Kindergarten

by Peter Rushforth

  Usually, his father gave him the single key to open the door of the Ferry House when he wanted to go there to practice in the holidays. But this day Corrie took the complete bunch of Ferry House keys from the office, without bothering to remove the one key he usually used.

  After practising his cello for two hours, he sat on the window-seat jingling the bunch of keys in his hand, spinning them round on the ring.

  Set in the wall of the bedroom was a locked door, a panelled white-painted door with a brass handle.

  On the key-ring was a little key he had not seen before.

  He moved away from the window, and up to the inset door.

  He considered just walking past it, but he was drawn on by curiosity. It was a door like any other. It was a key like any other key. He put the key in the keyhole, turned it only a little, and the door was open.

  Beyond the bedroom door he stepped into darkness.

  He stood for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the dim light. It was a long, narrow, windowless room, like a boarded-over railway carriage. Slatted wooden shelves stretched away against the walls on both sides, stacked with dusty files of old incoming school mail.

  The floor was white with the spilled contents of files which had fallen.

  He squatted down in the dusty darkness, disappointed, mildly interested, picking up the letters lying nearest to him on the bare boards, letters from the late 1930s, letters about the trivial important concerns of childhood: a boy to have milk in his cocoa, a boy not to have eggs, discovered smokers, requests for details of entrance to the school, a new school heating system, an accident to a boy in a games lesson, the payment of fees.

  Then, idly sifting through the papers at his feet, like the valueless litter left in an abandoned room, he came across the first of the letters which made him pause. From the window-seat above the playing-fields, he heard his brothers’ voices sharp in the air around him.

  Doors began to open, deep inside his head.

  MINISTRY OF LABOUR

  July, 1939

  MILITARY TRAINING ACT, 1939.

  I am directed by the Minister of Labour, in pursuance of the powers conferred upon him by Section 10 of the Military Training Act, to request that you will be good enough to furnish a return of information required by him with respect to certain persons who have attended your school.

  Persons of whom information is required. The return should relate to all boys born between the 4th June, 1918, and the 3rd June, 1919, both days included, who have been on the school roll in your school at any time during the last five years.

  Information to be included in the return. The particulars desired to be furnished in respect of each boy are:—full name, date of birth, home address and name of parent or guardian.

  Form of return. It is desired that the particulars should be furnished upon cards which will be supplied to you for the purpose. One card should be used for each individual. A postcard form is enclosed upon which you are requested to notify to the Registrar General, Somerset House, London, W.C., the number of cards estimated to be required for the return. On receipt of the postcard, the requisite supply of cards will be forwarded to you.

  I would add, after our earlier correspondence, that this return is asked for, not as an act of voluntary co-operation, but as a statutory duty imposed by Section 10 of the Military Training Act. A refusal to comply with the Minister’s request would thus constitute a breach of the provisions of the law.

  CIVILIAN PROTECTION LTD.

  Warwick Plain, Coventry

  8th June, 1939

  Dear Sir,

  We are pleased to be able to offer the supply of the following for the use and protection of the pupils under your control.

  (i) IDENTIFICATION DISCS. The sensible suggestion has been made that the civilian population should have some readily available means of identification about them. We believe that, for children, the best possible method is the wearing of one of our clearly printed METAL IDENTIFICATION DISCS. Each disc can bear the name of the pupil and the school, and will be a great advantage to you in identifying your pupils quickly in case of any difficulties encountered as a result of an air-raid.

  (ii) STRETCHERS. Our models are constructed of metal and fold easily for storage. There is no canvas to become discoloured or rot, and they may readily be hosed down if they become contaminated.

  Our prices are most reasonable. The stretchers, for example, cost only 48/- each, but there is a considerable reduction if you place an order for more than a dozen.

  We respectfully await your instructions.

  Yours faithfully,

  J. L. Carter,

  Sales Manager

  EMERGENCY COMMITTEE FOR THE

  CARE OF GERMAN JEWISH CHILDREN

  Rachel House, London W. 1

  11th July 1938

  Dear Anthony High,

  You have done so much for our children, that I hesitate to burden you any further, but you will realise the desperate urgency of the situation in Germany. Perhaps the Evian Conference will be able to find a solution, but we have hundreds of people who just cannot wait longer. There has been an enormous rise in applications for help. I am sure that you yourself will have become aware of this from Leonie Matthias in Berlin.

  Please forgive me if I ask you to please give me a brief indication of any further help you feel able to offer. Have you room for any children at all in September? Do you specify any particular ages? How many boys could you take? Could you take any more girls? What is the lowest possible figure you would be willing to accept as fees? (As you know, it is virtually impossible to get any money out of Germany.) Would you be willing to allow me to act on your behalf in accepting any children? I give you my assurance that the Committee and I will make the fullest investigation of each case.

  We are keenly aware of the generosity of yourself and your Committee, and you may feel that you have done all you could be reasonably expected to do, but we hardly know where to turn, and we need to get as many children out of Germany as possible, and as quickly as possible. Each place offered would mean that one more child was safe.

  I would be very grateful if you could reply soon. With renewed thanks.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hannah Greif

  Below him, on the football pitch, Matthias and Baskerville had seemed to hit upon a co-ordinated plan. Jo did a complete back-somersault over Baskerville, and nearly ended up with his head jammed beneath the net. “You’re supposed to be the referee!” he complained fiercely. “Canine nutter!” Matthias began to dance about because he had scored, moved more quickly than his legs could keep up with, and fell over. The high clear voices floated up from the field, and Corrie felt the vague, powerful forces of the adult world beginning to gather, waiting, at the edges of childhood, unseen by the children.

  The next thing he picked up was the postcard from Nickolaus Mittler, posted on the twentieth of June, 1939.

  He spent the rest of the morning trying to sort his way through the massed and scattered papers on the floor in the inner room, arranging them slowly in different piles that approached some rough chronological order. On the afternoon of Christmas Day, he left the others watching The Wizard of Oz on television. Dorothy had just started to follow the yellow brick road. On each day since then, he had come down to the Ferry House, saying that he was going to practise his cello. Patiently, carefully, he had tried to trace his way through the files of correspondence, beginning in 1933. The flimsy yellow papers were like documents from centuries ago, unfamiliar moustached or bearded figures on faded stamps with tiny denominations.

  He knew that the school had been evacuated during the war, and the staff and children moved away, when Southwold had been declared a prohibited area. The records for the 1930s and 1940s were disorganised and incomplete, and a good number of the 1930s files—whole stretches between 1934 and 1938—seemed to have been lost or destroyed.

  There were three files for each year—heavy box files with rusted m
etal clips inside—usually exactly divided into four-month periods, but some were unsorted random piles of documents from different years bundled together, damaged by fire, scorched or partially burned. In all the files, and strewn about the floor, in increasing numbers as the years went by, were the many letters from Jewish families in Germany, a part of the past of Lilli, and of himself.

  It was difficult, with the incompleteness and confusion of the files from the dark inner room, to follow through the correspondence of individual families over the years some names just seemed to vanish, and with others it was unclear whether or not children had actually managed to get to the school but as he approached the final file of late 1939, he had got to know some of the families well. Intent, absorbed, he read on, unable to draw himself away, as the letters and postcards poured in from Berlin, month after month, sometimes couched in the awkward English of commercial communications, asking if there was any possibility of a vacancy at the school: ordinary men and women, mothers and fathers, decent people, trying to learn how to plead, for themselves, and for their children.

  HE PLACED the two postcards on the window-seat in front of him, side by side.

  Berlin- Charlottenburg 4

  15th May 1934

  Dear Sir,

  I would be happy if you could please be so kind to send me a prospectus of your school. I was given your address by Miss Leonie Matthias, “Elternhilf a fur die judische jugend.” My boys whom I want to send to England are 10 years old and 13 years old. They have some knowledge of English, and can understand when people speak English to them, but they cannot really speak. More than 6oL each for a year I cannot devote to my boys’ education. I know it is a small sum. We are Jews. Will this mean difficulties in the school with their comrades? We are not political, and do not belong to any organisation. We have a great desire to give our sons under your care.

  Yours faithfully,

  Frau Katherina Viehmann

  Berlin-Charlottenburg 2

  18th January 1938

  Dear Mr. High,

  I need an attestation for the german authorities that my daughter Charlotte Goetzel is going to Southwold School. Please send me this paper in the next days.

  Lotte cannot speak English and it is the first time that she is separated from her home and from her parents. She is our only child. Please treat her with great love and solicitude. Please, if you have a little time, let us know whether you are content with her.

  Thank you for your kind help in our bad circumstances.

  With sincere good wishes,

  Peter and Aline Goetzel

  He turned the two postcards over, and again studied the sepia photographs carefully.

  Blick vom Hotel Adlon auf den Pariser Platz; im Hintergrund Tiergarten, Siegessäule, Reichstag, Berlin. (Sight from the Hotel Adlon on the Parisian Place; in the background the Tiergarten, column of victory, parliament-building, Berlin.)

  The Brandenburg Gate, with its six banks of neo-classical columns, the triumphal arch at the start of Berlin’s major central thoroughfare, seemed like a gate in Roman times, a clear boundary between the city and the countryside. In front of the Gate, the wide empty expanse of the start of Unter den Linden stretched away. On the right, buildings were crammed together, as though crowded within the walls of an over-populated and rapidly growing city, the square towers and shallow central dome of the Reichstag rising above everything else. Behind the Gate, as though it were wild and open countryside, were the trees of the Tiergarten. Beyond these was Charlottenburg, and the other fashionable western suburbs, safe, middle-class, comfortable. From amongst the trees of the Tiergarten, Victory rose up on her column, and above the Gate another figure of Victory, in a chariot pulled by four horses, faced down Unter den Linden.

  The photograph on the second postcard—Reich stagsgebäude und Brandenburger Tor, Berlin. (Parliament-building and Brandenburger Gate, Berlin)—showed a wide empty avenue, leafless trees, and, opposite the massive frontage of the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, its columned frontage facing the entrance to a bridge. The Gate appeared to be a solid structure with no way through.

  The same buildings appeared over and over again in all the postcards: shifting angles, changing viewpoints, the same immense structures blocking the sky.

  ON CHRISTMAS DAY, in one of the surviving files for 1933, he found the first letter from Rachel House, and then, soon afterwards, all the others.

  EMERGENCY COMMITTEE FOR THE

  CARE OF GERMAN JEWISH CHILDREN

  Rachel House, London W. 1

  19th July 1933

  Dear Mr. High,

  Do you remember me from fifteen years ago, when we both served on the Stewart-Hamill Committee? I remember you (and Mrs. High) well, and how pleased you both were because David had just started to speak. (Yes, it was a long time ago! ) I remember, also, how, as a result of the findings of this Committee, you were so ready to give free places to five of the starving Austrian children, and how you felt that the happiness that resulted was as great for you as it was for them.

  We are just one of many agencies and organisations endeavouring to help German refugees—pacifists, professional people, Jews, evangelicals, etc.—but our particular concern, as our name indicates, is with German Jewish children. I realise that we are certainly not unique in this field, and I am afraid that the number of agencies so concerned will increase rapidly and inevitably if the current situation in Germany intensifies. I do hope that I can presume on a previous acquaintanceship to seek your help. Here at Rachel House we are trying to help refugee Jewish children whose parents are in concentration camps, or deprived of their means of livelihood. We have established close contact with a Jewish organisation in Berlin (Miss Leonie Matthias, “Elternhilfe für die jüdische Jugend,” Berlin-Charlottenburg, Tiergartenstrasse), and hope to work together to alleviate the suffering caused by the actions of the present German government.

  Could you take two or three of these children in September? Even a tentative promise “subject to the approval of the School Committee” will be helpful. Are there other headteachers in your area who might also be willing to help, with boys or girls? Would you be able to offer places to girls at your school? (We hope to keep brothers and sisters together.) I will be happy to supply you with any further details, or answer any questions.

  I hope that you will feel able to help.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hannah Greif

  DR. WILHELM VIEHMANN

  Berlin-Charlottenburg 4

  23rd September 1934

  Dear Mr. High,

  Thank you very much for your letter from last week. My husband found the week he spent in England when he brought our boys a very happy time. He has told me all about Southwold, and about meeting you and your family.

  The start of life in England, and the beginning of term in a new school, have been very great events for our boys, and Kurt and Thomas write very much in their letters about it, and show a happiness they have not known for many months. Their letters talk much of their sport-life, and I am very glad that they are involved in this traditional “fair sport” side of English manner of life.

  Kurt is beginning to imitate the English orthography, and he does progress. He is beginning to write the nouns with the small letters in the correct way. He is telling me he is knowing the language “jolly well.” Thomas, I think, is a little homesick. He is gentler in mind than Kurt, and more longing for tenderness. Everyone he knows in the world is in Germany. I hope that he will accustom more and more to your life and will be a good comrade among the other boys. Are you satisfied with their progress in English, and with their behaviour?

  I hope my husband tried to tell you how thankful we both are that our boys are in your school during this difficult time and learn all about English life, but he does not speak English well. My English is not enough to express to you all the thankfulness we feel towards you and your school. I could not express it in German. You hardly know what a relief it is for us in our sit
uation that our children are taken care of in your community, where they can be children, without the troubles of the adult world. I am so grateful that, with comrades of their own age, they will perhaps forget soon what they were compelled for so many months to endure, with the sorrows of grown-up people, the many conflicts and pains they have suffered in their native country. With a heavy heart we sent them away, but we feel comforted knowing you care for them in our bad times. It is a marvellous experience in our life to find friends in a country where we are only strangers. People are kind. We must remember this.

  With many thanks for all your kindness towards us and our children. Kindest regards, also, to Misses High, please. The boys’ grandmother, also, sends her good wishes.

  Yours thankfull,

  Frau Katherina Viehmann

  Please give my love to my boys. I wait for their Sunday letters. I hope their colds are better.

  London W.C.I

  22nd Oktober 1935

  Very respected Mr. High,

  I have heard of your school through my friend Kurt Viehmann who has been a pupil at your school since one year, who ask you that I please would be accepted also.

  I am 14 years old, a German Jew, as Kurt is. I went in Berlin to the same “Gymnasium” as Kurt, and you may ask there a report about me. I was good student. I have my school reports with me here in England, and can show them to you. My wish is to be a physician.

  My parents’ letter will arrive soon. They told me to ask you if I could be allowed in your school. They have told me that if I can find a school to take me, I need not go back to Berlin. Please let me come to your school, Mr. High. I beg to ask that you will accept me. My parents will not be able to afford that I come to England a second time. My fees will be paid monthly, which you will receive directly from my uncle in Paris, in French francs.