The author's father wrote a poem, quoted before the beginning of the story:-
"The Sunken City
"Like one lost in the fog in the evening,
groping to find that lost road
toward the City,
which yesterday, in the earthquake,
sank into the Bottomless Lake;
but people were expecting him there longingly,
desires, beliefs, goals, and battles,
wife, ecstasy, music, life;
but he doesn’t yet know
that all this has been lost beneath the surface;
he just keeps going, or would go, but false sound shadows
lead him astray from the path:
woes, slogans, echoes, songs,
foghorns sounding alarms,
a will-o’-the-wisp, a phantom, a fog mirage;
in the heavy, dense silence that aches in sympathy,
the dark wings of the shadows of fate rustle,
a witch’s gloating cackles,
the withering horror of the deaf darkness
gapes, like the throat of execution day,
from its ice caves of distant old age,
a wolf howls, a hyena laughs,
and the dog of death barks: —
"Oh, where have you gone, Sunken City?
"Oh, where are you, Life, Youth?"
"János Darvas (The Author’s Father) 1929"
And the poem is all too appropriate for a beautifully written story that begins in Berlin with a seven year old watching her classmate, playmate, neighbour and first sweetheart, Kurt Blumberg, being beaten by men with truncheons, long past his falling limp on the sidewalk, for being a Jew.
"The day after they killed Kurt, Father did not allow me to go back to school. Though I loved going, I was glad not to have to go out alone. I was afraid of the men in their black boots and their red armbands."
The ordeal of crossing the border into Czechoslovakia is chilling, and it's only the beginning yet.
................................................................................................
Prague was lovely.
"The white, upright blossoms of the chestnut trees lining the boulevards glowed like candles among the dark green leaves of their crowns. From the old cobblestone streets, the city’s ancient churches rose toward the heavens, their gilded cupolas glistening in the sun. The river Vltava meandered through the city, dividing the Old Town from the New.
"In the Old Town were the bustling marketplaces that had been there since time began. In the New Town were cultivated parks and elegant homes. On a hill, towering majestically above it all, stood Hradcany, the castle of the kings of Bohemia and in modern times the home of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, founder and first president of Czechoslovakia."
"I looked forward to the spring festivals. People danced in the streets to the resounding Czech oom-pah-pah music. Sometimes I walked on the sidewalk holding Mother’s hand, keeping pace with the parade of people in national costumes. They wore crowns of flowers with ornamental streamers flowing on the air like opening blossoms. Their full skirts swished as they danced, and their embroidered vests flashed in the sun. The music drifted into the air as vibrant and varied as the balloons that floated up, up into the sky, their strings wiggling like tails."
But the Nazi threat loomed. Miriam was sent to boarding school nearby by her father, for safety. Friends of parents discussed leaving for France and advised Miriam's mother to send children to England. There was a Nazi classmate and a Sudeten German teacher at school.
"“An Aryan is a superior human being of the German race,” Obermeier intoned, emphasizing the seriousness of his statement by drumming out each word against the blackboard with his birch."
This was a lie made up by nazis. Aarya is a Sanskrit term and literally means of Light, and has nothing to do with physical characteristics of any kind, but relates to inner enlightenment and its manifestation in life and conduct of a person. Cultured breeding, civilised conduct and high values in humanitarian terms is part of connotation of the word. It was stolen and twisted by nazis, and so was Swastik, and they falsified both.
................................................................................................
As Germans marched into Prague, her school closed, and everybody had to leave. Miriam and Angelika walked to Prague, eighteen miles by road, through fields and forests covered deep in snow, and list one another in Prague. Miriam arrived home next day, and they met Lex, but Steffie was taken by Germans herding masses of people outside the cafe into trucks.
"The city was devoid of Czech sounds. The guttural sounds of bellowed commands, the march of solid boots, and the rat-tat-tat of drums floated through the air along the boulevard. Troops swarmed through the city, trampling down the snow. Patrols scoured the streets. Paralyzing fear spread through the city, shuttering windows and doors. I tried not to be afraid and pretended I did not see the patrols.
"We crossed the marketplace. The vegetable stands were tightly wrapped with tarpaulin. A few peasants stood around silently, their arms folded across their chests, watching soldiers at the other end of the marketplace toppling the statue of Masaryk. My head was tightly tucked into my coat collar in the hope that perhaps I would not be seen. Mother tightened her hold on my hand and pulled me along. We took the long way around to the Café Kotva. We walked as fast as we could, trying not to cause suspicion. Several times we ducked into doorways to avoid the armed patrol.
"My heart beat faster when I saw Chris walking on the sidewalk across the street with his father. I was about to call to him when my mother squeezed my hand so tightly it hurt. I had been told that I must not recognize anyone, lest I implicate them or they us. When I saw Chris I forgot the admonition. Our eyes met and held for a moment as he walked past. I tagged along beside my mother, my heart splintering into a thousand shards."
They were attended to in Kotva by the solicitous Zelezny.
"Suddenly the shouting stopped and heads turned to the entrance of the street. Trucks were backing into the cul-de-sac and forcing people against the buildings, closing off the street. Flanked by SS officers in their black and silver, soldiers jumped out of the trucks, rifles at the ready. Shrill voices rose against the Café’s window as women, children, and men were herded toward the trucks. Steffie was among them. Lex stretched his arm across the bobbing heads in a vain attempt to reach Steffie’s hand. She was pushed farther and farther away from him and finally forced by rifle butts into a truck. Her hands clung to the tailgate as it slammed shut. The packed truck drove away and another backed into the street. More people were rounded up. The ones left behind forced themselves into the Café in an attempt to get away, and Lex was pushed against the far wall."
Zelezny fed them and put them up for the night, since it was curfew already. Miriam was sent a way by her mother through the underground resistance channel to England, handed from stranger to stranger until she arrived, various stationmasters and their wives and other strangers feeding her and looking after her along the way. The descriptions here are very evocative, the beauty of desolate winter landscape and her train ride and walk up in Tatra mountains, the slide down into Poland and ride to Danzig and further and the couple in Gdynia, and the impressive honesty and kindness of the series of strangers along the way from school to Prague to Gdynia to Carlisle who help, feed and shelter the solitary child.
................................................................................................
Miriam arrived in England, at Southampton, in May after leaving Prague in March.
"Hungry, sick, and tired, I hardly cared where I was going. Dunes and downs and houses floated by like a hazy dream.
"At Victoria Station in London, we were unloaded and hauled off to a hostel, where I had a bath, ate my first meal in five days, and fell into a sound sleep between clean sheets.
"The following day, a woman dressed in a tweed suit walked me through streets covered with black fog. Lamps shed a dull sepia glow that formed weak pools of light on an invisible street. Her flashlight guided us one slow step at a time. The hall of the station was brightly lit and the people on the platform milled around casually and unperturbed, while I kept looking behind me for a column of soldiers to round us all up. The strange sound of the language, the different looking streets, the unaccustomed color of the official uniforms kept me in a constant state of anxiety."
"She looked at me intently. “Carlisle,” she repeated. I nodded. She smiled, patted me on my knee, and left. I had no more idea where Carlisle was than I had known where Katowice or Goteborg was, nor did I have any idea in which direction I was traveling. There was no end of unknown places in the world. I seemed destined to spend my life traveling on trains or on foot from town to village with no permanent place to land. I belonged nowhere."
"New landscapes sped by: green pastures of lush grass neatly parceled by hedges dividing one from another, gardens attached to bungalows like colorful aprons. This then was England where my mother believed me to be safe, but I did not feel safe. I felt as if I were skimming across a thin sheet of crackling ice that was going to give way any moment and send me plunging into an abyss of darkness to drown."
She was met with and taken home.
"The car slid through a wrought iron gate. A shiny brass plate emblazoned with the word “Nazdar” announced the entry to Miss Masters’s estate.
"What was the familiar Czech word for “so long” doing at the end of the world? Later I learned that Miss Masters had been to Prague twice. She had memorialized her visits with the copper sign, but it was the only Czech word she knew.
"The house stood on the crest of a hill, against dark trees rising into a hazy May sky. The view from its windows, which I came to know well, was of emerald meadows, lush and brilliant, gliding into distant blue-black woods. The nearer gardens were manicured lawns defined by the red and lavender blossoms of vibrant rhododendron shrubs. Beyond the circular cobblestone courtyard and through the woods, willows encircled a lake. It was fed by Eden Brook, which flowed through the village of Brampton. A narrow arched bridge led to a small island covered with azaleas and rhododendron. In time, this would become my favorite spot. I would sit hidden from view amid the greenery and wonder about what would happen next."
Miriam worried about her mother, and when she'd learned English well enough, asked Miss Masters how she could find her. She wrote as per her suggestion, and learned that Nora and Chris were in Sussex. Nora was a poor correspondent, and wrote only to say Chris had been killed by a car. Her mother wrote about getting papers from Gestapo to leave, but finally she lacked money for a ticket, and no one helped. Angelika and her family were taken by Gestapo, and Lex was sharing the apartment of Miriam's mother while their spouses were taken by Germans.
................................................................................................
Miriam was sent by Miss Masters to Brighton & Hove school, and was subjected to pranks until her school performance surprised everybody. War had parents remove daughters, and Miriam was sent to Denbigh in Wales, then Kettering and then to another school, Long Dene school, to which she walked from Windsor station. This school was run by a wiser, more sympathetic principal, and had a pair of Czech brother and sister students that Miriam was happy to bond with. The two girls relocated to London to study after graduating school, while their beaux - Miriam and the Czech boy Teo, his sister Lilka and another guy Anthony had paired up - went to join air force to fight in the war. Miriam found work in a magazine Sailplane and Glider, and was taken gliding by the editor who was an enthusiast.
"Mr. Blunt and I soared over the downs of Dover. Silently suspended between sea and sky, the turmoil of life became the stuff of insubstantial smoke. The soughing of the sea merged with air currents into an empyrean dream. We went every weekend. I loved it and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Then I would be able to float above the absurdity of the discord below."
Teo visited, and subsequently was shot down over straits of Dover.
"Then Anthony was shot down, and our lives caved in. There seemed to be no consolation anywhere among the ruins and death. The wailing of the air-raid sirens, the bomber formations overhead immediately after the sirens sounded, the bombings, the collapsing buildings, the gathering of the maimed and dead — these were constant reminders that life hung by a slender thread.
"For more than a year we had been reading warning signs about the German secret weapon. Suddenly, it burst across the sky and landed in our lives."
They thought those were German planes shot down.
"At last, the government announced that these were rockets — the secret weapons London had been warned about.
"Relieved to know what the secret weapon was, we were now afraid of not knowing where the next one would crash, and walked hunched in anticipation.
"The sirens screeched continually. As more than two thousand V-1 rockets trashed the city, Londoners humorously dubbed them “Doodlebugs.”"
Miriam's office was bombed and gone, so were the places they lived in, one after another. They learned to not unpack.
"London was swarming with struggling humanity from all parts of the globe. Refugees from Europe came to seek shelter. Soldiers in tunics and turbans, khaki and blue, choked the streets. Along with the daily tragedies went an aura of licentiousness. “Here today and gone tomorrow” was an attitude expressed in lethargic indifference or frenetic activity."
After yet another raid, they found an a room in a house.
"We found an attic room. The roof was so frail that every tremor caused by rocket, plane, and anti-aircraft burst threatened to bring it down.
"This cardboard house with the sword of Damocles hanging over it was the domain of a Polish refugee, a Mr. Rosenblum.
"It was Mr. Rosenblum who reminded us that neither Lilka nor I was Jewish, because we were not born of Jewish mothers.
"I finally realized what my father had tried to explain to me before we left Berlin. Religion had not been an issue in our house. Mother was a Catholic and Father was more a political activist than a Jew. But we had been labeled Jews. The thought, that my father had died as one, and that had I been captured crossing the border I might have died as a member of a group that did not accept me, was tragic. I wanted to weep.
"Lilka said that regardless of what Mr. Rosenblum believed, we were in the same predicament as he was."
They worked on Sabbath in the Rosenblum home, but finally left amidst a raid after having done their duty as air raid wardens, being unable to deal with the house rules. Miriam and Lilka met two flyers, Jacques Maron and Vaclav.
"I got a job at the Czech embassy-in-exile and worked there as an assistant to the consul while I continued going to the university. Lilka got a job with the Czech Red Cross."
Nora came to live with them. They got news, after the war was over, about their mothers' deaths. Miriam got work in Berlin with US army. Other two returned to Prague.
................................................................................................
Miriam arrived in ruined Berlin, hired as interpreter, and was assigned to set up censorship station and sent to Frankfurt, just as much rubble.
"New laws and rules for the conquered Germans were implemented and the hunt for Nazis was on. One way to capture them was through the mails, and setting up censorship had fallen to Tiny, Spike, and me."
"Tiny actually knew more than he was willing to admit. Since he preferred to live in Berlin rather than Frankfurt, he spat out information as fast as he could so that he could return to Berlin. Spike set up a rotating address card file filled with names and addresses of suspects given to us by the Information and Records group in our G-2 Division. We worked from June until September nonstop. By August, the ACEs were pouring in from Belgium, France, England, and Holland to man the file cards.
"Sacks of mail were dumped on the floor. Women ACEs compared names and addresses on the letter to the names of suspected Nazis on the card racks. If a name on the letter matched the name on the list, it was sent to Information and Records where it was analyzed and then handed to MPs for arrest.
"In September we flew back to Berlin and reported to Colonel Leahy.
"“I understand you did a good job,” he said blowing his cigar smoke to the ceiling. “Go find her some quarters.”
"I looked at him quizzically.
"“Housing,” he explained. He shook his head. “Where did they find you?”
"“You know sir. England.”
"“I suppose they must know what they’re doing.”
"“I understand that it was impossible to find Americans who spoke three languages fluently, sir.”
"“You speak three languages? English, I gather, isn’t one of them.”
"“American English isn’t, sir.”
"“What do we need three languages for? Let ‘em learn English.” He waved his “get out” gesture. “Dismissed.”
"With Colonel Leahy’s permission, we drove in his command car south on Potsdammer Chaussee to the suburb of Dahlem. Houses still standing there could be requisitioned, and I could choose which one I wanted. I picked one with a garden and a picket fence. Requisitioned houses had electricity, water, and heat allocated to them. I did not have the heart to evict the owners, the Ruperts, and permitted them to stay as servants. Though they did not much like being occupied, it was better than dying of cold and hunger. I was suspicious of them. They bowed and made explanations about not knowing what had happened. I wanted to shout at them: “Didn’t you smell the burning flesh? Didn’t you see the cattle cars with the thin arms of their cargo waving through the slits? Didn’t you hear the cries?” Instead, I insisted they live in the basement. It was still not punishment enough for them, I felt. They did get electricity, hot water, and food, which were denied most Germans who had no home left. I felt for their twelve-year-old daughter, Margot. War, hunger, and fear had scarred her — as it had me. Her arms were mere bones, her face was thin and pale, and her brown eyes were always moist, as if she were trying to prevent her tears from bursting down her cheeks. I remember my mother worrying about my thin, pale face. I brought Margot clothes and books and candies and sometimes took her with me to the theater. I could not bring myself to be civil to her parents."
"The houses were separated by large gardens, and though the gardens were unkempt, the street had a dreamlike quality. It sat surrounded by destruction like a film set sprung to life under the direction of a set designer. Nothing looked familiar. The trees I remembered were gone, the houses in ruins. I could not remember the name of the street where I had lived or where it had been. It might have been in what they now called the Russian Sector, the French Sector, or the English Sector. I did not know. I was relieved there was nothing to remind me of Kurt and my home. Yet sadness hung over me like a suffocating smoke."
"Each morning I walked through the ruins to the officers’ mess followed by haggard, dirty faces of the children begging for cigarettes and scraps of food. ... Inside the mess were tables, set with white linen, silver, glass, and china, laden with the most delectable foods baked and cooked by German cooks, who were permitted to take the leftovers home.
"During the heat of the day, the miasma of Berlin’s ruins gave off a vapor that covered the city with the stench of death.
"Old men and women, tied to carts like donkeys, dragged their possessions listlessly through the dusty streets. Money was worthless. American cigarettes were currency and everyone, French, English, Germans, and Russians wanted them. One carton of any American cigarette brought two-hundred dollars on the black market. Americans sold them by the thousands, converting the black market marks to dollars at the crowded exchange windows.
"Cigarettes bought diamonds, pearls, gold, silver, cameras, Meissen and Rosenthal china, servants, massages, cars — anything. We wondered who got to smoke them after all the trading. Probably the farmers.
"The Russians wandered around the American sector in search of fountain pens and watches. They would demand to race any German whose bicycle seemed faster than the one they had just confiscated. The Germans learned to let the Russians win the race. It became a standing joke."
"Eventually, the signs of East-West hostilities began and the sectors were closed off from one another."
Spike, who'd offered to sponsor Miriam so she could join him at Berkeley as she wanted to, reminded her to look him up if she came.
"Within a year the occupation troops and their dependents had replaced the warriors. Following the time-honored precepts of the pukka sahib, they scrupulously avoided unnecessary contact with the Germans except for the Frauleins and the swarms of hungry Germans who attended upon them as maids, waiters, janitors, and the like. All posters warning of venereal disease were dutifully removed, some clubs were closed, scrip money was issued, and the wives formed their usual clubs. Berlin lost its glitter."
................................................................................................
Miriam was sent by Miss Masters to Brighton & Hove school, and was subjected to pranks until her school performance surprised everybody. War had parents remove daughters, and Miriam was sent to Denbigh in Wales, then Kettering and then to another school, Long Dene school, to which she walked from Windsor station. This school was run by a wiser, more sympathetic principal, and had a pair of Czech brother and sister students that Miriam was happy to bond with. The two girls relocated to London to study after graduating school, while their beaux - Miriam and the Czech boy Teo, his sister Lilka and another guy Anthony had paired up - went to join air force to fight in the war. Miriam found work in a magazine Sailplane and Glider, and was taken gliding by the editor who was an enthusiast.
"Mr. Blunt and I soared over the downs of Dover. Silently suspended between sea and sky, the turmoil of life became the stuff of insubstantial smoke. The soughing of the sea merged with air currents into an empyrean dream. We went every weekend. I loved it and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Then I would be able to float above the absurdity of the discord below."
Teo visited, and subsequently was shot down over straits of Dover.
"Then Anthony was shot down, and our lives caved in. There seemed to be no consolation anywhere among the ruins and death. The wailing of the air-raid sirens, the bomber formations overhead immediately after the sirens sounded, the bombings, the collapsing buildings, the gathering of the maimed and dead — these were constant reminders that life hung by a slender thread.
"For more than a year we had been reading warning signs about the German secret weapon. Suddenly, it burst across the sky and landed in our lives."
They thought those were German planes shot down.
"At last, the government announced that these were rockets — the secret weapons London had been warned about.
"Relieved to know what the secret weapon was, we were now afraid of not knowing where the next one would crash, and walked hunched in anticipation.
"The sirens screeched continually. As more than two thousand V-1 rockets trashed the city, Londoners humorously dubbed them “Doodlebugs.”"
Miriam's office was bombed and gone, so were the places they lived in, one after another. They learned to not unpack.
"London was swarming with struggling humanity from all parts of the globe. Refugees from Europe came to seek shelter. Soldiers in tunics and turbans, khaki and blue, choked the streets. Along with the daily tragedies went an aura of licentiousness. “Here today and gone tomorrow” was an attitude expressed in lethargic indifference or frenetic activity."
After yet another raid, they found an a room in a house.
"We found an attic room. The roof was so frail that every tremor caused by rocket, plane, and anti-aircraft burst threatened to bring it down.
"This cardboard house with the sword of Damocles hanging over it was the domain of a Polish refugee, a Mr. Rosenblum.
"It was Mr. Rosenblum who reminded us that neither Lilka nor I was Jewish, because we were not born of Jewish mothers.
"I finally realized what my father had tried to explain to me before we left Berlin. Religion had not been an issue in our house. Mother was a Catholic and Father was more a political activist than a Jew. But we had been labeled Jews. The thought, that my father had died as one, and that had I been captured crossing the border I might have died as a member of a group that did not accept me, was tragic. I wanted to weep.
"Lilka said that regardless of what Mr. Rosenblum believed, we were in the same predicament as he was."
They worked on Sabbath in the Rosenblum home, but finally left amidst a raid after having done their duty as air raid wardens, being unable to deal with the house rules. Miriam and Lilka met two flyers, Jacques Maron and Vaclav.
"I got a job at the Czech embassy-in-exile and worked there as an assistant to the consul while I continued going to the university. Lilka got a job with the Czech Red Cross."
Nora came to live with them. They got news, after the war was over, about their mothers' deaths. Miriam got work in Berlin with US army. Other two returned to Prague.
................................................................................................
Miriam arrived in ruined Berlin, hired as interpreter, and was assigned to set up censorship station and sent to Frankfurt, just as much rubble.
"New laws and rules for the conquered Germans were implemented and the hunt for Nazis was on. One way to capture them was through the mails, and setting up censorship had fallen to Tiny, Spike, and me."
"Tiny actually knew more than he was willing to admit. Since he preferred to live in Berlin rather than Frankfurt, he spat out information as fast as he could so that he could return to Berlin. Spike set up a rotating address card file filled with names and addresses of suspects given to us by the Information and Records group in our G-2 Division. We worked from June until September nonstop. By August, the ACEs were pouring in from Belgium, France, England, and Holland to man the file cards.
"Sacks of mail were dumped on the floor. Women ACEs compared names and addresses on the letter to the names of suspected Nazis on the card racks. If a name on the letter matched the name on the list, it was sent to Information and Records where it was analyzed and then handed to MPs for arrest.
"In September we flew back to Berlin and reported to Colonel Leahy.
"“I understand you did a good job,” he said blowing his cigar smoke to the ceiling. “Go find her some quarters.”
"I looked at him quizzically.
"“Housing,” he explained. He shook his head. “Where did they find you?”
"“You know sir. England.”
"“I suppose they must know what they’re doing.”
"“I understand that it was impossible to find Americans who spoke three languages fluently, sir.”
"“You speak three languages? English, I gather, isn’t one of them.”
"“American English isn’t, sir.”
"“What do we need three languages for? Let ‘em learn English.” He waved his “get out” gesture. “Dismissed.”
"With Colonel Leahy’s permission, we drove in his command car south on Potsdammer Chaussee to the suburb of Dahlem. Houses still standing there could be requisitioned, and I could choose which one I wanted. I picked one with a garden and a picket fence. Requisitioned houses had electricity, water, and heat allocated to them. I did not have the heart to evict the owners, the Ruperts, and permitted them to stay as servants. Though they did not much like being occupied, it was better than dying of cold and hunger. I was suspicious of them. They bowed and made explanations about not knowing what had happened. I wanted to shout at them: “Didn’t you smell the burning flesh? Didn’t you see the cattle cars with the thin arms of their cargo waving through the slits? Didn’t you hear the cries?” Instead, I insisted they live in the basement. It was still not punishment enough for them, I felt. They did get electricity, hot water, and food, which were denied most Germans who had no home left. I felt for their twelve-year-old daughter, Margot. War, hunger, and fear had scarred her — as it had me. Her arms were mere bones, her face was thin and pale, and her brown eyes were always moist, as if she were trying to prevent her tears from bursting down her cheeks. I remember my mother worrying about my thin, pale face. I brought Margot clothes and books and candies and sometimes took her with me to the theater. I could not bring myself to be civil to her parents."
................................................................................................
"The houses were separated by large gardens, and though the gardens were unkempt, the street had a dreamlike quality. It sat surrounded by destruction like a film set sprung to life under the direction of a set designer. Nothing looked familiar. The trees I remembered were gone, the houses in ruins. I could not remember the name of the street where I had lived or where it had been. It might have been in what they now called the Russian Sector, the French Sector, or the English Sector. I did not know. I was relieved there was nothing to remind me of Kurt and my home. Yet sadness hung over me like a suffocating smoke."
"Each morning I walked through the ruins to the officers’ mess followed by haggard, dirty faces of the children begging for cigarettes and scraps of food. ... Inside the mess were tables, set with white linen, silver, glass, and china, laden with the most delectable foods baked and cooked by German cooks, who were permitted to take the leftovers home.
"During the heat of the day, the miasma of Berlin’s ruins gave off a vapor that covered the city with the stench of death.
"Old men and women, tied to carts like donkeys, dragged their possessions listlessly through the dusty streets. Money was worthless. American cigarettes were currency and everyone, French, English, Germans, and Russians wanted them. One carton of any American cigarette brought two-hundred dollars on the black market. Americans sold them by the thousands, converting the black market marks to dollars at the crowded exchange windows.
"Cigarettes bought diamonds, pearls, gold, silver, cameras, Meissen and Rosenthal china, servants, massages, cars — anything. We wondered who got to smoke them after all the trading. Probably the farmers.
"The Russians wandered around the American sector in search of fountain pens and watches. They would demand to race any German whose bicycle seemed faster than the one they had just confiscated. The Germans learned to let the Russians win the race. It became a standing joke."
................................................................................................
Miriam rescued a woman lying on a sidewalk next to the neighbour's garden, fed and revived her, and recognised her as the dance teacher she'd known in Berlin. Genia told her about having been with Lex and Tilly both at Theresienstadt, and their being taken away to extermination camps in last week's of war. Genia was determined to go to Leipzig to find her family, and Miriam helped her.
Miriam rescued a woman lying on a sidewalk next to the neighbour's garden, fed and revived her, and recognised her as the dance teacher she'd known in Berlin. Genia told her about having been with Lex and Tilly both at Theresienstadt, and their being taken away to extermination camps in last week's of war. Genia was determined to go to Leipzig to find her family, and Miriam helped her.
................................................................................................
"Eventually, the signs of East-West hostilities began and the sectors were closed off from one another."
Spike, who'd offered to sponsor Miriam so she could join him at Berkeley as she wanted to, reminded her to look him up if she came.
"Within a year the occupation troops and their dependents had replaced the warriors. Following the time-honored precepts of the pukka sahib, they scrupulously avoided unnecessary contact with the Germans except for the Frauleins and the swarms of hungry Germans who attended upon them as maids, waiters, janitors, and the like. All posters warning of venereal disease were dutifully removed, some clubs were closed, scrip money was issued, and the wives formed their usual clubs. Berlin lost its glitter."
................................................................................................
Miriam travelled to Prague to see Nora who said she'd information about their mother but wouldn't write it.
"“Where are you going?” the conductor asked.
:“Prague,” I replied, not certain I wanted to continue the journey.
"“This train does not cross the border.” I nodded. “No one travels this route. Don’t know why we run it. The border tracks are full of Germans.”
"“What are they doing there?”
"“They’ve been expelled from Czechoslovakia.”
"“Poetic justice,” I said.
"“An eye for an eye. They live in the cattle cars they used to use to transport Jews to concentration camps.”"
"A group of displaced Germans followed me to the border. One man kept pace by my side.
"“I’m just a butcher. I knew nothing of what was going on,” he said, tears streaming down his face.
"That was the theme of every German I had met. Not one admitted to knowing anything about what had happened, nor did the men admit to fighting at the Western Front. The whole Wehrmacht, according to their stories, had been fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front. I regretted handing out my K-rations."
...............................................................................................
Miriam was thrown in prison by Czech police in Pilsen and was let go after she showed her Czech passport, but that meant she couldn't leave. In Prague, she met Lilka and Vaclav, who told her about things worsening.
"“They’re canceling the pilot licenses of ex-RAF flyers,” Vaclav said, still watching the swirls in his wineglass.
"“What do you mean?”
"“They’re accusing the flyers who fought in England of having fought for capitalism, and they’re sending them to the mines in Slovakia. Re-education, they call it. Can you believe it?” Lilka answered."
They were planning to escape, and Miriam joined them after visiting Nora who told her about their mother - she'd been identified as Jewish despite being a German Catholic, and deported to Riga after Theresienstadt. The official who finally gave the document after being bribed twice had been hostile.
"My sweet, gentle, fastidious mother had died an ignominious death in filth and despair. The thought drove me out of the house. I rushed out into the village street and walked and walked till I came to the woods. I sat down on a hillock and tried to shake the image of Mutti sitting motionless among the skeletons, the skin over her shaven skull covering an emaciated head, bones like dead and broken sticks, her blank eyes watching with terror the trucks that gather human beings to be fed into their ovens and their gas chambers. And Father. What happened to him? Nothing about him. Not his name. Not where he went, not where he died. The solid, firm man of my childhood was gone as if he had never lived. A wayfarer leaving no footprints.
"As I sat on the hillock, a pounding, simmering fury bubbled through my veins threatening to drive me insane. I pressed my fists against my temples, trying to tranquilize my raw nerves. Poisoning rage begun years before was released in a violent flow of tears. They poured through my locked fingers. The raw, numbing anguish of two generations of loss and disappointment coagulated in my veins. A part of me died eternally on that hillock."
"Nora sat with her hands in her lap and looked at me through her red-rimmed eyes.
"“I could not have made the choice of sending my daughter away without knowing what might happen to her,” Nora said.
"I realized then the anguish that choice had cost my mother. The pain ripped through my very bones. I was overcome by Nora’s weeping. That ratty piece of paper had confirmed Mother’s death with an official seal of certainty and opened the door to suppressed pain."
Miriam returned to London after her contract with the U.S. army was over, and having considered options, decided on U.S..
"I placed Uncle Charles’s letter in a folder and walked to the American embassy. I was still not free of past images. The ruins I passed along the way still connected the wires in my head to the sound of a bomber formation and urged me to run.
"The embassy was crowded and I was tempted to leave and come back another day, but a young man engaged me in conversation.
"“Are you going to America?” he asked, his eyes beaming.
"“Yes, are you?”
"“Of course.”
"The door to the consul’s office opened and it was my turn. I sat opposite a young man who seemed totally uninterested in what he was doing.
"“Identification?” I handed him my Czech passport. He opened it, read the first page, and threw it on the desk.
"“The Czech quota is closed.”
"“Which quota is open?”
"“The German quota is unlimited, but that certainly isn’t going to help you.”
"I took the passport from the desk, opened it to the front page, and pointed to Cologne.
"“You were born in Germany?”
"“Yes.”
"“That’s different. You can have a visa in about two weeks, if you have a guarantor.”
"What irony, I thought. The former enemy of the United States had an unlimited quota to enter America, the conquered Czech did not."
Miriam flew to U.S..
"As the plane sailed over the tranquil sea, the smoldering rage that had begun in Berlin when I was a child fell away, and I felt a sense of peace, something I had not felt in a long time. In my pocket I carried the almost weightless remains of my old life: a cracked and faded black-and-white photograph."
Miriam lived on in U.S. and had two daughters, part Hungarian and part Belgian. Nora divorced Vaclav and lived on in Prague, Miriam met her several times over the years in Prague. Lilka and Vaclav migrated to Australia.
"Each spring, when the buckeye trees bloom in the Sierra foothills, their erect blossoms, white against the tree’s green foliage, remind me of the chestnut trees in Prague.
"It took thirty years before I could bring myself to return. I have been there during the Communist era and after, but I have never gone to Terezin — the concentration camp near Prague where my mother spent some of her last days. The city holds no terror for me now. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I see a beautiful city that beckons me with its Gothic churches, its Renaissance architecture, and its cobblestone streets, and yet I am saddened when I sit on a bench on the Letna or wander through the parks. I long for the distant Prague, the one before I crossed borders to another world.
"Nora still lives there. We do not speak of the past. We visit her two sons and daughter. They are Czechs. They are all married now, but only one of her sons has children. Her four grandchildren are now in America.
"When Lilka and Vaclav completed their tour of duty in Riyadh, they settled in Australia. Their two sons are the new generation of Australians.
"My daughters are Americans, descended from a Hungarian grandfather and a Belgian grandmother.
"With each war and each new political folly, people are displaced and become citizens of countries other than their own, making a melting pot of the world, mixing the gene pool. Perhaps, one day, these new generations will have learned something from the follies of the generations that went before.
"The legacy of my past is a dichotomy of two selves. One half of me wants to be here, the other somewhere else. Wherever I am, it is the wrong place for part of me.
"I straddle two worlds, not fully comfortable in either. I can live anywhere but am at home nowhere. My roots are shallow, but they spread like fingers across the globe, encompassing the world."
Miriam travelled to Prague to see Nora who said she'd information about their mother but wouldn't write it.
"“Where are you going?” the conductor asked.
:“Prague,” I replied, not certain I wanted to continue the journey.
"“This train does not cross the border.” I nodded. “No one travels this route. Don’t know why we run it. The border tracks are full of Germans.”
"“What are they doing there?”
"“They’ve been expelled from Czechoslovakia.”
"“Poetic justice,” I said.
"“An eye for an eye. They live in the cattle cars they used to use to transport Jews to concentration camps.”"
"A group of displaced Germans followed me to the border. One man kept pace by my side.
"“I’m just a butcher. I knew nothing of what was going on,” he said, tears streaming down his face.
"That was the theme of every German I had met. Not one admitted to knowing anything about what had happened, nor did the men admit to fighting at the Western Front. The whole Wehrmacht, according to their stories, had been fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front. I regretted handing out my K-rations."
...............................................................................................
Miriam was thrown in prison by Czech police in Pilsen and was let go after she showed her Czech passport, but that meant she couldn't leave. In Prague, she met Lilka and Vaclav, who told her about things worsening.
"“They’re canceling the pilot licenses of ex-RAF flyers,” Vaclav said, still watching the swirls in his wineglass.
"“What do you mean?”
"“They’re accusing the flyers who fought in England of having fought for capitalism, and they’re sending them to the mines in Slovakia. Re-education, they call it. Can you believe it?” Lilka answered."
They were planning to escape, and Miriam joined them after visiting Nora who told her about their mother - she'd been identified as Jewish despite being a German Catholic, and deported to Riga after Theresienstadt. The official who finally gave the document after being bribed twice had been hostile.
"My sweet, gentle, fastidious mother had died an ignominious death in filth and despair. The thought drove me out of the house. I rushed out into the village street and walked and walked till I came to the woods. I sat down on a hillock and tried to shake the image of Mutti sitting motionless among the skeletons, the skin over her shaven skull covering an emaciated head, bones like dead and broken sticks, her blank eyes watching with terror the trucks that gather human beings to be fed into their ovens and their gas chambers. And Father. What happened to him? Nothing about him. Not his name. Not where he went, not where he died. The solid, firm man of my childhood was gone as if he had never lived. A wayfarer leaving no footprints.
"As I sat on the hillock, a pounding, simmering fury bubbled through my veins threatening to drive me insane. I pressed my fists against my temples, trying to tranquilize my raw nerves. Poisoning rage begun years before was released in a violent flow of tears. They poured through my locked fingers. The raw, numbing anguish of two generations of loss and disappointment coagulated in my veins. A part of me died eternally on that hillock."
"Nora sat with her hands in her lap and looked at me through her red-rimmed eyes.
"“I could not have made the choice of sending my daughter away without knowing what might happen to her,” Nora said.
"I realized then the anguish that choice had cost my mother. The pain ripped through my very bones. I was overcome by Nora’s weeping. That ratty piece of paper had confirmed Mother’s death with an official seal of certainty and opened the door to suppressed pain."
Miriam returned to London after her contract with the U.S. army was over, and having considered options, decided on U.S..
"I placed Uncle Charles’s letter in a folder and walked to the American embassy. I was still not free of past images. The ruins I passed along the way still connected the wires in my head to the sound of a bomber formation and urged me to run.
"The embassy was crowded and I was tempted to leave and come back another day, but a young man engaged me in conversation.
"“Are you going to America?” he asked, his eyes beaming.
"“Yes, are you?”
"“Of course.”
"The door to the consul’s office opened and it was my turn. I sat opposite a young man who seemed totally uninterested in what he was doing.
"“Identification?” I handed him my Czech passport. He opened it, read the first page, and threw it on the desk.
"“The Czech quota is closed.”
"“Which quota is open?”
"“The German quota is unlimited, but that certainly isn’t going to help you.”
"I took the passport from the desk, opened it to the front page, and pointed to Cologne.
"“You were born in Germany?”
"“Yes.”
"“That’s different. You can have a visa in about two weeks, if you have a guarantor.”
"What irony, I thought. The former enemy of the United States had an unlimited quota to enter America, the conquered Czech did not."
Miriam flew to U.S..
"As the plane sailed over the tranquil sea, the smoldering rage that had begun in Berlin when I was a child fell away, and I felt a sense of peace, something I had not felt in a long time. In my pocket I carried the almost weightless remains of my old life: a cracked and faded black-and-white photograph."
Miriam lived on in U.S. and had two daughters, part Hungarian and part Belgian. Nora divorced Vaclav and lived on in Prague, Miriam met her several times over the years in Prague. Lilka and Vaclav migrated to Australia.
"Each spring, when the buckeye trees bloom in the Sierra foothills, their erect blossoms, white against the tree’s green foliage, remind me of the chestnut trees in Prague.
"It took thirty years before I could bring myself to return. I have been there during the Communist era and after, but I have never gone to Terezin — the concentration camp near Prague where my mother spent some of her last days. The city holds no terror for me now. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I see a beautiful city that beckons me with its Gothic churches, its Renaissance architecture, and its cobblestone streets, and yet I am saddened when I sit on a bench on the Letna or wander through the parks. I long for the distant Prague, the one before I crossed borders to another world.
"Nora still lives there. We do not speak of the past. We visit her two sons and daughter. They are Czechs. They are all married now, but only one of her sons has children. Her four grandchildren are now in America.
"When Lilka and Vaclav completed their tour of duty in Riyadh, they settled in Australia. Their two sons are the new generation of Australians.
"My daughters are Americans, descended from a Hungarian grandfather and a Belgian grandmother.
"With each war and each new political folly, people are displaced and become citizens of countries other than their own, making a melting pot of the world, mixing the gene pool. Perhaps, one day, these new generations will have learned something from the follies of the generations that went before.
"The legacy of my past is a dichotomy of two selves. One half of me wants to be here, the other somewhere else. Wherever I am, it is the wrong place for part of me.
"I straddle two worlds, not fully comfortable in either. I can live anywhere but am at home nowhere. My roots are shallow, but they spread like fingers across the globe, encompassing the world."
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December 24, 2019.
ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-079-0
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December 24, 2019.
ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-079-0
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