“And?”
“She said that it was her grandson’s idea. He said that there can’t be that many people with the name Waldstein in Canada, and that he could find me through the phone company, and he did.”
My frustration level was climbing sharply and I longed to blurt out some of the questions that would have resulted in clamped lips and the faraway look that I knew all too well.
“So what did she say?” I queried, keeping my voice deliberately neutral.
“She’s fine. She’s in good health. She lives near her children in Germany.”
“In Germany? Where in Germany?”
Already it was too much. The pursed lips warned me that I had been too eager.
“I don’t know. Some small town in Germany. I forget the name. It doesn’t matter.”
Immediately, my mother changed the subject. I knew the routine. Further questions would get me nowhere. Perhaps in a few weeks I could try again.
Finally, one day my mother said, “Tini called again. We talked for a long time, until I said ‘Tini, this is costing you a fortune.’”
This time, I asked no questions and simply listened, my thoughts darting about amongst the tangled details that my mother chose to recount. As she wound down, I heard my mother say, “She gave me her address so I could write to her. And her phone number.”
At that instant, the idea was born. I would visit Tini. I would ask her all the questions that had welled up inside me for so long. She would know. Perhaps she would tell me.
————
TIME PASSED, but in the spring of 1998, I was able to plan my visit. I wrote to Tini and gave her the date of my arrival but no specific time. Indeed, I had no sense of distance from the airport or of how long it would take me to get to the little town of Ehningen that I had located in my old school atlas.
Frankfurt airport was large, bustling, and international. Rollaway suitcase in tow, I headed for the information desk where I was directed to the elevator, which emptied directly onto a platform where a train whisked me to the central station to make my next connection. One hour later, I sat back contentedly to watch the countryside fly past. Gardens and neatly cultivated fields alternated with picturesque red-roofed towns. Heavily wooded areas yielded to industrial buildings old and new. Town and country, past and present, all seamlessly interwoven.
Soon it was time to gather my belongings. Across the aisle, I noted a woman also preparing to dismount. I nodded and asked whether she knew Ehningen and could recommend a small hotel. She laughed at my request, and replied that above the butcher shop was the only public accommodation in town. Glancing at my lightweight summer jacket and then at the heavy rain that awaited beyond the open platform, she kindly offered me a ride. Gratefully I followed as she headed for a Mercedes parked in the nearby lot.
“I work at the Mercedes plant,” she explained as I hesitated to place my well-travelled bag on the leather seat. “We get to purchase a car at a reduced price. ”
Moments later, the luxurious sedan pulled up under a sign that read Fleischer-Metzger-Bierstube-Gäste. As I struggled to lift out the suitcase, my nameless companion disappeared and returned with a heavy key. Up the stairs and down the hall she marched. Key in hand, she opened the door to a large room dominated by a huge bed buried under a white feather quilt. “You will be very comfortable here, ” she assured me as she opened a window overlooking the garden.
Though I scarcely knew where to begin, I felt compelled to respond to her kindness. Haltingly I explained how I had come to be so far from the standard tourist haunts.
“I am from Canada and I am looking for a woman whom I do not know but who knows me. Or rather, a woman who knew me. It was long time ago, when I was small. Sixty years ago. Before the war.”
Clearly intrigued, my new acquaintance looked at the address I had pulled out.
“Königsbergerstrasse. Not far at all. Please, let me drive you there. I must be sure that you find this woman.”
She remained in the car as I walked up the few steps of the small apartment block. Her name was listed by the intercom. Frau Christine Fuchs. I pushed the buzzer, listened to the electric crackle and then a cautious “Ja?”
“Tini, es ist die Helen. Ich bin hier.”
“Moment bitte.”
Moments later, the door opened and strong arms flung themselves about me. German words burned into my memory.
“Helly! What have I done to deserve this day? Dear God in Heaven! I thank You, dear Father, for allowing me to live so long! I thank You for allowing me to see my Helly-girl again.”
Now we wept, both of us, as Tini repeated her words and brought balm to my heart.
“Sixty years ago, they tore you from my arms. Never did I think to see you again. God’s Grace has brought you back to me.”
My Mercedes woman, whose name I never learned, walked quietly to where we stood. Beaming, she shook hands with Frau Fuchs, but declined the opportunity to linger. She spoke with tact and understanding: “These moments are for you alone. I leave you to enjoy this special reunion.”
I followed Tini up the stairs to the fourth floor, marvelling at the erect back and powerful legs of this woman in her eighties. Although she barely came up to my shoulder, she gave the impression of strength. She was well built. Not fat, but buxom, her breasts proudly pointing the way. A sheaf of naturally grey hair enveloped a wrinkled face that to me was beautiful.
Words tumbled out of us. She spoke, I spoke, we both spoke, sometimes at once. A thousand questions, each answer leading in turn to fresh questions. “Tell me about… how come… why… when… where… what did you do…?” My questions continued, not just for hours, but for days. We took time out for other things without interrupting the long conversations about a past that I could not remember, yet that seemed etched into my being.
Helen in the arms of Tini, 1937
Tini confided that immediately after our departure, she had approached her boyfriend and announced that she wanted to be married. She had told him that her arms felt unbearably empty. Despite the financial and political uncertainties that swirled about them, he agreed to a hasty wedding. Their son and their daughter Erni were born shortly thereafter.
“It was as if I had to replace the child that had been stolen from my arms, ” Tini said. “When they took you away, they tore out a piece of my heart.”
The sound of Tini’s voice awoke wordless memories. Her accent itself is a strange clone of my own way of speaking. People used to comment that my accent was different from that of my parents who spoke Hochdeutsch, the cultivated German considered to be “classic.” It was strange that I spoke more of a dialect than my own family. Now I understood. My first intense exposure to language was through Tini who had spent her days keeping an eye on me as she prepared meals and did all the housework in a pre-electric era.
Tini spoke “Böhmisch,” the local dialect of the former kingdom of Bohemia that had become the cornerstone of Czechoslovakia. She was born not far from Strobnitz, the small village near the Austrian border where my father’s parents had long owned the town’s only store.
Tini told me that she was sure we left Strobnitz in September of 1938 and that we had gone to Prague. I replied that this was impossible because we did not come to Canada until the spring of 1939. Besides, my mother had repeatedly regretted that she had never been to Prague. Tini was unshakable in her version of the story:
It was right after Hitler made his speech about the Sudeten -land. Usually your parents didn’t need me in the evening, but that night they asked me to stay with you because they wanted to hear the speech. The whole family gathered around the radio. There had already been rumours about a place called Dachau and I heard them say that some Jews had just disappeared overnight. You left for Prague the next day, and I helped your grandmother close up the house in Strobnitz. Your grandparents moved to Budweis two or three days after you left, and they gave me a key to the house in Strobnitz. This is not a trust I could forget.
> Only when Tini produced a postcard in my mother’s handwriting mailed from Prague in November 1938 did I believe her. My mother had sent it to the address of Tini’s parents. Tini had kept that postcard through the war and all its attendant dispersals.
My visit was an emotional time for Tini as well as for me. In Germany, the topic of the war had been off-limits both for the millions who had voted for and supported Hitler and for those who were simply victims of the times. Tini described a day when she had been scheduled to take the train on an urgent errand. Some inexplicable premonition had kept her from doing so. At the very moment she would have been there, the railway station had received a direct hit from a bomb and many people had been killed or wounded.
Repeatedly, we returned to the subject of the war, each time from a different angle. There was much that Tini had not told her own children, preferring to put the war years behind her. Tini’s daughter Erni had come to meet me the first evening of my arrival. We bonded immediately.
“I had to come,” Erni said. “I have heard about you ever since I was born. My mother has never stopped talking about you, and about the terrible loss that seemed to leave a hole in her heart.”
Erni and I found that we had much in common, including a reluctance to upset our mothers by asking questions about the past. Erni and her husband Rudi took time off from work to show me Germany. I learned to drink Hefeweizen from tall glasses, and to order German dishes that featured more meat than I would normally eat in a month. Arm in arm, Tini and I walked through picturesque towns where geraniums cascaded from every window, where cobbled streets led to historic houses where my favourite poets had once dwelt, where coffee houses and the aroma of freshly baked pastries invited us to linger. To linger and to talk.
It was with real reluctance that I left Tini and her family. She had mothered me in ways that I had missed. For many years, I had experienced myself as parent to my mother, and the recent period of care giving had strengthened that feeling. Tini was able to provide a different kind of love, an unconditional love that I ate up as eagerly as her freshly baked Vanil-lakipferln.
————
My family expands to include Tini, Erni and Rudi
From left to right: Erni, Rudi, Helen, Tini
TINI CONFIRMED WHAT I HAD learned in Linz about the Fränkels.
“They often visited,” she told me. “There would be great excitement as we got the house ready. ‘The Linzers are coming,’ your grandmother would say. They usually stayed overnight, so I would air all the sheets and bedding and iron the good tablecloths as well as doing some extra cooking and baking. Your grandmother always pitched in, so I never minded the work.”
She knew no details about the later years, only that she’d heard Frau Martha was expecting a baby. After my family fled, Tini had gone to live nearby with her own parents. She knew nothing further.
Tini did know something about my father’s sister Else and her husband. He bore the same name as his brother-in-law Emil, but Else’s husband was a doctor. Herr Doktor Emil Urbach. He was a renowned specialist and people travelled great distances to consult him. The Urbachs lived in Krumlau, a medieval town popular with visitors from abroad. Tini had been quite in awe of him.
Frau Else had been more approachable, and she often came into the kitchen. Despite being a very elegant lady, always carefully coiffed and attired, she never put on airs. Tini said that on the contrary, Else was very easy to talk to, even if their conversation was rather limited. Still, Tini liked the polite way in which Frau Else always couched her requests: “Only if you have time, dear Tini. I know how busy you are. Tini, my mother always says that neither she nor my sister-in-law Gretl could manage without you.”
On the last evening of my visit, Tini again fetched the postcard my mother had sent to her from Prague. This time, she pressed it into my hands and told me it was mine.
The card is addressed to Fraulein Christine Trinko, Erdweis bei Gmünd, Sudetenland. The postal stamp is smudged, but the words remain clear.
Prague, November 18, 1938.
Dear Tini
I have written to you several times in Strobnitz, but have received no reply. Now I shall write to your homeland. Perhaps my card will reach you there. If so, please send me a few lines. You know of course that we want to know how you are and what you are doing and whether you are perhaps still in Strobnitz after all and what’s new there. We speak a lot about the past. It is all so sad, and yet there is nothing we can do to change it. Helly so often speaks of Tini. The child has not forgotten you nor have we.
We are living here temporarily in very modest circumstances. If you write to me, please address to Ing. Arnold Waldstein, Prague XII, Fochova 20.
What will you do now? Will you accept another position or will you get married right away? You know that I have always been interested in everything that pertains to you and I would like to have some share in your future life, even if at a distance. In any case, I wish you all the best of luck.
You will be interested to know that Aunt Anny and her husband left for Canada/America three weeks ago. We want to go there soon too, but there are still lots of formalities to be completed. My dear parents are in Pilsen and Mother is very sick. Her nerves are very poor as a result of the departure.
I believe that if we could be together, we’d have lots to tell each other. Life in Strobnitz was so pleasant (gemütlich). Please be sure to write to me. Give my regards to your parents. Best regards to you from my husband.
Sincerely,
Gretel Waldstein
————
BEFORE LEAVING GERMANY, there was one more stop I felt compelled to make. Not far from Tini’s home in Ehningen lies Cham, my mother’s hometown.
“Cham,” the conductor announced. “The next station is Cham. Arrival in three minutes.”
As passengers folded their newspapers and assembled their belongings, I pulled my suitcase from the overhead rack and moved to the aisle. Having had such great luck on the train to Ehningen, I again tried the approach of speaking to a woman waiting to get off the train.
“Excuse me, are you from Cham?”
“Yes, but I haven’t lived here long. Do you live here too?”
“No, I’m just visiting. I was hoping you might know of a good Gasthof where I could spend the night.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you, but there is a small tourist agency just across from the station. The woman who owns it is very helpful. She is an old-time resident who will be able to advise you. You should just be able to catch her before the shops close.”
Having expressed my thanks, I hastened across the street to a white frame building with travel posters in the window. A welcoming light still burned in the gathering dusk. A bell tinkled to announce my entry.
“Good evening. How can I help you?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t need travel information, just a place to stay here in Cham.”
“Of course. There are many residents who rent out rooms. Cham is gaining popularity as a resort destination because we are so close to lakes and forests. Will you be staying long?”
“No, just for one night.”
“Oh, so you aren’t on holiday. Are you perhaps visiting someone?”
“No.”
An awkward silence ensued. The woman clearly expected further details.
“My mother is from Cham. My grandparents lived here.”
“Oh, but your mother didn’t come with you. Where is she now?”
“In Canada.”
“In Canada! But you speak German. And your mother didn’t come with you?”
“No.”
“You came alone? Didn’t she want to come? Surely, she would want to show you where she used to live. Perhaps some of her old friends are still living here.”
“No.”
Another awkward silence. I tried again.
“My mother will not set foot in Germany. Her memories are bad. She left here in 1939.”
“1939? Then she was lucky.
That was just before the war. She would have missed all the horror. Cham doesn’t have much industry, so we didn’t get those terrible bombings, but we had very little food, and many of our soldiers and civilians suffered dreadfully. Your mother escaped all that. How could she have bad memories?”
I see no way out except the terrible truth.
“My mother is Jewish. My grandparents were Jewish.”
I am aware of being looked at with wide-eyed wonder. I suddenly realize that I may be the first Jew that this forty-something woman has ever set eyes upon. Most of the handful of Germany’s Jews who survived chose to settle elsewhere after the war.
“What a shame that my own mother isn’t in the shop today. Sometimes she helps me. She may have known your mother. What is her family name?”
“Grünhut.”
“I don’t recognize it. There’s only one Jew living in Cham now. Everybody knows him. His name is Max Weissglas.”
I shifted uncomfortably. A single Jew in a town that once held dozens of Jewish families. Like the last of any species, his name is known to all. My mind flipped back to a short story in our high school English class, “The Last of the passenger pigeons.” At one time, there were so many passenger pigeons in America that trains would stop to allow gentleman travellers to stretch their legs and shoot at a sky that was clouded with birds. Then, one day, the last passenger pigeon died and the species was extinct.
A single Jew left in Cham. I could not banish the words from my mind. Soon after arriving at the recommended Gasthaus, I searched through the thin telephone book, and dialled the number for Max Weissglas.
Before I knew what I was going to say, a woman answered. My words simply tumbled out.
“Good evening. I’m a visitor from Canada. My mother was from Cham and my grandparents lived here. They were Jews. When I asked the woman at the travel agency by the railway station for the name of a guesthouse, she gave me the name of Max Weissglas and told me that he is the only Jew in Cham. I would like to meet him, but I’m only here till tomorrow. Is it possible?”
Letters From the Lost Page 9