Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler

by Trudi Kanter

  This sense of calm finally ended in April 1940, when the Maginot Line turned out to be the biggest fiasco in the history of warfare. France was defenseless, and on Saturday 14 June, the German army marched into a stunned Paris.

  “You’re crying!” Walter exclaimed, taking my hand.

  My beautiful Paris. “What will happen to all my friends?”

  “I know. I feel the same about my family in Prague. They haven’t answered my last two letters.”

  A tiny pink and white dress . . .

  Day by day, the news grew worse. Our visas from America finally arrived. But it was too late. No passenger liners were operating. We were trapped again, on an island, with the German army a few miles across the Channel.

  PART NINE

  A Letter

  (London, 1940–45)

  1

  One morning, I overhear Gwen talking to Alice.

  “It was unbelievable,” she says. “Two plainclothes policemen! They had an internment order and took our German neighbors off to the police station. They—” She stops abruptly when she sees me enter the room. I pretend I haven’t heard.

  I sit at my desk and try to concentrate on some instructions and notes from our factory in Luton, but I can’t take in a single word. Gwen and Alice are busy at their desks; Gwen’s face is flushed, and she keeps glancing at me.

  It was only a few weeks ago that we were officially classed as “friendly aliens.” So why am I so worried?

  When I go home for lunch, I notice two men sitting in a maroon car parked opposite our house. Are they plainclothes policemen? I rush upstairs and watch the car through the net curtains of our sitting room windows. Mother is making lunch; pots and pans rattle in the kitchen. She is singing. The car moves farther up the street, then reverses. The driver seems to be looking at our front door.

  The car is still there when I leave to go back to work. I don’t say anything to Mother. But all afternoon I feel sick. Mr. Levy is out, and I leave early.

  As I pass our landlady’s door, she opens it. Her cheeks are very pink. She is very fond of Walter, who sometimes does her shopping for her.

  “Mrs. Ehrlich,” she whispers. “Don’t be upset. I’m sure it’s nothing, maybe just routine. It must be. You and Mr. Ehrlich! No. No!”

  I grip the banister. “What is it, Mrs. Brindle? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The police were here. This afternoon. Two of them, asking for your husband and your father. I said they were out. It’s nothing, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I lie.

  Mother is at home. “Trudi, I’ve made minced meat today, and carrots with a little sugar and parsley—Walter loves it like that.”

  The four of us sit down to dinner. Mother watches us enjoying our food. “It’s lovely, Mother. Thank you,” I say. How am I going to tell them?

  I wait for Walter to finish, then break the bad news.

  Into the silence that follows, Walter says, “Tomorrow, they’ll come to intern us. Father, we must pack a few things.”

  Mother’s face is shocked. “Why? What have you done?” She puts her cup down. Her hand is shaking, and she spills coffee on the white tablecloth.

  “Nothing. They are going to intern us because England is at war with our country, and since the fall of France and the news of fifth columnists, they are terrified of spies, and terrified of an invasion. This is only a small island. If the Germans really have spies here, then all is lost.”

  Father says, “But all the refugees are on England’s side! We want England to win!”

  “We know that, but they don’t,” Walter says. “And they won’t take us to a concentration camp. We’re going to be interned, that’s all.”

  “God knows what can happen, once you’re behind locked doors.”

  “It won’t be long, you’ll see.” Walter pats Mother’s hand. He strokes my cheek, lifts my chin, looks into my anxious eyes. “It’ll be all right, darling.”

  “Where are our suitcases?” Father’s voice is choked. He is trying to hide his feelings, but I know that he’s desperate.

  “In the loft,” I say. “Walter will fetch them.”

  Walter gets up and leaves the table. Mother shakes her head. Father’s slim fingers move bread crumbs around on the tablecloth.

  A few minutes later, we hear a loud crash from the bathroom. I run in there. The bath, basin, and floor are covered in rubble. Walter’s legs are hanging through the ceiling.

  “Walter! Walter!” I scream. “Are you all right?” I hear him laughing.

  Walter is determined to repair the damage there and then. “We can’t afford to pay a builder,” he says. “If Mrs. Brindle finds out, there’ll be trouble. I’ll lock all the doors and close the windows. We won’t let anyone into this place to take me away before I’ve finished the job!”

  He spends half the night replastering the ceiling, covering it with a temporary arrangement of newspaper and paint.

  I pack his suitcase. White short-sleeved shirts with a breast pocket where he puts his cigarettes. Oxford shirts, strong, heavy material. He loves his gray tweed jacket with four pockets. A gray cardigan to match his flannel trousers. Will they let him wear it? Good God—surely they won’t put them in prison uniforms? I am suddenly back at 11 Kohlmarkt, packing his things so they won’t be found at my flat, terrified. My hands are shaking so much I can’t fold his shirts.

  Normally, people pack when they go on holiday.

  * * *

  Walter comes into the bedroom, exhausted. His hands are red and raw where he has had to scrub off the paint. It’s three a.m. I cling to him. He kisses me gently.

  “You must be brave. You have to take care of your mother, and of our home. Nothing and no one can come between us. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “I can’t live without you,” I say. There are white flecks of paint in his damp, black hair.

  “It won’t be long. You’ll see.”

  “How long? This is unbearable. In Vienna, I could try to protect you. Here, I am helpless. What can I do?”

  “Be hopeful. Keep on loving me. Write to me, often.”

  “How? Where will they take you? What are they going to do to you?”

  I cry and cry. I can’t stop. It is a dark, painful night.

  * * *

  The doorbell rings at six thirty a.m. Walter looks out of the window.

  “A black van,” he says. He slips into his trousers. Shirtless, he runs to the landing to go downstairs and open the front door. I stop him.

  “You can’t! You mustn’t!” I shout. “They’ll grab you right off the doorstep! Take my parents into the sitting room, quickly!”

  Mother stumbles into our room, fiddling with her hairpins. I help her into her blue dressing gown. Father, in his striped pajamas, follows.

  “Nesti, Nesti, careful,” he says. He carries his slippers. He is rubbing his forefinger against his thumb, as he does when he is agitated. His white hair is ruffled.

  I dress quickly. The bell rings again, insistently.

  “The henchmen are here,” Father says bitterly.

  I go downstairs myself and open the door to two men in dark civilian clothes. “Police,” they say, and show me a card. They follow me upstairs into the sitting room.

  Walter has got dressed; he is wearing his red pullover. Father stands with his arm around Mother’s shoulders. There they are, a thin, frail old couple. They have survived a pogrom; they spent eight frightening months in Nazi Vienna, waiting for their visas, waiting to be allowed to come to England—for refuge.

  “We have a warrant,” the senior officer explains. He produces a letter authorizing them to take “one Walter Ehrlich” and “one Adolf Sturmwind” into custody.

  “Are you Walter Ehrlich?” He points at Walter.

  “I am,” Walter replies.

  “And you are Adolf Sturmwind?” he asks my father.

  “Jawohl,” Father says.

  “What?”

  “He do
esn’t speak English,” Walter explains. “It means yes.”

  The policeman tells Father to get dressed.

  “Where are you taking them?” I ask.

  “To Albany Street police station.”

  “And then?”

  “We don’t know, madame.” The officer looks at the ceiling; the other one looks at his boots.

  “For how long?”

  “We don’t know, madame.” His voice is cool.

  “Why are you taking them? What have they done?”

  “They’re Austrians,” the senior officer says. “We have our instructions. Sorry.”

  Mother starts to cry. I am fighting back tears myself. You can’t do this. He’s mine.

  We embrace, one hug that has to last for a long time. How long? What is long? One day without Walter seems an eternity.

  Walter picks up the suitcases. I will never forget the hurt look in his eyes, the desperate expression, the wordless good-bye.

  The front door closes behind them. I stand in the sitting room, quite still. Memories race through my mind. The deer dance up the hill in the Vienna woods. Walter sits far away—too far away—from me on my sofa. His eyes are purple as he kisses me in the dark. Mother likes him. We sit huddled together on the glass roof.

  2

  COLLAR THE LOT the headlines demand. Until one newspaper publishes an article describing the misery that internment has caused innocent people. Suddenly, the tide turns: FREE USEFUL ALIENS the headlines shout. FREE INNOCENT INTERNEES.

  In London, I look after Mother, try to stop her crying, go to work, wait for the postman. She sleeps next to me in our bed. I have to hide in the cloakroom to cry.

  The Levys don’t mind when I arrive late for work, or leave early. They try to help. Fritz tells me that when the German army marched into the south of France, some commanders of the internment camps there opened the gates and told the refugees to run.

  But others locked them in.

  Where is Walter? I sit in the large, cold workroom at the Clarendon Hat Company, missing my cozy, shimmering workroom at Kohlmarkt, where we designed our hats for their beauty, rather than for a certain price range.

  * * *

  A letter arrives with the address handwritten in the English style, the street number before the street name. I open it with shaking hands. Inside is a torn-off flap of another envelope. Written on it in pencil are the words, “Wir sind gesund” (“We are all right”). It’s Father’s handwriting. I try to imagine how he got this message to an English person who in turn got it to me. And what does the message mean? Is Walter ill? How did Father communicate with an English person? Did he use sign language? Maybe he wrote down our address, pointed to it, pointed to my name, and said, “daughter”? I can see it all—the Englishman would have asked if he wanted to write a message, gave him an old envelope. He was a kind Englishman; he addressed another envelope and posted the message. Where could they have met? Maybe it was a kind guard on the train? Father is charming, tall, patrician-looking. Men like that. That must be how it happened. Mother and I agree.

  That evening, after Mother has gone to bed, I’m reading the newspaper:

  Yesterday, 2 July 1940, the 15,000-ton liner Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic, west of Ireland. The luxury liner had sailed from Liverpool on 1 July. Bound for Canada, she carried British men, Italians, and Germans. The Germans comprised the strangest mixture, from Nazis to Jews, businessmen to revolutionaries and socialists. Some were fanatical supporters of the Third Reich, others were refugees from Nazi persecution who had left friends and relatives in German concentration camps. Some did not consider themselves German at all, but Austrian, and had fled their country after Hitler annexed it in 1938. Each of these groups were represented among the Arandora Star’s survivors on that mild, midsummer morning in July 1940. Each was represented, unevenly, among those who died.

  My blood runs cold. I rush into the kitchen and snatch Father’s message up off the table.

  It was posted in Liverpool on 29 June.

  I sit down. I mustn’t wake Mother.

  Hours later, the first rays of light break through the window. They lie in thin stripes on the red kitchen floor. I hear the first bird sing.

  A small, copper-framed art nouveau mirror belonging to my mother hangs on the kitchen wall. When she heard the front door close and recognized my father’s tread, she would stand in front of it, rearranging her hairpins, pinching her cheeks to give them color, straightening her apron. When he came into the kitchen, he would find a pretty, smiling wife, awaiting his kiss. This mirror now reflects my white, worried face.

  How can I find out where Walter and Father are?

  * * *

  For the next two days, I live in hourly fear of a telegram. I sit uneasily in the kitchen, listening to the hiss of the boiling coffee machine. The milkman rattles bottles and churns on the pavement. Finally, the postman brings the mail.

  I run downstairs. There is a letter addressed to me from His Majesty’s Government, Internment Camp, Huyton, near Liverpool. It is from Walter and is written on shiny prison paper—I find out later on that it is designed to repel invisible ink. Internees are allowed to write eighteen lines. Walter writes that he and Father are both well and that they are together, and he asks us to send warm clothes.

  Alive. Not at the bottom of the sea. Now that I know they are safe, even though they are interned, I can breathe again. I hug my mother, and we dance together around the kitchen.

  Why do they want warm clothes—do they expect to be there through the winter? My mother is annoyed that I didn’t tell her about the Arandora Star. She asks again and again if I am absolutely certain that Father is with Walter.

  We send sweets, tinned food, and winter clothes.

  But my relief doesn’t last long. After hearing about an internee being shot by mistake in an internment camp, I decide that I must visit Walter and see for myself how things are. I find a solicitor, Felix Hartley, an Anglo-German who is an expert on internee problems. He tells me that the War Office does not allow family of internees to visit; the only visitors allowed are lawyers. Luckily, he has a friend, Mr. Cohen, who is going to Huyton to see another internee, and he will ask about Walter.

  “When will he be able to give me some news?”

  “You can ring him at his office first thing Monday morning.”

  It is Friday; the weekend drags by. On Monday morning, I ring Mr. Cohen.

  “Mr. Cohen? This is Mrs. Ehrlich. I believe you visited my husband in Huyton?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “How is he?”

  “Mrs. Ehrlich, I’m afraid I have to tell you that your husband has been deported to Australia. He is on the Dunera, which sailed from Liverpool for Sydney carrying two thousand two hundred and fifty deportees.”

  I might never see Walter again.

  “Hello, are you still there?” Mr. Cohen asks.

  “Are you certain?” My voice cracks.

  “I’m afraid so. I spoke to the camp commander.”

  “And my father?”

  “I had no instructions pertaining to your father, so I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “Can you tell me anything else?”

  “It would be best for you to speak to Mr. Hartley.”

  Why did I dance Mother around the kitchen?

  “Walter would never leave your father alone,” Mother says, trying to reassure me. I agree. Surely they are together.

  There is nobody to whom I can appeal, nobody who will understand, nobody I can even allow to see my misery. Nobody is on my side.

  I send a telegram to the Balfours, who helped us with my father’s visa:

  OUR HUSBANDS HAVE BEEN DEPORTED TO

  AUSTRALIA STOP PLEASE CAN YOU HELP US

  TO BE INTERNED WITH THEM STOP

  We go to see them at their house in London and explain what has happened. Lord Balfour makes inquiries of a friend of his at the Home Office, but nothing comes of it; it is
not possible for us to be interned with Father and Walter. He himself is shocked about the deportations. “What has happened to my country?” he asks, shaking his head.

  I still cannot believe that I might never see Walter again.

  I send a telegram to the camp commander at Huyton:

  WHERE IS MY HUSBAND WALTER EHRLICH STOP

  And I get a telegram in reply:

  WE ARE WELL STOP LETTER FOLLOWS STOP WALTER

  The telegram was sent by permission of the camp commander himself.

  Another Walter Ehrlich is on his way to Australia.

  * * *

  It is August. The heat is unbearable, but at least I know that Walter and Father are well. Long days of blazing sunshine have melted the tar on Baker Street. I look up into a still, blue sky filled with fat, silver barrage balloons.

  I have to find a way to visit the camp.

  * * *

  He sat at an old desk, crammed with correspondence, order sheets, bolts, screws, clamps. Pens and pencils were strewn across it. A bottle of whiskey, a flask of water, and two glasses were on a tray balanced on the corner of the desk.

  Mr. Curlow, the owner of a manufacturing company called Mica Products, was a massive man with a sharp eye for business. He had agreed in principle to mass-produce one of Walter’s inventions: a bright red cigarette box that you could carry in your pocket but that opened up like folding steps that you could stand on the table for people to help themselves.

  The financial agreement between Walter and Mr. Curlow was nearly complete when Walter was interned. This is why I have come to see him. I admire the factory through the office window, the delivery vans coming and going. Mr. Curlow is a man who has worked his way up from the bottom. He came to London from Cornwall as a boy: “I said good-bye to my parents and never looked back.”

  “You didn’t have to. You’re a great success.”

  Our eyes met.

  “What can I do for you, young lady?”

  “My husband can’t contact you. He’s not allowed to write more than one letter every two weeks. So he has asked me to finalize the deal.”