Letter from my Father (6 page)

The day the State of Israel declared its independence, on 14 May 1948, I thought I would burst with happiness. The Jews of Stuttgart including all the students of Bet Bialik gathered in Reinsburgerstrasse and laughed and cried and embraced one another. We sang
Hatikvah
(Song of Hope). To add to the excitement, Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the American President during the War, visited the camp and came to our school. We welcomed her by waving the blue-and-white flags of our new country. That night no one could sleep but instead talked about the future late into the night.

Over the following weeks we gathered again to farewell students from our school who had volunteered to go to Israel to fight the War of Independence. They wanted to fight against the Arab countries which were determined to destroy our new country before it had established itself. We knew our boys and girls would not allow this to happen. Some of them were only sixteen and seventeen years old but put their ages up to qualify. A couple were from my class. Most had no parents so there was nobody who could stop them going. And they wanted to go. They were not afraid.

Buses would arrive, and as they boarded, holding themselves straight and upright, we sang the
Hatikvah
again.
Shalom. Would they be safe?
We worried. Some of them did die in Israel's War of Independence

A few months later we got a
Morah
, a teacher from Israel to teach us to speak Hebrew as a living language and to read its books. She was young and pretty and brought with her new readers in what we began to grasp was a real language spoken by people like us in our own land, not just a school subject.

The day of 27th November 1947 was a great one for me. The Einlegers formally adopted me as their daughter. I was to call them Mummy and Daddy. At first I did not want to do that. They were not my parents. But they insisted and were prepared to pay me each time I used the words. So I gave in and after a while they came naturally. I also had to get used to my new full name of Ester Hadasa Einleger. One thing my former aunt and uncle made clear to me was that I was not to let anybody know that I was not their daughter. After all, people might talk.

Of course I never forgot my real parents. A relative in Israel sent me a photograph of my natural parents, Szulem and Chana. I kept it safe and often looked at it secretly. They were both so beautiful, I thought.

But I was also pleased to have parents every day just like other children, to be part of a
normal
family and not to have to explain all the time what the Nazis had done to my real mother and father and keep on being sad about it. I no longer needed to be such a serious girl.

My new parents were anxious about my future and required that I get good marks at school. I knew they would be disappointed if I didn't and I believed they would love me less. Even losing one mark and getting a 9/10 instead of 10/10 was an occasion for detailed analysis of how and why I had lost that mark. I learned that coming first in class was the best way of obtaining approval and recognition. It made my new parents proud of me. It made me worth loving.

I wished they would not be so strict. It was like a loose rope around me that stopped me from doing things that were fun or even silly.

My American relatives, those to whom my father Szulem's letter had been sent, contacted the Einlegers to find out if I was safe. They were assured that I was in good hands. Otherwise, I guess, they would have taken me into their own family and looked after me. But since I had settled down with my ‘new' parents, I decided I would rather not change my life again.

Our relatives organised regular parcels of food and clothes for us through JOINT, the American Joint Distribution Committee. We always looked forward to opening the big cardboard boxes to discover a jar of Nestlé instant coffee, a pouch of powdered milk or a can of Carnation milk, powdered eggs, pressed tinned meat, packaged cheese and water crackers. I loved the dark, fragrant blocks of Cadbury chocolate. With the help of these parcels we ate quite well, but there was little money for meat, poultry or fish. One of the parcels also contained a lovely red coat with a matching pussy-catstyle hat that I wore with pride. The coat fitted me perfectly and it was so nice and warm.

My mother kept insisting that I eat a lot to build me up. I was expected to finish a full plate of mashed potatoes and hard-boiled eggs for supper, even if I was not hungry. I also had to swallow a tablespoon of cod-liver oil each evening before going to bed. It tasted terrible and one night I spilled some on my nightdress and suffered all night from that disgusting smell. I tried to tell my mother about this but she said I was imagining it. I became a chubby child, full of energy.

For my tenth birthday, my new mother and father had a special dress made for me. How did they manage to get such lovely navy blue wool crepe material? Probably by bartering, since the fabric shops had nothing in their windows, the German mark being worth little until it was re-issued in
1950. I had a number of fittings because it was quite a complicated style. It was long-sleeved and had a semi-circular yoke with deep pleats falling from the centre.
My parents must really love me
, I thought, because they arranged for the edge of the yoke to be delicately embroidered with the most beautiful yellow and orange flowers with green buds. The dress had a white Peter Pan collar and a heart-shaped flower-embroidered pocket on each side.

It was the most beautiful dress I had ever seen. I couldn't believe it was mine. I was very grateful that my Mother and Father wanted me to have this special dress. They must have paid a lot of money for it. We had a professional photograph taken, with me in the centre and Father and Mother on each side. As in most photographs of the day, I had my arm around my mother, since somehow she did not find it natural or comfortable to put her arm around me. I had my hair done in the most flattering way: two plaits of hair laid across the top of my head, one on top of the other, and two plaits hanging down my back. Each plait was secured with a navy ribbon. In addition to the new dress, like most of my friends I also got a navy skirt and a shirt with a sailor collar. This was how ‘proper' European girls were dressed.

Then one day disaster struck. I was walking home with Ilonka after a party when we came across a puddle in the road. While she walked daintily around it, I decided to jump across. But it was too wide and I fell in. My dress, my beautiful dress with its embroidered flowers, was spattered with mud.
How can I ever show my parents?
I agonised. After discussing it with Ilonka, we decided to go home and try and clean it up. Fortunately my parents were out, so we locked ourselves in the bathroom, filled the tub with water and washed and washed and scrubbed and scrubbed. But the yellow and orange flowers just got duller.

My mother returned to find us still hard at work in the bathroom. We were made to open the door. She was scan
dalised.
You naughty ungrateful child!
she scolded.
Why can't you look where you're going?
All that scrubbing had just made things worse. The dress was somehow cleaned up, but it was never as beautiful again.

I was chastened. I knew I had to be much more careful in future, and do less jumping.

My mother claimed that I was a funny mixture of personalities. Usually I was a good girl but I was sometimes
wild
, which she did not like at all. I knew I had to be obedient, trust people and do what was expected of me. I followed what my father and teachers and friends asked of me without much thought. But then suddenly I did dangerous, impulsive things, according to my mother. I swung on the gates to the schoolyard and partially crushed my right hand.
Why couldn't you look at what you were doing?
I had to have my hand bandaged and could not write for a while, but it finally healed. Then one day as we were playing ball on the roof of the garage at the same level as the school garden, the ball fell down into the courtyard several metres below. One of the boys called out:
Jump down, Ester, and get it!
And that is what I did, impulsively, fearlessly. As I landed, my right leg hit the corner of a loose brick, which tore a slice of flesh off my shin. I was rushed to a nearby doctor, who took a pair of scissors, sterilised them in a flame and cut the slice off, leaving a hole in my leg. I finished up in the big Stuttgart hospital where my leg was bandaged, I was given an anti-tetanus injection and told firmly that if I had any more accidents I could not be given another. I was prescribed a month's rest for my leg. This was very dull and a lesson for me. Later I tried to become more sensible and less adventurous and reckless.

There were always books. I loved reading. I read in Polish the trilogy by the celebrated author Henryk Sienkiewicz,
Ogniem i Mieczem
(By Fire and Sword). This was about the brave struggle of a Polish knight, Jan Skrzetuski, against the Cossack Chmielnicki's brutal uprising. Skrzetuski was in love
with the beautiful, loyal and courageous Helena. He swam the river at Zbaraz, the one I knew, to rescue her from the Cossacks. I identified strongly with Helena, in spite of our different looks. She had long black hair, pale skin and blue eyes, while my hair was a fair brown and my cheeks rosy. I did like my green eyes, however.

Secretly, I rubbed lemon juice into my cheeks, hoping to make them as pale as Helena's, but with little success. Mother and Father were pleased that I was reading this famous book and we spent time discussing the various characters, especially Mister Zagloba, a funny but cunning and brave man who got away with doing outrageous things because of his ability to make people laugh.

Our landlord Herr Gerold had been waiting for me to learn to read German script and acquire a reasonable comprehension of German. When I did, he gave me a popular children's book,
Die Biene Maja und ihre Abenteur
(Maja the Bee and her Adventures). I loved it and read it avidly. I also enjoyed reading books about other countries, distant and exotic. Father bought me a beautiful book,
The Seven Wonders of the World,
about places such as Mount Kilimanjaro, Rio de Janeiro, the Sahara Desert and the Himalayas. He helped me find the places on a map and then tested me on my knowledge. These names sounded so romantic! I dreamed about visiting them.

Father helped me start a stamp collection and I searched for stamps from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia and Germany from before and after the War. I stuck them neatly in an album and studied the maps he gave me so that I would know exactly where each country was. Ilonka and I were sent to matinee sessions in the city's cinemas to see
Natur filme
about wildlife. Father always supported such activities. He was
against ignorance.

I loved him more and more each day and he loved me. I was so happy! To me he was the best father in the world. On
his birthday I wrote him a card with loving words of gratitude. We had photos taken in front of Bet Bialik with him holding me close and admiring me. He let me comb his wavy black hair and plait it, just for fun. He also hugged me. Mother never did.

He and I liked to walk through the birch and pine forest not far from where we lived. Father would point out various trees and taught me to observe the different shapes of their leaves. We touched the mossy stones, smelled the flowers and talked for hours.

One day when Mother was sick and could not accompany Father to the opera, he offered to take me. This was a thrilling opportunity, beyond my wildest dreams. I put on my best dress and set out proudly on Father's arm to the imposing Stuttgart Opera House. We saw Verdi's
Rigoletto
. What a story of a woman's love and the nasty lord's betrayal of her! When Gilda died, tears flowed down my face. The music was stirring and I knew that this would become my favourite opera.

That night Father opened doors for me and let me sit down first just as if I were a grown-up lady. I certainly felt like one. It was one of the best evenings of my life.

I was now eleven years old and for our summer holiday we went to a small village called Wurzach. On the way we stopped at a lake surrounded by a pine forest. I could not swim very well, though I had been instructed at many hateful lessons at the Stuttgart Municipal Swimming Baths. But I paddled at the edges and experienced a physical thrill as I moved through the cool water amid those magnificent trees. In Wurzach I rediscovered that being free in nature made me happy. The village was surrounded by flower-strewn meadows with red and orange poppies, daisies and the bluest corn-flowers. I ran through the long grass, laughing and made daisy chains.

When we returned to Stuttgart, my parents became preoccupied with getting out of Europe. The chances of our obtaining a prized American visa were not good. We tried so many times by making the trip to the place outside the city where migrants to the United States were being
processed.
We would sit waiting for hours and hours, only to be told at the end of the day to come back again later. Nobody cared that Father had taken the day off work and I had missed school. We also attended regular orientation days at the American Consulate, where one of the officials, an ignorant woman in Father's opinion, took it upon herself to lecture us on American manners. If and when we got there, we would be able to blend in and be accepted, she told us. At meals we were not to hold our knife and fork one in each hand at the same time, as I had always been taught.
No – this is un-American
. We should cut food such as meat first, then put down the knife and eat the cut-up piece with the fork. We, the intending migrants, listened to her with amazement.
Who was she to teach us manners?
My parents pointed out later that she showed a lack of sensitivity and understanding of our world and our experience of centuries of European culture.

At the beginning of 1949, after three-and-a-half years of waiting for some sign of an American visa, my parents decided that we would go on Aliya to Israel. I was overjoyed. They invested in a refrigerator to take with us. The day it was delivered they were out, and I spent hours polishing it, ready for their inspection. Here was proof that we were really going! I would be a Hebrew-speaking Israeli girl, living there and learning, just as I had been prepared by Bet Bialik. But heartbreakingly, it was not to be. My father was found to have kidney stones and had to go to the big hospital in Stuttgart to have one kidney removed. He was not healthy enough for life in Israel, this new young country that needed fit pioneers
rather than the frail or sick, no matter how dedicated or educated.