by Moya Simons
‘Where are you?’ he asked me.
‘On board ship,’ I replied, confused, then realised he was asking where I came from. ‘England, no, Germany,’ I said, unsure myself of where I came from.
Jacques held me close as we danced, and it was wonderful. I let him guide me and soon I found my feet moving to the rhythm. His arm was firm around my waist.
‘You have a small middle,’ he said to me.
‘Thank you,’ I said giggling.
These boys became our friends, and we played cards together and managed to accidentally throw a record number of deck quoits overboard. Eventually, their English improved and I think ours might have suffered as we communicated in broken sentences. Although we were all Jewish and had all lost family in the war, we didn’t talk about it. You couldn’t talk about the war and be happy. The two just didn’t go together. We played at being happy young adults who had grown up in a peaceful country where there had never been war, and no-one had to wear yellow stars stitched to their clothing or had been afraid of soldiers taking them away.
We were on a ship and the air became warm and balmy. We could dance and even cuddle a little in the clear nights. One night when we were leaning over the rail watching the ocean, Jacques kissed me. He had his arm around me and tilted my chin towards him. His kiss tasted salty and it seemed strange because I was thinking about Freddy at the time.
George, Greta’s friend, really did like her. He said he’d marry her when he turned twenty if she wasn’t married already, and we giggled about this in our bunks at night.
‘Did you tell him that you’re already promised to a Danish prince?’ I asked her. We laughed so loudly that poor Mrs Feinberg in the other bunk told us, ‘Shh. Go to sleep, you two. You’ll wake up Isaac.’
We talked about the ship stewards, which of them were good-looking and which weren’t. We both fell a little in love with the ship’s photographer, who had dark wavy hair and a wonderful smile. We had our hearts broken when he showed interest in a young woman migrating to Australia who had long legs and wore lots of make-up.
Our skin turned the colour of honey and tasted of salt. Soft bread rolls appeared at all meals, and fish and roast beef at dinner. Dessert was pudding and ice-cream, or cake and ice-cream, and there were bowls of fruit afterwards. Rationing didn’t seem to exist on board ship.
We went ashore at strange ports of call and with some money that Martha had given us bought presents for Papa and Miri. A letter from Papa was waiting for me at Colombo, the capital of Ceylon.
Rachel,
We’ve found Agnes! She is in a displaced persons’ camp in Switzerland. She is not well. She will come to us soon. When she arrives, we must encourage her immediately to have tantrums at least three times a day until she gets stronger.
His fun-filled words hid anxiety, but at least they’d found her. Agnes was alive. She’d be part of our family again. Papa would be surrounded by girls, all of them taking turns to trim his eyebrows.
There were serious shipboard romances, and one marriage, when the captain married a twenty-year-old Polish survivor to a young Swedish immigrant. We toasted them, cheering as the bridegroom stomped on an empty glass (a Jewish custom which probably didn’t impress the captain). We yelled ‘Mazel tov’ to wish them good luck.
When the ship docked at Fremantle, in Western Australia, I went to the purser’s office to see if any letters had arrived. I was surprised to find a letter for me from Freddy.
How are you, mate?
I think this is the way they talk in Australia. I am writing immediately by airmail hoping that you will get this before the ship leaves Western Australia.
I am coming to Australia, definitely. I don’t know when. Of course, now that I have seen your photograph and can confirm that you are outstandingly beautiful, I must come as soon as possible.
I am enclosing a recent photograph of me. As you can see I am outstandingly handsome (also just joking).
I have your mama’s frying pan. When I come to Australia I will bring it with me. I promised my Oma I’d do this. She said it was important if we were to meet again that I return it.
With love,
Freddy
With love? I said the words out loud to myself. What did they mean? Were they just casual words or was he telling me something else? I looked at the small photograph of Freddy with his wavy blond hair and startling blue eyes and decided he was outstandingly handsome.
My face felt hot. I tucked the letter away in my handbag. I didn’t show it to Greta. This seemed very private.
We disembarked and travelled on a bus with Mrs Feinberg and Isaac to the city. George and Jacques had gone on a guided tour with a large party of immigrants. In the city we had a picnic in a park on the banks of the Swan River.
I watched young adults walking near the river, arm in arm. They stopped and kissed. I looked at them and wondered what it would be like to have a boyfriend. George had told Greta he loved her, and she was absolutely delighted. ‘He thinks I’m wonderful,’ she said to me, surprised.
‘You see, you don’t have to be a princess to be loved,’ I told her.
Jacques and I were just friends. Since the first kiss we hadn’t kissed again. I think he sensed that I was saving my kisses for someone else.
In Western Australia I noticed that Australians spoke English but with strange accents, and used expressions I’d never heard before, like ‘no worries’ and ‘fair dinkum’. This was an ancient country, different and exciting. There were no green, cultivated farms, thatched cottages or castles. I’d read books about Australia from the ship’s library, learning about the red heart of the country, the dry mouths of parched river beds, the white beaches, the dusty green of trees, the Aboriginal culture that spanned hundreds of thousands of years, and the courage of early explorers to battle the climate and grow crops.
Greta and I wrote letters to Hartfield House.
Dear Martha and Peter,
We are having a wonderful time on board ship. We’ve visited amazing places and now I have some exciting news for you.
My cousin Agnes is alive. She is in Switzerland and has been ill but will come out to Australia to live with us soon.
I’ll write to you when we get settled. Here are a few words from Greta.
We’ll never forget you.
Lots of love,
Rachel
Dear Martha and Peter,
We are almost in Sydney. I am excited and nervous. I no longer think about the royal family and my grand connections. I think I am finally happy to be who I am.
I’ll come back one day and see you both.
By the way, I’ve had a shipboard romance!! His name is George and he’s as handsome as a prince! He won’t be coming to Sydney and I will be broken-hearted, but he’s going to visit me in Sydney just as soon as he can. I think I may be in love!!! He treats me like a princess too.
With hugs from Greta
THE SHIP DOCKED at Adelaide then Melbourne, and migrants poured off the ship, eager and happy to begin a new life. Greta and I said goodbye to George and Jacques. Jacques and I hugged warmly and promised to write. George and Greta kissed and Greta cried as she waved goodbye to him. Our magical journey to Australia was about to end, and we felt incredibly excited about our imminent arrival in Sydney and our new lives. Papa and Miri. Papa and Miri. I said the words over and over in my head.
The ship sailed into Sydney Harbour on a day when the sun shone like a golden disc in a clear blue sky. We watched on deck as the ship passed through Sydney Heads into the harbour.
Greta seemed uneasy. ‘You know who’s meeting you. I don’t. Will they like me?’
‘They’ll love you.’
In the distance we saw the Harbour Bridge and knew we had arrived. Small sailing boats came to greet the ship. Soon we saw the dock where the ship would berth.
As the ship sailed closer, coloured pinpoints filled the dock. People. Among them, somewhere, were Papa and Miri.
Greta snuggl
ed against me. ‘I’m nervous.’
I was too—giddy with excitement, almost frantic with hope.
The ship pulled up slowly alongside the dock. A huge crowd of people waited there, everyone looking for someone on board the ship. People near us called out: ‘There he is! There’s Uncle Joe! And Sally!’ I scanned the dock. They were there, somewhere. There were so many faces, and so many people screaming to one another.
Then I saw it, a sign held up high above heads: Welcome, Rachel and Greta. Papa. My papa. He was much smaller than I remembered and I couldn’t see his eyebrows from where I leaned against the rail; his hair appeared grey now, and his beard too, but it was my papa. Oh, Mama, why aren’t you here too?
Was that my sister, Miri, holding the other end of the sign? She was grown-up. Could it be true? She seemed taller than I remembered, slim and pretty, no doubt smelling wonderful.
I screamed my lungs out. I held up Miri’s journal. I waved the world’s longest scarf. ‘Papa! Miri!’
Somewhere above the cries of other people, above the screech of the seagulls hovering over the ship, Papa heard me. He pointed me out to Miri and dropped the sign. He put a hand across his mouth. I was waving the world’s longest scarf at him. Papa remembered. His shoulders heaved. He waved to me, to Rachel, his youngest child; the family baby; the skinny one.
It was not a time for words. Shyly Greta, too, raised her arm and waved.
‘It will be all right, Greta. You’ll see.’
I thought of Gabi, the girl I’d met at Hartfield who had asked the rabbi where God was when the Jewish people were being killed. The rabbi said he couldn’t answer. If Gabi was right and God existed only in love, then God was here now. He was here in the loving knitting of Mama’s scarf, in the beauty of Miri’s journal, in the hearts of all those who had risked their lives to help others in the war. In time, Greta would know this too.
Hear me
I am War.
I am the battle trenches of World War One.
I am the invading armies of World War Two.
I am the face of Hitler.
I was with Stalin when he murdered millions.
I was in the killing fields of Cambodia.
I was the fear in the eyes of the soldier in Vietnam.
I am in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, other countries too.
You’d be surprised where I turn up.
I am always lurking, a formidable shadow, in the minds of people,
For I am War.
My cause is not about justice.
I do not discriminate between civilians and soldiers.
I do not worry about the shattered lives of survivors.
I have no conscience.
I have only one problem.
It is the peacemakers who simply
do not let me get on with my work.
Timeline
1919 Treaty of Versailles signed, and World War I ends. Germany is defeated by Britain, France, and their allies.
Germany is forced to accept sole responsibility for starting the war, and has to pay massive financial reparations and give up territory to the Allies.
In the 1920s and 1930s, economic hardship caused by losing the war and the financial disaster of the ‘Great Depression’ leads to widespread public discontent in Germany.
1932
31 July National Socialist (Nazi) party under Adolf Hitler win 37% of vote, becoming largest party in the Reichstag (German Parliament).
1933
30 January Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany. 20 March Opening of concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich, for Nazis’ political opponents.
7 April Civil service laws bar Jews and Nazis’ political opponents from holding government and university positions.
26 April Formation of Gestapo (secret state police) under Hermann Goering.
14 July Nazi party declared only political party in Germany; East European Jewish immigrants stripped of German citizenship.
1934
30 June Night of the Long Knives; Hitler purges political rival Ernst Roehm and others.
2 August German president Paul von Hindenburg dies, and Hitler proclaims himself Führer.
1935
1 April Jehovah’s Witness organisation outlawed.
28 June Homosexuality criminalised.
15 September Nuremberg Laws strip German Jews, blacks and Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) of citizenship and forbid intermarriage between German citizens and ‘non-Aryans’.
1936
17 June Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, becomes chief of police for all German states.
12 July Construction of Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin begins.
1–16 August Berlin Olympic Games; anti-Jewish signs removed for the duration. Jesse Owens, a black athlete from the USA, triumphs at the Games, embarrassing Hitler’s government.
1937
15 July Buchenwald, one of the first and biggest concentration camps, opens in Germany. The population of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen increased rapidly after Kristallnacht in November 1938 (see below).
1938
12–14 March Germany annexes Austria.
26 April Mandatory registration of all Jewish property in the Third Reich.
1 August Adolf Eichmann opens office in Vienna to orchestrate expulsion of Austrian Jewry.
30 September Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of Sudetenland, the predominantly German-populated area of western Czechoslovakia.
27 October Nazis arrest and expel 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany.
9–10 November Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) pogrom in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland.
Synagogues, Jewish homes, shops and businesses attacked, burned and looted. About 100 Jews die, and 30,000 deported to concentration camps.
15 November Jewish children expelled from German schools.
1939
24 January Plans begin for removal of all Jews from Germany through emigration.
15 March Germany invades Czechoslovakia.
1 September Germany invades Poland. World War II begins.
17 September Soviet troops enter eastern Poland in accordance with Nazi–Soviet pact.
29 September Poland is partitioned; two million Jews live in the Nazi-controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet zone.
23 November Jews aged 10 and over in Poland ordered to wear a white armband with the Star of David.
1940
9 April Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
30 April Nazis seal first major Jewish ghetto (a street or quarter of a city set apart as a legally enforced residence area for Jews) in Poland.
10 May Germany invades Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
20 May Concentration camp established at Auschwitz.
22 June France surrenders to Germany.
7 September The Blitz – London is bombed by the German Luftwaffe (Airforce) for 57 consecutive nights, and then for months afterwards, eventually ending 10 May 1941.
3 October Vichy France passes anti-Jewish laws.
15 November Warsaw ghetto sealed.
1941
6 April Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.
22 June Germany invades Soviet Union. German Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) begin mass killing of Jews in the USSR.
31 July Hermann Goering plans The Final Solution, a euphemism for the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.
September German Jews aged six and up required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.
3 September First experimental gassings with Zyklon B at Auschwitz.
24 November Walled ghetto established at Theresienstadt and used by Nazi Germany as a transit camp for Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
26 November Opening of second camp at Auschwitz.
7 December Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; US enters World War II.
8 December SS begins killing Jews and Gypsies in mobile gas vans at an exterminati
on camp in Poland.
11 December Germany and Italy declare war on the US.
1942
19 February Japanese launch the first of 64 air raids on Darwin, Australia. Women and children have already been ordered to evacuate in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor was bombed.
17 March SS begins using stationary gas chambers for mass murder.
2 June BBC radio broadcasts underground report estimating that Nazis have murdered 700,000 Jews in Poland (real number is much higher).
15 July Mass deportation of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz begins.
19 July Himmler issues 31 December deadline for completion of The Final Solution in occupied Poland.
22 July Mass deportation from Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka death camp begins.
4 August Mass deportation of Belgian Jews begins.
8 November Britain and US invade Northern Africa. Australians (known as the ‘Desert Rats’) take on Rommel at Tobruk and El Alamein until mid-1943.
17 December Allies (Britain, United States, Australia and other countries) condemn German policy of mass extermination of Jews.
1943
18 January First attempt at armed resistance by Jews in Warsaw ghetto.
March Oskar Schindler, while witnessing a murderous raid on a Polish ghetto, becomes actively involved in saving Jewish lives. The Jews he had working for him as forced labourers, including disabled Jews, were protected by him throughout the war. In all he saved some 1200 lives.
15 March Mass deportation of Greek Jews to Auschwitz begins.
19 April Warsaw ghetto uprising.
21 June Heinrich Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland and Russia, and deportation of all Jews to concentration camps.
28 June Four large new gas chambers and crematoria are completed at Auschwitz–Birkenau, which at their peak consume nearly 5000 murdered victims in 24 hours.
4 December RAF bombs Leipzig, destroying large part of the city.