Shattered Crystals, Mia Amalia Kanner [cat reading book txt] 📗

cursed the authorities for the mindless cruelty inflicted on children by their anti-Semitic vendetta.

I longed for summer, for an end to the cold nights, for the season when the grounds and forest would yield something other than tobinambour that I still struggled to make palatable for children and staff. I wanted wild berries and prayed that the local farmers would put aside some of their spring vegetables for us before they loaded their wagons and headed for the market.

When the cherry trees had barely begun to flower, news of a different departure spread through Chateau Montintin. Some of our children were to emigrate to the United States on a special visa. The visa was for a total of two hundred children, selected from all the OSE homes around Limoges. The children would travel under the auspices of the American Quakers and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. The wife of the President of the United States had used her influence and intervened to get this visa to bring Jewish children out of war-torn Europe.

We were allocated fifty places. The most vulnerable were to be sent, so children who were orphaned, who had lost one or both parents, were chosen. The visa stipulated they were to be under the age of twelve. Exceptions were made if adherence to the stipulation separated siblings. Too many families had already been torn asunder.

There was great excitement among all the children. I noticed very little outward jealousy among those not going though they must have been disappointed. They seemed pleased at the good fortune of friends. The lives of all the children had already been disrupted so often, change and separation was accepted as normal.

Before the fortunate fifty left for America, we already knew there would be a second Kindertransport to America. A few youngsters had already been chosen before the first group left. Instead of solemn farewells, the fortunate ones told each other, “We’ll see you in a few weeks, in America!”

Late in June, I was busy in the kitchen pitting cherries some boys had brought to me. Using just a small bit of our precious sugar ration, I thought I should be able to produce a tasty dessert. The children leaving for America on the second transport would soon be able to taste all the delicacies they could only dream about here. But I wanted them to remember me and the kitchen at La Chevrette for something other than the unpalatable tobinambour. I had tried mixing it with carrot and apple, and still, whenever I had to make it part of a meal, there were leftovers.

Madame Krakowski walked into the kitchen, an erect, upright figure. Even in summer, the directress continued to wear a dark, severe, high-necked frock. “Find your husband,” she said, “And come into my office, both of you.”

Her tone and manner were peremptory, so lacking in warmth it was easy for me to see why the children disliked the directress. “The fruit will spoil, Madame,” I said. “Can it not wait?”

“No, it cannot. Come now!”

I found Sal sweeping the bare wooden floor in our dining room. He stood the broom in a corner and said, “I don’t like it. Something is wrong.”

But when we entered her office, the directress was smiling. It was the first time I had ever seen a look of pleasure on her face. I realized with surprise that she was a handsome woman.

“My dear,” the Montintin administrator said now. “Your children can go on the transport to America. Ruth, Eva and little Lea, all three of them.”

“Are you serious?” Sal asked.

But I thought: Give up my children? That was impossible. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“Two children have fallen ill and have been denied health clearance,” Madame Krakowski said. “That leaves two vacant spots. You know the policy is not to separate siblings, so all three of yours can go.”

I was stunned. Send my children away? “No, Madame, it is not possible.”

“Mia, what are you saying?” Sal protested. “In America, they will be safe.”

When I continued to shake my head, Madame Krakowski said, “Go and talk it over between yourselves, and then let me know. But understand, I must have a decision tonight.”

We walked to our room. Sal was exuberant. “What wonderful luck,” he said.

“It’s the other side of the world, Sal,” I said. “I can’t agree.”

“Mia, we can all end up in Buchenwald,” Sal said.

“It is impossibly far. If there are difficulties, if they need help, we will be too far away to do anything.”

“There will be other adults to take responsibility,” Sal said. “Besides, they are not infants.”

“Lea is a baby, not even five yet,” I said. “The youngest child in the group is seven.”

“You’re being unreasonable and foolish,” Sal said. “Look at the girls here in La Chevrette and Chateau Montintin. They don’t have mothers or fathers, and they are all right. People will take care of Ruth and Eva and Lea in America, just as we care for the children here. And they will have each other.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to watch your children go. You weren’t in Montmorency when they left without me. But at least they knew exactly where they were going, and I knew I could get to them. This is different. We’ll never get to America. If they go now, we will never see them again. We will lose our children. There is an ocean between France and America.”

“That’s the whole point,” Sal argued. “An ocean between France and America.”

Could Sal not understand? “You are asking me to give up my children,” I said.

“An ocean between the Nazis and the girls,” he insisted.

We argued back and forth, going over the same ground. He was asking me to part with my children. The girls would be children alone in a strange land, I argued. How could I protect them if they were so far away? An ocean away from the Nazis and danger, he retorted. Was Sal right? Was I being selfish to want my children near me?

“Maybe just Ruth. She’ll be twelve soon. She is very mature for her age. And maybe Eva. She is already ten years old. But Lea is so little.”

“Please, Mia, even Lea could be in danger.”

“Who would harm such a little girl?” I cried. “No, no, I can’t give up Lea.”

The door cracked open. Ruth was standing in the doorway. What was happening? She knew not to enter without knocking.

“Ruth, what is it?”

“Please, Mama,” my daughter said. “Don’t shout. Why are you shouting at each other?”

“This is not a fight,” Sal said. “We are trying to make a very important decision. Tell me, Ruth, would you like to go to New York with the other children?”

“Do you mean it? Could I? Could I really?”

“See how happy she is, Mia?”

I looked at my oldest. What was the right way? It was such a big decision we had to make, and it was all happening too fast. I closed my eyes and saw the fifteen-year-old girls being spirited away by members of the Underground. Would this happen to Ruth? She was growing up. Dear God, I love my children. Help me, help me to make the right decision.

“All right, then,” I said slowly. “Let the two big ones go.”

“Oh, Mama, Papa, thank you!” She hugged each of us in turn and ran out.

Two days of frenzied activity followed. I wanted the two girls with me all the time, but they had to be rushed to the village for the required medical examination and their certificates of health. Their clothes had to be sorted, cleaned, and packed. And I still had all my work.

Ruth and Eva were occupied as well, collecting information about America and accepting congratulations from the other children. They cut sheets of precious paper into three inch strips, found old cardboard, and hand-stitched autograph booklets. Now they went over their treasures and traded their American stamps and coins for French ones. Eva wandered in the meadow looking for wild flowers to enhance her dried flower collections.

Sal found an unused school notebook. In it, he printed his parents’ full names and their dates and places of birth. Below that he wrote the names of his four sisters and brother and those of their children and the dates and places of their birth. He copied all the addresses as they appeared in his address book though he could not be certain if they were still correct. He was less sure about his sister Malia who the Nazis had deported to Poland in 1938.

Almost three years had passed since then. In the interim, Russia and Germany had signed the Nazi-Soviet pact dividing Poland between them. And just a few days ago, on the 22nd of June, 1941, the radio broadcast that Russia and Germany had declared war against each other. Now, there was fighting in Poland and no way to know exactly where Malia lived, if at all. Similarly, he had last heard from his sister Fanny in Berlin more than a year ago. We had no idea how Jews were surviving in Germany.

On a separate page, Sal wrote all the information we had about my family, Hannah and Edith’s address in Villeneuve-sur-Lot and my father’s address in Leipzig, but we had no firm information that he was there.

In a third section of the notebook, Sal copied the names and addresses of every single person he knew in the United States, even casual acquaintances.

The night before the departure, Sal presented the book to our oldest. “Ruth, this is a very, very important book.” We were in my room, where the family was together for the last time. “Keep in touch with your aunts and uncles and cousins by mail. On this page are addresses in America. All these people in New York know me. You must write or telephone them, so that they will know you are in America. Then if you need help with anything, they won’t be surprised to hear from you. Do you understand what I am saying, Ruth?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

“Our family is splitting up, scattering,” I said. “You are the oldest, Ruth. You are responsible for your sister. You must always stay together.”

Ruth nodded. Her mood was solemn. Perhaps she comprehended the magnitude of the journey for the first time. Until then, she had been caught up in a whirlwind of excitement, congratulated by everyone on her unexpected good fortune. Had she given much thought to the separation she faced? I had not brought it up. I believed she could cope, so why make her sad?

Ruth was already looking out for her sister. “Look,” she said, “Eva is crying.”

I stroked Eva and wiped her damp cheeks. “Be a good girl, Eva, as you’ve always been, and everyone will love you. You’ve always managed. I know you will do well in America, and make Papa and me proud.” There were tears in my eyes now too. “After the war is over, we will be together again. I promise that we will all be together again.”

All this time Lea had been sitting quietly on the floor, turning a doll around again and again. “I want to go too,” she said now. “Why can’t I go with them to America?”

“After the war, we will go, too. Then the family will be together.”

Sal took Eva and Ruth to their rooms in the Chateau, while I took down three more hems on the girls’ dresses. They were not too short now, but they soon would be. Both girls had taken part in sewing classes at Montintin, and Ruth had been in a sewing class in the French school, but how neat a job could they do? Who would sew for them