At daybreak Miss Pike rousted us out of the dormitory and onto buses. Every morning there was a lull in the Nazi bombing raids between when the last of the night squadrons departed for Germany and before the massive daylight attacks began. Taking advantage of this window of relative safety, we were hustled to the docks.
It was there we got our first glimpse of the SS Newcastle, which would be our home for the next week, as well as our passport to a world without war. She was eight decks high from keel to bridge and loomed over the dock like a floating block of London flats. Her two smokestacks puffed gently, as if welcoming us aboard.
The contrast to blacked-out and partially demolished wartime London could not have been greater. Newcastle was sparkling clean. Though her hull was gray, Newcastle’s superstructure was gleaming white and her funnels adorned with black and red stripes.
None of my girls had ever been farther from home than London. Alice claimed to have visited Paris, but no one believed her. Memorable outings for Lindy and Betsy had been occasional trips to the pleasure pavilion at Brighton. Margaret’s eyes were wide, and Lindy was hurriedly scribbling in her notebook. Betsy tugged at her cousin’s sleeve. “Lindy!” she said urgently. “It’s huge! Won’t we get lost?”
“Not to worry,” Lindy assured her. “Elisa will look after us.”
I would not have to meet all their needs alone, I learned. Newcastle had a complement of two hundred officers and crew. Of these, over half were from India—lascars, they were called. Since there were only ninety evacuees with the CORB program, sometimes it felt as if each child had a personal servant.
Dressed in white cotton tunics, wearing slippers with turned-up toes, and sporting turbans in pink or orange or sky blue, the lascar stewards were also far outside my girls’ experience. Margaret pointed and whispered to Alice: “Are they wearing their pajamas?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Lindy breathed. “Like genies from the Arabian Nights.”
The first steward to greet us at the top of the gangplank bowed from the waist to receive Lindy aboard. “Welcome, missy,” he said. “May I show you to your stateroom?” For a girl from Lewes with two e’s, it must have been a most memorable moment.
My girls were bunked together, with me in an adjacent cabin.
As soon as the full muster of refugee children, chaperones, and paying passengers were accounted for, Newcastle got up steam, unmoored, and moved out into the channel.
Whereupon we dropped anchor.
“Why are we stopping?” Alice fretted. “Are we sinking? Aren’t we going to America after all?”
The explanation, delivered by Pablo, was simple: “The Newcastle sails as part of a convoy. We cannot leave until all the other ships are ready. Tonight we wait here; tomorrow, we sail.”
I was explaining this to my charges when there was a diffident tap at the door. A lascar in a pink turban bowed, introduced himself as Sanjay, and inquired if “the English misses and memsahib would like anything.”
Nan blurted out, “Like what? We didn’t have breakfast. Would there be any toast about, do you suppose?”
“Most certainly,” Sanjay agreed. “And perhaps tea, yes?”
The girls nodded. Tea and toast would be very agreeable.
Then Sanjay stunned us all by adding, “And a selection of fresh fruit, perhaps?”
“Fresh…,” Lindy began.
“Fruit?” Betsy concluded.
“Dear me, yes. The young misses would like oranges, or would perhaps bananas be more to your liking?”
“Both, please,” Nan returned, and Sanjay bowed his way out.
“Oranges!” Alice said. “I haven’t had an orange since last Christmas.”
“I love bananas,” Betsy said. “That is, if you do, Lindy.”
The wonders of shipboard life extended far beyond fresh fruit. At our first proper meal each table received a menu that offered chicken or fish, potatoes or rice, soup hot or cold, and a choice between pudding and seven flavors of ice cream for dessert.
“Is this real?” Alice wondered aloud, ladling a third teaspoon of sugar into her tea. “Back home Mum fixed me an egg two mornings a week. Tinned beef for supper…when she could get it.”
“Too right,” Connor said from the adjoining table of choirboys. “Watch this.” Taking a slice of soft bread he plastered it an inch thick with creamy yellow butter. “Real, too,” he mumbled around a mouth stuffed to overflowing.
When the meal ended with everyone, including me, replete, an officer climbed a small stage in the dining hall. “I’m Third Officer Browne,” he said, “welcoming you aboard. We’re very glad to have you. And now I’d like to ask some of our special passengers to favor us with a song. The quintet from the Westminster Choir. Please. Will you indulge us?”
It was impossible for The Four Apostles and Connor to refuse. “What are we going to do?” Tomas whispered to John. “I can hardly breathe.”
“Only one thing to do,” the leader of the pack returned.
At a gesture from John, Connor drew his tin whistle with a flourish and played a single, clear note. Then the quintet sang:
“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures, here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen!”8
There was a round of applause from the other CORB children and the chaperones. Even Miss Pike looked pleased.
In all the wonder there was only a single jarring note.
The last order of business at lunch was for each child and adult to be handed a life vest and instructed in how to put it on. Instructions complete, the children were also informed they must not remove the safety device until told to do so…probably three days’ sail, when Newcastle was well beyond the reach of the U-boat menace.
“Sleep in them,” Browne ordered sternly. “No exceptions.”
Later, as the girls and I tried to walk off the effects of the overwhelming meal, we saw how far-reaching was the concern.
“Look,” Lindy said.
Robert Snow—Robin Hood—still wore his forest-green cloak, but over it was buckled a forest-green life vest.
For thus says the Lord: “He who touches you (O Zion) touches the apple of My eye.”
ZECHARIAH 2:8, PARAPHRASED
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1937
It was late afternoon before I boarded the streetcar heading for the Jewish Quarter. In the market squares the booths were empty, the proprietors gone home to their families or back to snug, secure villages like Kitzbühel. How I wish I were there right now, and Papa safely there with me.
It is the notion that I can somehow help him, rescue him, that drives me. I remember the time I saw Dachau’s walls and imagined the helpless prisoners confined there…never knowing that one of them is my father!
Darkness fell early this close to the darkest night of the year. It was already enveloping me as I carried Rudy’s violin. I stepped from the streetcar and headed off down a narrow lane toward Leah’s apartment overlooking the Judenplatz.
In a few windows flickering Hanukkah candles told me of the bravery of those who live within. Fresh paint splotched on exterior walls must be covering Nazi threats and filth.
When I turned the corner and faced a synagogue, I saw that even tonight of all nights there is no peace on earth, no goodwill toward men. Christ Killers! is painted on the bricks, together with slogans and menacing promises. A large crimson-painted swastika floated in the twilight above the words Jews! Your blood will again run in these streets!
A statue of the Jewish playwright Ephraim Lessing has been vandalized. The marble fingers were hacked off, and the groin slashed with red paint. Race defilers will be castrated!
Like Rudy! I wavered in place. Putting my hand to the wall to steady myself, it came away wet with paint, as if with gore.
I stood too long trying to collect myself, and the delay almost got me killed.
From many directions at once came shouting waves of Nazi fanatics. “Jews out of Austria,” they bellowed. “Kill the Christ killers,” they yelled. Windows were smashed. Screams of terror and pain filled the night.
Then they grabbed me. I saw a rock thrown through Leah’s window; then all I could see were boots and angry faces and waving clubs and menacing torches.
“Teach them a lesson,” a thin-lipped attacker suggested. “Let these Jews know what it’s like to have their women violated.”
Hands clutched at my clothing, ripped off my shoes, seized the precious violin case. More hands tore my cap from my head.
“Stop,” someone yelled. “Blond. She’s Aryan.”
Someone pushed through the lusting mob, throwing men aside and yanking them away from me.
It was Otto Wattenbarger, the farm boy from our skiing holidays in Kitzbühel. Otto was wearing a Nazi armband. He returned the violin to me. He offered to help me, to protect me. He urged me to stay with him and I would be safe. I shuddered at his touch and refused.
“Don’t come here again,” he said. “Ever.”
By now police sirens were blaring. Otto dropped the armband on the street and walked to a waiting trolley.
I had not known I was crying, nor that I was bleeding from the back of my head, until another streetcar driver asked if I was all right.
I thought of Otto Wattenbarger and his brother, Franz—how what had come upon us was tearing families, cities, the whole world apart. I remembered the place where Franz had shown me that two snowflakes, identical in every way, could fall mere inches apart. Yet one would melt to flow south into light and warmth while the other would join the black uniforms, the marching rivers of the north.
The division of families and hearts is that clear…and that permanent.
8 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” doxology by Thomas Ken, 1674, also the last verse of a longer hymn, “Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun”