The Children's Train: Escape on the Kindertransport

by Jana Zinser

  Peter reached out to touch the beautiful gift his father had given him, the gift of acceptance. He knew he had his father’s permission to be himself.

  “Thank you, Papa,” he said. “I will try to make you proud like a football player.”

  “You already have, Peter.”

  That night, September 1, 1939, at the German Port of Wilhelmshaven, the darkness was thick. The lighted windows of the boat to America, waiting in the harbor, seemed to twinkle with the promise of a voyage away from the evil that plagued Germany’s Third Reich.

  Arnold, Evelyn, and Charlie, carrying their few possessions and ready to board, waited anxiously outside the metal passenger gates. Charlie, wearing a blue cap, hopped from foot to foot with anticipation of another voyage. The last one had been interrupted by his father’s love and desperation.

  The boat whistle blew, and Charlie cheered.

  The Kindertransport whistle blew. Another train, this time led by Jules, was ready to leave the Berlin station. The parents waved goodbye from behind the fence.

  Jules noticed that each Kindertransport departure seemed to be getting more chaotic and the people more desperate.

  Jules, the ex-German soldier turned refugee organization worker, boarded another train filled with children. “Say your last goodbyes, children. We are about to leave.”

  The parents waved and cried outside the train windows, still separated by the fence. The sound of their weeping was unmistakable, like the primal sounds of animals in agony. The anguish ebbed and flowed in volume, the pain palpable. The grief of voluntarily giving their children life, while dooming themselves to certain despair, was more than any of the parents could handle.

  Jules and the children waited nervously in their seats, ready to leave. The heart-wrenching faces of the mothers and fathers outside were almost unbearable.

  Jules knew he would breathe more easily once the wheels moved forward on their freedom journey. It was not the kind of relief that came after crossing into Holland, but it would be a loosening of the vise that gripped his heart. Jules waited for the screech of the wheels beginning to turn, because the sounds of the lamenting families would slowly fade. Then he could focus on getting his young charges to the safe harbor of Holland.

  Suddenly, a group of police officers swept into the Berlin railway station. They spread across the yard like a black tidal wave and streamed onto the train cars, boots pounding.

  A police officer with beady eyes and a huge nose banged on the seats and hit the ceiling with his club. “Out! Out! Everyone out!” he shouted.

  A little girl clutching a stuffed blue bunny screamed, “Mutti!”

  Jules jumped up and gestured to the children. “Your parents are still waiting for you outside. Leave your bags and quickly find your parents,” he said.

  “We aren’t going to England?” a tiny girl with brown ringlets asked.

  “No. There’s been a change of plans,” Jules said. “We must leave the train.”

  “We didn’t escape Hitler, did we?” asked a studious-looking boy.

  “Shhh. We must focus on exiting the train and finding your parents. Please move quickly,” Jules instructed.

  The children, confused and scared, scrambled over the seats and pushed to get out, calling for their parents. When the parents saw the police officers boarding the train and the children streaming out, they jumped over the fence and ran to the train cars, searching in the chaos for their children. The din of the Nazi officers’ shouts, the cries of the children, and the yelling of the parents sounded like the roar of a tornado bent on destruction.

  At the Port of Wilhelmshaven, where Charlie and his parents waited for their boat out of Germany, Nazi officers swarmed over the docks. They pointed their guns at the waiting passengers.

  A skinny bug-eyed Nazi officer waved his gun in the air. “Poland has been invaded! Germany is at war! No one may leave! Go home, or you will be arrested!”

  Arnold, Evelyn, and Charlie stood in shock, unable to absorb the meaning of the words. The officer approached them. “Did you hear me? I said go home!”

  “We are far from home. We thought we were leaving. We have nothing to go back to,” Arnold explained.

  The officer prodded them with a club. “I don’t care about your troubles. Move along. Germany is at war! The border is sealed.”

  Arnold picked up their small bags filled with everything they owned. Evelyn grabbed Charlie’s hand, and they walked away from the unexpected change in their escape plans.

  “But Uncle Ernst is waiting for us in America. Where will we go?” Charlie asked with the innocence of a child, who still believed his parents had the answers and could keep him safe.

  “What are you waiting for?” the officer yelled at them, threatening them with his billy club.

  “We don’t know this town. We traveled here from Berlin to begin our journey to America,” Evelyn said.

  The officer pointed to an idling military truck across the street. “If you hurry, that truck over there will take you back to Berlin.”

  Arnold, Evelyn, and Charlie picked up their bags and ran to the truck. The officer turned to another officer and smiled.

  The next morning, Marla and her group of Kindertransport children arrived in England and disembarked from the boat at Harwich Port.

  Sebastian found Marla in the crowd and pulled her aside. “We received a telegram from the refugee office in Germany. Jules’s train didn’t leave the station last night. The police raided it and forced them to get off.”

  “Why?”

  “Germany is at war. The borders are sealed, and Jules was arrested.”

  As the sun rose at the Bockenburg Camp, Eva waited in line for bread. She watched, as Grundy was distracted, and saw the man in front of her stuff his pockets with moldy bread. Nobody else saw him, and he got away with it.

  Eva reached out her hand to do the same, but then she saw the long line of people who were just as hungry, waiting behind her. She pulled her hand back.

  Grundy jerked the man by his shirt and threw him to the ground. He reached in the man’s pockets and pulled out the stolen bread.

  “A thief!” Grundy shouted for all to hear. “A menace to all humanity.” He pulled his gun and shot the man who was bold enough to steal extra bits of stale bread.

  Eva backed away, leaving her share of bread for someone else.

  In London, Hans and Stephen ran down the sidewalk from the hostel, pushing each other as they headed toward the bus stop. A newsboy on the corner waved a newspaper excitedly, shouting, “Paper! Paper! Get your paper!”

  “Let’s go straight to Mr. Barnaby’s place and get the work papers for your parents!” Hans called.

  “I’m ahead of you!” Stephen answered.

  The newsboy yelled, “GERMANY INVADES POLAND! BORDERS SEALED! Read all about it!”

  Stephen and Hans stopped and stared at each other. Their bodies went limp. When he could move again, Stephen paid the newsboy and grabbed a newspaper from the stack. He looked at the paper’s headline, and then he heaved it into the air.

  �
�I hate this world!” Stephen yelled, as the loose, fluttering pages of devastating news rained down.

  Peter shoveled the barn floor, ankle deep in cow manure, slop, and straw. Emil watched from the doorway, scowling and shaking his head in disapproval.

  “Stop piddling about. You better learn to muck the barn faster, or you’ll never become a farmer,” Emil, the agrarian hobgoblin, admonished. “Farmers aren’t much for idle time, fancy dreams, and musical nonsense.”

  “I don’t plan on being a farmer, and I’ll be leaving here soon,” Peter said.

  “Oh, I guess you haven’t heard.” Emil sighed. “Germany has invaded Poland. The borders are sealed. England may go to war. You’re not going anywhere for a long time.”

  Peter’s shovel dropped to the ground, as he stared at Emil in shock. The cows startled and mooed.

  At the Cohens’ in London, Becca played under the table with her doll, Gina. She quickly moved her doll under a chair. “Hide in the wardrobe, Gina, and don’t say a word, or they will take your papa away.”

  In Berlin, the burned synagogue was now a temporary camp and fenced with barbed wire to keep the Jewish people in, until they could be sent to other, more established camps. It was an unholy insult to be imprisoned on the grounds of their place of worship, but for Sylvia, who had to look across the street at her old apartment and the butcher shop where she’d been so happy with her family, it was unbearably cruel. She and Baby Lilly were camped out in front of the burned synagogue, with no shelter but a crude makeshift tent, as they waited to be transported out of Berlin.

  It was a cool September night, and Lilly shivered violently. Sylvia picked her up and held her inside her shirt, allowing the warmth of her body to surround the trembling baby who had a fever. She noticed a red rash on Baby Lilly’s arms and face. She opened Lilly’s mouth. Her baby’s tongue was bright red.

  Sylvia gasped. She ran up to the Nazi officers. “My baby is very sick. She has a fever and a rash.”

  A fat officer, with jowls that rippled when he spoke, laughed.

  “I’m afraid she’s going to die,” Sylvia said. “I think she has scarlet fever.”

  “That will be one less Jew to transport,” the officer said. “Don’t come near us with your infected child.”

  Sylvia walked away crying and repeating a prayer between sobs: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

  CHAPTER 25

  WAR

  (September 1939)

  It was deathly silent on the streets of London the night of September 3, 1939, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gravely declared war on Germany.

  Marla looked out the window of Sebastian’s Bloomsbury House office at the lights of London. Sebastian stared at his hands as he twisted them nervously.

  “You’d think declaring war would be loud, but it’s really very quiet,” Marla said, watching the emptiness of the streets as the reality of what war would mean sank in.

  A newspaper on Sebastian’s desk read: “ENGLAND AND FRANCE DECLARE WAR ON GERMANY.”

  Marla paced as they listened to the radio. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke: “It is evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, suppression, and persecution, and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.”

  In Coventry, Peter pulled thin mattresses and blankets under the stairwell. Emil and Maude sat at the kitchen table, staring at the wooden radio, the only modern thing on the farm. Emil had bought it for the news, not the music. Maude turned the knobs, until they heard King George’s voice.

  “ . . . I call upon my people at home and my peoples across the sea. I ask them to stand calm, firm, and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield, but we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.”

  Peter tucked the last straw-filled mattress into the small crawl space under the stairs and stood staring at the radio, as if it held the answers to what was coming next.

  “Don’t forget the blankets, Peter. When your people bomb us, we need to be prepared,” Maude demanded.

  “At least France is with us,” Emil said.

  “We’ll need more than that against such an uncivilized country.” Maude sniffed.

  Peter turned and climbed the stairs to the attic.

  “The blankets, Peter! Don’t forget the blankets!” Maude screeched in her high, grating voice.

  Peter ignored her and kept walking up the stairs. Tonight, he could not tolerate the belittling bullying of Emil and Maude. He needed the silence of grief to absorb the meaning of war.

  In his mind, he heard bars clang shut and lock. No one was getting out of Germany, and there was no escaping Coventry. His mother and baby sister were trapped inside Germany with Adolf Hitler, and Peter was trapped in England with Emil and Maude.

  At Bloomsbury House, Sebastian laid his head on his desk with arms crisscrossed over his neck, like he was seeking cover in an air raid. He sighed a shuddering gasp and looked up. “It’s done. We did our best. The Kindertransports from Germany are shut down. Yours was the last train across the border.”

  “What about the children still left there?” Marla asked.

  Sebastian shook his head. “We did what we set out to do. We saved as many children as we could, almost ten thousand.”

  “But what about Jules?” Marla asked.

  “I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do for him. It’s impossible. We don’t even know where he is. No one will be allowed in or out of Germany. Perhaps we can still get a few more Kindertransports out of the Netherlands, but the rail lines into Germany are shut down.”

  “So, it’s over? We walk away?”

  Sebastian nodded. “We don’t have a choice. We did the best we could.”

  In the Vogners’ apartment, in the designated Jewish Residential District in Dinsdorf, Eddie was hopping back and forth. Anna motioned to him. “Come on, Eddie, we need to get to the brick factory.”

  “But I need to go,” Eddie complained.

  “Eddie, the toilets don’t work anymore. They turned off the water.”

  “Why did they do that? I need to go.”

  “You’ll have to go in the bucket, like I told you.”

  “I can’t do that! I can’t do that!”

  “I am so sorry that life is like this, but there is nothing we can do,” Anna said. “When you’re done, pour it in the big ditch on the perimeter.”

  “Maybe I will pour it on Hitler.” Eddie glared at the bucket.

  “That would not be good, Eddie,” Anna said.

  “I wish Hans was here.” Eddie started crying.

  Anna put her arm around her loving, trusting son, and thanked God Hans was not there.

  Eva limped down the road at the Bockenburg Camp. A black Nazi car pulled onto the road and, without slowing down, headed right for her. She jumped out of the way and rolled to avoid being run over, then lay on the ground after the car passed.

  With no o
ne around to see her, she cried heaving sobs of sorrow, as the cold from the hard ground seeped into her soul.

  Marla drove up to the farmhouse. Her fancy car was an incongruous sight in the Coventry countryside. Peter didn’t hear the chugging sound of the car. He was pitching hay for the horses and cows.

  Marla poked her head into the barn and smiled when she saw him. “Hello, Peter!”

  “Miss Marla?” Peter answered.

  Marla watched as he threw a pitchfork of hay to Olga, the fussy cow who mooed an incessant complaint about the cruelty of farm life. She was surprised at Peter’s transformation into a strong and able-bodied farmhand. “If nothing else, the farm has made you strong.”

  “You are right. There is nothing else.” Peter smiled. “What are you doing all the way out here?” He stuck the pitchfork into the pile of hay and wiped his hands on his pants.

  “I came to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For separating you and Becca, and for placing you here with Emil and Maude.”

  “It was the best you could do.”

  “Yes, it was, but sometimes, my best is not good enough. I’ve never forgotten the way you played that song on the train. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. I’m sorry. It was wrong to place you here.”

  “But you’re right. It’s made me stronger. I am no longer the frightened little boy who rode the Kindertransport. This place and those people have hardened me.”

  “Ah, the Kindertransport is no more. I don’t know what to do, Peter. I’m sorry. It’s over. They arrested my friend Jules. The Kindertransport is done, but I will find you another place to live.” Marla hugged the growing and muscled Peter. “Don’t ever let go of who you are.”