The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival
Authors: Mona Golabek,Lee Cohen
Tags: #BIO004000
Copyright © 2002 by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.,
Hachette Book Group USA
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition : July 2007
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ISBN: 978-0-446-50666-3
Book design by Giorgetta Bell McRee
Contents
To my beloved mother, LisaThe music of your soul is eternal
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many individuals who participated in the fifteen-year journey to bring my mother’s story to life.
For her extraordinary insight and prose, enormous thanks are owed to Christine Burrill, without whom this book would not have been possible.
A profound thank you to Irene Webb and John Karas, for bringing the project to Warner Books; to Jamie Raab, for believing in the power of my mother’s life story; to Caryn Karmatz Rudy for being our guiding light; and to Harvey-Jane Kowal and Molly Chehak for their invaluable support.
Thanks to Lee Cohen for his great caring and devotion to the project, and to those individuals who gave him support, guidance, and wisdom—Lois Sarkisian, Alex Cohen, Brien Lopez, Susan Grode, Regina Seidman Miller, Belinda Casas-Wells, Deborah Oppenheimer, Al Landolph and Pam Somers, Tara Cook, Mark and Ann Goldblatt, Fred and Cheryl Cook. In memory of Sue Cohen.
Thanks to Dennis and Gina Schwartz, Martin Lewis, Hans Cohen, Bertha Leverton, David Jedwab, Honey Chester, Annette Saville, for their time, generosity, and memories.
Thanks also to Richard Burkhart, for his daily commitment every step of the way; Chuck Hurewitz, for his invaluable advice; Marc Whitmore, for his thoughtful assistance; and to Jesse Silver, Jackie Maduff, and my brother-in-law, Marc Kaye, for their insightful contributions and loving support through the long process.
And finally:
The deepest thanks
To my best friend, my sister, Renée: We had the greatest parents.
To Michele: You were Lisa’s angel.
To Sarah: Lisa loved you with all her heart.
To Jonathan and Rachel: Lisa is listening—and waiting to see where the music will lead you.
Several years ago, I was preparing for a concert that featured the Grieg piano concerto and found my thoughts turning to my beloved mother, Lisa. I remembered the last time I had played for her.
Although she had fought against it with everything she had, my mother had grown weak and fragile from illness. She yearned to sit at the grand piano in her living room and play, but she could no longer manage it. Instead, she watched and listened as I played.
As I began, I was a child again, her student, watching her at the piano, hearing her play those same heroic passages of the Grieg with a passion and intensity I knew would be difficult to match. My mother had lived an incredible journey and she had infused her music with everything she had experienced: her childhood with loving parents in Vienna before World War II; her escape to England aboard the legendary Kindertransport; her struggle to study her music while a war raged around her; and always, her endless fascination with that ramshackle building at 243 Willesden Lane, the hostel in the London suburbs where she lived as a young refugee separated from her family.
I watched my mother’s eyes as I played for her, and remembered how I loved my piano lessons. They were more than piano lessons—they were lessons in life. They were filled with stories of the hostel and the people she knew there. Her stories were my folklore, filled with bits and pieces about a kind lady named Mrs. Cohen, a mysterious suitor named Aaron who whistled the melody of the Grieg as a signal to meet him, and members of a clandestine committee named Gina, Gunter, and Paul. Sitting at the piano, I would close my eyes and listen to her gentle voice, and see the world and the people she had grown up with and loved.
Most of the names you read on these pages are the real names of Lisa Jura’s friends and family. Aaron’s name has been changed, because this character was an amalgamation of several boys who were influential in my mother’s life. Mr. Hardesty’s character, too, represents several Bloomsbury House officials. The facts and conversations that follow reflect my mother’s recollections, although I realize that some of her stories were clouded by time. In the places where there were gaps in her memory, my present-day research has filled them in. The spirit of the story is all hers.
When I finished playing for my mother that final time, she nodded her quiet approval and I moved to her bedside and sat there as she had sat at mine when I was a child. At the end, she was, I believe, at peace.
My mother was my greatest teacher, and my sister, Renée, and I became concert pianists because of her.
I know that Lisa Jura Golabek’s spirit continues to live, not only through me, but through all those she touched. Her legacy has inspired my music and my life and continues to do so every single day. I pass along her story in hopes it may enrich the passion and music that lie in each of us.
L
ISA JURA
took her appearance very seriously. She stood in front of the mirror for an eternity, arranging her dark red hair so that it peeked stylishly from under the wool hat she had just bought in the hand-me-down store. The hat needed the perfect tilt . . . just so. She had seen the models do it in the fashion magazines.
She was determined to look more sophisticated than her fourteen years. She was going to her piano lesson and there was nothing more important. Finally turning from the mirror, she smiled at the image of a saucy young girl.
After opening the front door quietly, so as not to disturb her family, she walked down the hallway of the crowded tenement and emerged from the solemn gray building, stepping onto the sidewalk of Franzensbrückestrasse in the heart of the Jewish section of the city.
As she had done every Sunday since her tenth birthday, Lisa boarded the lumbering streetcar and crossed Vienna, heading for Professor Isseles’s studio.
She loved the ride.
The images rushed by her window—the glorious Ferris wheel of the Prater amusement park and the blue and serene Danube—eerily accompanied by the distant rhythm of an oompah band. To go across the city was to enter another century—the era of grand palaces and stately ballrooms. Street upon street of marble and granite, of pillar and pediment. The spire of St. Stephen’s Cathedral danced by. Her father called it
“Der Alte Steffe”
—“Old Stevie.” Lisa thought it a silly name; it was much more grand than that, rising to the heavens like a castle in a fairy tale.
As the streetcar descended the broad avenue and passed Symphony Hall, Lisa closed her eyes, just as she had many times before, and imagined herself sitting perfectly still in front of the grand piano on the stage of the great auditorium. A hush fell over the audience. The keys shimmered in front of her, ebony against ivory. She could hear the opening of Grieg’s heroic piano concerto: the soft roll of the tympani building until the moment of her entrance. She straightened her back into the elegant posture her mother had taught her, and when the tension was almost unbearable she took a breath and began to play.
She could sense the excitement of the audience and feel their hearts beat in time with hers. The exhilaration of hearing the music inside her was so extreme that the bumps of the ride and the noise of the street no longer disturbed her.
When she finally opened her eyes, the car was passing the Ringstrasse, the majestic tree-lined boulevard where the Grand Court Opera House stood. She looked out the window in awe and waited for the driver to call her stop.
This was the Vienna of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, and Strauss, the greatest composers of all time. Lisa’s mother had filled her head with their stories, and she had made a secret vow to live up to their legacy. She could hear their music in the marble of the buildings and the stones of the streets. They were here. They were listening.
In a booming voice, the driver called out her stop. But today his words were strange and different. In place of the familiar “Mahler-Strasse” she was expecting, he called another name: “Meistersinger-Strasse.” Lisa’s heart stopped momentarily.
She climbed down into the great plaza. All the street signs had been changed; the Nazis did not approve of such a grand avenue being named after a Jew. She felt her fury grow but tried to contain herself. Getting upset would only interfere with her music. She forced herself to think about the lesson ahead, knowing that once she was at the piano, the world outside would disappear.
Although it was early, the café-lined streets bustled with energy. The gentle sounds of the “Blue Danube” waltz, mixing with raucous Dixieland jazz, returned the smile to Lisa’s face. The aroma of warm, fresh
apfelstrudel,
thick with sliced apples and cinnamon, made her long for a taste of her mother’s recipe—surely the best in all of Vienna.
Inside the cafés, well-dressed young men and women sipped their coffee, deep in animated conversation. Lisa imagined them all to be composers, artists, and poets passionately defending their latest works. She yearned to join them, to wear fine clothes and speak of Beethoven and Mozart—to be a part of that intoxicating café society. One day, when she made her musical debut, these streets, these cafés, would be hers.
When Lisa reached her destination, she stopped short. A German soldier, tall and emotionless, stood in the doorway of the old stone building that housed Professor Isseles’s music studio. The sun glinted harshly off the black rifle he held against his gray uniform.
She had been coming to the professor’s studio for nearly four years, but this was the first time anyone had been standing guard. She shouldn’t have been surprised, though; Nazi guards were becoming an increasingly menacing sight on the streets of Vienna.
He asked coldly, “What business do you have here?”
“I have a piano lesson,” she replied, trying not to be frightened by the soldier’s commanding presence or by the firearm on his shoulder.
“The professor will be waiting,” she continued in a loud, clear voice, the force of her words belying her true state of mind. The soldier looked up to the second-floor window. A figure stared down, then motioned that it was all right for the girl to come up. Lowering his weapon, the soldier moved away from the door and grudgingly allowed Lisa to pass.
“Come in, Miss Jura,” Professor Isseles said, greeting Lisa with his customary warm handshake. The stoop-shouldered, white-haired gentleman ushered her in past a chipped bust of Beethoven and a sideboard covered with stacks of yellow sheet music. She breathed in the aroma of the professor’s pipe tobacco. These sights and scents had become a friendly greeting—a signal that for the next hour, she could turn away from all else and be a part of the music she loved.
The professor’s stately Blüthner piano stood in the middle of the studio. It was richly polished, with ornately carved legs and a scroll-patterned music stand. On the wall hung her teacher’s prized possession—a photograph of Franz Liszt as an old man, surrounded by several students, including the professor’s teacher. He boasted that his teachings were a direct line from the master himself, and there was a worn mark on the photograph where he had so often placed his finger.
As usual, there was little small talk. Lisa put the score of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in C on the music stand and sat on the worn piano bench. She adjusted its height to fit her small stature.
“So, Miss Jura, was it difficult?” asked the professor.
“It was much too easy,” she teased.
“Then I expect nothing less than perfection,” he responded, smiling.
Lisa began to play the tender C-major opening theme. The professor sat forward in his chair and followed her progress with his copy of the score. When the simple theme erupted into cascades of descending arpeggios, she peered out of the corner of her eye to judge his reaction.
She hoped to catch him smiling. After all, she had learned the complicated first movement in only a week and had often heard him say that she was his best student.
But the professor continued listening with a stern concentration. When he had this expression, she imagined it was his sadness at not being able to play the piano anymore. Arthritis had stiffened his fingers, making it impossible to demonstrate the correct way of playing. What a cruel trick of fate to deny a pianist the ability to perform, she thought. She could not imagine a day when she would not be able to play.