Chapter 3
December 1, 1938
The First Kindertransport
Gilde Margolis stood beside her sister, Alina, at the train station. Her arms were folded across her chest and her small black valise sat on the ground beside her. It was that eerie time of morning before the sunrise, when the shadow of night had not yet begun to lift and the world was still cloaked in darkness. A dusting of snow fell like ashes on her hair, appearing more pale grey than white in the limited light of the station. Even though she was bundled up with a heavy coat over an itchy wool dress, thick black stockings, and long underwear, the icy fingers of winter reached deep under her clothing and into her skin. At twelve years old, Gilde was still a child, but circumstances were forcing her to embark, alone, upon a journey that would lead her far away from everyone she knew and loved.
“Gilde, look at me and listen to me, please….” Alina, her eighteen-year-old sister, bent to look into Gilde’s golden brown eyes, which were glazed with tears. Alina was shaking.Her trembling hands were raw from the cold as she brushed a strand of blond hair out of Gilde’s eyes. Alina forced a smile, and trying to keep the fear out of her voice she continued to speak. “Gilde, I know you don’t want to go to Britain and, believe me, I don’t want to let go of you.” Alina put her hands on both of Gilde’s shoulders. “Since the day you were born, we have been inseparable, and I already miss you terribly even though you haven’t left yet.” Alina cleared her throat and mustered a half smile of encouragement. “But I know that getting out of Germany right now is the safest thing for you. And you have to realize, Gilde, that it’s harder for me than you can imagine to let you go so far away without me. I want to protect you the way I always have. But, I’ve turned this over in my mind a thousand times and you see, sweetie I truly believe that you will be safer if you get out of Germany.”
“Why can’t you just come with me?”
“We’ve been over this, Gilde. I am too old. I can’t go. The authorities won’t allow it. This program is for children only. But you are lucky to have been chosen to be a part of it. Thank God you will be out of Germany and far away from Hitler.”
“I don’t feel at all thankful. I want to stay with you and Lotti and Lev and wait for Mommy and Papa to come back.”
“Gilde, we don’t know when they will return. For now, you will be in good hands in Britain. A family has agreed to care for you until everything settles down here in Germany, and then you’ll be able to come back home and it will be safe-
“I’m scared, Alina. I don’t want to go all alone. I will be so far away from you, and I won’t be here when our parents get back.…”
“I know, Gilde. I wish I didn’t have to send you,” Alina said. Then she thought, if our parents ever come back. God help us.
“You don’t have to send me,” Gilde said.Her voice was firm and angry.
“Yes, I do!” Alina took off the gold Star of David necklace that she’d received as a gift from her parents for her sixteenth birthday and slipped it over her little sister’s head. “Wear this until we are together again.”
“But Alina, Mommy, and Papa gave that to you. I know how much you love it. I couldn’t take it.”
“You’re not taking it away from me, Gilde. You’re just holding on to it for me until we are together again.”
“Please … don’t make me go.” Gilde reached up to her neck and gripped the Star of David and held it in her small hand.
“You have to go, Gilde. I love you and that is why I am insisting on this. Please, trust me.” Alina made her voice as firm as possible.
Lotti and Lev were waiting on the other side of the station. They wanted to give Gilde and Alina a few minutes alone to say goodbye. Lotti walked over with Lev at her side. She hugged Gilde and then Lev hugged her as well. Tears stained Lotti’s cheeks and her eyes were red and swollen. They had been friends of the family for many years. And after Gilde and Alina’s parents had been arrested by the local police, Lotti and Lev had insisted that the two girls stay with them. It had all begun on the most horrible night of Gilde’s young life, when bands of wild ruffians had attacked the neighborhood where the Margolis family lived. They’d come through the streets looting and killing anyone who was outside. They shattered the windows of all the Jewish-owned shops. Alina had been on her way home with her fiancé, Benny, when Benny was attacked. Taavi Margolis, Gilde and Alina’s father, heard Alina screaming and ran out of their apartment to help Benny. He’d demanded that Alina get inside the apartment with her mother and sisters. The three females watched in horror as Taavi tried to stop the angry mob from kicking and hitting Benny with clubs. But the thugs were relentless. Then the police came and Taavi, not the attackers, was arrested.
The police took him away in a black car that made a terrible alarming sound. All night the two girls and their mother sat up waiting and praying for Taavi’s return. When he’d not returned by the following morning, Gilde’s mother had gone to the police station to beg for her husband’s release. That was over two weeks ago, on a night that would become known as Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. Neither of Gilde’s parents had been seen since. For several years before Kristallnacht, Lotti and Alina had been working with a group that ran an orphanage for Jewish children. After Kristallnacht the orphanage received an offer from the British government. They had arranged for a transport of Jewish children from the orphanage to be taken to Britain to live with British families who had volunteered to take them and keep them safe. As soon as Alina and Lotti heard about the program, both of them pled with the authorities to take Gilde along with the group. After a lot of meetings and begging, Alina and Lotti were successful in securing a place on the transport for Gilde. Gilde was going to live with a family in London, where she would be taken care of until the end of the war.
And now the time had come to leave Germany. Gilde was standing at the train station as a frozen breeze swept across her face. With her knees quaking and tears freezing on her cheeks, she held on desperately to Alina’s hand for the last few minutes before she boarded the train into the unknown.
Alina knew that if it weren’t for the fact that Lotti had been volunteering at the orphanage for many years and then gotten Alina a job there, it was doubtful that Gilde would have been able to join the rest of the children on this rescue mission.
“It is for the best, isn’t it?” Alina had asked Lotti on the day that Gilde had received her acceptance letter. Lotti had assured her that it was, but the question still plagued Alina, even now, even after she’d made the decision to send her sister on the transport.
“Gilde!” A heavyset boy of fourteen came loping over to Gilde. As he ran towards Gilde he slipped on the ice and fell. His friend Elias, another orphan of the same age, who’d been walking with him, laughed loudly.
“You’ve always been so clumsy, come on, let me help you up,” Elias said, giving Shaul his hand.
Shaul’s face was red with embarrassment.
“Good morning,” both Shaul and Elias said to Gilde.
“Good morning,” Glide said without enthusiasm.
Elias pushed back his dark hair that was falling over his forehead. Even at fourteen, it was already obvious that he was destined to be a handsome man. Alina thought
One of the teachers came over and handed Gilde and each of the boys a square of cardboard that had been made into a large necklace with two pieces of thick string. Written on the front of each of the cardboard tags were numbers. Gilde looked at the number.
“What is this for?” she asked.
“So that when you get to Britain your new family can find you and identify you. They have a card with your number. That’s how you will know each other,” the teacher said.
“I don’t need a new family,” Gilde said, tossing the card back at the teacher.
“I’m sorry,” Alina said, picking up the identification number and putting it over Gilde’s head. Shaul read it. “Your number is twenty-four Gilde. I’m eighty-two , an
d Elias is seventy-nine.”
“Now we are nothing but numbers,” Gilde said sarcastically, shaking her head.
“Please, Gilde. Don’t fight this. I know it’s hard. But you have to go,” Alina said. She had been trying so hard to stay strong, but now she was crying too.
“All right, children, form a single-file line and say your goodbyes. It’s time to board the train.” One of the nurses Alina had become friends with during the years she’d worked at the orphanage was organizing the children for boarding.
“Come on.” Shaul took Gilde’s hand, but she shook him off violently. Then she stood steadfast and would not move.
“Alina? Do I really have to go? Really?” Gilde’s eyes were wide and pleading.
Alina nodded. “Yes. But don’t forget to write. Write often.”
Gilde’s shoulders began to shake as she cried silent tears.
Elias put his arm around Gilde. “Let’s go, Gilde. You’ll sit with me. This is going to be a great adventure. You’ll see….” He carefully led Gilde into the line, and after a few moments, it was their time to board.
Elias took Gilde’s suitcase and carried it up the stairs, and then he extended his hand to help her. Gilde turned to look back at her sister and Lotti with one more pleading glance.
“Don’t make me go,” Gilde said. Alina could hear the pain in her sister’s voice.
“I love you,” Alina said. “Write to me. Don’t forget….”
Shaul boarded behind Gilde.
Alina stood on the platform and watched her sister through the window of the train. Her heart ached. ‘Gilde’, she thought. Dear God, I hope I am doing the right thing. Gilde’s pleading eyes almost brought Alina to her knees. She turned and whispered to Lotti, “I want to get on the train and take her off. Whatever happens at least we’ll be together.”
Lotti held Alina’s arm. “Let her go,” Lotti said, her voice gravely with held back tears. “She’ll be safe. I know it’s hard. But let her go, Alina.”
Alina saw Gilde wipe the tears from her cheeks with her thumb, and Alina began to cry.
Then a loud whistle sounded and the engine roared to life. This was the final second, the last moment to change things. If she didn’t jump on the train at this very minute and grab her sister, Gilde would be gone. Somehow, Lotti knew what Alina was thinking, and she held fast to Alina’s arm, restraining her.
Then the train rumbled to life and began to move out of the station. Alina ran down the platform as far as she could to see the train until it disappeared into the horizon. When she could no longer see the train, Alina fell to her knees on the wooden platform and wept.
Chapter 4
Alina
Lotti and Alina had lost their jobs. They’d worked at the orphanage, and now that the children had all left for Britain on the Kindertransport, there was no more work. The business that Taavi and Lev owned had been confiscated on that terrible night of the broken glass. So Lev too was jobless. After her sister left, Alina Margolis was miserable, but with no money to buy food and nothing to eat, there was little time to mourn the loss of her family. After their parents were gone, Alina and Gilde came to live with Lotti and Lev, and now Gilde was gone, but Alina was still living there. Lotti insisted that she stay with her and Lev. “You can’t live all alone, Alina. Now is the time when you need family around you the most. And Lev and I have been like family to your family since the day Lev and I met,” Lotti said.
It was true. Lotti and Lev were the Margolis’ best friends. Alina’s father had become very close with Lev many years before Lev and Lotti married, and the two families seemed to grow into one big family after Lev and Lotti got together.
Lotti, Lev, and Alina all searched for work, because they knew that it was only a matter of time before Lotti and Lev’s savings ran out. Then there would be no place to live. Because good German women were expected to be housewives and never employed outside the home, it was impossible for Lotti to find work. Lev was a Jew, and non-Jews were forbidden to hire him. His fellow Jews had lost their businesses, and so they were barely surviving and had nothing to offer him either.
Lev was forced to present his papers when applying at any of the factories, and he was immediately rejected because of his religion. He even went to see his old boss, the man he and Taavi had worked for before they opened their own carpentry business, but their old boss was a Jew, so as Lev suspected the shop was closed. The sign on the window said that it was to be reopened by non-Jewish owners. The same thing had happened to Taavi and Lev’s store, so this news came as no surprise. Jews were losing their businesses and gentiles were not allowed by law to hire them. Alina was fortunate, because she was young and pretty. The man who had been the family doctor for the Margolis family for many years took pity on her and gave her a job doing office work. Dr. Peter Millman didn’t really need help, but he’d known Alina since she was a child, and when she told him about what had happened to her family, he found a place for her at his practice. Because Dr. Millman was Jewish he was only permitted to practice on Jewish patients, many of whom often were unable to pay him. Gentiles were forbidden to go to Jewish physicians. This cut his practice by more than half. Still, he hired Alina.
Alina missed so many things, and among them was her job at the orphanage. She missed working all day with Lotti and the children. Those had been good days. That was before that terrible night when Benny was killed and her loving father was arrested. And then her mother was gone. Her mother, who was her arch nemesis and her best friend at the same time. Her mother, who was her strength, and her weakness. So much was unresolved between her and Michal. After that it was Gilde. God, how she missed little Gilde. From the day Gilde was born, Alina had treated her as if she was her own child. Now Gilde was off somewhere in Britain all alone with people she didn’t know. It was for the best, it had to be done, but it still hurt like hell. And as each day passed without word from her parents, she became more convinced that something terrible had befallen them. But even with all the evidence pointing towards a bitter end, Alina refused to give up hope. Two long weeks had passed since Gilde left on that morning train, and so far there had been no letters. Alina felt as if she were being driven to the brink of insanity. She had no address. If she and Gilde were to stay in contact, Gilde would have to write to her. She knew Gilde was angry with her, and that might be why she hadn’t heard from her, but Alina couldn’t help but worry. She was so afraid that something bad had happened to Gilde too. Keep steady, Alina told herself, keep believing against all odds that they are all alive.
Johan, Lotti’s brother, had met Alina when she and Lotti were working at the orphanage. From the first time he saw Alina he had a strong attraction towards her. Once he realized that Alina was staying with Lotti and Lev, he came by his sister’s house more often. He brought Alina books and two oranges once. They were not easy to come by, and she knew Johan had paid a pretty penny for them. I’m being courted, Alina thought. She was attracted to Johan, but she told herself that she must not become involved with anyone. Her life was far too uncertain. She had just lost Benny, her fiancé. And although she hadn’t really been madly in love with Benny, he’d been a good friend. The images of his death on the street still haunted her. And out of respect, she couldn’t think of marrying anyone else, at least not now. Still, Johan came to see her often. He was a good distraction from all the pain in her life, easy with jokes and conversation. Alina knew that Lotti didn’t approve of a romance between her and Johan. Lotti had been very clear about this.
She’d explained that her brother did not have the courage to carry on a relationship that defied the Nuremberg laws forbidding relationships between Jews and gentiles. Johan didn’t have the strength inside of him to fight against something as big and terrifying as the Nazi party the way that Lotti did when she had refused to leave Lev no matter what the consequences. . Lotti was afraid that Alina would end up getting hurt if she became involved with Johan. However, when he came by, Johan helped Alina to forge
t, if only for a few hours, how distraught she was.
Johan and Alina took long walks through the Berlin zoo eating ice cream cones. Alina found Johan easy to talk to, and so she shared her feelings with him. She told him how much she missed her sister, and how worried she was about her parents. What she did not tell him was how guilty she felt about pushing her mother’s love away when her mother had reunited with her father. When she’d been so angry with Michal during her teenage years, she’d not known that one day Michal would disappear and she could not be sure if she would ever see her mother again. If only she could just have a few minutes to tell her mother how sorry she was.
Chapter 5
Michal
After Michal had lost control and against her better judgment had fought off the advances of the hauptmann, she was thrown into a dirty jail cell. Cockroaches climbed the moldy walls, and a slimy concrete floor served as her bed. Even as the iron door shut behind her, she was heartsick because she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. If only she’d kept her head. Now, not only would she be unable to find Taavi, but her girls were alone at home waiting for her return. She had no idea what was in store for them, and she wondered if could ever return to her children. Hours passed without food or water. There were no windows, so Michal had no idea whether it was day or night. Only a single low-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, giving her just enough light to see the frightening spiders weaving intricate webs up and down the cell walls. She was being held in a single cell in the basement of the building. No other prisoners were around her, so she had no one to talk to, only the voices in her head that kept reprimanding her for her stupidity of acting so rashly with the hauptmann. The smell of damp, mold filled the air and burned her eyes, bringing on fits of sneezing. There was no doubt that she was terrified of what the Nazis might do to her, but even so, her thoughts were primarily of her daughters and her husband. If she died here, what would happen to Gilde and Alina? Then she remembered Lotti and Lev, thank God for Lotti and Lev. They would watch over her girls. “Please, God,” she whispered into the empty room. “Watch over my children.” And what of Taavi? Was he dead? She couldn’t help but think about the time that they had been separated from each other. How much of their precious lives had been wasted because of foolish pride. Now, all she wanted was to feel his arms around her. To even imagine that he might be dead was beyond comprehension. She felt so alone. She would have tried to scream, cry out, beg for mercy, if she thought anyone would hear. But there was no one around. Perhaps the hauptmann had locked her in here to die of thirst and starvation, alone, terrified. She put her head in her dirty hands, soiled from the dirt on the floor, and began to cry. Michal wept until her stomach ached and her head began to pound so hard that she thought she might vomit. There was a very good chance that she would never see another living person again. My children, she thought. So, she took a deep breath and looked up at the black ceiling of the cell, and pretended she could see the heavens. Use your imagination, she thought, it is all you have left. Then she whispered, “God, please … watch over my children….”