. Just for now, okay?”
Eddie patted his grandma’s head. “Is my Oma okay?”
“She is fine. Just very tired.”
“And old, right?” Eddie said. “Where’s Hans? I wish he was here.”
“I don’t know, Eddie, but he’s a smart boy.”
“Yes, he’s a smart boy,” Eddie said, sadly.
The train that held Anna, Oma Greta, and Eddie, along with a few other Polish Jews who had somehow escaped the initial deportations in October, slowed. Anna could hear the two policemen on board, near the front of the car, discussing the passengers’ fate.
“What are we supposed to do with them?” one said. “Poland doesn’t want them either.”
“We will force them across the border. Then they will be Poland’s problem,” the other policeman said.
High winds and swelling waves rocked the boat that took the children across the English Channel that morning. Peter, whose stomach was always a little sensitive, was seasick from the rocking and swaying of the rollicking boat on rough waters, and the smell of the black exhaust smoke puffing from its engine. As they pulled into Harwich Port, he held onto the side of the boat and leaned his head over.
Becca wistfully watched the water. “I miss the butterflies. Where do they go in the winter?”
Peter didn’t care about butterflies; all he cared about was stopping the rocking boat.
The boat horn bellowed, announcing its arrival. Becca grabbed Peter’s arm. “We’re here, Peter! We’re in England! Our new family is waiting!”
“My stomach’s still back in Holland. Give me a minute.” The rolling boat lurched to its side as the gangplank was lowered. Peter swayed with it and vomited off the side of the boat.
He straightened back up, feeling somewhat better. “Okay, I think I can walk now.”
“That was a waste of some good eggs,” Becca said.
Peter glared at her. “Be quiet, Becca.”
Marla waved her arms and smiled. “Come on, children, gather your things. We need to get off the boat.” She patted Peter’s shoulder. “You’ll feel better when you’re on solid ground.”
Peter nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. He and Becca gripped the sides of the gangplank and made their unsteady way onto English soil.
There were crowds of people waiting for the children: foster parents, local curiosity seekers, English refugee worker volunteers, and reporters with big cameras.
A reporter, wearing a fedora hat tipped slightly to the side, stepped in front of them. His camera bulb flashed. “So what do you think of England, children?” he shouted at Peter and Becca.
Becca looked in his direction, unable to focus after the blinding flashbulb.
“At least it’s not a boat!” Peter looked back at the dreaded boat. It looked so steady now as it stood almost empty, obviously mocking him.
“What do you think about Hitler?” the reporter asked, talking quickly and loudly.
“Someone should do something,” Peter answered.
The reporter smiled and nodded.
“My papa is dead,” Becca said. Tears welled up in her eyes.
The camera bulb flashed, and Becca stumbled back. Peter pulled her away, so the reporter could not assault them again with questions about home and the man they were fleeing. He moved Becca along, not knowing where to go, but following the line of German children leading to Sebastian, the London refugee official.
Sebastian checked off the children’s names from his list as they entered Harwich Port. Peter and Becca waited until they were finally next in line.
“Name?” Sebastian said in a businesslike tone, his face showing no emotion. He was not even looking at him.
Peter looked up at the big man, and his voice left him. All he could think of was Karl Radley, the policeman who kicked him out of his school. The one who thought it was amusing when Wolfgang tripped him. The one who slapped Becca. The one who took his father away and stole their home and shop.
“I’m Sebastian. What’s your name, lad?” Sebastian asked again, this time smiling at Peter.
This man Sebastian isn’t Karl Radley, Peter thought. We’re in England now. People aren’t like that here. He swallowed hard and stuttered, “Peter Weinberg. This is my sister, Rebecca.”
Sebastian searched his list. “Peter, you’re on the bus to Dovercourt, over there.” Sebastian pointed to a red double-decker bus waiting in the road. A few of the older boys were boarding the bus. “Rebecca, you have a family waiting for you at the Liverpool Street Station in London. You go over there.” He pointed in the opposite direction to a group of refugee volunteers, waiting to take the children to the train station.
Peter and Becca looked at each other. Becca wrapped her little arms around Peter’s waist. “Tell him,” she said to Peter.
Peter gestured to Sebastian. “No, no, I’m sorry, maybe my English isn’t very good. We’re together, she’s my sister.”
Sebastian pointed in two different directions. “Your sister goes to London. You go to Dovercourt. I’m sorry, mate.”
“No! That’s not what we agreed to.” Peter stared at Sebastian. “That wasn’t the arrangement. My mother is expecting us to stay together. She will demand it.”
Sebastian shook his head, cleared his throat, and looked away. Then he quickly motioned to Marla, who walked over and took Becca by the hand. “Come on, love, only one more train ride.”
Peter ran up beside them and grabbed Becca’s other hand. “I’ll go with her then.”
Marla shook her head at Peter. “No, no, the family only has room for Rebecca. You go over there. Your name’s Peter, right? See that big bus. It’ll take you to your camp.”
Peter grabbed Becca. “I’m in charge of Becca. I’m her brother. We need to stay together!”
Marla pried Peter’s arms away. “I know, but this is the best I can do.” She scooped Becca up and walked away.
Becca kicked and screamed. “He’s my brother! I need him! He’s my Peter! Don’t take him away from me! Peter!”
“Becca!” Peter called, as he ran after her.
Sebastian left the line of children and hurried over. He stood in Peter’s way, preventing him from going after his sister. “Not today,” Sebastian said.
I was wrong, Peter thought, as he glared at Sebastian. You are just like Karl Radley. Why does everyone keep taking my family away?
In Marla’s arms, Becca reached out for Peter, crying. “Peter, don’t leave me! Peter, you promised Mutti!”
Peter struggled to get to her, but Sebastian, an imposing figure, steered him toward the red double-decker bus with a firm hand. “Be a good bloke and get on the bus, now,” he said, quietly, his voice cracking with emotion. “Please.”
“Do something!” Becca commanded Peter, her quiet, but always reliable, brother.
Peter was only eleven, in a foreign country, and didn’t even fully understand the language. What was a Dovercourt, anyway? His shoulders slumped, and his head bowed. He had lost his last connection to love, his sister Becca, and his mother’s trust that he would take care of her.
He turned away and covered his ears, so he couldn’t hear his sister calling for him, as he walked toward the bus that would take him away from Becca.
Marla deposited Becca in the line for the London train and turned back toward the children streaming off the boat. She looked back at the anguished Becca, as Peter was led away.
Marla grimaced. She knew what it was like to lose a brother. Her older brother Dwight, the dashing light of her world, had taken a job at her father’s tavern to learn the business. He took advantage of being the owner’s son and drank his weight in scotch. Two months earlier, while trying to find his way home in the middle of a moonless night, he’d teetered across a dangerously high seawall, like a drunken tightrope walker, and fallen into the sea. He’d drowned, a few feet from shore within sight of his father’s tavern. It had changed her life forever.
There were more children coming off the boat, clamoring to be placed, so she wiped her tears away, pushing her own grief aside.
In Berlin, Grundy, the Nazi officer who had pulled Helga, Bert, and Eva from the tailor shop, forced the Rosenbergs into the back of a truck already filled with people.
Eva held onto Bert’s arm to steady herself. “Where are we going, Papa?”
An old man in an expensive, but very dirty and ripped, suit motioned to them. “I heard them say that they are taking us to the Bockenburg work camp near Munich. From there, it is only God who knows.”
Meanwhile, Noah, the daring stowaway from the orphanage, was squished in a group of men being herded out of the police station next to Edelweiss Park and onto a transport bus. Their hands were tied together with rope, because there were not enough handcuffs since the mass arrests.
A group of schoolchildren passed by them. Noah wiggled his small hands out of the rope knots made for adults and pushed his way out of the crowd of new Jewish prisoners. He slipped into the group of schoolchildren; although a bit disheveled, he blended in with them, as the rest of the inmates were loaded roughly onto a huge military truck. No one noticed his quick escape.
He walked with the German schoolchildren for a few blocks. They stared at his dirty clothes, but ignored him. Noah slowly made his way to the back of the group, letting the other children pass him. At an alleyway between buildings, he ducked out of the line and hurried off, ditching his clever school group camouflage.
Noah ran down the street and up the steps of the Jewish Children’s Orphanage. He opened the big double doors, smiling at the man he saw in the foyer. “Herr Benny, I’m home!”
Then he stopped short. It was not Herr Benny, but a large scowling Nazi officer.
“You do not live here. The orphanage is closed.” The officer pushed Noah out and slammed the door shut.
Noah, with nowhere to go, ran down the steps and out into the dark and uncaring streets of Berlin.
CHAPTER 18
MUTTI STILL REMEMbERS YOU
(January 1939)
Peter climbed inside the double-decker bus with his suitcase and violin. He’d overheard the volunteers saying they were headed to Dovercourt, a summer holiday camp in Essex about sixty-four kilometers south of London. The only problem with this arrangement was that it was winter.
Peter quickly wiped a tear away and looked around to check if anyone had seen him crying, but no one had noticed.
Hans and Stephen were already seated in the bus. They waved to Peter.
“Peter!” Hans called. “That boat was rough, eh?”
“Where’s Becca?” Stephen asked, looking behind Peter.
Peter looked at Hans and Stephen, eyes hollow with grief. “On a train to London.”
“What?” Hans asked.
Peter walked on past them, unwilling to discuss “the best the English could do.”
Hans and Stephen looked at each other. “Maybe the holiday camp won’t be such a holiday,” Stephen said.
“At least it’s not a Nazi camp.” Hans shrugged.
Peter passed William, who had his feet lounging over the seat in front of him. Peter didn’t look at him. He could not forgive him for taking Eva’s seat. He went to the back of the bus and plopped into a seat all by himself, stewing in the painful knowledge that hope always leads to disappointment and heartbreak, and there was nothing he could do about it.
The big red bus started up and pulled away. Peter looked out the window as they passed the train station. He saw Becca walking into the station with the other little children.
He turned his face away from the window and buried it in his arm, leaning forward on the seat in front of him. He recited the cuts of meats in his mind: loin, shoulder, porterhouse, rack, shank, but that only made him think of his father. He remembered how his father would say Maybe your music will save us from Hitler, and that made him sad, because he knew he couldn’t even save his sister.
The train bound for Liverpool Street Station was loud and disorganized. Becca refused to sit in her seat. She planted her feet in the aisle and refused to budge. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to go home. I want to go back to Germany. I don’t like this place.”
As the whistle blew and the train started
up, Becca was thrown back into the seat behind her. She hit her head on the window and screamed, kicking the seat in front of her. “How could you take Peter away from me? He’s my brother! He’ll come for me! Watch and see! He’ll find me!”
The other Kindertransport children, in their own excitement and quiet grief, gazed out the windows at the gently rolling hills of the English countryside, the fields, woods, farmhouses, and smoke drifting gently from the chimneys, trying to ignore the rantings of the small, disgruntled passenger.
Becca gasped heavily, and then broke out into a howl of raw agony. After losing her father, her mother, and Baby Lilly, she was not prepared to lose Peter, too. She was in a strange country, and no one knew her. For the first time in her life, she was alone, unloved, nobody’s darling, and nobody’s little spitfire.
Anna, Oma Greta, and Eddie were herded off the train on the German side of the Polish border. Then, at gunpoint, they were forced across the border near Zbaszyn. It was a small town of about four thousand people on the main railroad between Frankfurt on the Oder and Poznan. Now it was overrun with Jewish people who had nowhere to go, and who were not allowed to return to Germany.
Anna looked around. “Where are we?” she asked.
Oma Greta heaved a great sigh of resignation. “Near Zbaszyn, Poland.”
“Where is Poland?” Eddie asked.
“Poland is where I was born,” Oma Greta said. “We all left Poland a long time ago. I know no one here anymore.”
“Why did you leave?”
“To find a better life in Germany.”
“Did you find it?” Eddie asked.
“No.” Oma Greta said sadly. “Hitler made sure of that.”
Becca got out of a sleek black sedan at the long driveway in front of a wide expanse of lawn. It led to a beautiful large home, surrounded by a thick grove of trees and bushes.