The Children's Train: Escape on the Kindertransport

by Jana Zinser

  “I’ll talk to some people before I head to Germany for the next train. I’ll get you the money,” Marla said. “Somehow.”

  Sebastian looked up and smiled. “Marla, I know the children don’t really know, yet, how much your gift means to them, but one day they will. Maybe, after they have their own children, they will fully understand what you have given them.”

  “What we have given them,” Marla corrected him. “Sometimes, I think about Peter, sent to that couple that use him like a farmhand. His sister Becca lives in luxury, and both of them are alone and miserable. Have we really done such a great job?”

  “They’re alive,” Sebastian pointed out.

  “So it seems.”

  Peter lay on his bed in the farmhouse attic, looking at a picture of his family standing proudly in front of the butcher shop. Henry rested his hand on Peter’s shoulder. Sylvia held a tiny Baby Lilly in her arms. Becca was looking up at Peter, instead of at the camera as instructed. Peter smiled, despite the tears welling up in his eyes. He knew he would give anything to have the luxury of complaining about his annoying, demanding little sister.

  Suddenly, Emil’s shouting pierced his sadness.

  “Air raid! Under the stairs, Peter!” Emil yelled in his booming troll voice, as he and Maude thumped across the floor beneath him. But Peter heard no siren.

  If the Germans bombed the farmhouse, he would be the first to die, here in the tallest part of the house. Maybe that would be a blessing, Peter thought. He slid the family picture under his violin and closed the case.

  He carried the violin with him down the low-ceilinged attic stairs. “Under the stairs! Don’t dawdle!” Maude yelled to Peter from the stairwell.

  “Why would they bomb Coventry?” Peter asked.

  “Munitions factories,” Emil said.

  Peter crawled under the supports and sat down, his violin resting in his lap.

  “There’s no room for your violin!” Emil scolded, as he huddled in a corner.

  “It’s small,” Peter said. “It doesn’t take up any room.”

  “No,” Maude said gruffly.

  Peter sighed and crawled back out from under the stairs. He thought he’d rather die than be without the violin his father gave him. It was his last connection to music and all joy, and to his father.

  He sat outside the stairs, under the kitchen table, still clutching his violin. He could hear Emil and Maude talking about him.

  “He’s very peculiar, that little German boy,” Maude said.

  “How did a butcher’s boy end up with a violin anyway?” Emil wondered. “It isn’t right.”

  Peter leaned his head back against the table leg and pulled his knees up, thinking of his father. Henry had given Peter a football for his birthday when he was little, but Peter hadn’t been interested in balls. He’d sat on the ball, like a round chair, in front of the radio as he listened to music. His little body swayed back and forth until the football rolled out from under him and he fell onto the floor.

  At Edelweiss Park, his father would throw the ball to him and shout, “Kick it! Kick it!” However, Peter would shy away from the hurtling ball.

  “Don’t be scared of the ball, Peter. Use your legs. Jump and kick it! Kick your leg out! You can do it,” his father would yell.

  Peter shook his head. Henry put his arm around his child. “Son, before my legs were crippled, I was one of the best football players in Berlin. I had an unbeatable side-kick. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. You can do it, too. You’re my son. I was the shortest one in my class, like you, until I was fifteen. Then I shot up. We Weinbergs are late bloomers.”

  “But I don’t like balls,” Peter said.

  Henry had been a strong, fearless young man who never backed away from a fight. He was a good soldier, a decorated war hero, and proud to have defended his country.

  Peter was Peter. He shied away from confrontation, felt uncomfortable in physical challenges, and was deathly afraid of injury, ridicule, and defeat. He was most at home listening to music, reading books, and avoiding trouble.

  “What do you like then, Peter?” Henry asked, confused to find his son was not like him.

  “I like music. I like violins.”

  “Violins?” Henry repeated. “I know nothing about violins. I’m a butcher, and you will be, too. It will grow on you.”

  Peter remembered that the next day, Henry had delivered meat orders in the truck. Peter sat on his father’s lap and drove the meat truck, his legs pressing the pedals because Henry could not.

  As they had walked down the sidewalk with a delivery, a police officer strutted toward them. He’d intentionally bumped Henry as he passed, knocking him to the ground.

  “Worthless, crippled Jew!” the police officer sneered.

  Henry huffed as he tried to get back up and defend himself, but he twisted helplessly on the sidewalk. “Help me up, Peter.”

  The boy reached down and struggled to get his father back on his feet. They stared at the police officer, who was laughing as he sauntered on down the sidewalk.

  Peter handed Henry back his cane and looked at him. “Why do they want us to be exactly like them? Why aren’t we allowed to be different?”

  Henry had looked at Peter and nodded. “You’re right, son. We all have the right to be different. You may play the violin, and I will dance to your music, the best I can.” Henry tapped his cane against his wobbly legs. But that seemed so long ago.

  At the Coventry farm, Emil and Maude emerged from under the stairs. Emil stood up and looked at Peter, still huddled under the table. “What are you doing, boy? It was just practice. We wanted to see if you were prepared, but you would have been dead if it was real.”

  “A drill?” Peter asked.

  “We must be prepared in case the Jerrys are brave enough to attack,” Emil said.

  “It’s not all Germans, it’s just the Nazis,” Peter corrected him.

  “What’s the difference?” Emil snorted.

  It was the last day of August in 1939. Hans and Stephen rode a bus into the countryside outside the city. The sun was hot, and they opened the bus windows to let the breeze blow in. Hans clutched the piece of paper that Marla had given them, with the name and address of someone who might be able to help them bring Stephen’s parents to England.

  They got off the bus at the town written on the paper, and walked along the road until they came to an imposing English estate.

  “Is this the right place?” Stephen asked. Hans looked at the piece of paper in his hand and nodded.

  “This is bigger than our school in Berlin,” Stephen said in amazement at the expansive estate.

  “Let’s hope they don’t kick us out of here like they did at school,” Hans teased. “Are you ready?”

  Stephen nodded.

  The boys opened the huge metal gate, with its curlicues surrounding the letter K. They walked up the long, wide, bricked driveway to the mansion. “Look at this place!” Stephen said.

  Hans took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A tall butler in a black suit with
tails opened the door. “May I help you, young gentlemen?”

  “Are you Mr. Barnaby?” Hans asked.

  “No, I’m Alfred. One moment, please,” Alfred said. Then he shut the door.

  Hans turned to Stephen. “One moment, please,” he mimicked in his fake English accent. “I’m Alfred.”

  After a few moments, the door opened again. “Please, follow me,” Alfred said.

  Stephen and Hans looked at each other and followed him down a long ornate hall. Stephen bumped a table, and a vase wobbled, toppling over. Hans grabbed it before it hit the ground. He glared at Stephen and quickly set it back on the table. Alfred turned around, and the boys both straightened, as if nothing had happened.

  The butler opened a huge carved wooden door. “Gentlemen,” he said formally, and with a sweep of his hand, the boys were ushered into a library with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books.

  A gray-haired man in a tweed suit was seated at a table inside. He looked up from a pile of papers and smiled. “Yes, boys. What can I do for you?”

  “You’re Mr. Barnaby?” Hans asked.

  Barnaby nodded. “The one and only.”

  “Marla sent us,” Hans said.

  “You are some of her Kindertransport children?” Barnaby asked.

  Stephen nodded. “Yes, sir, I’m Stephen. This is Hans. We’re from Germany.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Barnaby said, extending his hand across his desk to shake theirs.

  “My parents are hiding from the Nazis in their friends’ attic so they won’t be arrested. We’re trying to get working permits for them, so they can come to England before the Nazis get them,” Stephen said.

  Barnaby cleared his throat, more from emotion than reluctance.

  Hans stepped forward and bobbed his head. “Sir, my father owned a factory. He was killed in a concentration camp. My mother, brother, and grandmother were arrested. I don’t know where they are, but there’s still time to get Stephen’s parents out.”

  “Indeed.” Barnaby tapped the desk in front of him. “What would they be willing to do?”

  “My father is a doctor, but he can clean stables, and my mother can do anything,” Stephen said.

  “A doctor willing to clean stables? Come see me, tomorrow.” Barnaby looked down at his papers, but not quickly enough to avoid them seeing the emotion in his eyes. “There are always jobs for that kind of determination.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Barnaby. Thank you!” Stephen said.

  “Tell my daughter to come see me,” Barnaby said.

  “Your daughter?” Stephen asked.

  “Yes, Marla. I’m her father, Barnaby Kincaid.”

  Stephen and Hans looked at each other.

  Barnaby added: “If you two need jobs, you can work as dishwashers at Percy’s Tavern. That’s the way I started.”

  “Thank you, sir. That would be wonderful,” Stephen said, smiling broadly.

  Alfred nodded to the boys. “Let me show you out.” He opened the door.

  “Goodbye, sir,” Hans said, as they followed the butler out.

  They walked politely down the lane from the house to the road, not saying a word.

  When they shut the heavy gate, thinking they were out of sight, they yelled and jumped around. “We did it!” Hans said.

  “My parents can come to England! They are saved!” Stephen yelled. They slapped each other on their backs.

  “Thanks to Marla,” Stephen added, “and her father.”

  “I didn’t know she was that rich!” Hans said.

  “What’s she doing with us?” Stephen asked, laughing as they walked back down the road to the bus stop. “We are German heroes.”

  “And we are English dishwashers!” Hans said.

  Barnaby and Alfred watched the children from the library windows. “Boundless determination,” Barnaby said.

  He thought of when he was a boy, growing up in Blackpool on the northwest English seacoast of Lancashire. His mother, Vivian, was a beautiful and resourceful woman with an unfortunate weakness for men of no honor. His father, Percy, was a brash, daring, and often drunken sailor.

  One day, Barnaby and his mother had waved goodbye to his father. Percy had saluted back to Barnaby, blown a kiss to Vivian, and boarded his ship to India. When the ship had returned from its voyage, Vivian and Barnaby waited anxiously until the last sailor got off. When they’d demanded to know where their beloved Percy was, they were told, simply and without sympathy, that he’d disembarked at a port in India and never returned. The ship had sailed without him, and that was that. Barnaby’s father was not coming home.

  Barnaby and his mother had often wondered what had happened to Percy. Had he left them for something else, or had some unexplained tragedy befallen him in India? They soon lost their comfortable little cottage by the sea with the great view of the sunset, and they went to live in the back room of a boarding house.

  Barnaby had been ostracized by the other children for being different, being fatherless, wearing the same clothes day after day, eating only butter sandwiches for lunch, living in a boarding house, and every other humiliation fatherless poverty brings. He’d grown up determined to never depend on anyone again, but instead of bitterness, he chose generosity.

  Barnaby and the butler smiled as they watched the bold German boys determined to save their families.

  “No wonder Marla loves those children,” Barnaby said.

  In the rock pit near the Bockenburg Camp, Eva flung the heavy sledgehammer down against the rocks, breaking them into small pieces of gravel. The bits of white dusty rock flew in every direction.

  She struggled to raise the hammer again, but then let it drop. The rock split, and a large piece flew and hit her nose. Blood gushed from the wound. She dropped the hammer and gently touched her nose, wiping away the blood.

  Grundy, seeing her stop crushing rock, swung a fist from behind and hit her on the back of her head. She fell forward onto the ground.

  He kicked her. “Get up. This isn’t a holiday camp.”

  Eva’s eyes fluttered open, as she came to, bloody and dusty from the gravel. She struggled to get up, trying to bring her eyes back into focus. She got to her feet, wavering. Grundy shoved the hammer into her hands and waited as her quivering thin arms hefted the hammer over her head, and she smashed the next rock.

  He passed on. When he was out of sight, Eva bent over and spit out blood.

  CHAPTER 24

  A CHANGE OF PLANS

  (September 1939)

  As the sun rose on the morning of September 1, 1939, another Kindertransport passed across the border into Holland. Inside the train, Marla sat down and leaned her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. She barely slept during the Kindertransports. She spent most of the time praying that they would cross the border safely.

  That night, a small boy of five sitting across the aisle sobbed. Marla opened her eyes and motioned to him. He tentatively walked to her.

  She picked him up and cuddled him on her lap. “It’ll be okay,” she told him. “You’re going to a good
place. I promise. It’ll all be over, soon.”

  The boy sniffled, tears welling up in his eyes. “My Papa says it’s just starting.”

  “Ah, so it seems. You know what? On one of the Kindertransports that rolled out of Germany, there was a boy named Peter, who loved the violin. He was good. I mean really good. When he played, he became a different person. The quiet boy became like a musical warrior. A violin commando.” Marla smiled and looked at the boy, who had calmed down. “Do you want me to tell you about when the police officer found Peter’s violin and challenged him to play?”

  The boy nodded, his lower lip quivering.

  “It was a Kindertransport, exactly like this,” Marla said. The boy lay back and relaxed against her. His little hand reached for hers. She looked at his tiny hand in hers and gently closed her fingers around it. Then she pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “Peter was eleven. His fingers were long and nimble, perfect for playing the violin.”

  Peter stared at his finely trained musician’s hands, now covered with cow manure stuck with straw. He sighed and returned to shoveling the muck from the barn floor in Coventry. “A clean floor shows German pride,” his father had always said in the butcher shop.

  Peter smiled, remembering the day he got his violin. His father, still wearing a bloody butcher’s apron, had found him in front of the radio, listening to Mozart while sitting precariously on the ball.

  “Peter,” his father called, “I have something for you.”

  “What is it, Papa?” Peter asked, reluctantly pulling himself away from the seduction of the concerto.

  Henry held out a violin.

  Peter stood up and stared at the instrument. “Is it for me?”

  “Yes, Peter, you will be a great musician, someday. You are like me; we are good at whatever we set our minds to. We don’t let others tell us who we are.”