The Children's Train: Escape on the Kindertransport

by Jana Zinser

  As Peter ran out, he knocked into a frail old man scurrying away, disoriented from the confusion of the random explosions. The old man fell to the ground. Peter stopped and reached out his hand to help him up, but the old man covered his head with his skeleton-thin arms. “Please, no! Don’t kill me!”

  Peter looked at the man’s outstretched arm and then his own uniform. “I am not a Nazi. It is just a camouflage to hide behind. I am blowing up the buildings. I am Jewish, and I am here to set you free.”

  The old man squinted his eyes. “What took you so long?”

  Although weak from hunger and exhaustion, the children hurried to the kinderlager barracks.

  Bert hugged Eva, as they headed toward the infirmary. “You’re so cold,” Eva said.

  “They marched us out of here, but I escaped. The Allied Forces must be getting very close to risk such an evacuation of so many thousands.”

  Eva kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, Papa, God gave me exactly the right father, but where are we going to go? What are we going to do?”

  “We will go home and demand our lives back,” Bert said. “Let’s tell your mother about the rebels and Peter. I can’t wait to see her face when she hears the little maestro turned into a commando.” They laughed and hugged each other, filled with a joy they hadn’t felt for years, a joy of possibilities, a joy of tomorrows.

  The Nazi guards were gone, evacuated by orders or fleeing from fear. A few prisoners wandered around, disoriented. A woman curled up on the ground, with her hands over her head, and lay frozen in her act of fear.

  Peter returned again to the last target on his assignment list, the one he’d skipped when the children would not leave: the gas chambers. However, he only had the pine bomb with the bad fuse and two petrol bombs in his leather pouch. One way or the other, he had to make them work. It looked from the chaos of the camp and the number of buildings burning that this bold endeavor was successful after all. The gas chamber could not remain standing. Its destruction was crucial to the success of their mission, to Peter’s personal vengeance, and as a symbol of their liberation.

  Peter entered the building to make sure it was empty. To kill one of his own people from carelessness would be unforgivable.

  “Anyone here?” Peter shouted. “Please go to the barracks where you will be safe. This building will be exploded immediately.”

  He entered the gas chamber, a chilling room of emptiness, and he could feel the cold fear and dread of what had taken place there. The pegs for clothing were bare; for many months, the killing had gone on without any pretense.

  Boots clicked on the bare concrete floor.

  “You have forgotten one thing, Bruno.” Radley stepped from behind a pillar. “Me. You will not run away this time. You will die, like all your people, at the hand of a superior race.” He pointed his pistol at Peter.

  His death would come at the hands of his old enemy, Peter thought. But until his last breath, he would still fight. He remembered Abraham’s last words: May God guide your feet.

  Peter leaped into the air, mimicking the football side-kicks of Hans and Stephen that he had watched every afternoon at Dovercourt. He kicked his leg out, hitting Radley’s knee. The gun went off, the bullet embedding itself in the wall. Radley went down, and the gun skidded across the room.

  Peter picked up the gun. “Hitler’s days are through,” he said, as he walked toward Radley. He aimed the gun at him, thinking it was finally the end.

  With his heart beating fast, Peter pulled the trigger, but he heard nothing but a hollow click. The gun was empty, its shells spent on Radley’s previous attempts to murder him.

  Radley got up, his injured knee preventing him from fully extending his leg. He limped toward Peter, pulling a dagger from his belt. “I will kill you myself. You are nothing but a Jew boy.”

  The dagger sliced toward Peter. Peter blocked it with his forearm, but the dagger grazed him in retreat and blood ran from the slash line.

  Radley laughed. “You are inferior, Bruno!”

  Peter took a deep breath and pulled up his slashed arm. He shook his head. “My name is not Bruno. I am Peter Weinberg. My father was Henry Weinberg, and he served with honor in the Great War.”

  “You are the weak little violin player?” Radley asked, with disdain and surprise. He stabbed the dagger at Peter, but Peter danced away.

  “No, I am the great Jewish rebel who plays the violin, and you are my enemy.”

  “I hated your smug, no-good father.” Radley swung the dagger again. Peter quickly backed away, forcing himself off balance, and he fell. Radley hovered over him.

  “I remember when I slapped that arrogant sister of yours,” Radley said, as he slashed the dagger down toward Peter’s chest.

  “I remember, too,” Peter said. Using Wolfgang’s schoolboy leg sweep, he suddenly jerked and spun around, kicking Radley’s legs and buckling his injured knee. Peter jumped up and threw his fist with every ounce of anger in him, hitting Radley in the face.

  Radley crashed down, with his dagger still in his hand. His head hit the floor.

  “That’s for Becca,” Peter said. “Nazis should keep their mouths shut.”

  He grabbed the failed pine bomb from his pouch and stood up. He touched the fuse. It was slightly damp. He lit the last match and held it up to the uncooperative fuse, and this time it lit.

  He threw it on the floor, which startled Radley, who was dazed after his head had hit the concrete floor. Radley threw the dagger at Peter.

  But Peter ducked, wheeled around, and ran out of the chamber.

  “Now you are running away. That’s all you Jews do!” Radley shouted.

  The pine bomb sizzled, sputtered, and went out. Radley threw back his head and laughed. “See, you can’t kill me! You are a shame to your shabby, undignified family!”

  Peter pulled the heavy door shut and locked it, the lock that prevented any escape by the inmates.

  Peter could hear Radley’s laughter, but no explosion. Leave no room for failure, Peter thought, and he smiled. He ran to the room the map identified as the place where they dropped the pellets to release the gas. He took out the petrol bombs from his pouch.

  “And this is for my father!” Peter yelled as he threw the petrol bombs down the hole and into the pillar in the chamber where Radley was trapped.

  Then Peter ran faster than he had ever run in his life, as the Mozart tune he had so often struggled with played in his head. He jumped out the back door, as the gas chamber, with Radley in it, exploded behind him, the petrol bombs finally igniting the reluctant pine bomb.

  Peter was thrown into the air. He hit the ground hard. A little dazed from the blast, he scrambled up and ran away from the burning building as the heat from the explosion propelled him forward, like the anger still surging through him.

  A woman with sores on her arms, whose one eye was almost swollen shut, pointed to Peter as he escaped the flames of the burning gas chambers. “Look, there is still one Nazi left.”

  The old man whom Peter had run into earlier shook his head. “He is not a Nazi. He is a rebel, the greatest rebel of all, a Jewish one. He just blew up the gas chambe
rs. God is surely with that one.”

  Sick prisoners lay in beds at the camp infirmary, but no one attended them. The medical personnel had been the first to leave after the terrifying initial explosion.

  Eva and Bert sat beside Helga. “Mutti, it’s over,” Eva said. “It’s finally over. The end has come.”

  “The rebels are here, and you won’t believe it, but Peter Weinberg is one of them!” Bert said. “And the Allied Forces aren’t far behind.”

  “Peter Weinberg? Impossible,” Helga said. She rolled over, and her gown opened. There were scars all over her stomach and infected open sores.

  “What have they done to you?” Eva gasped.

  “The Nazis know no bounds,” Helga said. “I learned that a long time ago.”

  Eva patted her mother’s arm. “You feel hot, Mutti.”

  Helga looked at Eva. “Don’t worry about me. Always worrying about me.” Her hand wavered to Bert. “So like your father.” She looked at Eva. “You should have gone to England.”

  Eva reached out and held her mother’s shaky hand. Helga sighed, as if her attempt at an apology had taken everything out of her. She shuddered, closed her eyes, and passed away.

  Eva laid her head down on her hand clasping tightly to her mother’s. Bert gently closed Helga’s eyelids and kissed her forehead. “She’s free now, too,” he said.

  That night the homemade bombs ended the reign of Nazi terror at Reinigen. Although they were weak and exhausted, and some were near death, the realization of freedom brought the remaining prisoners jubilance. For the first time, the children laughed, talked, and rested in the yard where they used to stand still for hours at roll call. The busy camp had been emptied of Nazis. The prisoners who were left gathered in the street between the barracks, sharing what little food they could find. It was slowly sinking in for the Reinigen Camp inmates that freedom was near.

  Eva, and Peter, who had taken off the Nazi uniform and bandaged his injured arm, held their hands out to warm themselves at a fire in an open barrel by the barracks.

  “I actually feel warm,” Eva said. “I had forgotten what it felt like. Things have changed so much since we were children.”

  “I know. I think I might be better at football than I thought.”

  “Are you going to play?” Eva asked, surprised.

  “No, too dangerous.” Peter smiled. “Music is my game.”

  She smiled at Peter. “You still play the violin?”

  “I’ve been sort of busy lately,” he said. “A pub in England is holding it for me. It’s a long story. Why don’t you come to England with me and see Hans, Stephen, and Becca?”

  Eva laughed. “Do you know how many times I have dreamed of that? How is my favorite little spitfire?”

  “She is a proper English girl with fancy black, shiny shoes.” Peter laughed. “And she plays croquet on the lawn.”

  “I cannot wait to see her, and Hans and Stephen,” Eva said. “I dreamed of your lives each night as I lay in my bunk, and knowing you escaped gave me hope. I have to take my father home and see if there is still a place for him there, but I will come as soon as I can. Will you ever come back to Germany to live?”

  “I will always love Germany, but I cannot live there anymore. It has betrayed us. I will find my mother and Lilly and bring them to London. Germany is no longer my home.”

  “I understand.” Eva rested her head on Peter’s shoulder. “You’ve changed, Peter, and yet, you are the same.”

  “Is this night really almost over?”

  The sun reached the horizon, emitting its hazy half circle of illumination. Peter looked at the lighting horizon as morning emerged. “The night is dark, until the sunrise,” he said.

  Eva sang quietly, and the children stared with their mouths open, for some of them had never heard music before.

  The night is dark until the sunrise.

  Your heart is lonely until I answer your cries.

  Your path is steep and filled with stone,

  But I will walk beside you.

  You are not alone,

  Although the heavy pain you carry is your own,

  You are not alone.

  You are not alone.

  I am God. Follow the way I have shown, and

  I will help you find your way home.

  When Eva finished singing, she looked over and across the field. Shadows moved there in a long line. It was the death march inmates returning to camp on their own. The Nazi police guards had deserted them when they saw the entire camp burning, and saw no end to the march. Abandoned by the Nazis who fled for their lives, the inmates, with nowhere else to go, returned to camp, the only shelter they knew.

  Peter leaned down and kissed Eva gently on the cheek. He pointed to the returning inmates. “Look what your singing can do.”

  Peter knew it was not the time to linger on personal joys, and a prison camp was not a place for a romance. He was more concerned about getting Eva to safety and moving on to his next mission. He hoped there would be time for love later.

  “I will never forget tonight, but I cannot stay. Take your father and the children to the farmhouse down the road and wait for the Allied Forces to arrive. I will see you again,” he said.

  “Where will I find you?”

  “Leave word with Becca. She lives at 16 Poppleton Circle in London.”

  “I could come?”

  “If you wanted to,” Peter said.

  “We really are free?”

  Peter nodded. Eva smiled at him and wrapped her arms around him. He knew at that moment that the risk of the big rebellion had been worth it. He could feel her heart beat against him, and he wished that night would never end, but the sun was already up. It was time to go. Peter knew that to be a part of the Resistance, he must give up everything. This he’d promised he would do for his people and for God.

  Peter, the commando, walked through the blown-open front gate and waved to Sloan and Mica, waiting for him on the train tracks that had brought Eva and so many others to that nightmarish place. He turned back, trilled his whistle three times, and then was gone.

  Several weeks later, Peter looked up at the orange sunrise spreading its morning brilliance over the Nazi headquarters in Berlin. The Allied Forces were taking back the countries Hitler had invaded, but there was still work to do. As long as there were Nazis somewhere, Peter was determined to finish what he started. He realized his father was right. Wars were started by people in offices and ended by soldiers on the front lines. Peter was a soldier, just like his father.

  Sloan, Mica, and Peter huddled in the bushes.

  “There is too much wind,” Mica pointed out. “We should not proceed.”

  “I’m not too fond of that hanging platform,” Sloan said.

  “The wind does not matter any more,” Peter said. “I told you, I am an explosives expert. These are like the ones I used at the gas chamber, they do not require a match.”

  Peter grabbed two petrol bombs, scored vertically to ensure breakage and no need of a fuse. He pulled his
arm back to throw the bottles, but stopped. He handed one to Sloan and one to Mica. “You do the honors. I owe you.”

  Sloan and Mica threw the bottles. The bombs crashed through Nazi windows and exploded on contact.

  The Nazi headquarters lit up the block like a bonfire. Peter smiled.

  Sloan gave his deep bear laugh. “Retribution tastes so sweet, huh, fearless rebel?” he asked as they hurried away. “Do you have a dustbin lorry waiting for us?”

  “Next time, I’ll just let them hang you.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Sloan said. “The war is almost over. Now we need to get out of here. There are still Nazis in Berlin.”

  CHAPTER 46

  VICTORY

  (May 1945)

  Four months later, on May 7, 1945, the church bells rang in England announcing victory in Europe. Traffic barely moved, and horns honked in a spontaneous celebration.

  People cheered all over London. Some people wore paper hats and waved noisemakers. They hugged and kissed total strangers, and they danced with abandon in the streets of Piccadilly Circus. Great relief swept over England. The fear was gone. The burden of war was finally lifted from the people, and their hearts’ joy was unbounded.

  Hans and Stephen ran into the street from their hostel. “What’s going on?” Stephen shouted to a man passing by.

  “Germany has surrendered!” the man yelled back.

  The perpetually dark streetlights flickered and glowed brilliantly, lighting up the streets for the first time since war was declared. Searchlights joyously crisscrossed the night sky, lighting up the darkness, signaling safe skies to the people of England.

  The war with Germany had ended. The joy of victory spread throughout England. The Kindertransport children’s nightmares were finally over.