The English German Girl

by Jake Wallis Simons

—Well, says Samuel, are you ready?

  —Did you bring the documents? asks Rosa.

  —I did, you’ve asked me that already.

  She grips his arm tighter.

  —It’s going to be grand, says Samuel, the future is going to be grand.

  They walk along the driveway, climb the steps and knock on the door with a smoothly swinging brass knocker. Within seconds the door glides open, and a nun in a black habit beckons them in; they step onto glistening floorboards. The building is filled with a rarefied quietude and smells faintly of incense.

  —Sister Jane, hello, says Samuel.

  —Welcome back to Bellview, says the nun, please come this way.

  Something in the movement from the sunshine to the shade, something in the smell of the flowers perhaps, or the furniture polish, or the quietness of the house, causes a memory to surface in Rosa’s mind with such vividness that she lets out a gasp. She remembers a childhood holiday in Wiesbaden, remembers scrambling up the Neroberg hill, her legs hurting from the climb. She remembers pausing for a moment, stretching and turning round to look at the view. Hey, comes a voice from further up the hill, don’t look round till you’re at the top, you’ll spoil it. She makes a face, turns and continues to climb – not far now, comes the voice again, one last effort and you’ll be at the top. Her curls bounce like the hair of a clown from beneath her blue felt hat with the big flower on the side which butterflies will land on come summer, and she has that strange sensation of being hot even though the weather is cold, it is a clear, crisp winter’s day, the first week of the Weihnachtsferien holidays, and her face is red with both heat from inside and chill from outside. She pulls at her scarf to loosen it and, despite being tired, breaks into a run, dashing up the last few yards of the hill and collapsing on the grass, laughing and panting and blowing her cheeks.

  —Come on, says the voice, don’t just lie there, get up and look at this damn view.

  —Pfui, Heinrich, we don’t use such words, says Inga.

  —Don’t chastise the boy, says her husband, he is simply exuberant, that’s all.

  Rosa raises herself on her elbows and sees, silhouetted against the sunlight, her parents, standing side by side on the edge of the Neroberg hill, and Papa has the fat little Hedi on his shoulders, and Heinrich is doing star-jumps, waving his father’s hat above his head, his scarf flicking in the air like a tail.

  —Come on, Rosa, he shouts, just look at this damn view.

  Rosa gets to her feet, brushes the grass off her coat, shields her eyes from the sun, and the panoramic view of Wiesbaden is revealed, sprawling and magnificent, houses and churches and trees and buildings, spreading across the landscape to the horizon. She runs to join her family, and Heinrich drops Papa’s hat on her head.

  —Now, says Inga, crouching on the ground and opening a bag, who would like some bread and Damenkäse?

  —Wonderful, says Papa, setting Hedi on the ground and smoothing his hair and moustache, let me just light my pipe.

  The nun leads Samuel and Rosa across a large, square foyer. Piano music can be heard from the drawing room, where the flicker of a coal fire can be seen. A little girl walks past them at a subdued pace, nodding maturely as the adults catch her eye. A child’s laughter can be heard upstairs, a mischievous hysterical laugh, followed by a female voice demanding silence. Sister Jane shows them into her office and closes the door.

  Rosa squints her eyes against the sunlight from the window, the nun lowers the blind and the office is cast into muted shadow. Rosa shuffles her feet on the floorboards and tries to compose herself; she hasn’t been this nervous since her interview at the London all those years ago.

  —Now, says the nun, the documents, the documents. I trust you are both well?

  As Samuel replies, fine thank you, Rosa thinks, I wish we could just get on with it. They answer the questions, read the declarations, provide the paperwork, sign document after document, fill out forms. Finally the nun says:

  —Now if you wouldn’t mind waiting for a few minutes, I will go and see if Julian is ready. You know to call him Julian, yes?

  —Of course, Rosa replies, affronted.

  —Good, good, that’s good, says Sister Jane. Very well, I won’t be long. Would either of you like a cup of tea?

  They both shake their heads, and she leaves the room. On the hard wooden seats they sit in silence, exchanging nervous glances, Samuel feeling uncomfortable in his best suit and Rosa checking her make-up in a little Bakelite mirror. After a time Samuel gets to his feet and slowly paces the room. Somewhere in the building, in a staffroom maybe, a wireless is playing; from time to time children’s voices can be heard, as well as frequent footsteps. It has taken so much effort to get to this moment, and now the end is in sight, these few moments are like a ring through which the multiple threads of their lives must pass; as soon as the little boy enters the room they can start to weave the tapestry of their future.

  As Rosa sits and waits, her mind wanders back to Wiesbaden. The family sit down to eat beneath the turquoise sky, Mama passing round chunks of rye bread, Damenkäse and salami. They eat contentedly, then Papa suggests a game of tag; he takes off his tie and gets to his feet, followed by Rosa and Heinrich, and while Mama sits with Hedi on her lap, feeding her pieces of cheese, Papa chases after his children, in and out of light and shadow, bellowing and laughing, running one way then the other. Within minutes he ends up on his back in the grass, there is a great grass fight, and after a while they all lie looking up at the sky, giggling and catching their breath.

  The door opens hesitantly.

  —Hello, Julian, says Samuel.

  In the pale light stands a boy of around ten, with a cloth cap bundled over black, curly hair, dressed in a coat done up with a belt; Sister Jane carries a little suitcase in behind him.

  —Ready, little man? says Samuel.

  The boy nods timidly; Rosa takes his hand and Samuel takes his suitcase.

  —Once we’re home, says Rosa, we’re going to give you a lovely mug of cocoa.

  —I like cocoa, says the boy.

  Samuel, Rosa and Julian each shake Sister Jane by the hand.

  —Goodbye, Julian, says the nun, you be a good boy now, do you hear?

  —I’m sure he will, says Rosa defensively.

  —And be sure to say your prayers.

  They leave the building and step out onto the pavement. Samuel stashes the boy’s suitcase in the boot, and with a rev of the engine they move off down Willesden Lane.

  —Where do we live? asks Julian.

  —Not far, says Samuel.

  —Is my room ready? he asks.

  —Yes, my darling, says Rosa, we’ve painted it blue as you wanted. I’m sure you’re going to love it.

  Rosa catches sight of the boy in the mirror and remembers the tiny baby on the dark train from Berlin. She remembers the steam, the carriage, the basket, the weight of the baby in her arms; she remembers holding him inexpertly, feeding him all the milk, slipping him under her seat to protect him from the SS, bringing him safely out of Germany. She remembers him being taken from her. Could this really be the same face? The same person? The years have changed the boy unrecognisably, yet she feels in her heart that this is him. There can have been no mistake. Not after the many long hours spent tracing his identity, all the letters, the documents, the records. The breakthrough came when Samuel managed to contact Norbert Wollheim, who had survived Auschwitz and returned to Germany. With his assistance they discovered the baby’s name, Joachim Levin, who alone, amongst all his relatives, had survived. Joachim had been fostered by a middle-aged Catholic family in Essex, they discovered, and christened Julian; towards the end of the war, when his foster mother died, he was entrusted to the nuns of the Crusade of Rescue. And now he is here, really here, in the back seat of their car. After all these years Rosa is caring for him again. Minute by minute the first delicate threads of tapestry are being woven. Rosa rests her head against the car window and closes her eyes.
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  —Come on, children, says Papa, we must start making our way back to the hotel.

  —But what about the damn view? says Heinrich.

  —All right, my boy, that’s quite enough. Come along.

  As the light deepens and the shadows lengthen, Papa and Mama lead their children down the hill towards the road where the driver is waiting with the car. Hedi is on Papa’s shoulders again, her hands patting his forehead, and Heinrich is walking beside, talking non-stop about his upcoming handball tournament at school; Mama and Rosa follow arm in arm.

  —Did you have a nice day? asks Inga.

  —Yes, Mama. How about you?

  —The hot springs were especially good, says Inga, I still feel as if I’m glowing somehow.

  —Yes, says Rosa, me too.

  For a while they walk in silence, their feet whispering through the grass.

  —Mama, says Rosa suddenly, when we are grown up, do you think I will have children before Heinrich, or him before me?

  —What an odd question, says Inga, whatever makes you ask that?

  —I don’t know, just thinking.

  —Well, girls tend to get married earlier than boys, so who knows?

  —I want to have lots of children, says Rosa, at least four.

  —God willing, replies Inga. As they say in religious circles, God willing.

  Julian sits forward in his seat.

  —My mother and father are dead, he says suddenly. Sister Wendy told me.

  Samuel and Rosa exchange glances.

  —Yes, says Rosa, we believe that to be the case. They’re in heaven.

  —Did you know them?

  —Not really, says Rosa, I saw your mother once but that was all.

  —What was she like?

  —It’s difficult to say. I only saw her for a moment.

  —How come?

  —She was putting you on the train to England. You were only a baby.

  —Why didn’t she come with me?

  —She wanted to, very much. But she wasn’t allowed.

  There is a pause, and Julian goes back to looking out of the window. Cars slip by outside, each containing complex and multi-faceted lives, each with thousands of stories contained within fragile walls. Shadows wheel across the boy’s face as the car turns a corner; after a time his eyes narrow and his head begins to nod to the rhythm of the engine. He didn’t sleep very much last night either. Before long he is slumped in the leather seat, asleep.

  —He’s a bright one, isn’t he? says Rosa.

  —Indeed, says Samuel, and he’s got rather good manners, too.

  —That’s nuns for you. They’re like nurses.

  Samuel reaches over and takes her hand. The engine throbs gently around them, and the wind blows ripples of cloud across the sky above the endless grey roofs.

  —I feel as if I am caring for myself by caring for Julian, says Rosa. And for my family.

  There is a pause. A lorry rumbles alongside them for a while before turning into a side road; a flock of sparrows passes overhead. Rosa turns to Samuel, squinting her eyes against the sunlight.

  —Can I ask you something? she says.

  —Of course, says Samuel.

  —Well, it’s not a question really. I want you to promise me something.

  —Go on.

  Rosa looks over her shoulder, checking that Julian is still asleep.

  —In the future, she says, if there should ever be another war, and if we were faced with the same choice as my parents, promise me we would never send Julian away. Promise me we will keep him with us whatever happens, even if that means to the end.

  Her voice breaks slightly and falls into silence as the car winds slowly through the streets of London. Samuel looks at the road, looks at the people moving on the pavements, looks at the buildings and the sky.

  —Yes, he says slowly. Very well. I promise.

  Afterword

  I was extremely fortunate to have been able to draw upon the advice of many insightful and generous readers while working on this book. Foremost of these was my wife Isobel, whose combination of a startlingly perceptive intellect and earthy common sense makes her the consummate adviser. In addition, my good friends Haydn Middleton and Danny Angel provided me with regular feedback, as did Andrew Cowan, Giles Foden and Trezza Azzopardi at the University of East Anglia, and Nicholas Royle at Manchester Metropolitan University. My formidable agent, Andrew Gordon, brought his full editorial powers to bear upon the novel as it took shape, and acted as a tireless sounding board whenever I needed him. Judy Moir, my editor, helped at the vital ‘polishing’ stage. My father-in-law, Michael Sallon, was a creative rudder who set me on a true course at crucial moments, and my sister-in-law, Zoë Sallon, read an early draft and delivered her thoughts with élan.

  My uncle, the sometime playwright David Del Monté, offered an invaluable perspective on scenes involving dialogue, helping me appreciate the difference between dialogue that is genuine and dialogue that is cramped by the plot. Afua Hirsch, an old and valued confidante, helped me arrive at a key creative decision during a lengthy conversation on the way back from Nottingham to London (we had been to see the Dalai Lama). My only regret is that the other idea we came up with, for a healthy breakfast nut bar called ‘Get Up And Glow’, never materialised. Monica Ali, Sir Martin Gilbert, Jonathan Freedland, Sir Erich Reich, Giles Foden, Nicholas Royle and Jeremy Gavron were all extremely generous in reading the novel and offering their endorsement.

  I was also fortunate to be able to turn to some good German friends for detailed advice. Chiefly, the magnificent German novelist Jan Brandt went through the Berlin chapters several times with a fine-tooth comb, saving me the humiliation of having made countless schoolboy errors; he also hosted me in Berlin when I visited to carry out research. Janek Schmidt of Sueddeutsche Zeitung read these sections very thoroughly as well, and painstakingly elucidated the difficult theory involved when using German words in an English novel. The Anglo-German journalist and writer Philip Oltermann was a constant presence, dealing with my on-the-spot technical queries via pithily worded SMSs. Dr Jo Catling at the University of East Anglia helped by double-checking the material.

  In addition, a number of experts in various fields were kind enough to make themselves available for consultation on what increasingly became questions of minute detail. These included the historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Dr Colin Shindler; the novelist Clive Sinclair; Jonathan Evans of the Royal London Hospital Archive; Rachelle Mortimer-Massingham of the Cromer Museum; Keith Farrow, Hugh Taylor and David Bradley of trolleybus.net; Mike Handscomb and Richard Adderson of the Norfolk Railway Society; Dr Hermann Simon and Ingrid Schramm of the Stiftung Neue Synagogue Berlin Centrum Judaicum; various people at the Sachsenhausen Museum; Julia Feast and Jenny Lord of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering; and my grandparents, Ruth and Tony Simons, who shared with me memories of their honeymoon in Jersey and my grandfather’s post-war second hand car business.

  Over the years, I have had the honour of speaking with many people who escaped from Europe on the Kindertransport. Four in particular granted me extensive interviews: the extraordinary Bertha Leverton, Walter and Herta Kammerling, and Ann Meyer. I owe them a great debt. I would also like to offer my profound thanks and admiration to Emmy Mogilensky, who escaped from Munich on a Kindertransport as a teenager and cared for twin babies who had been placed on the train in secret. Clearly this inspired a key aspect of Rosa’s story, and I am grateful to Emmy for allowing me to take her experiences as a starting point in this way, and also for reading the relevant sections of the novel and giving me her thoughts. Margaret Goldberger, who came to the UK on a Kinderstransport from Berlin, also read the novel with a fine-tooth comb and made some valuable points concerning historical veracity; for this I offer my appreciation.

  Finally, of the many books that I studied closely, these were the most important (in roughly chronological order): The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood; Before the Deluge, by
Otto Friedrich; Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner; The Pity of It All, by Amos Elon; Peeling the Onion, by Günter Grass; Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin; Mr. Brecher’s Fiasco, by Martin Kessel; The Past Is Myself, by Christabel Bielenberg; Jews in Berlin, ed. Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps and Hermann Simon; Into The Arms of Strangers, by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer; The Tiger in the Attic, by Edith Milton; Kindertransport, by Olga Levy Drucker; Other People’s Houses, by Lore Segal; Berlin Mosaic, by Eva Tucker; Norfolk in the Second World War and Norfolk at War, by Neil R. Storey; Betty’s Wartime Diary 1939–1945, by Betty Armitage; Shir-Ella: Remembrances of Two Sisters Evacuated from London to a Norfolk Village, World War II, 1939–1945, by Ella Grimmer, et al.; The Norwich Hebrew Congregation, 1840–1960: A Short History, by Henry Levine; London at War 1939–1945, by Philip Ziegler; Patients Come First and Patients Are People, by Margaret E. Broadley; London Pride, The Story of a Voluntary Hospital, by A. E. Clark-Kennedy; The Children of Willesden Lane, by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen; and An Unlikely Heroine, by Asher Cailingold.

  It’s a notoriously tricky business to write novels about the Holocaust. Ultimately I believe that fiction, if done properly, has a special power to bring these events alive in the minds of future generations. But doing it properly is not easy. For my own part, I felt a keen sense of duty towards the Kindertransport children and their families throughout the writing of this book. To avoid historical travesty I wanted to make it as accurate and realistic as possible; at the same time, I did not want to stand accused – as Peter Hall so memorably put it – of ‘bumming a ride on the Holocaust’. This phrase haunted me throughout the writing process, and I can only hope that I have achieved the right balance in the novel that you hold in your hands.

  Index of real-life characters in the novel

  Apart from the people listed below, all other characters in the novel are fictional. The exceptions to this are the patients and staff of the London Hospital. Although many of these characters were inspired by real people, the author had to use fictional names in accordance with a declaration he signed while working in the Royal London Hospital archives.