“Why?” Slim asked shocked, “How could you not be up in arms about it?”
“Because we didn’t let the Jews into America when they needed us. But more to the point, look how White Americans treat Negroes. In the South, we have to eat in separate restaurants, use colored-only washrooms. Is that any different from all the ‘Jews forbidden’ signs all over Germany? They lynch us for no reason. They prevent us from voting. Our schools are substandard. The question Negro soldiers asked themselves is: Was Nazi Germany any worse than America is today?”
Slim looked down, ashamed. “I guess not.”
Felice shrugged. “It is what it is. So how can I help you, Miss Moran?”
Slim started to explain her case. Felice cut her off before she could get too deep. “I can help you, but not right now; I have to get back to work. I do have something I can show you. Where can we meet?”
Slim gave her grandmother’s address and they arranged to meet in the early evening. The rest of the day flew by. Slim arranged airplane tickets to Germany for herself and Pasha. Then she filled out the paperwork for Josie to complete her employment arrangement at Norland Nannies. She came downstairs after packing her suitcase to find her grandmother holding the baby in the drawing room.
“When your mother was born, she was taken away from me and put into the nursery. I saw her once in the morning and once at tea time. As she grew, the tea times grew longer. She went from nanny to governess. Then the Great War happened and we lost an entire generation of men. The old society held together by propriety and rules broke down, and the beautiful young things started their descent into dissolution. I surrounded her with enough decent young men for me to feel assured she would make a good match. Then your mother met your father at some party, and she was instantly smitten. They ran off and seven months later you were born. The marriage was troubled from the start.”
“I know all this Gran,” Slim sighed.
Gran handed the sleeping Tiny to Slim, “I employed a nanny for you because Daniel is gone…”
“I am appreciative Gran,” Slim said as she felt the warmth of the baby against her.
“That baby you are holding needs to know you are her mother. You are her parent. Until we find out what happened to Daniel, you are her only parent.”
“Gran, I don’t know how to parent. Look who I was raised by,” Slim said exasperatedly.
“Please. Do you think infants come with a manual? You start by doing. These overwhelming feelings of love will come. Infants are helpless for one reason because their dependency builds a bond.”
“But, I’m leaving. How am I supposed to build a bond?”
“You’re going to let Josie build her bond with the baby — establish a routine. Heaven knows, that baby has probably been up all night sleeping under the bar of La Silhouette.”
“Not exactly, Gran,” Slim said defensively.
“Your occupation does not lend itself to a schedule. Tiny needs a schedule and a name.” Gran rolled her eyes.
“She’s not getting a name until Daniel comes back,” Slim said quietly.
“Slim, darling, he may not come back.” Gran looked pained.
“If he’s alive, he will make his way back to us,” Slim looked down at Tiny, whose eyes were suddenly open. Slim had to find out what happened to Daniel; not only for herself but also for this baby.
Felice came a little after six. Barnaby showed her into the drawing room. Slim stood up to greet her. Felice greeted her with a broad grin, “What are you a Princess or something, Miss Moran?”
Slim laughed. She looked around and saw oak paneled walls with dour oil portraits of centuries of inhabitants, illuminated by a massive brass chandelier.
“I’m the product of a dissolute Irish movie star and a high strung debutante,” Slim responded with a smile. “And please call me Slim.”
“Please call me Felice. So who was your father if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Tyrone Moran,” Slim said with a grin, half expecting Felice not to know of him.
“My grandmother had a thing for him. She used to drag me to all his movies. I must have seen The Harem of Topkapi Palace seven times.”
“That’s seven too many. Please sit. I have a million questions to ask about your work at UNRRA.”
“I brought you my journal. It’s from 1945 until we closed up shop in 1947.” Felice pulled open her leather case and took out a large cloth bound journal. “I kept rather extensive notes. Mostly because so much was happening that I needed notes to keep track.” She looked down at the journal. “I typed up pages of missing people reports. When I first got to Frankfurt, I was excited. I was twenty-one; I couldn’t absorb what had happened. Two weeks in, I was typing up a list of the last known addresses of Czech Jews. I got the name Hirschler. I typed in Mariska, 48 years old, last known address, Auschwitz, year, 1944. Under her name were eight children. I sat there shaking. A little less than a year ago, this woman had been alive with her eight children. When the opportunity came up to work for Miss Eileen Blakey at the Child Search Bureau, I jumped at the opportunity. I needed to help find the living and not just record the dead.”
✽✽✽
1945 — UNRRA Headquarters, Frankfurt, Germany
Felice sat there typing. It was October of 1945 and here she was in Germany, working at UNRRA’S Repatriation Division, surrounded by the Third Army. All day long Felice typed in names. Names of the dead; names of the missing. If Felice was going to be doing this for the next year or so, she’d go mad. Roland Berger, the myopic director of her division, walked over to Eileen Blakey, the head of the search division and waved a telegram. “Blakey, do you know anything about thirty-five missing Polish children?”
Miss Blakey looked up surprised. “35 missing Polish children? No. Why?”
“I’ve just gotten a telegram from the Polish Red Cross in London. According to an informant, they were deported to Austria for Germanization.”
Felice looked up from her typewriter, surprised.
“Germanization? What in the devil’s name is that?” Miss Blakey said.
“The Nazis stole Aryan looking children and placed them in a home in Salzburg, and after some indoctrination, they were placed by the jugendamt, the youth welfare office, in individual homes.”
“That sounds crazy, but then again…” Blakey sighed.
“I have a list of the children. I want you to go to Salzburg and track them down,” Berger said, lighting a cigarette.
“I don’t speak German, Mr. Berger.” Miss Blakey explained as if she were talking to a slow child.
“I do,” Felice said, unsure where she had found the courage to speak.
They both turned to look at her.
“My father was a German baker who came to Pittsburgh in 1920 where he opened a bakery. I speak German,” Felice said, now a bit more unsure of herself. She should have kept her mouth shut. She had been hired as a typist, not a social worker even though she had trained as one.
“What’s your name?” Roland asked, surprised.
“Scott. Felice Scott.”
Miss Blakey sized her up. “Miss Scott, you’re going to Salzburg and you’re going to ask every burgomaster in every town where the missing children are.”
Berger looked at the two of them. “Do whatever you can but get those children back. Let’s get your ID card in shape and see what papers you will need.”
✽✽✽
1950 — London
“So you went to Salzburg. Did you find children?” Slim asked.
“Yes. They were being well-cared for in their foster homes, but were quite Germanized. At first, their foster-parents denied they were Polish, but usually when the child was spoken to in Polish, they responded in some way. We found almost all the children and removed them to a home in Ebensee.”
“I heard from a Child Welfare Officer that this was very hard for the children,” Slim said, remembering what Gitta Sereny had told her about removing the twins.
“It
was very hard on everyone, but the Polish Red Cross insisted that Poland must have its children back if it was to survive as a nation. When I got back to Frankfurt with Miss Blakey, Mr. Berger told us he had a list of two thousand more missing Polish Children.”
“Two thousand?”
“It kept growing. That’s when we started the Child Search Bureau. Look, I have a theater tickets, so, I am going to entrust this journal to you. It’s a bit dry, but it will have dates, names and places of the people involved with the Lebensborn Homes.”
“Thanks,” Slim said, taking the journal.
“If you find this boy,” Felice stopped and then began, “his mother should realize that the boy she knew is gone. These children have been brought up to hate; hate the Jews, the Poles…”
“But they are Polish.”
“They don’t think they are Polish. That’s the problem. The children are going back to a country they have been brought up to hate.” Felice stood up and held out her hand, which Slim took. “Please return the journal when you finish the case.”
“Of course. Are there any other records I can find about UNRRA’S activities?”
“No. All the files were shipped back to the States when UNRRA disbanded. This journal will be your best record. Please don’t lose it.”
“I won’t,” Slim promised.
After Felice left, Slim started to page through the journal. She found herself suddenly lost in Felice’s world. From her first foray into Austria to a telegram stating that 70 Polish children had been found living on Hermann Göring’s estate, Carinhall, she detailed the locating and repatriation of Polish children. Felice seemed to be at every meeting and typed every report. As Slim read, details caught her eye from time to time. One was a description of a telegram requesting that regular passenger cars be used to transport the children back to Poland because freight cars scared the children and reminded them of their previous deportation to Germany. The second was Nuremberg. As the children started to be located and the evidence began to mount, a legal brief had been drawn up presenting the case for war crimes. It was well after midnight when Slim put the journal down.
She thought of the telegram again and the UNRRA worker who was pleading for a train car with seats. ‘Please do not send freight trains. Please send passenger trains. The children will become anxious if they see freight trains. They will not board them.’
Slim felt a tear drop from her eye, which she wiped away. She imagined the small children ripped from their homes a second time being sent to back to a country they couldn’t or wouldn’t remember. Was searching for this lost boy the right thing to do? Slim went up to the nursery and tiptoed into Tiny’s room. As she watched her sleep, Slim wondered what would she do if someone snatched Tiny from her arms. She’d obviously put up a fight; one she wouldn’t win. She imagined Tiny gone from the crib like Charles Lindbergh Jr. had been in Chestnut Hill, New Jersey. She took a deep breath. It was the not knowing that was killing Karol’s mother, Lena. Slim stroked Tiny’s face as her small lips puckered like a fish. She imagined Tiny sent to a children’s home and then fostered out to some family. How could a baby this young survive a ride on a freight train? At that moment, Slim understood what parenthood was — a commitment to worry every moment of every day.
She leaned down and kissed Tiny on the cheek and whispered, “If you get lost, I will find you. I promise.”
Chapter Five
The next morning Slim met Pasha at Heathrow Airport where they boarded a British European flight to Frankfurt.
During a shaky coffee service, Slim turned to Pasha, “How is Dima? Does he like Ludgrove School?”
“It’s quite a culture shock for him. In America, he was playing cowboys and Indians, riding his bike everywhere and, quite frankly, living at home. We had a bit of a weep when I dropped him off. He held onto my leg for dear life. Finally, a boy came up to him and offered him a bag of sweets and asked if Dima had any American comic books. Then I didn’t exist.”
As they landed at the Rhein-Main Airport, Pasha commented, “We’re meeting one of my men here who will pick us up in a car. Do me a favor. I don’t quite trust him, so let us not talk about this case in front of him.”
“Why don’t you trust him?”
“I met him and a group of his friends right after they graduated from Cambridge. They wanted jobs at His Majesty’s Secret Service, but they had all fought in the Spanish Civil War and were members of the Communist party. I didn’t want to hire them but they knew someone so they got in.”
“Surely, they grew out of being Communists,” Slim said. “Everyone’s an idealist when they’re young.”
“I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. He’s also a bit of a drunk.”
“Then why are you having him drive you around?”
“So I can keep my eye on him,” Pasha said.“Please, mind what you say. Let’s show our passports and get out of here. The smell of jet fuel is making my stomach turn over. Oh, and I will be using an alias, Sir Robert Nichols.”
A four-door blue Mercedes-Benz 170 V pulled up and a tall, awkward man in an ill-fitting grey suit jumped out. He pulled open the door.
“Phillips, this is Miss Moran,” Pasha barked.
“Delighted, Miss Moran. May I take your cases?” Phillips pronounced Slim’s last name ‘Mowan’ instead of Moran, a verbal anomaly found usually in the Southeast of England.
Slim climbed into the back seat with Pasha.
As they drove away, Phillips asked, “What brings you to Germany, Miss Moran?”
“That’s none of your business, Phillips,” Pasha said. “Now we have at least a three-hour drive to Bad Arolsen, so please just keep your eyes on the road and your mouth closed.”
Slim saw Phillips blush a deep red and she turned to Pasha to scold him, but he had already shut his eyes. She tried to catch Phillips’ eye in the mirror and smile, but she saw him look glumly on the road.
The International Tracing Service was a place Slim knew well. It was the first place she went to when family members and friends would come into the Red Cross Displaced Persons’ center at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris.
She filled out thousands of forms. Each one of them the same — family or surname, given or Christian names. Age, last known address, deported to — Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka — the list went on and on. An index card would be filled out with the request. Concentration camp records checked and cross-checked. Ads were placed in newspapers and radio announcements across Europe. “Ernée Pollack 46 years old from Nove Zamky. Last known location Camp Dachau. Your sister, Adéla, is looking for you. Please contact the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.” More often than not people would remain lost, silenced forever in the gas chambers. But sometimes, the relative, the friend would emerge from the ashes of war and be found in a displaced person camp. Slim lived for those moments and they did happen.
Slim’s point of contact at the International Tracing Service had been a man named Hans Müller. She had corresponded with him so regularly that she felt as though she knew him. She had sent a telegram saying she was coming, but after talking with Felice, Slim wasn’t sure how he could help her. After all, Felice said all the Child Search Branch files were sent to the archives in New York City. If anything, perhaps Hans Müller could point her in the right direction.
As Phillips drove into the small spa town, Slim noticed something immediately. She nudged Pasha, who murmured something and promptly went back to sleep.
“Phillips? This town is untouched by the war,” Slim said incredulously. She had been to Hamelin and Karlsruhe the year previous and both had suffered varying degrees of devastation due to the Allied bombing.
“That’s why it was chosen for the International Tracing Service. Also, it’s central to the British, U.S., Soviet and French occupation zones. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it Miss Moran?” Phillips asked.
Slim nodded and took in the Residenzschloss Arolsen, the yellow palace framed by
two guard houses. For a long time, Germany had been ruled by princes until Bismarck united the country under one Emperor.
“This is how most of Germany must have looked before the war. Stop the car here.” Slim said.
Phillips stopped the car. “The International Tracing Service is at the palace?” He asked, puzzled.
“The main branch is at the palace. All the records on camp survivors are at the old SS barracks. The children’s branch is at a nearby school. I am not sure how to get there. My contact, Mr. Müller told me to go to the reception area here.”
At the reception desk, they showed their passes and were led to Hans Müller, a portly, middle-aged man with wire glasses whose countenance needed some sun. He was leaning over a woman trying to decipher a form.
“Miss Moran, I presume?” He rushed forward effusively, nearly tripping, holding out his hand for Slim to shake.
Slim held back tears. She reached over and kissed him on each cheek. She could see him starting to tear up through the lenses of his glasses.
Pasha looked at them both quizzically. “I thought you said you two had never met,” he said almost accusingly to Slim. Could Pasha be jealous? It was all too absurd.
“Now, Miss Moran, we have made great strides since you first contacted me.”
“How so?”
“We now employ nearly one thousand people. Some Americans, but mostly Germans like myself. Some are displaced persons. We started out at the SS Barracks. In the beginning, we had huge tables laid out with giant boxes of information. Above each row of tables, it would say ‘Buchenwald, Auschwitz.’ Now, we have individual cards for each person, and from them, we can cross reference last known name, age, last known address and place of deportation. From there we can go to our camp ledgers and find out what happened.”
The Lost Boy Page 8