The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival

by Mona Golabek

  “Don’t worry, Lisa, you can do it,” came the reassuring voice of Hans from the nearby couch.

  September 7 brought Lisa’s disciplined routine to a halt. Saturday afternoon, as she was playing warm-up exercises, there came the piercing blast of the air raid siren. There had been many false alarms, so she kept playing. Why run to the shelter, as she had so often, and wait in boredom for nothing to happen? But then she heard the low rumble of approaching aircraft, and suddenly everyone came running down the stairs. Gunter grabbed Lisa by the arm and they raced onto the front lawn, training their eyes on the skies for a quick look, as the rest of the hostel ran by them into the convent, screaming.

  “Hurry! It’s for real! The Germans are coming!”

  The clack-clack of the antiaircraft guns was the next indication that this was not the usual false alarm. The drone of the approaching bombers got louder and louder, then bursts of white smoke appeared high in the sky. Aaron was the last to watch before the matron yanked him by the sleeve and dragged him to the convent basement.

  The London Blitz had begun.

  The boys tried bravely to banter away their fear. “That’s a Jerry for sure, listen to the motor,” Paul said as the noise got closer.

  “No, that’s ours, here it comes in for the kill!” Aaron answered.

  Then no one could talk as the noise of the antiaircraft guns blasted their earsplitting barrage.

  “That’ll get ’em,” one of the little boys bragged. But the next sounds were boom, boom, boom—each one a bomb, each one hitting their city of London. Boom, boom, and boom again; nothing the RAF or the antiaircraft guns could do stopped them. Lisa cowered in the corner under a blanket and held Gina’s hand. The piercing sounds sent the horrible images of Kristallnacht racing again through her mind.

  Several hours later, a short blast of the “all clear” sounded and residents from up and down Willesden Lane appeared in the streets, climbing out of basements and metal backyard shelters.

  “We’re all right, how about you folks?” came the nervous question echoing through the neighborhood.

  “All okay here.” “We’re fine.” “Us too,” were the answers heard up and down the street.

  Just as the neighbors began to collect themselves, someone yelled, “Look at the sky!”

  Everyone looked up at the red glow. At first they thought it was a brilliant fall sunset. The red sky, however, was not in the west, it was in the east; the East End of London was burning.

  After a brief respite the sirens sounded again and everyone descended once more into their protective shells and waited, terrified and confused.

  Over the next forty-eight hours, they went back and forth, day and night, into the shelter. When the weekend was over, two thousand tons of bombs had been dropped onto the docks and industrial area of the Cockney heart of London—right in the neighborhood of Platz & Sons.

  Monday morning, urged by the radio to go about their “normal lives,” Gina and Lisa headed fearfully but patriotically to the underground train. When they came out of the station at Whitechapel, they were confronted by a confusion of hook-and-ladder brigades, civil defense workers, and families wheeling possessions in carts and baby strollers. The flames were mostly extinguished, but embers still smoldered, and the streets were littered with bricks. Chairs, tables, wardrobes, bureaus, and mattresses were being stacked in the streets as people pulled their possessions from the ruins. Housewives were sorting through soggy piles of clothing.

  The corner shop where they’d bought penny candy had no window or door, but a hand-lettered sign had been stuck between two bricks: “Open for Business.” A Union Jack dangled from the telephone wire.

  Up ahead were piles of rubble. Gina stopped. “I think we should go back.”

  Lisa hesitated, looking around her in fear and dismay, but a housewife passed the two girls and waved. “A little bombing like this ain’t gonna stop us, now, is it! We’re going to work, aren’t we!” She laughed as hard as she could, the white of her teeth flashing in bright contrast to the blackened soot covering her face.

  “Yes! We’re going to work!” Lisa shouted back, taking Gina’s hand.

  Continuing toward the factory, the girls dodged ladders and fire hoses and tried not to ruin their shoes.

  Up ahead, two firemen were pumping water into a second-story bedroom. “Step back, please!” they yelled at the girls. “Wall’s coming down, watch yourselves!” Wide-eyed, they looked on as the men yanked a cable and brought a whole precarious section of a damaged building tumbling down into a dusty pile of bricks.

  “All right, girls, go on through, don’t hurt those pretty feet!”

  They picked their way through the bricks and arrived at Platz & Sons, which was mercifully intact except for a few broken windows. Mr. Platz himself was boarding them up. “Luvly day, good day, good morning, nice to see you,” said the owner, greeting the workers at the door.

  When Lisa sat at her station, she was amazed to see there wasn’t a single empty seat. Everyone was at work, and the uniforms were flying off the assembly line in record time. Lisa felt tears of gratitude. These people weren’t trembling under the Nazis the way she’d seen at home. They were gritting their teeth. If they could do it, so could she, she told herself, and for the first time in a long time, she felt some hope that Hitler might have met his match.

  But Hitler seemed to have other ideas.

  For a solid week the bombardment continued day and night, its fury concentrated on the shipping docks and ammunition dumps of the East End, and every night the residents of the hostel trudged into the shelter. On the mornings that followed, Lisa and Gina would head for work and emerge from the underground, never knowing which buildings would be in ruins and which would have been spared.

  They learned to carry handkerchiefs to tie around their noses, to protect them from the acrid smoke of burning rubber and magnesium from the docks.

  Sometimes the siren went off in the middle of the day and the workers had to rush into the basement of the factory. Mrs. McRae made it a point to grab Lisa’s hand, pulling her down the stairs behind her. In spite of her terrible loss, Mrs. McRae used humor to help everyone through the worst. Hooking arms with the person in front, she hurtled down the stairs, singing:

  “Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush . . .”

  It was silly, but it felt good to smile.

  As the weeks went on, wave after wave of bombs continued their assault on the east side. In one terrible night alone there were a thousand fires. Workers began grumbling that their neighborhood was taking the beating for the whole country. But soon an errant bomb hit Buckingham Palace and the king and queen were photographed amid the damage. The grumbling turned to patriotism as people realized that even the royalty was taking its fair share.

  Lisa and Gina and the other workers started leaving early so they could make the trip home before the sirens went off again. Lisa would run into the hostel and grab as many precious minutes on the piano as she could before another siren would blast.

  One night, after an all-clear, they picked up leaflets that had fallen from the sky. “A Last Appeal to Reason,” one read. The text was by Adolf Hitler and urged the English to give up before they were obliterated. Everyone laughed, but Lisa couldn’t help wondering if the joke was on them.

  When Britain gradually got the upper hand in the daytime, downing Nazi bomber after Nazi bomber, the Germans switched and bombed only at night. They had learned a costly lesson—this would not be the quick victory they had expected—for the first time since 1936, they couldn’t roll in and over a country in a matter of weeks.

  In a fit of patriotic fervor, Johnny announced that he had signed up for the “rescue squad.” He showed off his metal helmet proudly, its large letter R painted across it.

  “You’re only fifteen, John,” Mrs. Cohen said, chastising him.

  “I wasn’t asked my age, ma’am,” he replied. “Only my weight,” he added, provoki
ng giggles from the group. Mrs. Cohen tried to look stern, but Lisa could tell she was as proud of him as everyone else was. Johnny was enormously strong, and God knew the rescue squad could use him. She went up and gave him a patriotic kiss.

  The former precision of the hostel meal schedule was in shambles, for Mrs. Glazer never knew when the air raid siren would go off, forcing her into the shelter before she could finish her stews. Overdone cabbage and burned potatoes became a regular staple, but no one complained. In fact, complaining about anything seemed unpatriotic; one might as well be congratulating Hitler himself if you were caught moaning about the shortage of soap or toilet paper or sugar.

  One night, huddled in the shelter, Lisa tried to figure out how she, too, could help the war effort. What could she do? She wasn’t strong like Johnny. All she could do was play music. Suddenly it hit her; she could help raise morale by organizing a “musicale,” a little concert of classical music and popular songs, and invite refugees from another hostel. The matron gave her approval; everyone was very excited. It gave them a sense of patriotic purpose.

  Lisa asked for suggestions from Mrs. McRae about popular songs, and people at work donated sheet music. Her favorite was “Oh, Soldier, Who Is Your Lady Love?”

  Hans agreed to play his favorite, which he had memorized from the BBC broadcasts, entitled, “When You’re Up to Your Neck in Hot Water, Be Like the Kettle and Sing.”

  Gina wanted to help. “Let me sing the words.”

  “You can’t sing,” Lisa said without thinking.

  “I can too. You just don’t want anyone else to get any attention!”

  Gina pouted for several days, until, realizing the program wouldn’t be the same without her friend’s enthusiasm, Lisa groveled and begged her to sing. They all stayed at the piano practicing until the last seconds of the now daily air raid blast, then had to be dragged by the matron into the shelter, still singing as loudly as they could.

  The bombing continued mercilessly—no longer just in the East End but everywhere. The local town council inspected the hostel and announced that it was too risky having the boys’ bedrooms on the vulnerable top floor, so the boys began sleeping in the living room and kitchen, where they were precious minutes closer to the bomb shelter.

  Lisa understood the importance of this move but found it irritating nonetheless, since the younger boys liked to wrestle and chase each other through the living room and under the piano bench, disrupting her practice.

  No one got much sleep. Every night the sirens sounded, and they would rush to the shelter for two or three hours, then stagger back to bed at the all clear. Some of the children chose to spend the whole night in the shelter, but the trade-off was waking up with frozen fingers and toes. When the bombing was at its worst, Johnny would be called and proudly joined the firemen in all-night stints. Lisa slept less and less and her face took on a drawn, worried look. Night after night she huddled in fear against the cold cement wall, praying for it to be over.

  Hanukkah came, and Lisa was disappointed that once again Sonia was not allowed to visit.

  Sonia had written her sister every week. The first letter had been almost unreadable, since it was written in English and Sonia hardly knew three words of her new language.

  Lisa had responded in German, asking how everything was and telling her all the news of the hostel. But again the response had come in English, only slightly more intelligible than the last one.

  When Lisa wrote back insisting that her sister write in their native tongue, she got a harsh reply.

  “I promised to never more speak the words of Hitler,” came the reply. Her fourteen-year-old sister was as stubborn as Lisa. Willpower seemed to be a family trait.

  The musicale was scheduled for New Year’s Day 1941. Mrs. Glazer had been hoarding butter so she could make mincemeat pies, and the other hostel forwarded two weeks’ ration coupons for sugar. Gina was in good voice, only half joking that she was considering a singing career, and Gunter scrounged up a pair of castanets. Edith borrowed a neighbor’s oboe and learned the five most relevant notes, while Johnny beat the time on his metal helmet.

  It was only Aaron who didn’t join in the festive mood. Lisa asked him to sit next to her as they practiced, but he refused.

  “What’s wrong, Aaron? Has something happened?” she asked.

  “Everything has happened, look around you,” he answered bitterly, going back to the sofa and staring at the chess board. Suddenly she noticed that the boy who had whistled the opening bars of the Grieg, founded the committee, and charmed her so was beginning to disappear into a cloud of angry solitude.

  A week’s lull in the bombing raised everyone’s spirits and enabled the entertainers to put the finishing touches on their music program. But on December 29, the air raid siren sounded once again in the middle of evening practice. Everyone moaned and grabbed their books and the chess board and headed underneath the ground. Everyone but Lisa.

  She was fed up with the horrible shelter. She needed to keep practicing! The bombs never hit anywhere near them, anyway, she told herself. There were no ammunition dumps in Willesden Green! She hammered the cascading octaves of the cadenza of the Grieg louder and louder to cover the whine of the bombers. Over and over she pounded the keys, and when the chords weren’t loud enough, she began to shout the melody—drowning out the sound overhead.

  The relentless explosions worked their way inside her head, and soon, without even realizing it, Lisa imagined herself single-handedly fighting a war against the Führer. Matching sound for sound in a pounding frenzy, she hurled chord after chord into the threatening skies, answering each explosion with one of her own. She played feverishly, her chords her only ammunition. She played with such intensity that she couldn’t hear that the bombs were coming ever closer.

  Suddenly there was a deafening crash, and the force of the bomb’s concussion threw Lisa from the piano and smashed her against the living room wall. The glass of the bay window shattered and sent splinters showering across the room.

  Lisa lay on the floor, wondering if she were dead. She looked at her hands first; the fingers moved, and so did the arms! She did a muscle-by-muscle inventory and discovered that everything worked. She was covered in dust and splinters but could discover no blood, so she stood up slowly. Instead of being terrified, she felt suddenly calm. These bombs can’t hurt me! she told herself. She was fine; the piano was fine! The door flew open and Aaron and Gunter ran in.

  “Lisa! Are you all right?” they yelled in unison.

  “Just fine, you can tell Mr. Hitler I’m just fine!”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Hitler that you’re crazy! Now let’s go!” Aaron shouted angrily. She had never seen him so upset.

  Another wave of airplanes was approaching; they each seized one of her arms, lifting her up and over the glass and back to the shelter.

  Once underground, Mrs. Cohen grabbed Lisa, clasping her to her chest in relief. Releasing her, Mrs. Cohen scanned her charge from head to toe, making sure she was intact. Satisfied that Lisa was unharmed, she railed: “We are at war, young lady! It is not the time to take foolish risks. I had to send two boys to find you. You could have all been killed! Never, never do that again!”

  Lisa apologized, too overcome to try to explain herself, and set about comforting the younger children. The raid lasted another six long hours. It was dawn when the neighborhood emerged from its shelters. The smell of smoke hung in the air with the dust and the fog. Four houses on the block, including the hostel, had been hit, and rescue crews were looking for the residents of 239. Their backyard had taken a direct hit and the shelter was covered with bricks and debris. Firemen were frantically digging them out. Everyone held their breath until finally the dusty man and wife appeared at the entrance and waved.

  Willesden Lane cheered. They’d been lucky.

  Lisa and Gina stood on the sidewalk, huddled under a blanket, and watched the firemen inspect the hostel. A hole was ripped through the roof, and the windows on
the north side were completely blown out. When the firemen came out and gave the thumbs-up, Lisa joined a dozen others in rushing back into the building.

  “Be careful, there’s broken glass all around!” Mrs. Cohen yelled, but nothing she said could stop them.

  Lisa had only one thought: Where were the photos of her mother and her father? She ran into her bedroom and found a layer of wet plaster covering her bed. Yanking open the drawer of the bureau, she pulled out their pictures, still intact, not even damp. She held them to her and read for the millionth time, “Fon diene nicht fergesene mutter.”

  What if she had lost them! She stared at her mother’s downcast eyes. “I’m safe, Mama,” she whispered, hoping to communicate across the distance to wherever her mother was. She wished so much she had news of her . . . where could she be? Would they ever let the letters through again? Please, dear God, let me have a letter, she prayed.

  Mrs. Cohen pulled her from her thoughts by tugging gently on her sleeve. “Please hurry, Lisa, pack your things, we have to go.”

  Mrs. Cohen helped pack the residents’ suitcases and duffel bags, and the thirty-two children were led away by a civil defense captain to the community shelter to spend the night. They were officially homeless once again.

  15

  NO ONE knew exactly when the hostel would be habitable again. After the broken glass had been cleared from the front room, the residents were called back to the house for a brief meeting.

  They finished cleaning out their drawers and were told to sit in the living room. Gunter, Aaron, and Johnny pushed the precious piano away from the cold air blowing through broken windows.

  Mrs. Cohen addressed the morose assembly. “Quiet, please, for just a moment!” When the noise died down, she continued. “Mrs. Glazer and I have spent today contacting our neighbors and asking them if they could host you until our home is livable again. We have done our best to find you all homes as close by Willesden Lane as possible. Unfortunately, some of you will be placed outside of London temporarily. . . .”