The Runaway Family (33 page)

At last she reached their courtyard, and climbing the stairs to the apartment was greeted with cries of delight from the younger children, and huge, relieved smiles from Laura and her mother. They knew how dangerous the streets were becoming for Jews, and her safe return every day was awaited with anxiety. Ruth no longer allowed the girls to walk to school through the streets on their own, where they were now prey to attack, both verbal and physical, from Austrian children, but insisted that Helga went with them, even though it meant that the twins had to trail all the way there and back again, too. Their small Jewish enclave lived under a canopy of fear. New laws and directives were published almost every day, and they all lived with the dread of being arrested for breaking one of these without even knowing it existed.

“So what did Edith want?” asked Helga once the welcome was over and she had sat down at the table.

“Oh, nothing much,” Ruth said, her eyes flicking to the children. “I’ll tell you all about it later.” Even now she couldn’t read the letter from Kurt. She needed privacy to do so. She had no idea what he was going to say, but clearly he wasn’t coming to Vienna and she needed to be alone as she read the words that explained why. She washed her hands and face at the sink, and then, picking up her bag, went to the room she shared with the twins. When she had heard their prayers, she settled them into bed and read to them; waiting, watching over them as they fell asleep, top to tail in the single bed, each clutching a battered rabbit. Sitting on the mattress that was her own bed, she finally got out her letter. With trembling fingers she ripped open the envelope and withdrew the single sheet inside.

My darling Ruth, she read,

I wish I were with you now, but though I tried to reach you recently it was not possible with the recent change of affairs. At present I am in Hamburg where I am working in a shop. You can write to me here and let me know how you all are. I am working on the plan for a visit to Berta, as you suggested, and hope to leave in the next few weeks if I can get time off from work. Perhaps you and the children will be able to come and see Berta too before very long.

Write to me, my darling, and tell me how you and the children are doing. Is your mother still with you? Please remember me to her.

I have to go to work now, but I will write again soon with my news. Forgive the brevity of this letter but you know the circumstances.

Remember how much I love you, my darling girl, more than life itself.

Kiss the children from me and tell them I am longing to see them again.

All my love,

Kurt

Ruth read the short letter through several times, wondering at the strange and stilted language. Kurt must have thought the letter might be intercepted, and was giving as little away as he could. She looked again at the envelope, but as she had torn it open she had destroyed any sign that it might have been opened before.

She read the letter again, trying to work out the subtext to what he had written. By recent change of affairs he must mean the Anschluss. The visit to Berta was the code she herself had used in their telephone call, so he was trying to get to England, and from there he was going to try and get them out as well. Was that possible? She wondered. Forgive the brevity of this letter, but you know the circumstances. Yes, that’s what he meant, Ruth thought. He was afraid that the letter might fall into the wrong hands.

She looked at the address at the top of the page. It was a shop in Hamburg. He must think it safe for her to write there, or at least that the risk was small. She clutched the letter to her. Thank God it had arrived in time. If it had come to Edith’s house in another week or so, when the Bernstein family had left for Shanghai, she would never have received it. Kurt did not know where she lived now, and they would have lost all contact. She shivered with fear at the dreadful thought. He wouldn’t have known where she was in Vienna, and she wouldn’t have known where he was at all. She found that tears were running down her cheeks, and for a few blessed moments she allowed herself the luxury of a good cry, before she scrubbed her cheeks with her handkerchief. No need for tears, she admonished herself. Kurt was alive. He was safe. He wasn’t trapped in a daily-more-terrifying Austria, and he seemed to think he could get to England and send for them when he got there. She put the letter back in her bag and got to her feet. Gently she straightened the coverlet over the twins, kissed each one on his forehead twice, once for herself and once for Kurt, and then went back into the kitchen where the girls were sitting at the table, Inge drawing on a scrap of paper, and Laura writing in her diary:

When Oma took us to school today we saw some poor people scrubbing the road, trying to get some paint off the stones. They had only toothbrushes and bucket of water and two soldiers with guns were watching them. Two horrid boys came by and tipped a bucket of horse muck on them, and they had to clean that up as well. Oma told us not to look, just to walk by and take no notice, but one of the people was an old lady, and she was crying. Why aren’t there proper sweeping men like before? When I asked Fräulein Lowenstein she told me not to talk about it. She was quite cross, but I think she is scared like all the grown-ups. Horrible things are happening to Jews like us, and everyone is afraid.

Helga looked across at Ruth as she came in, raising an interrogatory eyebrow. Ruth smiled. “They’re sound asleep,” she said, and turning her attention to the girls she said, “Now then, what would you two like to do before you go to bed? How about writing a letter to Papa?”

When at last they had the kitchen to themselves, Ruth told Helga about her visit to Edith. “Shanghai? In China? Why on earth is David taking them there?”

“Edith says there’s already a large Jewish community there, but I think it’s mainly because they don’t need any sort of visa to go there. America has a quota system and other countries are taking fewer and fewer Jews. They could wait forever to be allowed to go there. Anyway, they’re going and as soon as it can be arranged.”

“What about David’s parents? Surely they aren’t leaving them behind? Specially not after what happened to poor Herr Bernstein.” Helga broke off for a moment and then said bleakly, “We saw the same thing happening again today, as I took the girls to school. A group of Jews being made to clean the road on their hands and knees.” She sighed. “David’s right to get them out, of course, but Shanghai?”

“Edith says that his parents are going, too.”

“To Shanghai? But they’ll hate leaving Vienna.”

“That’s what I said,” agreed Ruth. “But she says David’s made up his mind and they don’t have any choice.”

“Poor things,” sighed Helga, “but I suppose it’s for the best.”

“Edith also gave me a letter from Kurt,” said Ruth.

“From Kurt?” Helga’s eyes lit up with pleasure. “Oh darling, how wonderful. You must be over the moon. What did he say? Where is he? Is he coming here?”

Ruth took out the letter and handed it to her mother. “You can read it yourself,” she said.

Helga looked doubtful as she took the letter. “Well,” she said, “if you’re sure,” and adjusting her glasses on her nose, she read it through. When she looked up she looked a little bemused. “What a strange letter,” she said. “What does he mean?”

Ruth explained what she thought Kurt had been telling her. “He doesn’t know if the post is safe,” she explained. “He’s telling me things which no one else would understand. And at least now I know where he is, for the moment anyway.”

“So you can write back to him and tell him what’s been happening here.”

“And I must do it quickly before he moves on,” said Ruth. “If he writes to me care of Edith again, I shan’t get the letter, and whichever Nazis are living in Edith’s house will.”

“Do you know when they are leaving?” asked Helga. “Did Edith say?”

“No, not exactly, but I think it will be as soon as possible. She asked us to come and visit them on Sunday.”

“I can’t believe they’re going so far away,” Helga said, a break in her voice. “My Edith in China. Shall I ever see her or the children again?”

Ruth was beside her at once, her arms round her comfortingly. “Of course you will, Mutti. It’s only till this nightmare is over.”

“It’ll never be over,” said her mother flatly. “The Nazis will never be satisfied until they’ve got rid of every Jew in the country, and there’s no one to stop them.”

“You could go with them, Mutti,” Ruth said gently.

Her mother’s head jerked up. “And leave you here on your own! I would never do that. Edith has David to look after her and the children. She doesn’t need me.”

It was three more weeks before David, Edith and their family finally left Vienna. Getting all the exit permits from the Department of Emigration had taken longer than they had thought. David spent hours queuing up at the department, waiting with the required documents, only to be told that this form was incorrectly filled in, or that another one was now necessary. Their situation in society had changed radically. Anna and Cook had both left, neither prepared to work for a Jewish family anymore. Edith had to manage the house and do the cooking on her own, something she had not done since she had married David. Jacob, the driver, also left, because David no longer had a car. That had been confiscated. Two SS men had arrived at the house one afternoon, brusquely demanding the keys of the beautiful motor parked outside the house. David, remembering his father’s fate when he had argued about the apartment, could do nothing but hand them over, his face pale with contained fury, as he watched the men drive away.

Once their application to emigrate had been lodged, they prepared for their journey. Edith had been right about the amount of luggage they could take, and they packed and re-packed the cases trying to cram in all the basic things they would need to set up their new home.

On the two Sundays before they left, Ruth and Helga took the children across the town to visit them. Summer was fast approaching and the children were allowed to play in the garden, under the eye of a disconsolate Paul. Watching young children play wasn’t his idea of fun, but there was no Anna to look after them anymore, and he knew his parents were relying on him more and more these days. He was quite excited about moving to Shanghai. He’d never been out of Vienna, and thought that the whole trip would be a great adventure.

“You’ll be able to go back to school there,” his father had promised, “and then train as a doctor as you always planned.”

“I don’t want to go to China,” Naomi confided to Laura as they sat together on the swing seat. “I want to stay here.”

“I didn’t like leaving my home either,” Laura said sympathetically, “but it may not be as bad as you think.”

“Yes it will be,” asserted Naomi. “I shan’t know anyone, and I shan’t see Hilda again for ages.”

“But you’ll have both your mother and father,” pointed out Laura, “and your Oma and Opa.”

“Opa’s gone all funny,” Naomi said, “and Oma’s fiercer than ever!”

At that moment the twins erupted from the house, chasing and yelling as they hared round the garden. They charged over to Paul, whom they both adored, and he swung them up in the air, one after the other, as they shrieked at him to do it again and again.

“Your Paul is a fine boy,” Ruth remarked to Edith as they watched from the window. “Almost a young man now.”

“We’re getting him out just in time,” said David who had overheard her comment. “On his sixteenth birthday he’d have had to register for a work permit, and he might have been sent anywhere.”

“When are you leaving?” Helga asked her son-in-law.

“If I get the final documents tomorrow, as promised, we shall take the train to Odessa on Wednesday,” he replied. “From there we travel by boat.”

“They were promised last week,” complained Edith, “but when David went to collect them, they sent him away and told him to come back next day. He’s been going back every day since.”

Ruth thought of her dealings with the Office of Jewish Affairs in Stuttgart and shuddered. She knew exactly how the Germans worked when dealing with Jews; the Austrians were clearly as bad.

“They’ll have to give them to me this time,” David said. “We have to leave on Wednesday, some high-ranking Nazi and his family are moving in here. They’ve given us until Wednesday to get out.”

“But what about all your things?” asked Helga. “Your furniture, your pictures, all your glass and silver?”

“Our dear Anna made an inventory of it all,” spat Edith. “She gave it to the Nazis, and we are to remove nothing from the house. They will have it all, and Anna will have her job back… working for them.”

“Anna?” Helga was incredulous. “But she’s been with you for years.”

David shrugged. “So she has, but she has obviously decided to join the winning side.”

The door to the drawing room opened and Friedrich and Marta Bernstein came in. Ruth was shaken by the difference in their appearance since she had last seen them, the night the Anschluss was announced. Both had aged ten years, particularly Friedrich, who no longer carried himself ramrod straight, as he always had, but walked with a stoop, leaning on an ebony cane. Marta still held herself erect, but there were new lines etched deep in her face, and her skin was pale and drawn taut over her cheekbones.

Helga and Ruth both got to their feet, Helga holding out her hands to them saying, “My dear Frau Bernstein, how do you do? Herr Bernstein, I hope you are recovering from your ordeal.”

Friedrich shuffled over to the window, making no effort to take her hand or to reply, but Marta took the extended hand in hers for a brief moment, saying, “Yes, he is much better, thank you. The bruises have almost gone.” She turned to look at her husband who stood staring out at the children playing below. Suddenly he swung round and addressing them all, said, “They will kill us all. The Nazis will kill us all.”

“No, Father,” David said firmly. “They won’t. We leave on Wednesday, remember?”

“They have driven us out of our home, and now they’re driving us out of our city. I would rather die here than live in Shanghai.”