When the World Was Ours

by Liz Kessler

  ‘Where?’ a brave man shouts. ‘Where is this safe place you are taking us?’

  For a moment, there is silence as everyone in the carriage holds their breath, waiting to see what will happen. Will this man be taken out and beaten for daring to question the guards? Or will we actually get an answer?

  It seems he is in luck, and so are we, as the guard smiles and answers mildly. ‘It is a nice place. A new ghetto especially for you lucky Jews. It’s called Theresienstadt. You will be happy there. You will like it. We will look after you there.’

  I remember what the man from the Jewish Council said last night. Is it true? Are they helping us?

  I can’t stop myself wanting to believe him. A tiny flame of optimism glimmers like a flickering candle in the dark. Can I let myself believe he is telling the truth? Are they really looking after us at last? Do they finally see how unfair everyone is to the Jews and they are giving us a chance to live our lives in peace? Maybe there will be a park we can walk in! We’ll be able to go to school, ride bicycles, maybe even sleep in our own beds instead of sharing a dirty mattress between four of us.

  Can I dare to let myself dream even for a few minutes?

  I know I shouldn’t, but the guard’s words are so reassuring I can’t stop myself. Now I just want to get moving, but people are still clambering aboard the train.

  Our carriage is full, and still more and more people pile inside. So many people that soon we can barely move.

  A feeling of panic swirls in my stomach.

  And then the doors finally close and the last bit of air is shut out. We are sealed in. I think back to science class – although it feels like a lifetime ago that I had lessons, that I went to school. I remember learning about oxygen. We need it to breathe, to live. How much do we need? Is there enough in here? All these people breathing. In and out. In and out. Using up the oxygen. What happens to us after it’s gone?

  I realize my mind is racing so fast that the thoughts no longer make sense.

  ‘Mutti,’ I croak. I haven’t got enough room to twist my body, so I can’t look for her.

  ‘I’m here, darling,’ she whispers from behind me.

  ‘I’m here, too,’ Vati says from somewhere else.

  ‘And me,’ Otto’s voice adds from even further away.

  All around me, people are doing the same. We are like animals in the wild, bleating and crying to find our families. Bleating and crying to those we love, calling out names as we stand here waiting, waiting, waiting.

  And then there is a sudden jerk. As one, we fall. Bodies moving against bodies, rolling forward, then back again.

  Slowly, the train clanks into movement. We settle into a jagged rhythm, swaying together, gripping arms of people we cannot even see, pressing feet and knees against people we hardly know.

  As we rock and sway and breathe each other’s breath in and out, sharing the air as if it were a prize in a game of pass the parcel, I find myself noticing how easy it is for something absurd to become almost natural.

  How rapidly something unthinkable can become commonplace. How easily we let the inconceivable become a new normal. How quickly we learn to stop questioning these things.

  And amongst all these thoughts, I find myself wondering if we will at last find our way back to some kind of life when we get to Theresienstadt.

  I don’t want to wish for it. I should know by now that dreams no longer come true. But I can’t stop myself. I allow myself the luxury of hope.

  1942

  MAX

  The cold February day was here at last. It seemed to Max he’d been waiting his whole life for this day.

  His fourteenth birthday and the day he progressed from the junior section of the Hitler Youth to the real thing.

  His father had organized a party for him that evening. Max could barely concentrate on his schoolwork all day. Luckily, his teachers understood. Everyone knew the pride he was feeling, the hunger to give himself fully and completely to the Führer, to know that from this day onwards he was not a boy, an individual, a someone. He was part of the regime: a soldier who would take his part in spreading the message of the Aryan race and commit his life to fighting Germany’s enemies.

  He would no longer have to settle for sports days and weekend camps. Now, the real training would begin. He would be learning the things that really mattered. Bayonet drill, grenade-throwing, trench-digging, map-reading, pistol-shooting, how to get under barbed wire. These things would be his life from this moment on, and nothing else mattered.

  Every fibre of his being itched with the desire to take his place and give himself to Hitler.

  Finally, the school day was over and he was back home waiting for the party to begin.

  The doorbell rang at six on the dot. Max opened the door for his friends and stood to attention, ready to greet them.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ the three boys said in unison at the top of the stairs.

  Max snapped his heels together. His face solemn and composed, he raised his arm in a proud salute. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he shouted back to them.

  His mother had made tea for the boys, and they crowded around the dining room table to eat. The boys looked identical with their combed and parted hair, their spotless uniforms and swastika armbands.

  ‘Look at you all, so handsome and so grown up,’ his mother said as they ate.

  ‘The boys do not care about being handsome!’ his father scoffed, wiping his mouth and folding his napkin back into a perfect square. ‘That is not why they look smart. They do it because they care about order, discipline and obedience.’ He turned to his son. ‘Am I right?’

  Max nodded sharply. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I think it’s all right for a mother to think her son looks handsome,’ Mrs Fischer replied as she picked up their empty plates and took them to the sink.

  Once her back was turned, Max’s father nudged him and, with the tiniest hint of a smile, he rolled his eyes. ‘Women, eh?’ he said in a conspiratorial sort of manner that filled Max’s heart.

  His mother came back to the table with Max’s birthday cake. It was a Black Forest gateau.

  Max’s friends gasped. ‘That looks wonderful, Mrs Fischer,’ one of them, Heinrich, said. ‘How did you get all those ingredients in wartime?’

  Mrs Fischer laughed and pointed to her husband. ‘Being married to a senior SS officer has its uses,’ she said.

  The boys all laughed in reply. Even Mr Fischer cracked a wry smile.

  It was the best evening Max could remember having. Ever.

  Except for… maybe one other evening. One time when the Black Forest gateau would have been a Viennese Sachertorte. When the tight discipline would have been replaced by carefree running around in a carriage high in the air. When the polite laughter was instead wide smiles captured in a photograph that he had not looked at or even thought about for years.

  Stop.

  What was he doing? What was he thinking? How could he insult his parents by even allowing a tiny part of his mind to go there?

  Max forced himself back into the present moment. And for the rest of the evening he made sure to show his mother how much he adored her cake: the best he had ever eaten. He ensured he did nothing to anger his father. Max was the most generous and delightful host he could possibly be to his friends.

  It was definitely the best birthday, he was absolutely sure of it.

  But still, at the end of the evening, when the other boys had left and Max had helped his mother wash and dry the plates and his father had lit a fire in the lounge where he sat with a book, something tugged at a corner of Max’s mind. The corner that could not quite let go of that other birthday party.

  He took himself off to his bedroom and opened his wardrobe. Kneeling down, he reached to the back for the shoebox he hadn’t opened since they had moved to Munich. He scrabbled through shoes and bags and mothballs that had never seen the light of day. And then…

  There! He pulled the shoebox out, his arms doing t
he work without stopping to consult his mind. If they had, they would surely have known better.

  He sat on the side of his bed and took the lid off the box. As he opened it, a smell of something from inside it climbed into Max’s heart. What was it? The books? The photographs? The old teddy bear he had completely forgotten about? It was hard to say, but the smell took him straight back to Vienna.

  He closed his eyes and he could see it all. Leo and Elsa and him. Running, playing tag, riding their bikes, diving into the Amalienbad, always talking, always teasing, always smiling.

  The feeling was so intense Max wouldn’t even call it a memory. It was stronger than that. He was there. And it hurt. It hurt so much. It ripped into his skin, scorching down into his being. The outer layers fell away. In an instant, nothing of his current life was real. He saw it for what it was: a vain, superficial attempt to fit in. To be loved. To be praised by his father, by his leaders, by Hitler. None of it was a fraction as real as his friendships with Leo and Elsa had been. The only two people who had ever really loved him for himself, with no expectations or demands.

  Max’s heart hurt so much he found himself clutching his chest with one hand as he rummaged through the box with the other. And then he found what he’d been looking for.

  The photo. The smiles. The linked arms.

  And he was suddenly back there in that carriage, transported as if on a flying carpet to that wonderful, magical—

  ‘What are you doing?’

  His father was at the door. His frame filled the doorway and blotted out the light behind him.

  ‘I…’

  Max shoved the photo back in the box but his father had crossed the room in two strides and was towering over him, holding out his hand. ‘Show me,’ he said.

  Max knew better than to do anything other than obey. He handed the photo to his father. And then he looked at the floor and waited for the onslaught of rage.

  It didn’t come. Max raised his eyes to look up. His father studied the photo, nodding slowly, and then he handed it back to Max.

  ‘Why were you looking at this?’ he asked calmly. Too calmly.

  ‘I just… I…’ Max paused. In the pause, he knew what he had to do. He had to use this moment to strengthen his will. Of course he remembered his old friends on his birthday. It was only natural. But they weren’t his friends now. They were nothing to him. They were a thing from another lifetime, as was that day. They were not real friends, not like the friends he had now. They were Jews. He knew that now. He accepted it now. They could never be his friends.

  Max realized what this moment was all about. His memories had led him here as a challenge, a test. This was truly the moment where he had reached the fork in the road. He could hanker after long-forgotten laughs and childish games, or he could push himself past all of that emotion and make the commitment that today demanded of him.

  He knew what he had to do.

  ‘I was looking for the photograph so that I could destroy it,’ Max said evenly.

  His father stared at him for a moment. The darkness in his eyes was like a black hole and Max thought he might be swallowed up in it for ever if he wasn’t careful. Finally, after an age, his father nodded again, then turned his back. ‘Come,’ he said sharply. ‘And bring the photograph.’

  Still holding the photo, Max jumped up from his bed and followed his father out of the room.

  At the door to the lounge, Mr Fischer hesitated. ‘Wait in there,’ he said, pointing into the room. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Max waited as he heard his father enter his office, the room next to the lounge. In the silence, he held the photo so tightly his palm had begun to sweat. He forced himself not to look at it again.

  A minute or two later, his father was back in the room. He had something in his hand. A huge bundle of paper, wrapped in string.

  He held it out to Max. ‘Here, take these,’ he said.

  Max took the bundle and turned it over in his hands. It was a pile of envelopes. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. But why…

  ‘Look at them,’ his father instructed, folding his arms as he watched Max’s face.

  Max pulled out a couple of the envelopes – and immediately realized what they were. He knew that handwriting. He had sat next to the boy who formed those spindly letters every day at school in Vienna.

  They were letters from Leo. Letters he had never received, never seen, never knew existed.

  Max’s chest tightened as he fought the urge to rip the envelopes open and consume what was inside them.

  He knew what was expected of him.

  Feeling his father’s eyes pinning him to the spot, Max walked to the fire. He held the envelopes out. Hesitated. Took a breath.

  ‘Go on,’ his father said softly.

  Max felt a tear sneaking into the corner of his eye. No. He wouldn’t let it out. He hardened his will. This was the challenge that would truly make him a man. This was his birthday gift from his father.

  The memory of his old friends was the final thing he had to let go of. Once he had cut that tie, once he had proved that Hitler and the Nazi regime meant more to him than anything else, there would be nothing in his way. He could give himself in his heart, body, mind and spirit to the party and his country – and once he’d done that, he knew he could conquer anything.

  He threw the letters into the fire. The flames curled around the envelopes, greedy and starving, turning Leo’s words to ash.

  Max still had the photograph. The final link to the boy he could never be again.

  Without hesitating for another second, he held the photo out in front of him, and threw it on to the fire.

  His father put a hand on his shoulder. Max could not remember a single time in his life when he had felt his father’s touch, and the sensation made him dizzy.

  ‘Good man,’ Mr Fischer said.

  Good man? His father had called him a man? Now he knew what true happiness was. Now he knew his real purpose in life. Now he was a soldier.

  Together, they watched the flames. The photograph hissed and curled; the childish smiles melted into nothing. Max stood tall and proud beside his father as a door in his heart silently closed.

  LEO

  We had a new geography teacher at school today. Mrs Whitehead. And something quite amazing happened.

  We each had to stand up and go to the front of the class in turn. Mrs Whitehead had placed a big map on the board and we had to point to a country and tell her something about it.

  It was my turn to go up. I told myself we’d lived here over two years and there was no reason to worry. The boys no longer bullied me. Sure, we still played soldiers most of the time, and sometimes some of the things they said made me wince. But I didn’t always have to play the German nowadays. And they didn’t say ‘Sieg Heil’ and laugh at me any more.

  I didn’t go out of my way to talk about being Jewish, but I didn’t go out of my way to hide it, either. Daniel had helped with that. Just knowing I had an ally, even if we never really talked about it, made me feel more normal, more like one of the boys.

  So I decided to be brave.

  I pointed at Austria and said that it was where I was born. For a second, it all came back. Those last months in Vienna. I’d pushed it all so far away from me, it was like remembering someone else’s life. Someone else’s mother crouched in the cupboard while shops and houses were smashed up; someone else’s father taken away by his friends. Someone else who had nightmares every single night for the first year of living in England.

  But it wasn’t someone else; it was me. And while I stood there at the front of the class, I remembered that other day, when I was made to stand up in front of the whole school.

  I could feel my knees about to buckle as a feeling of nausea crept into my throat. Maybe I’d been kidding myself about being normal here, about being safe. In that moment, part of me still expected the teacher to point at me and call me names and the other kids to turn and stare silently as I
walked to the back of the room.

  Mrs Whitehead’s voice brought me back to the present moment. ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You must have left when you were a baby?’

  I shook my head and swallowed down my fears and my memories. ‘It was just over two years ago,’ I said. ‘I was twelve.’

  Her eyes went all wide and she said, ‘I never would have guessed. You sound perfectly English to me.’

  I walked back to my seat almost in a trance. Daniel gave me a nudge and smiled at me. ‘See,’ he whispered. He still had to tell me on a regular basis that I had nothing to worry about.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I could dare to believe it.

  I sounded ‘perfectly English’.

  I found myself breaking into a smile. It didn’t leave my face for the rest of the day. All day, I could feel myself walk a little taller, laugh a little harder, join in a little more.

  I was perfectly English. I was no longer an outsider.

  And yes, sometimes I wondered if I would ever get to see Vienna again, and I knew that it would always have a special place in my heart. But England was where I lived now, and it seemed that, at last, I could let myself think of it as home.

  I floated on air through the rest of the lesson, and on into the next. Science with Mr Rogers.

  We had barely started the lesson when we heard a familiar sound outside the classroom. The siren. Air raid.

  Usually it was a drill, to make sure we knew what to do, but you never knew for sure and it had been drummed into us that we were to act as if it were real every single time.

  ‘Tom, Sally, Peter, fetch the gas masks from the cloakroom. Leo, Daniel and Mary, help hand them out. The rest of you line up by the door. When everyone has their gas mask, take it with you and let’s go.’

  I hurried to do my job as quickly as possible. In less than two minutes, the whole class had their gas masks and had formed a line at the door.

  ‘Good,’ Mr Rogers said. ‘Right, come on.’

  We followed Mr Rogers out into the corridor and joined the children coming out of all the other classrooms. We filled the corridor and hurried out to the yard.