by Jana Zinser
One May afternoon, a lanky British man in a wool sweater followed William into a London pub, the Blue Ox Tavern. The man got a pint of ale and sauntered up to William.
“You any good at darts, lad?” he asked, taking a sip of his ale, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“I’m good at everything,” William said, simply, as if it was an undisputed fact.
“Can I have a go, lad? Winner buys the next ale.”
“I never turn down a free ale.” William handed him a dart. “The center is the bull’s-eye, lad,” he said, mocking the man.
“I would be honored to play with such an expert.” The man smiled. “So, what’s your name?”
“William.” He aimed his dart.
“William what?”
“Rosenberg.”
The man grabbed William’s arm, and William shook him off. “Wait your turn!”
“There will be no bull’s-eyes tonight. You’re the one I’ve been looking for. You are under arrest,” the man said.
“Since when is it illegal to get drunk and play darts?” William asked. “This is England, after all.”
“You’re an enemy alien! You’re a Jerry.”
“I’m a German Jew. I’m an enemy of Hitler,” William said. “I was brought into your country on the Kindertransport to escape the Nazis.”
“What a delightful tale. You’re over sixteen, and you’re German. You’re an enemy alien until you can prove otherwise. Your new home is the prison on the Isle of Man.”
The man handcuffed William and marched him out of the pub.
Peter hefted a huge bag of chicken feed onto his back and set it down inside the barn. He scooped some out and entered the chicken coop behind the barn, spreading the grain out with a shake of his hand.
He lifted up the self-satisfied reddish hen with the black streak on its wing. He cupped the egg resting warmly in the nest. Then, he set the egg back down. He could not take the hen’s egg. He moved down the line. Next, he picked up Henrietta, a white-feathered sassy hen known for her vicious pecking. There was no egg, so he plopped her down quickly before her beak could take another chunk out of him.
Peter laughed triumphantly. “I’m getting too fast for you, Henrietta,” he said to the aggressive fowl.
Peter stooped down and picked up one of the newspapers piled in the corner. He opened the first paper and spread it on the coop floor. He looked at the next paper in the pile. Then he stared and turned it around to look at the picture on the front page.
It was William Rosenberg, Eva’s thieving brother. It appeared that the boy, who had sold out his own people to get his release from the Sothausen Concentration Camp, who’d stolen Eva’s Kindertransport seat, and who’d outwitted the Nazi man who threw him off the train, could not escape the English.
The May newspaper reported the Isle of Man internment was in a large stone building surrounded by barbed wire on a small island of two hundred and twenty-one square miles in the Irish Sea. The picture showed William being escorted into the massive building without a crime to his name, except being a German in England.
In the street in the Dinsdorf District, Eddie chased a butterfly, the first one he had seen since leaving home. “Steal some cream for me, schmetterling! I’m hungry.” He grabbed at the butterfly, his hand trapping it.
He laughed and opened his hand. The fragile butterfly was smashed.
Eddie stared at the beautiful broken wings of the schmetterling dead by his hands, and he cried.
CHAPTER 29
A TREMENDOUS BATTLE
(May/June 1940)
Hans and Stephen, thirteen years old, sat in a London school, not too far from their hostel. Stephen, Hans, and the other students watched the teacher trace the huge map of Europe. “Hitler is able to control his troops through coded communications, using mail, telephone, and telegraph. So, although we intercept his messages, we lose precious time until we can decipher them, and the Nazis have been able to stay one step ahead of us. Now, Germany has invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and today, France. What does this mean?” she asked.
“That we’re next!” Stephen said.
“Air raid drill!” someone in the hall shouted.
Hans, Stephen, and the other students scrambled to put on their gas masks, which the younger students carried in boxes around their necks. Stephen and Hans hid under their desks with their arms crisscrossed over their heads and with no room to spare.
Hans called out to Stephen. “When Hitler invaded the Netherlands, I wonder what happened to the basket baby.”
“Karla Blinker is fine, I’m sure,” Stephen said, hesitantly. “I hope.”
On May 19th, in the farmhouse kitchen, Peter sat at the table with Emil and Maude and listened as the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, spoke on the radio. “I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country. A tremendous battle is raging in France. It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”
Emil turned off the radio and snarled at Peter. “Look what your people have done!” his gravelly goblin voice sputtered.
In their room at the youth hostel, Stephen looked at a letter in his shaking hands. Hans sat on the bed next to him.
“It’s from Klaus, again,” Stephen said.
“What does he say? Are your parents okay?” Hans asked.
Stephen read the letter. “Dear Stephen, I have sad news for you. Clara and I were arrested, and our futures remain uncertain. I have since heard that your parents were arrested as well. A friend is mailing this for me. I pray it reaches you. Do not give up hope. Someday, you will all be together. Yours truly, Klaus.”
Hans nodded. “This is not good news.”
CHAPTER 30
HEAD FOR COVER
(September 1940)
William was released in September, several months after his imprisonment, after the authorities finally determined that he was not a national security threat to England. He was a belligerent young man with a bad attitude and a knack for stealing the shoes of the other prisoners and then trading them back to their owners for food, but that was not enough to keep him in jail.
He walked out of the prison gate with nothing but two pounds in his pocket and anger on his mind. He climbed onto the boat waiting to take him across the short expanse of sea, back to England. He squinted his eyes and threw his head back, letting the setting sun hit his face, breathing in the cool salty sea air.
William remembered a day when he was young, and he and new his friends were skipping rocks on the lake at Edelweiss Park, trying to beat their record of ten skips. The birds were screeching, squawking, and soaring over the water. His rock had skipped only six times across the glassy lake.
He’d turned around, and Eva was running toward him. He’d looked away, pretending he didn’t know her, but when he’d turned back, she was standing in front of him. “William, what are you doing here? Papa’s been looking for you. He needs your help in the shop.”
“That’s your sister?” one of his friends
had asked.
William shook his head. “No,” he’d said, denying his sister.
Eva had put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to be in big trouble if you don’t get to the shop, you zhlub!”
His friends stared at him. “You’re one of them?” a boy asked.
William shook his head, but his hands trembled at his sides. Then, his friends had suddenly turned on him, beating him with their fists, and viciously kicking him.
“Dirty, lying Jew,” his best friend said, “trying to trick us!” Then, he motioned to the other boys, who a few moments ago had been happily competing to see who could skip their rocks the farthest.
“Let’s get out of here,” the boy said. He spat on the bloody William splayed out on the ground, then turned suddenly and spat on Eva. Each of the other three boys did the same.
Eva hadn’t moved from where she stood. She’d watched them run away as their spit slid down her face. She’d looked down at William and wiped the humiliating wetness from her face. “Those are your friends?” She’d bent down to help William up, but he’d pushed her hand away and slowly gotten up on his own.
“Not any more, thanks to you!” William had picked up and thrown a rock, and with the velocity of his anger, it skipped eleven times across the water.
In England, William couldn’t wait to get off the boat from the Isle of Man and away from the spray of the water. When the boat docked, he almost jumped off before it stopped moving. I need a pint of ale about as fast as they can pour it, he thought. He headed toward the Black Anchor Pub, the closest tavern he could see, where he planned to blow through his two pounds.
That night, the pub’s blackout curtains were pulled tightly across the windows, so no light shone through, hiding them completely from the feared threat of German planes. The radio blared music and war news. He sat at the bar on a black leather stool and ordered a glass of dark foamy ale, which he chugged down as if it was a nightly ritual. He slammed the empty glass on the bar. “Another pint!” William called to the bartender. “And fill it to the top this time!”
A burly, bearded man at the bar eyed him suspiciously. “Your accent. You’re a Jerry.” William glared at him, and the man glared back. “Thought so. Why don’t you go back to Hitler-land?”
“Because I’m Jewish,” William said. “Haven’t you heard? Hitler hates Jews.”
“Jews started this whole problem. England doesn’t want you either,” the man said.
William slowly set his ale down. “We started the problem? You are an idiot. I just got off the Isle of Man where I was imprisoned for being an enemy alien.”
“Jolly good. You’re a German, you can’t be trusted.”
William sucked in his breath. “England brought me here on the Kindertransport, but I found the same human wasteland that I left.”
“Bite your tongue. England is fighting Germany, and we will win. We are far superior.”
“England and Germany are the same. I was imprisoned in both countries, for just being who I am. But I have a message for you and Hitler.” William planted his feet and swung at the man, connecting with his bushy face.
The bearded man staggered. Gripping the blackout curtains to stay upright, he pulled them open, exposing the light of the pub.
William turned to the bartender. “And I really need another pint.”
Without missing a beat, the bartender pulled the tap and filled the glass as the bearded Englishman staggered outside, convinced of the brutality of Germans and confirmed in his hatred of Jews.
The radio blared “Fools Rush In” by Glenn Miller. William could not hear the sound of the airplane motors as they rumbled overhead. He did not hear the bombs as they fell, until the great bandleader was interrupted.
“Head for cover!” the radio announcer shouted. “Bombers reported over—” Then the radio signal was lost.
William jumped up and ran toward the door. The bomb hit the pub, its light exposed through the open curtain, and exploded before he could escape. The pub was destroyed. Nothing was left but a fireball of smoke, bricks, splintered boards, ash, and spilled ale. The German bombs could not distinguish between an Englishman and an alien enemy.
William, the boy who’d stolen his sister’s seat on the Kindertransport to escape Hitler, was dead, killed in England by a German bomb. The German Blitz had begun.
CHAPTER 31
THE WORLD’S ATTENTION
(November 1940)
In the Coventry attic, Peter flopped down on the thin mattress after an uneaten dinner of fried eggs. Despite his immense hunger, he could no longer bring himself to eat the eggs of his friends the hens, their children’s lives stolen by the brutality of farmers. After knowing Olga the cow, he was not sure he would look at the butcher’s meat the same way again, either.
He was exhausted from the perpetual farm work. He had barely lain down when the air raid siren shrieked in the distance.
Peter picked up his violin case with the picture of his family tucked in it, and ran out of the attic. He stumbled down the stairs to the small space underneath, where he’d put mattresses and blankets. If there was one thing Peter knew, it was that Hitler would not stop until he had destroyed everything in his path, and Peter seemed to keep getting in his way.
Emil and Maude were already there, sprawled out. “We left that bit for you,” Maude said to Peter, as she pointed to the only remaining tiny space back beneath the stair frame.
Peter crawled over them, cradling his dusty violin in his arms, as the sound of airplane engines roared overhead. This time, the unmusical duo did not say anything about his violin, not from any change of heart, but only from their preoccupation with impending doom. Peter’s weary, and now quite strong, body shook. Hitler has found me, he thought. Perhaps I haven’t escaped after all.
“Pray, and Jesus will protect you,” Maude said.
“But I’m Jewish. No one protects the Jews,” Peter said.
The German plane engines got louder. The high-pitched whistle of the bombs shrilled through the air. Then, an explosive burst nearby sounded as if the Earth itself had split. Another plane flew overhead. The high-pitched whistle of a bomb got louder until it was over their heads. It hit the farmhouse in a fierce explosion.
One side of the sturdy old stone farmhouse was ripped apart. The bombed structure peeled open like a rations can, revealing its contents. The only thing left standing was the stair frame, and Peter huddling underneath it.
Emil and Maude were dead, but Peter emerged, crawling on his hands and knees from under the stairs. He was covered in dirt and blood, but he was still alive and relatively unharmed. He glanced around, and then looked down at his body, as if stunned to see it was still in one piece. He wiped the blood and debris from his face in long-fingered streaks.
He turned and frantically pulled boards away, pulling up his mattress and revealing his violin. He grabbed the case and carefully wiped its cover with his sleeve. He set the case down and slowly opened it.
The violin was unharmed. He picked it up and held it aloft, like an offering to God, an acknowledgment that this was evidence that confirmed God was watching over him. Then he bent down in prayer with the bow and violin still
in his hands. I give my life to you, he prayed.
What Peter had run from had finally caught up with him. A flash of understanding surged through his mind. A shiver ran through his body, and he knew that running wouldn’t work. Staying and fighting was the only way to survive, and it was time to stand up.
He rose to his feet. The smoke from the debris swirled around him like a dust tornado. When it cleared, he saw the moon had not changed. He would live to see another day. He had survived the bombing, and he decided he would never let anyone control him again. Enough was enough. He was ready to fight back.
England was under attack in what the British press nicknamed “The Blitz,” a German word for lightning. Hitler was no longer just a Jewish problem. Germany had the world’s attention, and fear was quickly spreading.
The constant barrage of bombing was in full force. The German war had arrived in the backyards of the Kindertransport children. Peter had made it through the rubble of his life at the farmhouse with a determination that something needed to be done, and now he would do it. He decided to head to London to make sure Becca was unharmed before putting his plan into action.
He walked through the bombed-out countryside with his violin, the last remnant of anything civilized. He made arrangements with the nearest farmer to take care of Olga the cow and the other animals. He said his goodbyes to his animal friends and then walked away from the farm that had imprisoned him, free to make his own decisions at last.
In the village, he hitched a ride with a soldier returning to London to report on the unbelievable destruction of Coventry. Peter’s anger had outgrown his fear, and he knew what he had to do.
Marla took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead, as she paced in front of a meeting of the refugee workers at Bloomsbury House. “Hitler is on our doorstep, chasing our Kindertransport children,” she said. “Their worst nightmares have caught up with them. We’ve waited as long as we can; now we have to move them to the countryside. Even that may not keep them safe, but at least they’ll have a better chance in the country.”