The Children's Train: Escape on the Kindertransport

by Jana Zinser

  (May 1943)

  Eddie and Anna were still at the Mengele Ghetto when the word came down from Nazi headquarters in Berlin that most of the prisoners there were to be moved to the Reinigen Camp, where the facilities allowed a faster process of elimination, with large gas chambers, more ovens, and quicker deaths. The mass murders were not fast enough for Hitler, so Anna and Eddie were shoved into another train car and shipped out without warning.

  Once inside the suffocating train car, Eddie wet his pants. He looked at his mother. “I’m glad Hans is not here. He would not like it.”

  His mother hugged him. “You are the bravest boy in all of Germany.”

  “Braver than Hans?”

  His mother nodded. Eddie smiled, despite his wet crotch and the overwhelming stench of urine.

  Eva had been at the Reinigen Camp for several months. Each time a train pulled up and unloaded its human cargo, she felt compelled to watch, as if witnessing such a cruel and inhuman act would confirm that it was real.

  One day, Eva, wearing a strip of an old dress as a scarf to cover her butchered short hair, watched as a new female prisoner entered the inspection point, holding the hands of two children. The little girl looked about six. Her long brown hair was matted and twisted. Her brother was about twelve, a tall boy with sad eyes.

  The cruel Nazi greeter of new inmates stopped them. “Only one child allowed,” he snapped, enjoying the emotional abuse inflicted on the Jewish prisoners.

  The mother hesitated for a second, and then dropped the girl’s hand. Without looking back, the woman continued through the checkpoint with the boy. He craned his neck to find his sister. With tears streaming down his face, he waved.

  The crowd surged around the loving brother and the decisive mother, swallowing them up in the chaos. The mother never looked back, and the girl did not see that both her mother and brother were herded into the middle line, the killing line. She stood lost, uncertain of what to do.

  Another policeman motioned to her. “Where’s your mother?” he demanded.

  Eva ran over from her observation post and grabbed the girl’s arm. “Our mothers are right up there. We got separated from them.” She pointed into the crowd, hiding the arm with the tattoo, so they would not know she had already been processed. “Look, there they are.”

  Eva nudged the girl past the policeman, before he could say anything, and the next train car of arrivals needed his attention.

  Eva put her arm around the girl. “I saw what happened.”

  The girl stared at Eva with wide, vacant eyes, still trying to absorb her mother’s betrayal.

  “Come on, their rules are intended to break us down,” Eva whispered. “We’re all on our own in here anyway. What’s your name?”

  “Lory.”

  “I’m Eva.”

  Eva led Lory to the reception building, where the prisoners were processed. There was still a long line. Lory looked around. “I don’t see my mother.”

  “I will stay with you,” Eva said. “Stay in the left line.”

  If Eva had returned to her usual post, she would have seen Eddie and Anna emerge from one of the back cars. They shuffled along with the crowd, until they reached the death-determining policeman.

  “Men to the right, women and children to the left,” he said, pushing Eddie to the right.

  “But he’s a child,” Anna said, grabbing Eddie’s arm. She held on tightly.

  “Doesn’t look like a human child to me. How did he make it this far? To the right! Do as I say!” The guard pointed to Anna. “You, to the middle line.”

  Anna didn’t let go of Eddie. “No, he’s my son. We have to stay together.”

  The policeman nodded to two others, who quickly came over and pulled at Anna’s tight grip on Eddie. Anna wouldn’t release her grasp.

  “Let go of my Mutti!” Eddie yelled.

  A policeman drew his gun and pointed it at Eddie’s head. “Release him, or we will no longer have a problem,” he threatened Anna.

  Anna quickly let go of Eddie, but she remained beside him.

  “Is he going to shoot me?” Eddie whispered to Anna, as if the guard couldn’t hear.

  “No, no, Eddie, I have to go in a different line. I’ll find you later. Do what they say. It’ll be okay. I’ll find you, I promise,” Anna said. “Eddie, God gave me two beautiful, smart sons.”

  “Am I one of them?” Eddie asked innocently.

  “Yes, Eddie, you definitely are.”

  “And I’m the bravest.”

  “There is no one braver,” Anna said, and meant it.

  The guard pointed for Anna to go. “Middle line! Middle line to the showers!” Anna nodded and turned away from Eddie. The middle line led to a building with a flat roof and a tall smokestack.

  Eddie walked past Dr. Braun, a solemn-faced man with dull eyes looking out of small, round rimless glasses. Next to the doctor, a young policeman gave orders, as Eddie watched his mother advance in the crowded middle line. He soon lost sight of her.

  He stood, undecided, in front of the doctor and the policeman. The doctor glanced at Eddie with disdain, as Eddie’s hands flopped in front of him. “Hi, I’m Eddie.”

  “Showers for him,” Dr. Braun said, “middle line!”

  “Good. Showers.” Eddie clapped and let out his strange squeaking cheer. “My Mutti’s going there.”

  The young policeman with the clipboard beside Dr. Braun heard Eddie’s voice and suddenly turned around to look. It was Otto, who was now twenty-two years old.

  Otto pulled Eddie aside. “Eddie?” he whispered.

  Eddie, still fixated on looking for his mother, watched as the middle group walked down a long street to the brick building with the tall square smokestack that had flames rising from it.

  “Eddie!” Otto said quietly again.

  Eddie glanced at Otto. “Otto? Hi!” Eddie said, excitedly. “They brought you here, too?”

  A short distance away, Dr. Braun pointed to Eddie and shouted. “I said showers for the idiot!”

  Eddie looked at Dr. Braun. “I’m not an idiot. My mother has two smart sons.”

  Dr. Braun rolled his eyes. “Middle line,” he said, jerking his head.

  “I need a shower. Good, thank you. That train was dirty and smelly.”

  Otto stepped up to the doctor. “What about your medical experiments? This one might be useful to you.”

  Dr. Braun looked at Eddie, studying him. “Perhaps. Yes, okay,” he said, nodding.

  Otto’s shoulders relaxed. He walked over and leaned in to Eddie and whispered, “Stay to the right.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, I want a shower, too.”

  “It’s okay, Eddie. Stay to the right.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, I need a shower.”

  “Do what I say, Eddie!” Otto ordered under his breath.

  “Okay, Otto, okay.” Eddie said, finally giving in to his old friend.

  Otto walked backward with Eddie, still directing other people to
the lines. “Stay in line!” Otto yelled to the crowd. He turned to Eddie. “Where’s the rest of your family?”

  “Hans is in England. He took a train. Not like our train, I hope. My Vati and Oma are dead. They are not coming back. They left Oma on the street. And my Mutti . . .” Eddie pointed to the gas chambers. “She’s taking a shower.” He frowned. “I wish I could.”

  Otto’s eyes opened wide with horror. “Stay to the right, Eddie,” he said gruffly, pointing. “Do it for me!”

  “Okay, Otto.” Eddie nodded and merged into the right line.

  Otto hurried down the middle line, searching the faces as he passed until he got to a building with a sign over the door: “To the bath and disinfecting rooms. Cleanliness brings freedom, and one louse may kill you.” Otto did not get there in time to see Anna descend into the cellar.

  Two policemen ushered Anna and the others into a giant shower room. Eric was older, tall, with a rigid stride. “You must get disinfected and take a shower! You must give up any valuables and get undressed! Schnell!” he ordered.

  The policeman named Borg was a small mouse of a man. Although stone-faced, he had beads of sweat running down the side of his ashen face as he stood watching the prisoners enter.

  The women undressed and hung their clothes on numbered hooks to be retrieved after their shower. Then, they waited in the whitewashed room with its showerheads and pillars and concrete floors.

  Eric checked the lock on the steel gas chamber door. “Borg, it’s your first day. You do it.”

  Borg shook his head and wrinkled his rodent face. “That’s okay. I don’t—”

  “Throw the pellets down the air shaft,” Eric ordered. “It’s not so bad after the first time.”

  The women and children stood naked in the gas chamber, stripped of their clothes and their dignity, never suspecting their fate would rain down on them in a spray of poisonous gas.

  Borg hurried to the place where the air shaft opened. He took a deep, halting breath and threw the Zyklon-B pellets down. He stood back, bracing for what would happen next.

  Anna looked around. No water came out of the showerheads. They were fake. The holes in the hollow pillars let out the hissing gas. The bitter almond smell was overwhelming. It was hard to breathe. She felt the air sting her throat and fill her nostrils with hydrogen cyanide. In those few seconds, Anna realized that death was upon her, and there was nothing she could do to save herself or Eddie.

  “Eddie! Oh, dear God! No!” Anna screamed, realizing full well what it would mean for him. “Eddie!”

  The people inside the chamber with her screamed, howled, and prayed. Anna jerked with involuntary convulsions as the poison took over. She closed her eyes. “Eddie. Hans,” she mumbled as she slumped to the cold concrete floor. The heart-wrenching screams and cries inside the chamber finally ended, their prayers unanswered.

  Borg watched through the peephole in the door at the huddled cherry-red bodies. He quickly turned and walked back to the air shafts. He stumbled through the door to the outside, directly behind where he had dropped the poison and murdered a room full of people. He leaned against the building, sucking in the cold fresh air. Sweat streamed down his face. He wiped the constant dripping from his nose and coughed.

  Eric opened the door and followed him out. “Had the same reaction my first time.”

  “How do you stand it?” Borg asked.

  “You’ll get used to it, and a tall glass of vodka helps,” Eric said, laughing. He slapped Borg on the back.

  Borg took a huge breath, but he nodded. He wiped his eyes and looked up at Eric. “Did you hear some of them praying?”

  Eric shook his head. “No. After a while you block out the sounds, so you don’t think of them as people.”

  As fast as the policemen could usher them into the gas chambers, other inmates were forced to load the bodies into the ovens and burn all remnants of the gruesome violence. No one, not even a child, was beyond the horrifying fate of the crematorium, as it puffed its smoke, creating foul-smelling air.

  The next day, Eddie, with his head shaved and wearing baggy striped pants and a shirt, walked up to Eric and Borg outside the crematorium. Eddie pointed. “Where is my mother? She’s been taking a shower for a long time. She should be clean by now.”

  “I don’t know, boy. Move on,” Borg said.

  Eric pointed to the smoke. “Say Auf Wiedersehen. She is smoke by now,” he said, laughing and showing his yellow teeth.

  Eddie didn’t understand, but he stared at the strange smoky sky. “The sky is smoking.” He walked on as he twisted his head to continue looking up at the sky. “That is not good.”

  “How is that one still alive?” Borg asked.

  Eric laughed and shrugged as the sky puffed foul death-smoke. The one thing the Nazis hadn’t counted on was the smell of burning human flesh. The stench seeped over the camp like a foul fog, a constant reminder that souls had been sacrificed.

  Smoke came out of the chimneys as the red sun went down behind London’s skyline. Peter, hidden behind the bushes outside the Cohens’ house, watched as Becca played croquet on the well-manicured lawn. Priscilla wheeled up next to a ball and whacked it with her mallet.

  Mrs. Daniels emerged from the house with small cucumber sandwiches for the girls. Assured that Becca was still safe, Peter turned away and walked off, ready to plan another underground plot to stop Hitler.

  CHAPTER 40

  HATE IS HARD TO KILL

  (May 1943)

  Ramona, the inmate matron, led Eva into the warehouse the Jewish people called “Kanada,” which symbolized their dreams of a place with great wealth and freedom. In it, mounds of clothes, shoes, suitcases, and other belongings were piled thirty feet high, a Matterhorn of stolen possessions. Huge baskets overflowed with eyeglasses, combs, brushes, and wedding rings.

  “This is the sorting warehouse. It’s not hard. You sort things into piles,” Ramona explained. “The valuable things are sent back to Germany.”

  “Why?”

  “To be sold. It pays for the trains that bring us here,” Ramona said matter-of-factly, as she searched the side pockets of a suitcase.

  “Why do you do their dirty work? You’re one of us,” Eva said. “I think that—”

  “Don’t think,” Ramona interrupted. “Just try to survive. Thinking always causes problems.”

  “But if you survive, how can you live?” Eva asked.

  A Nazi officer walked in. Ramona stood straight, her face scrunching up into a wrinkled, bitter snarl. “Get to work! This isn’t a holiday!” she shouted at Eva.

  A rat ran out from the piles. Eva didn’t even flinch. She kicked it away. She pulled down a suitcase, opened it, and scavenged through the possessions of her fellow prisoners. Vermin and loss of privacy were the least of her problems now.

  Stephen and Hans dressed, choosing their day’s clean folded clothes from their drawers. Then they boarded the London city bus to go to their jobs as dishwashers at Percy’s Tavern.

  Peter rolled under Commandant Karl Radley’s big black car, which Peter had watched until Radley went into t
he headquarters building. He attached a crude homemade bomb to the undercarriage and rolled out. He had learned a few things from his friend Abraham, the Ichabod-looking scientist. Peter stood up and strolled away without looking back.

  A short time later, Radley emerged from his meetings, walking in his fast-paced stride with his driver hurrying to keep up. Radley flipped his gloves in the palm of his other hand, as he passed two police officers standing nearby. They were too busy talking to notice the arrogant commandant or appreciate his incessant need for power. Radley stopped suddenly and turned toward the two officers. The driver opened Radley’s door, went around the car, and got in.

  Radley’s turned-up nose flared. He took his gloves and slapped the two officers across their faces. “Salute when I walk by you!” he yelled.

  The driver started the car. It exploded in a fuel-induced ball of flames.

  Peter eagerly looked back to see his final revenge fulfilled against the abhorrent commandant. Instead, he saw Radley rise from the ground where he had taken cover, shaken, but very much alive, and Peter realized it was harder to kill hate than he thought.

  At the Reinigen Camp yard, Eva and Lory sat beside Helga. Eva smiled. “Look what I found.” Eva opened her hand to show them a candy bar. She divided it into three pieces, handing one piece to Lory.

  Lory looked at the rich dark chocolate. “Where did you get the sweet?” she asked, awestruck.

  “Hidden in a suitcase pocket,” Eva whispered.

  “I’ve forgotten what chocolate tastes like,” Lory said, as she shoved hers into her mouth. Eva held out a piece to her mother as she raised her other hand to eat hers. Her mother hit her hands, and both pieces of chocolate fell on the hard dusty ground.