... And the Policeman Smiled (13 page)

A happier relationship was forged between the RCM and
Youth Aliyah
, though here again there was a clash of ideals. For
Youth Aliyah
, Zionism came before all, an article of faith expressed with terrifying force by David Ben-Gurion, Jewish leader in Palestine when the flow of refugee children was at its height.

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, then I would choose the second alternative. Against the lives of these children we must weigh the history of the people of Israel.

Here spoke the man of destiny whose singleness of purpose overrode all other considerations. The RCM had its Zionist sympathisers and there were those like Lola Hahn-Warburg who had a foot in both camps. But at Bloomsbury House, the interest of the children took priority over any political cause, a philosophy which supported the family environment over other forms of upbringing. For
Youth Aliyah
, who were now sending over more children on transit visas, foster homes, even orthodox foster homes, could not inspire the full-blooded commitment to a pioneering life in Palestine. While cooperating closely with the RCM, children brought over from Germany under
Youth Aliyah
auspices surrendered home comforts for the spartan discipline of the barrack room in agricultural training camps like Whittingham House near Edinburgh and Great Engham Farm and Pine Trees in Kent.

Youth Aliyah
had a knack of bringing in the money. What with Becky Sieff crusading the country and a succession of charity dinners and film and theatre premieres, close on £300,000 was raised in the first half of 1939. A third of this came from a sixteen-day British tour by the Broadway singer and comedian Eddie Cantor. Himself the child of Jewish refugees, Cantor insisted that all proceeds from his tour should go to a special fund to support the re-emigration of young Jewish refugees to Palestine.

But whatever money was raised, it was never enough. In March 1939 Norman Bentwich, who more than most realised the desperate straits of the Austrian Jews, wrote to Josef Löwenherz in Vienna:

I regret, too, that there can be no question of our taking into the refugee transit camp additional numbers from Vienna, until some of the 1100 for whom the lists have already been prepared have emigrated from England. It may be possible to consider a list of a few individuals in addition to those that have been chosen, but no more. The Movement for the Transport of Children, again, cannot bring over more unguaranteed children until those already here have been placed. I regret that it is no use to continue to ask for more help than we are giving, because it is not in our power to grant it.

As competition for places on the
Kindertransporte
mounted to panic proportions, the chances of success turned increasingly on knowing the right people – an official who could hurry through an application or, more critically, someone in Britain who was willing to take on the financial responsibility of acting as a guarantor.

Having a close relative in Britain, even a recent arrival, was a huge advantage. For example, an older sister found a sponsor for Gerta Jassem just two months after arriving in London to take up a job as a chambermaid.

She had never before boiled an egg or made a bed. Her only preparation for her new life was a few intensive lessons in English and much good will. She found my guarantor by putting an advertisement in
The Times
. An elderly couple whose grown-up children were no longer at home agreed to take me on. The reason I think Lily took a fancy to them was the goldfish pond in their garden. She had always been a dreamer.

For Nina Liebermann, solution was a chance acquaintance with a wealthy businessman.

Mr C was taking the cure in Bad Gastein, a spa in the county of Salzburg. At the approach of the Jewish High Holidays, he sought a congenial place to attend services and so met my father, who was a rabbi, my mother and us two girls. He took a fancy to my sister who reminded him of his own youngest daughter. He joked with my mother. ‘I'd like to educate this girl in England.' She laughed. ‘I don't give up my daughter as easily as that.' But eighteen months later she wrote to him pleading for refuge for her children. That's how we came to be on a children's transport.

With a mother who was active in
B'nai B'rith
, Anne Barth was offered a place on one of the early
Kindertransporte
, but her parents decided to hold back in the faint hope that conditions would improve. By February 1939 they were reconciled to the inevitable. The parting was less traumatic than some, however. Anne left Germany in the expectation of seeing her family again before very long. It was simply a matter of waiting for their visas to be approved. Their patience was ill-rewarded. When the visas did come through they were dated 5 September. Just two days too late.

Much effort went into tracing remote family connections abroad on the off chance of identifying a benefactor. Johnny Blunt's father worked his way through the sporting calendar:

My mother's maiden name was Levinski and there was a boxing champion in Ohio called Kingfish Levinski. My father wrote to him without realising that Levinski was his ring name. I found out later that he was called Kingfish by his wife who divorced him because he used to eat fish in bed and the bones stuck into her!

Young mothers who had kept their looks had an obvious advantage when it came to extracting vital documents from unhelpful bureaucrats. The more blatantly they were prepared to use their charm, the smoother was the way of escape.

Sometimes it was the children who forced the pace, pleading in all innocence to join their brothers, sisters, or friends who had somehow won this great distinction of a place on a
Kindertransport
.

My parents put my brother's name down for the
Kindertransporte
. Children are jealous of everything – and I remember crying: ‘I want to go …' My best friend's father was one of the organisers. My mother went to him – I don't know whether it was because I cried – it must have been a terrible thing to send children away – and somehow or other I got onto the transport. It must have been very last minute, because when I got to Holland my papers weren't finished and I had to wait for a week.

My mother packed one little suitcase for me. We were lucky to have one change of clothes and a
shabbat
dress. That's what I had. My mother took me to the station … I didn't realise I would never see her again. They must have had such courage to send us away. I don't think I could have done it.

There were a few friends sitting together in the carriage, laughing and joking. We can't have realised the seriousness. A boy lit a Hannukah light. I remember that some children had to travel on
Shabbat
and some of the orthodox children cried bitterly. It was explained that these were not normal times. It was to save our lives and it was all in order.

But for all those like Thea Rudzinski who managed to blank out the significance of the journey there were more who shared with Helga Samuel the anticipation of worse to come.

So one morning, the day of our departure had come. I remember crying bitterly and saying ‘Please Mummy, please don't send me away' – again I saw the heartbreak that was going on around me. I was eleven years old.

All the children from the different towns met in Berlin, each with a small suitcase, ten marks and a label around our necks giving our name and number. There was much confusion and many tears were shed …

I was told to go into a compartment with several other children of my own age, my sister in the adjoining one. I recall vividly our arrival at the German-Dutch frontier, when the Nazis boarded the train for the last inspection before the train crossed into a ‘free' country. One Nazi per compartment… The one in our compartment pulled down the blind, made us stand erect in the gangway, pulled down all the suitcases from the racks, opened them, whereupon he threw everything on the floor, taking one or two small items (really of no value – except a sentimental one) such as a gold necklace, watches, rings and even a camera. He also asked each one
of us to hand over our money, taking nine marks from each child. And so we left the Fatherland with one mark in our pocket …

Fear was in all of us, until the moment the Nazis disembarked, the whistle blew and the train slowly moved out of the station and crossed the frontier into Holland. At this moment, we opened the windows and started shouting abuse … It was terrible that we were learning to hate so early in our lives.

In the early part of 1939 the
Kindertransporte
were nearly all from Vienna, where pressure on the Jews was at its most severe. Then in February, attention switched back to Berlin. Jewish sources attributed the sudden rush for places to the arrival in the city of Adolf Eichmann. His orders were to apply the methods that had proved so successful in Vienna to mop up the surviving Jewish influence at the heart of the
Reich
. Accordingly, leaders of the Jewish community were packed off to Vienna to receive first-hand information on organising mass emigration, though how anyone could think of forcing thousands of destitutes over the border – with a passage on a leaky tramp steamer to Shanghai or Trinidad as their only hope of salvation – as ‘organised emigration' defied the imagination.

In any event, this latest tightening of the screw brought about a sharp increase in the number of
Kindertransporte
from Berlin and a change in the composition of the
Kindertransporte
from Berlin and Vienna. The average age of child refugees fell dramatically. As Wilfrid Israel noted, ‘Babies in their cradles and small children of the tenderest ages were handed over by their parents.' But handed over to whom? The few adults who were allowed to accompany the children had too many demands on them to act as full-time baby minders. That role was assigned to older children, not always with their approval. A despairing mother, spotting a thirteen-year-old boy seated by an open window, thrust her infant into his arms. The train pulled out. He looked after the little girl throughout the journey, everyone, including the Gestapo guards, assuming that it was his sister nestling in his lap. He held on to his charge until he came off the boat at Harwich. To this day, he wonders how she made out.

The Nazi-imposed rules for managing the
Kindertransporte
were made more restrictive in early 1939, presumably as an attempt to disguise from decent citizens what was being perpetrated in their name.

Lorraine Allard had only had four days' warning before leaving from Berlin:

I had to fight to take the family photo album. My mother didn't want to part with it and what a blessing it is that I did because that's all I have. I had a stamp collection, which was just a child's stamp collection, but I wasn't allowed to bring it. You weren't allowed to take anything of value. I played the accordion at that particular time and I carried that and on the train the SA made me play it to prove that I wasn't taking it to sell. I was shaking as I tried to play it.

Greater use was made of quiet suburban stations or of quieter platforms on the main stations; trains left at night and the number of family wellwishers come to say goodbye was restricted to one parent for each child. The new rules were self-defeating. To load up a
Kindertransport
in lonely isolation was to attract more, not less attention. As for the limit on the number of adults allowed near the train, this merely served to intensify the emotional pressure and to cause more breakdowns.

Vera Coppard left Berlin in May 1939 when she was thirteen.

Mother couldn't bear to come to the station. I went with my father. There was a terrible scene when they were shouting out the names of the children. There was one woman who was very agitated and when her children were not on the list she became hysterical. The guards hit her with clubs and knocked her to the ground. Then we were handed on to the platform. I just had time to say goodbye to father. My former nanny, who had married one of father's patients, managed to get on to the platform, I don't know how. She threw oranges through the carriage window.

The journey was terrible. At stations all along the way, parents had gathered to catch a last glimpse of their children. I'm glad my family didn't do that.

Vera went to a Quaker school in Cornwall and a short time later to school in Letchworth. Meanwhile, her mother was arrested in Berlin:

She was a very attractive woman and the senior Nazi officer who interrogated her took a liking to her and said that he would have her released if she would go to bed with him. She said that if he
could get tickets to England for herself and her husband she would do what he wanted. But when the tickets came through she sent a message saying that she was ill and that she was going to the mountains to convalesce. Instead, she went straight to the airport and flew to England.

She was followed by Vera's father who arrived on i September.

He wasn't allowed to practise as a doctor so he had to work as a cleaner at the Cumberland Hotel. Then he was allowed to work as a medical orderly in Newquay Hospital looking after soldiers who were injured in the First World War.

The support given to Vera Coppard and her family by the Quakers came at a point when the Jewish organisations in Berlin and Vienna were reduced almost to the point of impotence. Many others had reason to be grateful to the Quakers for refusing to give up their mission to help refugees.

With her mother in prison, ten-year-old Angela Carpos was adrift in Vienna.

I was handed on to the Quakers, probably because I was half-Jewish. They tried to get me out but I had no passport. I missed two or three
Transporte
. Then I heard about a transport on a particular night. I was told that the only way I could get out was to have a Jewish passport, with Angela Sara Pfeffer, with a ‘J' on it. I said I didn't care what passport I had, so I was issued with a Jewish passport.