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“My name is Anca. Anca Pasculata. Your teacher introduced me as Mrs. Jones, and that is indeed my name now, for I came to your country in nineteen forty-eight, married in nineteen fifty-four and have lived here in the United Kingdom ever since. But for today, for the purpose of this lesson, I am Anca Pasculata once more.
“The name is Romanian, for such are my origins. I was born in Romania and my parents, my family, were all of that country.”
Blank faces stared back at me. I suspected they were as indifferent to geography as they were to history, and had no idea where Romania was.
No matter.
I gathered my thoughts. “I had intended to begin by explaining a little of the background to the war, but your teacher has shown me some of the remarkable materials you have to work with and I realise that is not necessary. To be honest, you probably know more about the war itself than I do.”
I took a deep breath, conscious of the tremor in my voice
“So I shall begin not at the beginning but rather towards the end of the war, for that is when my own story starts. I want to take you back to a year before the war ended. To nineteen forty-four.”
I paused to study my audience, already showing advanced signs of boredom. Someone stifled a yawn. Several were fidgeting with bags or equipment. One seemed to be texting from a mobile phone secreted behind their pencil-case. I pressed on, hoping somehow to earn their attention, if not their respect.
“I was twelve years old at this time. Just a little younger than you are now. I was lucky enough to have enjoyed an education until then, though it hardly compared with your own. School, for us, was a single, bare, unlit, un-heated classroom. A place where paper and pencils were luxuries, and memory our most precious asset.”
I was pleased to see a few heads turn my way. I pressed on.
“This was a time before computers, or even calculators. Before television, even in the advanced industrial countries like your own. For a backward, peasant country like Romania even radio and newspapers were luxuries beyond our day to day experience.”
A couple of girls exchanged glances, perhaps trying to imagine life before computers.
I said, “Certainly I knew nothing of the world about me. Not even of the global nature of the war that had already been raging four long years by this time. Our country was under Nazi German domination, that much I knew. I vaguely understood other, neighbouring countries to be involved somehow, but to what end, on whose side, I neither knew nor cared. I was aware only of events in my own small world. And that world was one insignificant town in a backward, insular country in eastern Europe.”
A boy to one side was whispering loudly to his classmate. Mr. Wilkinson rapped a ruler on the desk.
“Ben, at least have the courtesy to be quiet, if you can’t be bothered to listen. Mrs. Jones has been to a great deal of trouble to be here with us today.”
The boy called Ben stretched out in his chair, a calculated show of disinterest. “Yeah, but it’s boring, Sir. Why can’t we do it on the computer instead, if we have to do it at all? No-one cares about history.”
The boy cast his eyes about his fellow pupils conspiratorially before adding, “Least of all the Holocaust.” The child looked directly at me, a smirk on his face. “It’s only about dead Jews.”
“One more remark like that and you’ll be up before the Head.” Mr. Wilkinson’s sharp rebuke silenced the boy. To me, “I’m so very sorry, Mrs Jones.”
I could feel the teacher’s embarrassment at his pupil’s conduct, and at my discomfort. I raised a shaking hand to stay his apologies, but speech failed me. Not that I was offended by the child’s words. Rather, shocked that any child could be so insolent in the presence of a master.
Mr Wilkinson turned to the boy again. “Ben, you will apologise immediately.”
The boy leaned forward in turn, staring back at his teacher.
Mr. Wilkinson took a step towards the child. “I won’t tell you again.”
Some of the other children glared at the boy. I heard three or four girls urge him to apologise. Others were nodding agreement.
Ben forced a sullen “Sorry, Miss,” as he slunk back into his chair, still privately delighted with his performance.
I forced a smile, addressing the boy directly. “I can assure you, Ben, that, if old and frail, I am still very much alive, and anticipate being around a few years more yet.”
The class appreciated my little joke and I pushed home my advantage. “Nor, I might add, am I a Jew.”
The teacher shot me a surprised look.
I said, “Mr Wilkinson asked me to bring along any personal effects I had, to help illustrate my story. Photographs of my family and friends; mementoes of that time. Of the Holocaust.” I splayed my palms theatrically. “You will notice I have brought nothing.”
I felt the eyes of the class on my empty hands. “I brought nothing because I have nothing. Everything, every possession I had, was destroyed or left behind. Not a single token or memento survived with me.”
If the words brought a lump to my own throat still there was indifference from my audience and I knew that, if I did not soon capture their minds I would never move their hearts. I asked, “Tell me this. How many of you have lost a parent?”
There was a stunned silence. Two hands rose awkwardly.
“Forgive my intrusion, but what happened to them?”
Mr. Wilkinson cast an anxious glance at me, but I ignored his concerns, directing my attention to the two children whose hands hovered hesitantly above their heads.
“My mother was killed in a car accident, a few years ago.”
“I am sorry. So very sorry.” I turned to the second child, a boy. “And you?”
“Cancer. My father died of cancer, soon after I was born. I never knew him.”
The class shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Mr Wilkinson looked on, unsure how to respond. This was not what I had been invited to discuss.
I said, “Thank you. You are brave to talk about it. But I asked with good reason, to make a point. Most of you have two parents. Two of you have lost one. I lost my father when I was twelve years old. But not to cancer. Not to a car accident.”
I paused, struggling to control the quaver in my voice. “He was murdered. Murdered in cold blood, by a firing squad outside our home, while my mother, my younger brother and I were forced to watch.”
I had their attention now, this class of bright-eyed children that had no acquaintance with evil. I chose my words carefully.
“History states the war began in nineteen thirty-nine, when Germany invaded Poland. Perhaps it was so. But for me the war began with my father’s death.
“My story begins as the war entered its final year, just a few weeks after my father’s execution. In a storm-swept cemetery in Medgidia, Romania, in the early spring of nineteen forty-four...”