The Runaway Family (7 page)

“Beyond your control,” agreed Ruth, “but true none the less. As far as the authorities are concerned you’re a Jew. The new laws apply to you as they do to the rest of us.”

Ruth could see Herbert was about to argue, and she was too tired. “Never mind,” she sighed, “let’s not argue now. Come to the table, I’ve made dinner for you.”

Herbert was happy enough to do as he was bid. The food, though plain, was a great improvement on what Frau Schultz had been in the habit of leaving him, and he found himself looking forward to the meal that would be waiting for him when he got home.

Laura’s Diary

24th July 1937

We have come to stay with Uncle Herbert in Munich. He wasn’t very pleased to see us and I don’t like it here. We are all sleeping in one room, except for Mutti and she’s got to sleep on the sofa in the living room. I wish we could go home again, but I know we can’t. I wish Papa was here. Uncle Herbert is his brother, but he’s not like him. Papa is always kind, but Uncle Herbert is always cross. He has a cross voice and a cross face and it’s nice when he goes to his office.

Laura paused, chewing her pencil thoughtfully, and then wrote,

25th July 1937

We can’t go out like we did at home, there is nowhere to play. Mutti took us to the park. Hansi and Peter played in the sandpit. I helped them. We made a castle with two girls. A man came and told us to leave. He said Jews weren’t allowed to play in the park. The nasty lady who was here when we got here was with him. She was smiling, but she was horrible.

Laura stopped writing and looked at what she had written in the notebook Mutti had found for her. Mutti had suggested she write a story. Laura had always loved writing stories and had done so as long as she could remember. At school the teachers used to encourage her, especially Fräulein Lederman, but that was until everything changed, when Fräulein Lederman had to leave and Fräulein Karhausen took her place. From then on Laura was left out. Oh, not from the actual classroom, just from the activities that went on inside it. She and two other Jewish children, Olga and Elfriede, were made to sit at the back… where they were ignored. Fräulein Karhausen never asked them to provide answers in class, even when nobody else could; she never looked at the work they produced, never corrected it, no stars were given, indeed their names weren’t even on the star chart. But Laura had continued writing. She began to keep a diary, which she wrote every evening when she had finished her homework, homework that was required but never looked at. Papa had given her a beautiful notebook in which to write her diary, but that, like everything else she owned, had been destroyed in the fire. All her thoughts and ideas had vanished in the smoke that billowed from the window into the night sky.

Ruth had not suggested that Laura start her diary again, she thought it would be unhealthy to keep a record of the dreadful things that had happened. They were best forgotten as soon as possible, so that the slithering skein of life could be grasped once more, and some sort of normality could be re-established.

“Why don’t you write a story?” she suggested. “One you could read to the twins. They always love your stories.” It was true, Hansi and Peter did always love her stories, begging her for new ones, but today there were no stories in her head, only the events of the last few days, churning and bubbling like an over-boiling saucepan. The men coming to the apartment. Papa being arrested. The fire. Staying with the Meyers. Finding the box. Suddenly their lives had been turned upside down, and Laura felt that if she didn’t write it all down, set it in some sort of order in her mind, it would overwhelm her and she would sink under its weight. Mutti needed her help. She, Laura, was almost eleven, after all. She must be strong and help Mutti, especially with the twins. They had always been her beloved brothers. She loved Inge, of course she did, but Peter and Hansi… she would be strong for them. They were too young to understand what was happening.

“When’s Papa coming?” Hansi had suddenly asked as he was being got ready for bed.

“Will he be here soon?” Peter had chimed in, finishing as he so often did his twin’s thought.

“Soon,” his mother had soothed, but Laura knew that she had lied. She didn’t know when and was only trying to comfort the little boys.

I should start this diary from the night of the fire, Laura thought now, and crossing out what she had written, began again.

19th July 1937

They took Papa away and we haven’t seen him since…

On the first Friday evening after their arrival at Herbert’s, Ruth had set the table for the Sabbath evening meal, carefully ironing the only white linen tablecloth she could find, before washing and laying out the silver and china she had discovered packed away in the sideboard. She polished two rather tarnished candlesticks, which still had the remnants of candles stuck into them, and set them in the middle of the table. Murmuring the familiar prayers, she lit them, and waited for Herbert to come home. As the children waited for him, seated round the table, they too seemed to be soothed by the familiar ritual of Friday evening. The meal would start when the man of the house, normally Kurt, but in this case Herbert, came home, but this evening Herbert did not come home. Kurt would have been to the synagogue, but Ruth knew that was the last place Herbert would be. She knew there was a synagogue not that far away, for she had discussed it with her brother-in-law. But when she had suggested she might take the children there on Saturday morning he had been adamant.

“It would be madness to go,” Herbert had stated. “I forbid you to go! Do you want to draw even more attention to your children? I forbid you to go.”

No, wherever Herbert was, he would not be at the synagogue this evening. Eventually she said the prayers herself and served the meal.

When the children were safely in bed Ruth sat in the living room, the table uncleared, and waited. At last she heard Herbert’s key in the lock, and as she turned to greet him saw the shock at what he saw before him register on his face.

“What’s all this mess?” he demanded, looking at the remains of the meal on the table.

“It’s your supper, Herbert,” she replied quietly. “It’s the Sabbath.”

“Well, I don’t want it!” he snapped. “You can clear it away.” When she hesitated he rounded on her. “You may not work on the Sabbath in your own home, Ruth,” he growled, “but you do in mine. I have no intention of sitting looking at this stuff. Put it in the kitchen. I don’t want it. I’ve eaten.”

“If you’d said you were going out, I wouldn’t have cooked dinner for you.” Ruth forced herself to speak mildly, though she could feel the anger welling up inside her.

“Oh? So now I have to account to you for my movements, do I?”

“Of course not,” Ruth replied, “but it seems a pity to waste food when we have so little of it.”

Herbert suddenly seemed to sag, and dropping into his chair said, “Just put it in the kitchen, Ruth, you can leave the washing-up until tomorrow evening if you must.”

Accepting this compromise, Ruth got up. After all, with the changed state of things, there was no way she could do no work on the Sabbath. She cleared the table, stacking the dishes neatly beside the kitchen sink, which was where Frau Schultz saw them the next morning when she called to demand her money.

“And she had the audacity to call
my
kitchen dirty,” she said to Frau Schneider, as she recounted her visit. “Dirty crockery and cutlery, in heaps by the sink. Nasty Jewish food. Beginning to smell in this heat, I can tell you.” She sniffed as if the smell was still in her nostrils. “No German would live in a pigsty like that.”

“No, indeed.” Frau Schneider nodded judiciously, even as she thought of the squalid state of her own kitchen upstairs where no one had washed a plate for days. “Just the Jews.”

Over the next few days Ruth slipped into a routine of cooking and cleaning for Herbert, for Frau Schultz, true to her word, and much to Ruth’s relief, did not reappear. Ruth spent time with her children, making them do some lessons every day, before taking them out for some fresh air in the afternoon. Not to the gardens, though. She dared not venture there again. She knew she had been stupid to ignore the notice and take the children there in the first place. She had put them at risk, and she was determined not to do so again.

Nor did she return to Frau Schneider’s shop, but walked the children further afield, to shops where they were not known, buying her groceries in different places, so that they were not recognised as “locals”. Herbert had given her some money, and so she managed to buy them all another set of clothes, pinafores and blouses for the girls, shorts and shirts for the twins. There was no money for shoes. Once she thought she saw Frau Schultz walking along the street behind them, but when she looked back a second time there was no sign of the woman, and she decided she must have been mistaken. Surely not even Frau Schultz would bother to trail them round the area to warn the shopkeepers that they were dealing with Jews. Surely not.

The days turned to weeks, and still there was no news of Kurt. In many ways Ruth wished they had found some way to remain in Gerbergasse, where at least they would be surrounded by people they knew. There might be news of the men who had been taken the night of the riot; such news would spread swiftly through the neighbourhood. There might be news of Kurt.

Ruth had written to Frau Meyer to thank her for her kindness and to tell her that they had reached Herbert’s in safety She’d asked if anything had been heard of those arrested. The letter she received in reply did nothing to raise her spirits.

Dear Frau Friedman,

Thank you for your letter. I am glad you and the children are safe with your brother-in-law. You are certainly safer than you would be here. Terror stalks our streets now, and we walk in fear of our lives.

Herr Rosen came back the other day. He’s been held in some sort of camp. A place called Dachau. He says that all the men from here are being held there. The conditions there are very bad. He has been let out because he has agreed to leave Germany with his family and never return. He came to collect them, but they have had to leave everything behind. Everything except what they could put into one suitcase, and that was searched by the Gestapo to make sure they weren’t taking anything of value. They went three days ago, and already another family have moved into their apartment.

So far nothing has been done with your shop. Leo boarded up the door, but it remains a burnt-out shell.

If your husband comes here I will tell him where you are, but I shall not write to you again, and ask you not to write to me. Who can tell if the post is safe?

God bless you all,

L

There was no return address on the letter, nothing other than the single initial to identify the writer, but its content struck fear into Ruth’s heart. She had done the right thing moving the children out of the area; she could only pray that Kurt would soon be let out of this Dachau place, wherever it was, and be able to come for them. If it meant leaving Germany, Ruth wouldn’t mind. What was left for people like them here, after all? Encouraged by the government and orchestrated by the Gestapo, the persecution was getting worse, more frequent, the ways of degrading and humiliating Jews becoming more inventive, more brutal.

This isn’t how I want my children to live, Ruth thought as she read and re-read the letter. Better we leave now. But where, with no money, no possessions? America? England? Palestine? How can we go? What should we live on?

She would show the letter to Herbert when he got home that evening and see what he thought about it. Probably he would say that Leah Meyer was being alarmist. He still thought that Jews who kept their heads down were in no real danger. He had become less concerned about her and the children being in his home recently, now that she was so careful to do nothing more to draw attention to them. He even played with the children sometimes, in the evening when he came in. He genuinely had difficulty in telling the twins apart, and often called them by the wrong name, which sent them off into paroxysms of laughter, and once he discovered that he could make them laugh, he found that he enjoyed doing so. One day he had come home with a present for each of them; soft toy rabbits dressed in striped trousers for the twins, some crayons for Inge and a book for Laura. The delight on the children’s faces as they opened the parcels was mirrored in his own, and Ruth could see he was becoming genuinely fond of them.

This evening, however, he came home late, well after the children were in bed, and at once Ruth could see that something was wrong. He seemed to have aged ten years since the morning. He looked pale, his skin, the colour of parchment, seemed more tightly drawn over his cheekbones. His shoulders sagged and his whole body seemed to have shrunk. Only his eyes gleamed, and they gleamed not with life, but with fear, continually darting in all directions as if he expected an attack.

“Herbert? Are you all right? What’s happened?”

For answer he simply shook his head and sank down into his armchair, burying his head in his hands.

“Herbert?” Ruth waited, but it was some time before her brother-in-law looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and disbelief.

“Herr Durst,” he said. “Herr Durst has left.”

Ruth knew that Herbert thought the light of day shone out of Herr Jacob Durst, the senior partner. She had often had to listen to Herbert extolling the abilities, the intellect, the steadfast character of Herr Durst, the mainstay of the firm.

“Left? Left the office?”

“They’ve thrown him out!”

“Thrown him out? Who’s thrown him out?”

“The other partners.”

“The other partners? Why? Why would they do that?”

“The firm was losing clients,” replied Herbert wearily. “Nobody wants a Jewish lawyer anymore. Just having his name on the letterheads has made the clients look elsewhere.”

“So, what’s going to happen?” asked Ruth.