The Quality of Mercy (33 page)

It seemed cold comfort to Edward and he felt uneasy praying standing up and with a hat on his head. He studied the English translation of the ancient Jewish prayer and, as the words echoed in his mind, they brought him a kind of understanding.

‘He who creates peace in heaven, may he bring peace for us and for Israel,’ the rabbi intoned.

Georg had not found peace in his beloved Austria, nor in England. Perhaps he was at peace now. Edward hoped it was so. He solemnly swore to the spirit of Georg that he would do his utmost to bring life and hope to the children in the trains shuffling their way over dangerous borders to a kind of safety. They, at least, must feel the quality of mercy.

He closed his eyes and offered up a moment of quietness – what his friend the Reverend Tommie Fox had told him was called a hesychasm – as he silently repeated words from the twenty-third psalm. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.’

He sighed.
Sursum corda
. Lift up your hearts! He offered up a prayer for Verity’s safety in Czechoslovakia and for Frank, who might soon be fighting Nazism on another battlefront. He hoped there was a God to hear it.

As he left the synagogue, words from
Measure for Measure
– perhaps Shakespeare’s bleakest play – came to mind. They seemed in some mysterious way to fit the time and the place.

Historical Note

The first
Kindertransport
refugee train left Berlin for England in early December 1938, some months later than I have it in the book, for which I hope I will be forgiven.

After
Kristallnacht
(the Night of Broken Glass) on 9 and 10 November 1938 when 367 synagogues were destroyed and the windows of all the Jewish shops left in the Reich were shattered, the British Jewish Refugee Committee appealed to the British Government to admit any Jewish children up to the age of seventeen from Germany and what had until the
Anschluss
been Austria. After a debate in the House of Commons this was agreed and, as a result 10,000 children were saved from the concentration camps. The last train departed from Berlin just two days before war broke out on 3 September 1939.

For more information go to www.kindertransport.org