The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond The Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival (11 page)

“Wait! My father’s cousin! Danziger! We could look for the cousin’s name!”

There were plenty of Danzigers in the phone book, especially in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood nearby, Golders Green.

“I’ll help,” Aaron offered gallantly.

“So will I,” said Gina.

“Me too,” Gunter chimed in.

“We’ll each call four of these numbers tomorrow,” Gina offered.

“And on Saturday Gunter will go with Paul, in case he needs help, all right?”

Lisa wrote down the phone numbers and handed them out. She decided that she would visit the four closest Danzigers in person, since she didn’t trust her English to the telephone.

“I love being part of a team!” Lisa said, overcome with excitement.

“We’ll call ourselves the Committee for the Resolution of All Ills,” Aaron pronounced.

Aaron put his hand in the middle of the table, and Gina, Paul, Gunter, and Lisa put their hands on the top.

“We’re the committee, right?” “The committee we are!”

Lisa received permission from Mrs. Cohen to switch her practicing to the hour after dinner, so she could spend time after work canvassing the neighborhoods. She loved having a plan, and memorized a little speech for herself, resolving to leave no stone unturned—she’d get Sonia out no matter what.

Knocking on doors proved more tiring than she had anticipated. None of the Danzigers said yes. The petite, determined figure in her neat pleated skirt walked up and down the streets of Golders Green, knocking on every door she could, but the answer was always the same: “We wish we could help, but . . .” These doors had been knocked on many times before, she realized; there had been many refugees before her.

It wasn’t just that families didn’t want to take an extra child, it was that the children of London themselves were being organized to evacuate. Houses were being boarded up and toddlers were being shipped to the country.

Sometimes, as Lisa made the clanking noise to unlatch a gate, she could see a person in the upper story lift a curtain and peer out. The shade would then be drawn, the bell not answered. They knew in advance what the pretty young girl would ask them and couldn’t bear to say no again.

The newsboys called out the evening’s headlines, which always included the words
Hitler
or
Poland.
Sandbags were piling up in front of store windows; there was a sense of urgency in the air.

Lisa had begged the people at work, but they were all as poor as she was. She knocked on shops near the factory, and never thought of giving up; she just resolved to approach things more systematically. She would find every Danziger in London if that was what it took.

When her stomach told her it was dinnertime, she would find the nearest underground station and make her way back to Willesden Green station. At the fish and chips shop, she picked up her pace so as not to be tempted to spend any of the few shillings she had saved.

After dinner Lisa would go to the piano, happy to lose herself in music. The late summer evenings were long and warm, and the large bay windows were left open onto the front lawn. Neighbors and passersby enjoyed a concert of classical culture from old world Vienna.

Before the evening was over, the five friends, Paul, Gunter, Aaron, Lisa, and Gina, would have a “committee meeting.” Paul reported that he had secured a sponsor for his little brother, but that so far there were no seats available on the Berlin Kindertransport—too many families were fighting for a chance to save their children.

Lisa had the opposite problem—a space on the train and still no sponsor.

At the end of yet another unproductive afternoon, Lisa walked up Riffel Road with her head bowed, on her way back to the hostel. A voice stopped her.

“Young lady, come here a moment. Please.”

It was the strange neighbor lady in black, leaning on a large wooden-handled rake. With her long dress and high-button shoes, she looked like the witch in Grimms’ fairy tales.

“I have too many cucumbers and tomatoes this week, would thee take them to Mrs. Cohen for me on your way?”

“Of course,” Lisa said politely, surprised at the strange English.

“I’ll get thee a bag. Please start under there,” she said, pointing to a dark green plant. Lisa hesitantly lifted the large leaves and was surprised to find half a dozen cucumbers waiting. She snapped them off and piled them on the lawn next to a neat stack of already picked tomatoes.

The woman still hadn’t come back. Lisa waited. Overcome by temptation, she reached for a juicy tomato, and bit in. The woman came out the door just as the warm juice exploded over Lisa’s chin and blouse.

“My, my! Look at thee!”

It was just an overripe tomato, but after a day of frustration and exhaustion, and doors shut in her face, Lisa couldn’t control herself and burst into tears.

“It’s nothing to worry about, I’ll get thee a towel.” When the woman returned, Lisa was still crying. She was ashamed of her tears in front of this stranger, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop sobbing.

“You poor dear. Things must be so difficult . . . difficult for all of thee,” the lady said kindly, making Lisa cry even harder.

The woman handed her a plain handkerchief, and Lisa gradually calmed herself.

“Tell me, what’s the matter, dear?” the lady asked with concern.

Lisa didn’t say anything right away, afraid she would start to cry again, but finally she found a voice. “My sister is still in Vienna. Please, please, do you know anyone that could help us be a sponsor?”

The woman’s name was Mrs. Canfield. She wasn’t the scary or strange specter Lisa had thought, but a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. She listened carefully to Lisa’s painful pleading, then promised to do all she could. She explained a bit of Quaker philosophy to Lisa, who was in no shape to understand it.

Accepting the handkerchief she was offered as a gift, Lisa backed out the door, carrying the vegetables up the street with a glimmer of hope in her heart.

Two days later, Mr. Hardesty called to leave word that a Quaker family in the north of England had agreed to sponsor Sonia and that expedited calls were being made to the Jewish Refugee Agency in Vienna. Sonia would be on the train within the week, and Lisa was delirious with joy.

The next day was Friday, September 1, 1939, and Lisa came home early for Shabbat. After the lighting of the candles, Mrs. Glazer read aloud from the air raid precautions pamphlet that had been delivered to the hostel that afternoon. The total blackout of London had been ordered. In anticipation of the bombing, bolts of black cloth were to be made into curtains and hung in the windows so no light would shine through. Gas masks previously stored in the basement were to be placed at the head of each person’s bed.

When the sun set that evening, no streetlights came on. Everyone gathered around the radio, which Mrs. Cohen had switched on in spite of the fact that it was the Sabbath. The sad, hushed children listened as the BBC reported that one million Nazi soldiers had marched across the border from Germany to Poland in the last twenty-four hours, with lightning speed, headed for Warsaw. A new word was added to the vocabulary—blitzkrieg.

Lisa went to sleep overwrought with worry, lying awake to the sounds of several children crying in the bedrooms down the hall. She thought of only one thing: Would Sonia make it?

The busy preparations continued the next morning. Lisa was hemming the curtains in the living room as Edith and Gina answered the doorbell. They greeted three of the nuns from the convent next door, who brought boxes filled with tins of food.

“We’re cleaning out the larder. We’ve been ordered to evacuate,” one of them explained.

“Thank you very much, sisters,” Mrs. Cohen said, coming up behind the girls.

“We would prefer to stay, but I’m afraid the bishop doesn’t see it our way. We’d like to offer you the use of our basement, if you’d like. The air raid warden says it’s the best basement on the block for a bomb shelter. Oh, and if anyone could find it in his heart to water the hyacinths for us, Sister Agnes would be most grateful.”

Mrs. Cohen thanked the sisters profusely, while Lisa helped carry the tins of sardines and meats to Mrs. Glazer, who read the labels, checking for nonkosher ingredients.

When she came back to the foyer, the nuns were leaving. One turned back and addressed Lisa. “We’d like to thank you for the beautiful music, we’ll miss it.”

“Thank you,” Lisa said, blushing.

“Miss Jura, will you come with me to my room?” Mrs. Cohen said, closing the door.

As she entered, Lisa noticed that the figurines and framed photographs were neatly wrapped and packed in boxes for protection from the possibility of bombing.

“I understand your sister is to arrive today,” she said, shutting the door to the inner sanctum.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mr. Hardesty called me to discuss where to send you. I understand that Mrs. Canfield has friends who will take Sonia, but that it might be difficult for them to take you as well.”

In the frantic emotions of the past few days, Lisa hadn’t even thought about her own future. Things had happened too fast to allow herself the luxury of plans and expectations. She’d almost forgotten that her stay at Willesden Lane was to be temporary.

Mrs. Cohen continued: “I told him that we would be willing to keep you here, even though we’ll only be allowed thirty ration books and you would be our thirty-second person. We’d be willing to tighten our belts a little bit, if you’d like to stay.”

Lisa bowed her head in gratitude and to hide the tears that were being shed all too often. She nodded yes. “Thank you very much,” she whispered.

“That’s settled, then. Please close the door behind you.” Lisa went to the door, but Mrs. Cohen called her back. “Wait a moment,” she said, opening the doors of the mahogany dresser and lifting out a stack of sheet music. “Would you like to borrow this?”

Lisa’s eyes widened at the sight. It was Chopin and Schubert and Tchaikovsky! A name was penciled neatly on the top of each book: “Hans Cohen.”

“Thank you so much, ma’am,” she cried.

Sonia was due to arrive on the 3:22 train at the Liverpool station that afternoon.

The train station was a madhouse. As fate would have it, the children of London were being evacuated that very weekend, and long lines of English toddlers were being organized by their parents and volunteers. They had tiny packs strapped to their backs and white paper identification tags fastened with strong twine through buttonholes.

A sign outside the station read: “Southern Railways Special Announcement: Sept 1,2,3 the following steam trains are required for the evacuation of children and will not be available for ordinary passengers: 9:30
A.M
., 11:30

A.M
., etc. all weekend long.”

Lisa located the volunteers from the Bloomsbury House, and they helped her to find Mr. and Mrs. Bates from Norwich, who also spoke with the odd-sounding thees and thous. They offered reassuring words about their farm and about their daughter, who was also Sonia’s age, and together they went to look for the special train coming in on track sixteen.

The waiting was an agony for Lisa, but finally the children began to emerge from the Kindertransport. The boys were dressed as Lisa remembered, in their finest wool suits and tiny ties; the girls in woolen dresses. In comparison with the lines of bright-eyed English children she’d seen outside (who had been promised a vacation in the countryside), these girls and boys looked exhausted and terrified.

Sonia was wearing her heavy maroon coat, even though the weather was warm. When Lisa saw the frail and serious thirteen-year-old come down the steep steps, she thought she would crumple on the spot from the rush of emotion and relief. Breaking away from the couple, she ran to meet Sonia, grabbing her tightly in her arms, calling her name over and over. “Sonia, Sonia, you’ve come, Sonia.” Again she was sobbing and couldn’t make her voice utter any of the words she had been preparing.

For a long moment they held each other, and it almost seemed she was home in Vienna again.

Lisa had told herself to be strong and positive to show her sister that everything would be all right, so she forced herself to stop crying. Mr. and Mrs. Bates had tickets on the train back to the north of England, which would leave from Paddington station in two hours, and they’d been lucky to get any seats at all. Lisa was desperate to make good use of every second of the thirty minutes they had been given for their reunion. The two sisters embraced all the way to the first-class café on the second floor of the station, where they were left alone for a private reunion. Grasping her pale sister’s hand on top of the white tablecloth, Lisa called the waiter, proudly showing off her English by ordering tea and sandwiches. Sonia politely nibbled at the unfamiliar food, while Lisa opened the package that her sister had brought her from Vienna. Her heart leapt to her throat. Inside was a silver lamé evening purse that had belonged to Malka’s grandmother and a book of preludes by Chopin—the one her mother had helped her learn. It seemed like yesterday. She was overwhelmed by emotion.

Opening the letter from her mother, she read: “Your father and I are so comforted to know that you and Sonia are both at last safe in England away from the dreadful place that our home has become. We are putting every effort now to find a way to get Rosie out. Take good care of our littlest treasure, Lisa, and know that all our prayers are for the day when we will be reunited.”

Attached to the letter was a photograph of Abraham. She was so grateful to have his picture—for try as she might, it was harder and harder to remember all the details of his beloved face. She stared at the photograph and was shocked to see that his hair was now totally white.

The thirty minutes passed in a heartbeat, and Mr. and

Mrs. Bates returned. Standing up regretfully, Lisa embraced her sister, trying to reassure the trembling child.

“The minute the bombing is over, you’ll come to London with me, I promise.”

Sonia was too frightened and emotional to respond in words. She clung to her older sister’s hand while Lisa helped with the difficult separation, taking Sonia’s suitcase and handing it to Mr. Bates.