IN 1938, WHEN THE GERMAN ARMY invaded the Sudetenland, where the small town of Reichenberg was situated, Uncle Freddy fled to Prague with Granny Anna, his wife Lotte, and his daughter, my cousin, Marlies. But it wasn’t long before the German troops were pouring into that city too. Uncle Freddy told me that, when he witnessed the soldiers arriving in the Wenceslas Platz, he knew that if they were to avoid capture the family would have to immediately flee the country. But he also realized they would have to leave without Anna, because of her frail condition. By that stage it was no longer possible for a Jewish family to travel across the borders openly, and Freddy was forced to flee with Lotte and Marlies on foot, using a secret escape route over the border into Italy. They then journeyed on to join us in London, where they settled. When they arrived without Granny Anna, I was devastated. I had been so sure they would bring her with them, and I could hardly bear the thought of her being the only one of the family left behind.
By 1940, although we barely dared to talk about it, I shared my father’s fears and sadness about Granny Anna. I had such wonderful memories of her, which were being kept vividly alive by the letters and cards she had been writing to me from Czechoslovakia. They were full of love but gave no clues as to what the future might hold for her now the Germans were occupying Prague and Uncle Freddy was in London with us.
I still treasure them to this day.
To my beloved Evchen,
I send you the heartiest wishes, my most beloved child. I send you in spirit a thousand heartfelt kisses, enclosed so that my little grandchild shall be forever happy and shall stay healthy in body and soul and that in life her choices will always be right. That she remain her parents’ great delight and that God graciously guide the ways of her life so that we will soon meet in peace again before your Oma must leave this earth.
In another she wrote:
My beloved Evchen, how much I would like to see you again my beloved child, and Claude. I cannot describe the longing I have for you.
After the German invasion in 1938, her letters began to arrive through the Red Cross and not the normal mail. They still gave us no clues about what might really be happening to her or what terrors she might be enduring. She wouldn’t have wanted to burden anyone else with her worries anyway, particularly not her granddaughter.
I was told that Anna had been quite adamant about not escaping with Uncle Freddy and his family, insisting that she was too old and arthritic to make the trip and that she would only be a liability to them. Uncle Freddy had eventually given in, seeing that he had no choice and hoping that an old lady living on her own in a city as big as Prague would not attract the Nazis’s attention. She hardly ever went out any more anyway, he reasoned, so how would they even know she was there? With any luck she would be able to live out her days in peace and comfort if he could find her somewhere pleasant to live.
Whatever happened, he knew he had to save his wife and child before it was too late, even if it meant he had to leave his mother to take her chances. Before he set out for Italy he searched for an apartment for her in a good area of the city. A man called Dr. Borakova had agreed to take her in as a tenant in his attic flat in the Praha 6 district, an affluent area where most of the foreign embassies were located. If she was going to be safe anywhere, Uncle Freddy decided, Praha 6 would be the place. He left her with as much money as he could find, and their final good-byes must have been heartbreaking, neither knowing if they would ever see each other alive again. I thought of my own separation from Anna, which was profound, as if part of my very being had just disappeared.
Without any warning, after June 1942, there were no more letters. As each day passed I became increasingly frozen with fear and more inconsolable. We were left with nothing but silence, which made space for the darkest imaginings to invade our thoughts and dreams. We all pretended to hope for a while that it was just the war interrupting the postal services, including the Red Cross’s. But in our hearts I think we realized something much worse had probably befallen her, although none of us wanted to put our fears into words and risk making them feel more real. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so helpless and wanted to talk to my father or my mother but I knew I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been any use anyway because they didn’t know any more than I did.
Although I was fearful for Anna and her fate, I was also consoled because I knew my father felt the same way. He must have been tortured all through this very difficult time, just as I was. I knew that he worried about her every minute of every hour of every day, wondering if she was alive or dead, or fearing that she might at any moment be arrested by the Nazis or suffering unknown horrors in Auschwitz. Even when her letters and postcards had been arriving, they were taking so long to reach us it was impossible to tell if something awful had happened to her in the meantime. Part of my father must have desperately wanted to hear her voice and see her face again, while the other part must have been thankful that we were all safe in England. Such thoughts must have made him feel like he was being torn in two by his conflicting loyalties to his mother and his past, and his responsibility to my mother and me and our lives in war-torn London.