Rosa's Child (2 page)

On 17 May 1936 Rosa went into labour. Before the day was over she had given birth to two girls: Lotte and Susi. In the eyes of their proud mother, Lotte was the spitting image of her father, while Susi had the unmistakably Semitic looks of Rosa herself. Lotte was dark, alert and had bright eyes; Susi's eyes seemed to reflect the sadness that Rosa felt in her heart.

Within the twins' first few days a number of events occurred which were to have a profound impact on the course of their lives. First, Rosa learned that the Levingers had been granted permission to settle in the USA. That came as no surprise, but she herself was to have no such luck, for she soon received formal notification that her application had not been successful. Worse, it had not even received serious consideration. At a stroke, all her hopes of starting a new life in America with her two daughters had been shattered.

The bureaucrats of the immigration authorities in New York had had no interest in an unmarried and pregnant, penniless and unskilled refugee whose own relatives were not prepared to stand as guarantors. Their refusal obliged Rosa to find another job in domestic service, and in this at least she was successful. Less than three months after giving birth, Rosa was back at work tending to the domestic affairs of middle-class Munich Jews. As she went about her daily chores only one question preoccupied her: whatever was to become of Lotte and Susi, still slightly jaundiced as they lay in their cots at the Jewish hospital?

Sometime during the late summer of 1936 a formidable figure wearing a nurse's starched white apron and cap pulled up in a taxi outside that building and asked the driver to wait for her. Not long afterwards she re-emerged with Susi tucked securely under one arm, Lotte under the other. Alice Bendix, the visitor to the hospital, was the efficient and highly respected matron of the Antonienheim, named after the quiet Antonienstrasse in which it was situated. Others called it the Kinderheim -the Children's Home -but however it was referred to the fact remained that it was Munich's Jewish orphanage.

Before leaving for the hospital Alice Bendix had told children and staff alike that they should prepare to give a warm welcome to two very special guests. At the orphanage there was great excitement and anticipation as the children tried to guess what the matron had meant. When she later returned with Susi and Lotte, no one was disappointed. The twins were received as honoured newcomers, and every person in the building made their way down to the nursery to greet them. What none of those one hundred or so ardent admirers could have known was that the Bechhöfer twins would not take a single step outside their new home until one day before their third birthday. Or indeed that when that day came, they would walk away without the hand of their mother or father there to guide them on the long journey ahead.

From the start it was Lotte who stole the hearts of everyone. Slightly bigger than her sister, she had a round, chubby face and a cheerful and outgoing nature. She was full of affection, constantly wanting to be picked up and cuddled. Susi, tiny and fairer of colouring, made no attempt to reach out to people. Instead, two large brown eyes, in a dainty, fragile face, seemed to look out on the world with a rather serious curiosity. She cried a great deal, sometimes uncontrollably. No one said as much, but little Lotte was unquestionably most people's favourite. And yet perhaps Susi's more cautious outlook stood her in good stead for what life was later to bring.

Antonienstrasse was a short, mostly residential street close to the celebrated English Gardens. The home was at number seven, a large building which seemed to be bulging with a surfeit of balconies. Surrounding the orphanage was a well-tended garden, which, although it had only a small lawn, was dotted with many mature fruit trees and bushes that sprouted dozens of kinds of berries. The dining rooms and playrooms were situated downstairs, while upstairs the bedrooms were painted in different colours: greens, blues and yellows predominating. The nursery, where the twins had found themselves together with three other little souls, was a spacious room painted bright pink. Just along the corridor were the bathrooms, with rows of small sinks, tiny toilets and miniature bath-tubs.

Although food was sometimes in short supply -often there was no breakfast and lunch the same day might be of limited nutritional value -the atmosphere in the Antonienheim was invariably pleasant. By contrast, the political framework in which it functioned was becoming more and more sinister with each passing day. And unbeknown to Alice Bendix, the legal status of the orphanage was about to be reviewed.

Responsibility for the care of the twins passed to Helene Pressburger, a qualified nursery nurse from Stuttgart and one of the most popular personalities working in the Antonienheim. But in practice day-to-day care of the babies in her charge fell to the older children, who were appointed as carers. The policy was entirely pragmatic, for scarce resources demanded that the older children take care of the little ones. This was how eleven-year-old Ruth Bruckner and her brother Walter came to be responsible for Lotte and Susi. They made an excellent job of preparing the twins' food, lovingly feeding and bathing them, and taking care of their considerable laundry requirements.

Rosa would have dearly loved to perform all these tasks for them, but circumstances prevented her doing so. It seemed to be her destiny to tend to the needs of others rather than those of her own children. She felt enormously guilty about it, and to compound her self-condemnation there was the unspoken but almost unanimous disapproval of her family to contend with. Rosa visited the Antonienheim regularly. She would appear nearly every Sunday, her day off, arriving soon after the twins had finished their lunch. Delighted though she was to spend precious time with her daughters, her visits never failed to cause her great pain.

To Edith Moses, one of the orphanage's many volunteer teachers, Rosa's grief was all too plain to see. 'It was the same story every week when it came to saying goodbye to the twins. She could hardly bring herself to look at them because she used to get so upset. That's why she was always to be seen rushing away from the building.'

The only other Bechhöfer to visit the Antonienheim was Frieda, who made it her business to drop in from time to time. Her view of her nieces clearly accorded with what others said of them, for on the back of one of the photographs she took at the orphanage she wrote: 'Lotte -an angel', while on the front was the revealing inscription: 'Susi - rather difficult'.

By the time the girls had moved from the nursery into the kindergarten, at the age of eighteen months, their mother had changed addresses three more times. The pattern was familiar to her: the Jews of Munich with sufficient funds or foresight were on the move. Seeing them secure their families' future, Rosa decided on a change of plan for her own children. If she could not emigrate, might it not be possible to evacuate them? She asked Alice Bendix what could be done.

Despite the ever-increasing tension for the city's Jews, the head of the Antonienheim had remained adamant. On Friday nights strict observance of Jewish traditions would continue: candles would be lit, Kaddish recited and ancient Hebrew songs sung. This atmosphere, intended to recreate historic Jewish family life and following customs handed down over the centuries, was readily absorbed by the twins. Indeed the heralding in of the Sabbath was a ritual to which everyone in the orphanage, children and staff alike, looked forward eagerly. For they knew that after the completion of prayers a wholesome meal of fried fish and potato salad awaited them.

The Kristallnacht of 9 November 1938 obliged Alice Bendix to amend these practices. Now there could be no doubting that the Jews of Germany were in grave danger. The 'Night of Broken Glass' spread horror throughout the country's Jewry, wanton destruction and violence on a national scale having replaced legal coercion. A Nazi Party internal report prepared the following day contained the first grim statistics:

The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures. Eight hundred and fifteen shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire, only indicate a fraction of the damage so far as arson is concerned. One hundred and nineteen synagogues were set on fire, another 76 completely destroyed. Twenty thousand Jews were arrested. Thirty-six deaths were reported and those seriously injured also numbered 36. All those killed and injured are Jews.

The final tally of murder and destruction throughout the country was much higher: about one hundred Jews killed and three hundred synagogues burned down. In addition some 30,000 Jews had been arrested and a number of cases of rape had been reported. The twisted logic of the Nazis led them to regard rape in these circumstances as more reprehensible than murder, since it violated the Nuremberg decrees forbidding sexual relations between Gentiles and Jews.

A few days later the Jewish communities of Germany were informed that they must pay for the destruction of their own property. For good measure, a collective fine was imposed on them of one billion Reichmarks. And all this at the orders of their own government.

In Munich tension was running at fever pitch. Desperate to renew her plea on behalf of the twins, Rosa returned to the Antonienheim. Aware that there was now talk in the city of transportations being organized to evacuate Jewish children from Germany, she begged for two places to be found for hers. Alice Bendix had already taken the initiative, and now informed Rosa that she had contacted various Jewish organizations in the USA and had apparently obtained clearance for the twins to be adopted by a wealthy orthodox Jewish family in California. She had even recruited a twenty-year-old Jewish woman, Hannah Bronstein, to spend time at the orphanage acquainting herself with the sisters, now sprightly toddlers of two-and-a-half. As soon as the twins felt comfortable with her she would accompany them on the long and arduous journey to America's West Coast. The formalities were about to be finalized.

Rosa was taken aback by the plan. But in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, and with Lotte and Susi's welfare her greatest priority, she knew that Alice Bendix's arrangements were probably the best she could hope for.

Just a couple of miles away members of the Nazi Party were completing the preparations for a massive celebration of Aryan art. Almost the entire Nazi leadership was to gather there, with the proceedings culminating in a pageant of knights in armour and flaxen-haired Rhinemaidens to symbolize their conception of two thousand years of Germanic culture. As they did so, Alice Bendix was putting the finishing touches to her own project -and not just on behalf of the Bechhöfer twins, for she was battling to dispatch overseas every one of the children who remained in her care. True, after Kristallnacht progress had become a little faster. But there were still official procedures to be followed, with the inevitable delays that these entail. And then suddenly, on the morning of 16 May 1939, there was a sense of urgency in the air. In the Antonienheim little suitcases were being packed.

Ruth Bruckner recalls that day vividly. She noticed that the twins were gone, but had no idea where. Nor could she get any answer beyond: 'They've gone'. By the time the young girl asked about the whereabouts of her charges, they were already out of the country.

TWO

Grace and Eunice

I
rene Mann was ironing in her kitchen one day in November 1938 when suddenly her husband came in clutching the
Daily Telegraph.
After attending to some business in the centre of Cardiff, he had been reading the paper while drinking a coffee in the Kardomah cafe. Now, in his warm but firm voice, he read his wife part of an article which said that, as a result of the situation in Germany, thousands of refugee children desperately needed a home. The newspaper invited readers to take such a child into their care; when her husband asked if she would be willing to do so, Irene, always eager to comply with his wishes, agreed enthusiastically.

Before long the couple -28-year-old Edward Mann, a Baptist minister, and his wife Irene, four years his senior and likewise a devout Christian -had made contact with the German Jewish Aid Committee in London, and there began six months of correspondence in preparation for their fostering of a Jewish child.

Many newspapers had carried reports similar to the one the Reverend Mann had read out to his wife. For it was the period just after Kristallnacht, and world opinion had been appalled by the deeds of a nation which, while possessing an ancient culture combining Christianity and humanism, had nevertheless acted with shocking barbarity. And nowhere had this outrage been expressed more eloquently than in the British press. Now it was clear: the Third Reich was going down a dark path from which there was to be no return.

The savagery of Kristallnacht had finally propelled the British government into addressing the refugee question. The Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, announced that with immediate effect visas and passports for refugee children from Europe would no longer be necessary. All that would be required now was a single travel document. At last the large-scale exodus of young people from Germany and Austria, for which Jewish organizations in Britain had been campaigning vigorously, could take place. During the months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, nearly 10,000 children, most but by no means all Jewish, were to be delivered from Nazi oppression to safety in Britain. They were the Kindertransport children.

Eventually the Manns were offered a child, but when they learned that she would be coming with her mother they wrote to the German Jewish Aid Committee to explain that they would prefer to care for a refugee who had no one to look after him or her. The committee then asked them to consider taking two little girls from an orphanage in Munich who were in great need of care. At once Irene was concerned about the extra cost, so the couple wrote to say they would be happy to consider taking one of the girls, whose names, they had been told, were Susi and Lotte Bechhöfer.

When the Manns received a photograph of the sisters it confirmed Irene's suspicion that they were twins. But now, on seeing them, instead of rejecting the idea out of hand she turned to her husband and asked him to decide. Neither felt that they should separate the girls, and after much heart-searching, they wrote to say that they would, after all, take both of them.

As this correspondence continued, what the Manns did not know was that the Central British Fund, responsible for providing most of the finance for the Kindertransport, was desperately short of money. With the Fund overwhelmed by demand and insolvency fast approaching, Earl Baldwin, the former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, took to the airwaves to see if his authority might assist in some way. Through the good offices of the BBC, he called upon the British people to rally to the aid of the victims of a catastrophe. 'It is not an earthquake, nor a flood or a famine,' he explained, 'but an explosion of man's inhumanity to man.'

The public responded generously, donating over half a million pounds to the Central British Fund. So popular was the broadcast that it became something of a hit when it was distributed on record at eight shillings a disc, bringing in yet more money. Much of the total revenue was allocated to the cost of maintaining the refugees, a figure which the German Jewish Aid Committee managed to pare down to just under one pound per child per week.

The new flexibility being shown by the British government did not mean that all bureaucratic procedures had been cast aside. Documents still had to be processed in large numbers. Once dealt with in London, applications to leave Germany were sent back to the Reich. There, some of these forms would simply be rejected by the German or Austrian police and the word 'unacceptable' stamped in large black letters across the documents -usually for no apparent reason. In each such case, the fate of a child had been sealed at a stroke.

The German Jewish Aid Committee was almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the task it faced. One thousand children were setting off every month, with an average of two transports departing from various European capitals each week. Nor was demand slowing. On the contrary, as war grew ever more inevitable, more and more parents became anxious to evacuate their children. Five thousand letters were arriving every week at the organization's London headquarters, where the atmosphere was one of near chaos. It was even worse in Germany and Austria, where preparations for departure were almost always made at the last minute, with selection for inclusion in a particular transportation being a haphazard affair.

And yet, despite these great odds, the general secfetary of the Refugee Children's Movement would later affirm: 'It is not a small thing in these years of suffering without parallel, to have given to ten thousand children the opportunity to grow up in an atmosphere of decency and normality, to work, to play, to laugh and be happy and to assume their rightful heritage as free men and women.' But were the Bechhöfer twins, who were soon to arrive in England, destined to find themselves in such an environment?

As committee members combed through the papers from prospective foster families, they were briefed to look out for upper-middle-class Jewish parents, preferably professional people who already had children of their own. Ideally they would live in the country, away from the enticements of urban life. And if, in addition, they spoke fluent German, then they immediately qualified as perfect foster parents and were recruited without delay.

Naturally, few applicants met these requirements, and whatever their other virtues, the Reverend and Irene Mann certainly did not. They were from the lower middle classes. Their home could hardly be described as being in the countryside, for it was a stone's throw from the centre of Cardiff. Nor, much to their regret, did they have children. As for speaking German, they could not put together a sentence between them. And crucially, not only were they not Jews, but Edward Mann was a Baptist of the nonconformist, fundamentalist tendency, whose reputation was growing all the time, both as a teacher of the New Testament and as a stirring preacher of the Gospel. However, there were not enough Jews coming forward as prospective foster parents, and so, despite all these apparent disqualifications, to their great joy the couple were accepted.

'My husband detests the Victorian era,' Irene Mann had a habit of saying, 'but he would have done very well in it all the same.' She was right. Edward Mann had grown up in and still inhabited an enclosed, ordered world of religious devotion, his every move revolving around his role as a minister. It was a busy life, for among other duties he was obliged to deliver two lengthy sermons every Sunday. This duty he would carry out with panache, gesticulating expressively from the pulpit with his arms. Then there were Bible studies to conduct, meetings to chair, and, with Irene, the counselling of members of his congregation whenever the need arose.

Although he undoubtedly believed in the scriptures, the Reverend Mann understood little of the Christian concept of humility. Instead he was a powerful, dominant and, to the many people who came under his spell, charismatic man. What Edward Mann wanted, he usually got.

There was one notable exception to this rule, however. For some years he and his wife had been trying without success for a child. In fact Edward Mann was so frustrated by his lack of paternity that it came to haunt him daily throughout his life. Indeed, in time he would find himself virtually incapable of conducting a service of dedication to bless a newborn baby. Obsessed by their childlessness, he often came close to shaking his fist at God. Therefore it is not surprising that, although there was often warmth and laughter in the home, there was a permanent undercurrent of friction within the marriage. The gifted Bible teacher was angry. In his view his wife ought to have borne him a son. Had she not therefore singularly failed in her duty to him?

This was the home in which the Bechhöfer girls were to spend their formative years. The plan conceived by Alice Bendix for them to settle in California had fallen through at the last minute. Even so, the twins could count themselves among the lucky ones, for two places had been found for them on a Kindertransport to London instead. The same could not be said for the twenty or so other children from the Antonienheim, who never succeeded in crossing the German border. The bold slogan of the hour had been 'Save the Children'. The charity bearing that name was involved in what had become a desperate, last-ditch relief operation. Despite all the good work, not all the children were to be saved.

On 18 May 1939 the train carrying Susi and Lotte Bechhofer pulled into London's Liverpool Street station. It had been a 36-hour journey for the twins, who, the previous day, had spent their third birthday on a Kindertransport. Wearing identity labels around their necks and each clutching a small suitcase in one hand and a cuddly toy in the other, the bewildered little girls emerged onto the platform of the huge rail terminus. A voluntary worker in Munich had gone to some trouble to explain to them that they were leaving the orphanage to go on a long and very special journey -something that neither of them had ever done before. If this was meant to furnish a full explanation of why they were now in a strange place where everyone spoke a strange language, it had evidently not done the trick.

Within minutes of leaving the train, Susi and Lotte were to be seen walking off in obvious distress, a pitiful sight as they struggled with their luggage, determined to hang on to each other's hands as they did so. Ushered along by the good women of the children's refugee committee, they were in tears as they slowly made their way to a large, dimly lit room. There, women clutching clipboards and calling out surnames which sometimes they struggled to pronounce, were busy processing the 160 new arrivals.

The refugee committee had set up shop in an enclosed space by a taxi ramp at one end of the station. On one side were seats and benches for those children destined for hostels and camps. The other side had been designated for children already allocated foster parents, and it was here that Susi and Lotte were told to sit, although they did not know why.

'There I found these two children, little tots, having been lifted up onto the seat, with their legs dangling,' recalls Irene Mann, who had travelled up from Cardiff to meet the twins from the train. The Reverend Mann had been unable to accompany her because he was conducting an important funeral that day.

They looked very dazed and very bemused, wondering where they were. They were not dressed alike. They weren't looking as if they were identical twins. It must have all been very strange for them, wondering what had happened to them. So I held out my hands to them and I said: 'Come.'
'Nein,'
they said, and shook their heads. So, I thought, that's a fine start. So I went back to the lady in charge and I said: 'Would you come with me and speak to them? Put them at ease. Tell them what I'm about to do.' And Lotte said to her: 'Are we going home?' To which the lady replied: 'If you take the hand of this lady here, she is going to take you home.' With that they jumped off the seat, held out their hands -I can see them now and came with me without further ado. I felt very emotional about it all. I just wanted to pick them up and run away with them.

But Irene did not give in to her impulse. When everything was in order she and the girls crossed London and boarded a train for Wales. Although poorly dressed, the twins has arrived in London spotlessly clean, and what was more Irene understood that they had behaved themselves impeccably on the long journey. Unable to speak to her foster children, she consoled herself with the fact that she could at least offer them the refreshments she had prepared beforehand. A few hours later they were in Cardiff, the girls having spent much of the time gazing out at the lush green countryside.

'When they arrived at our home,' the Reverend Mann would later say, 'I was of course there to meet them. I fell very much in love with them right away -for they were dear children indeed.'

As Susi and Lotte were being prepared for bed that first evening of their new life, it was quite obvious that they were very weak, especially Susi. She had become so thin that the Manns could count her ribs with ease. Lotte, who seemed somewhat hardier, had rather more body fat and was one-and-a-half inches taller. The Manns summoned their doctor, who immediately explained that, as a result of malnutrition, Susi and Lotte were in great danger of developing rickets. He added that because both girls were deficient in calcium, the bones in their legs were nowhere near as strong as they should have been.

Before the twins' arrival the Manns had befriended a Jewish couple, the Vellishes, themselves refugees from Vienna. It was a relationship which was to prove invaluable, because for the following three months Mrs Vellish would turn up every single morning to speak in German with the girls, outlining to them what Irene had planned for them that day, as well as teaching them their first words of English. The twins soon became very fond of her and, increasingly, of their foster parents too.

That first summer Irene threw herself with great enthusiasm and energy into her new role as a mother.

In the afternoons I would take them out. I was obliged to get a double pram, though, because it was just impossible to take them for a normal walk -they simply didn't have the strength in their legs. I put them side by side and said to myself: 'Right, I don't care what other people think -at least like this they'll get some fresh air.' One and a half miles away we had a park, where we would go and feed the ducks, and I would point out the flowers and talk in English to them. It took me no time at all to love the children. But I felt that the important thing was not to force ourselves on them, but to win them over gradually. It all seemed to go well, for they were as happy as the day was long.