My Train to Freedom

by Ivan A. Backer

  Mr. Šmolka’s chauffeur brought the suitcases to the border, to the gate. He could not go any further. He left them there. Miluška and I were both crying. Then the car turned around and left.

  I don’t know how to describe it: You know, I was alone, and it was a fantastic adventure just to come to the border. But it was legal. The Germans are very precise. When they see a passport which is validly stamped, they will not say, “You Jewess, we will not let you into Germany.” That was the irony—it was an impossible situation. They, the Germans, carried my suitcases in and somebody said, “There is a train—not a passenger train but a freight train—going to Nuremberg. If you want to go by train to Nuremberg, you can catch it.” So I went on that train all through the night to Nuremberg.

  In Nuremberg, there was a congress of the Nazi party. You can’t imagine what that was like. There were blood red flags from roof to pavement on every street. It was frightening.

  I had some money legally. And some I wanted to send to Vala [Mother’s youngest sister in Berlin]. This part I had hidden. When I arrived at the station in Nuremberg, I was told there were no trains. I had wanted to go to Aachen and to the Belgian border at Aix. They told me, “If you have money, you can hire a taxi and there will be a train in Cologne.” I hired a taxi for 150 marks, which was half the money I had. I found a taxi driver who was willing to take me to Cologne, but he wanted to see the money first. He said, “If you show me the money, I will take you.” I showed it to him and he took me.

  That is a trip I will never forget. It was very far. And it was the loveliest weather imaginable. Germany is such a lovely country. But the contrast of being desperate, half out of my mind—I did not know if I would ever arrive in England—this contrast of going by car like a tourist, the lovely weather, and the countryside, and being in such distress…

  It was the afternoon of September 2nd. Every train was going to Poland, so very few trains were left. But in Cologne there was a train going west. I bought a ticket with the remaining “legal” money I had.

  On the train there was a group of hysterical German women who said, “You will never get to Belgium via Aachen. You should go through the enclave”—that was a German protectorate area. I don’t know why I listened to them, but I did. It was probably a bad idea. I got off the train at the stop they indicated.

  It was the middle of the night, a small station on the German side of the Belgian border. There was one soldier, one nurse, and one official, the commandant. I told them I had no money, no contraband, or anything. The nurse appeared and made me strip. Of course, she found the money that I had wanted to send to Vala.

  Now, they woke up the commandant. He came down, and he shouted and carried on, “You shut up. You know that I can have you arrested and jailed, you Jewess, you dirty Jewess.” Then they opened up the suitcases and just emptied them. Everything was out on the floor. He took my money. Then I had not one cent left. But he did not take anything from the suitcases. He just took every bit of money. But I did have a visa and a valid passport, so if he didn’t arrest me for trying to smuggle out the money, he would have no reason for stopping me. And since he took all the money, he took pity on me and let me go.

  It was 2:00 a.m. After I repacked the suitcases, I went out of the station. It was pitch black. I asked the only soldier there, “Where is the Belgian border?” He pointed to a red light and said, “There is Belgium.”

  I went three times, carrying one suitcase at a time. Each trip took half an hour. My purse also must have weighed about twenty kilos. The Belgian sentry looked at me as if I were a ghost, but the border guards spoke French and they took me in without money. They even bought me coffee. There was a train to Brussels at 6:00 a.m. and they put me on it. On the train I told the conductor that I had no money and he let me go on through to Brussels. That I will never forget. It isn’t very far. Belgium is a small country. It was about a two hour ride, but still…

  In Brussels, I was safe. There was Mr. Aaron, a friend of Father’s, and he lent me money. I also had a former student there, Mr. Volner, who had a gift shop, and he also lent me money. I also had a French visa and I thought I would go and see the countess—a very close longtime friend, La Countess de Colorado—but Mr. Aaron said, “You must be crazy. This is not a pleasure trip. How do you know you will ever get out of France? This is war. You go nicely to England.” He was right.

  But during her journey Mother made a one-day detour anyway, as she had heard about a special exhibit of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp and she was determined to see it. She took an early train and arrived on the gallery steps only to find it was closed. Undeterred, Mother rang the bell. Rang it again, and again, and again, until finally the museum director himself came to find out who was so insistent. She explained that this was the only day she could be in Antwerp and she desperately desired to view the Rubens exhibit. Her pleas won him over and he let Mother in. All day, quite alone and unguarded, she drank in the magnificence of Rubens’s huge canvasses until she returned late to Brussels, exhausted but soon ready to resume the final challenges to reach family and freedom.

  I stayed another night in Brussels, and the next day I took a ship from Oostende to England. I arrived on September 4th, one day after war was declared.

  In England, I went to work for Mrs. Barrett, the woman who had pledged to employ me. She was a shrewd old hag, a ninety-two-year-old miser who lived with her insane daughter. When I arrived, she dismissed all her servants and planned to get full value for the thirty pounds she had pledged to pay me for a year.

  But I soon found good employment as a governess to a wealthy family, the Dunns. Despite the loud squawks of protest from Mrs. Barrett, I left to work for the Dunns who invited me to bring you [Ivan] to live with me in their house.

  In six months the four of us had effectively escaped the Nazis and were counted among the saved but, like others, scars remained into our futures. My childhood was irrevocably interrupted in 1939 by the German invaders who initiated a merciless reign of terror on relatives left behind and on my country. That year, after arriving on the Kindertransport, I was fortunate to be relocated in a free nation to resume boyhood with three different English families, each one providing me a unique experience.

  Chapter Four: My Three English Families, 1939

  TO CONFORM WITH British Home Office regulations, each Kindertransport child needed a British sponsor to live with, and I was placed with the Millers who became my first family in the new country. Although my father was already in London, I could not live with him because he had only one small furnished room in a rooming house.

  The connection with the Millers was made through my brother, Frank. He and Cyril Miller, the family’s eldest son, became friends when they both stayed the month of August 1938 in Saint-Malo, Brittany, with a French family to learn French. Frank wrote to Cyril asking if his parents would sponsor me—and they did. The placement must have made it easier for Nicholas Winton to include me on one of his Kindertransports since he did not have to locate a sponsoring family as I already had one. Each British family accepting a child had to put up fifty pounds, a significant sum of money in those days. Winton searched tirelessly for families, but almost two thousand children remained on his list of names needing sponsors, and those children did not escape the Nazi war machine that swallowed up Czechoslovakia.

  The Millers seemed to me to be a strange family. Mr. Miller was a businessman who made a substantial sum of money which he liked to draw attention to whenever possible. He was especially proud to own one of the first television sets. It had only about a ten-inch screen but was big enough to view a Joe Louis boxing match with a group of friends invited over for the occasion. I watched, too, much to the amazement and chagrin of my schoolmates who did not have TVs and had to endure my enthusiastic descriptions of the progression of the fight.

  While Mr. Miller was a short stout man in his forties or fifties, his wife was tall with dark hair and penetrating eyes; she was very high strung. H
er adored pet was a little poodle-like dog, and it appeared to me she devoted more time to her dog than to her two teenage sons, Cyril and Harold. Both boys were at school, away more than they were home. The Millers lived very comfortably in a single-family house within middle-class surroundings of north London; a well maintained park was situated nearby. Theirs was a quiet neighborhood consisting of similar type houses built about the same time. One evening a mysterious puddle appeared on the Millers’ staircase landing. There was no doubt in my mind how it got there, but at first Mrs. Miller was perplexed by the discovery. She stared down at the dampness then looked directly at me with squinted eyes. “Why couldn’t you wait to get to the bathroom? What’s wrong with you!” she admonished me with disgust. “But I didn’t do it!” I protested, and then added, “The dog must have done it.” But she would hear none of this theory, dismissed it at once, and made clear to me that her precious pet would never do that in her nice home. She finished her rant with, “You should be quite ashamed of yourself!” I can still see her red face staring down into my pale one.

  I looked forward to seeing Father every Sunday afternoon. He visited me without fail and always brought sweets with him to nibble on while we walked in the park, sat on one of the benches, and talked. It was a pleasure to converse in Czech again, to hear news about the rest of the family, especially about my mother, who was still stuck in Prague. We spoke not only about the family but also about what was occurring in Europe, the likelihood of war engulfing our country, and together we speculated about strategies. In fact, over time the progress of the war became the main topic of our conversations. My father was not a very demonstrative man, seldom revealing what was on his mind or his feelings, but I absorbed great warmth just being with him at those times.

  Going to synagogue on the Sabbath was another new experience. Our family was secular Jews—my parents seldom went to temple. But with the Millers I was required to attend services regularly and found it a strange experience, mysterious and alien.

  Come summer, it was time for a vacation at the “seaside,” and in the Miller’s case this was at Ramsgate in Kent. Even though war clouds were hovering ominously over Europe, I spent several pleasurable weeks playing there with other London children “on holiday.” When we were driving to Ramsgate with mister at the wheel, his wife beside him, and me in the back seat enjoying the ride, the missus suddenly let out a blood-curdling shriek that made me hold my breath, thinking we were about to experience a major crack up. Instead, with little break in speed, Mr. Miller was squeezing the car between a trolley and a truck, accomplishing the tight maneuver without a scratch. After skillfully making it through, Mr. Miller looked over at his wife’s frightened face and roared with laughter.

  On the Monday after my arrival in May, I was taken to the neighborhood elementary school and put into the third grade. Although my mother had taught me some English in Prague, I could communicate very little and understood less. My one moment of glory came on the school playground one day in a game resembling cricket or stickball. I caught a very high fly ball which everyone expected me to drop. I was just as surprised as they to see the ball resting securely in my bare hands; but I quickly decided not to reveal how ecstatic, and surprised, I was, instead assuming an off-hand attitude of casual confidence as I trotted off the field with my team.

  When classes resumed at the end of the summer, Germany had just invaded Poland and England declared war. One day during the first week of school, we were told to come the following day with a suitcase containing just our basic belongings and be prepared to leave. All London children were being evacuated to the midlands in anticipation of bombing attacks on the city. So, I was on the move again, and it was good-bye to the Millers for good.

  We children arrived by train in Northampton, were divided into groups at the station, and marched into a residential area. At each intersection, ten of us were dispatched with a lady who knocked at every front door of each two-story row house occupied by a working class family. The lady asked a standard question after the woman of the house opened her door. “These are children from London—how many can you take?” What a contrast with the London neighborhood of my first placement! These were families getting by on the husband’s meager salary while the wife kept house and tended to a brood of children. There were no television sets here.

  There were only two of us left when the end of the dead-end street came into view. I began to panic, worried about what would happen if none of the three remaining houses had room for us or, worse, if I alone was not chosen. But at the third house from the end, the woman answering the door said cheerfully, “Well, I have a son at home and he has a double bed all to himself. We can fit these two in there. I’ll take them both.” That night I learned to sleep with two companions wedged in beside me! But I was happy I had a bed to sleep in and dozed off quickly. In a few weeks the other boy from London moved out to a different family and I had the luxury of half a bed. But we were not the only ones to have to share. In the next bedroom were two daughters sleeping in a double bed with their aunt.

  At the end of the street was a retaining wall beyond which stretched a wide expanse of open meadowland with a stream meandering lazily through it. As I was to find out, the stream flooded after heavy rains but the retaining wall kept us dry. I loved to roam the fields and even tried my hand for the first time at fishing—not successfully.

  One sunny afternoon, three of us boys wandered a bit further beyond the wall than usual and discovered a brick building with rail tracks leading to it. When we looked through the grimy window, we saw a large shiny black locomotive. We were inside in a jiffy. Once on the platform of the engine, our imaginations took off—down the tracks and through the meadow the locomotive carried us, clickity-clacking rhythmically and tooting its whistle until dusk came when we suddenly realized we had better return with haste back to reality.

  Northampton lasted for me a little more than two months. The family there, whose name I cannot recall, was very kind to me and shared their home without complaint even though they lived quite modestly. Saturday evening baths were memorable. The missus would heat up water on the stove, pour it into a portable metal half-bath in the middle of the kitchen and then wash each one of us separately. “Are you clean?” I would nod. “Well, wrap yourself in a towel and off with you. NEXT!” she bellowed. After a week of washing only hands and face, the bath felt so good that I was pokey about getting out. I learned that modesty is not possible in such close quarters; and it was there, on the living room floor, with the two daughters, that I timidly received my first basic sex education lesson.

  Friends of the family who visited would ask me, “How did you get here and when did you leave Prague?” Expressing incredulity and exuding sympathy they added, “You say you haven’t seen your mother for six whole months?” That was my cue to tell my story in a hushed voice with a sad face and sometimes tears as well. I was fairly shameless about it and discovered that more tears produced more kisses and cuddling. I enjoyed the attention and did not feel guilty about playing on the emotions of my listeners. All in all, I was not unhappy living with this second English family in Northampton.

  By November I was reunited with my mother and able to go live with her. She had arrived in England the day after war broke out, following a harrowing journey filled with danger. She was hired as governess and tutor for the children of a well-to-do family, the Dunns, in Bromham, Wiltshire, a small village between Chippenham and Devizes. Major and Mrs. Dunn had agreed to let me come live there with my mother in their large home called Battle House.

  Horses and hounds first welcomed me when I arrived at Battle House, the Dunn’s estate, from Northampton as a ten-year-old on that memorable November morning before the jaws of war clamped firmly around Great Britain. A fox hunt was about to begin. With all the excitement, it was a while before I located my mother, whom I last saw on the railroad platform in Prague before I boarded the Kindertransport train, now more than six months ago. When at last I
saw her hurrying toward me, I tingled with anticipation. I noticed at once that Mother wore a big bandage on one of her fingers, covering a painfully infected wound. Later, I was relieved to learn the injury was recent—the result of an exploding hair dryer, not due to any occurrence on her perilous journey to England.

  Major Dunn, patriarch of Battle House, was in the British army and served long hours at the military base. The major, who cut an imposing figure especially in his army uniform, had a ruddy complexion and a neatly trimmed mustache. I saw at once that he ruled the roost when he was home, and, as he was stationed nearby, he was home most weekends. The major always stood or sat ramrod straight as befitted his military rank and family position, and most children and adults at Battle House stayed clear of him. The children, me included, usually ate in our own room, which served as the schoolroom, nursery, and playroom, as well as our dining room, but on Sundays we had dinner with the grown-ups around the sturdy long oak table in the formal dining room. Children did not speak unless spoken to, and we were always on our best behavior at those times. During one Sunday dinner I remember well, I jumped in alarm when Major Dunn raised his deep bass voice to boom out at one of his sons—“Hugh, stop waving your fork all around the countryside!” I had never heard a human voice with such volume. I still recall these tense dinners at the Dunns’ table, and specifically this episode, when I read novels or see dramas about the English upper class.

  Mrs. Dunn, the strong-willed mistress of Battle House, was a short, intense woman who liked to drink and smoke pungent Turkish cigarettes. Once I filched one of her cigarettes and lit up while sitting on a back wall. In short order I became thoroughly dizzy and fell hard off my perch to the ground. I permanently foreswore smoking then and there, which wasn’t a bad thing.