AS soon as we arrived back—after an early start we had managed to reach the camp about 2 p.m.—we found everything in turmoil in the Children’s Hospital. A few hours before an order had come through that the children were to be moved next day—a week sooner than had been arranged. A train had actually arrived in the station, sent in by X Corps, though the latest information suggested that it could not be officially used, as another order from N Army Group had cancelled it. Nothing was ready, neither clothes for the children, food for the journey nor final selection and registration. The Swedes were rumoured to have got irritated and threatened to sail away to sea with all their ships. There was only one thing to do: go straight to Lübeck and straighten the whole thing out with them at their Legation there.
I had been driving all day. I just couldn’t drive any farther, so I got Frank Whitehead, one of the British Red Cross team leaders, who was affectionately known as ‘Uncle’, being our oldest member, to drive us over.
The journey took four and a half hours’ hard driving. It got dark; we ran into a dump on the autobahn outside Lübeck and it was not till after 11 p.m. that we reached the Swedish Red Cross quarters.
The head of the Swedish Red Cross, Dr. Arnoldson, is one of the most efficient of Red Cross Officers anywhere. He is a small, blond and incisive man accustomed to making up his mind. He cuts straight through red tape with knife-like decisions. Before the capitulation of Germany he and his men had gone all over the country, rescuing the Scandinavians out of the concentration camps and bringing them to Sweden. He had had many escapes when being machine-gunned from the air while passing along the German roads, and bombed by day and night in the cities. He had arranged to move to Sweden a whole floating concentration camp, held off the Danish coast, in which typhus had broken out. But it had been bombed at sea by the Allied Air Force and few had escaped. Now he had come over with a whole fleet of Swedish hospital ships and was taking all the sick (10,000) from Belsen. In the first place the Swedish offer had been to take only orphan children of non-German nationality. But when I had asked him whether the Swedes would take all our sick children and orphans—even if they were Germans, Jews or Gipsies—he saw the point at once and agreed, making the necessary orders without having to refer to anybody else. He was the same over minor matters, clear, incisive, and quick and was without doubt the best person to work with I have ever met. He was, however, a doctor, and like the rest of us found all Army red tape difficult to bear. He would arrive bursting with energy, ready to move tens of thousands of displaced persons immediately, but after they had kept him waiting here, telephoned to somebody else there, cancelled this order and made another and forgotten to tell somebody in some other corps Head-Quarters about it, days would have elapsed and he would be deflated.
In spite of everything he achieved the almost impossible and moved the whole sick population from Belsen to Sweden.
He was, however, if anything, exact. He had said he would take sick persons and the authorities kept sending him well refugees. Suddenly he got angry and refused to take any more. Now he told us exactly what he thought about all Army authorities and the British in particular. Indeed, it would have been refreshing to have listened to him, but we were too tired and our children’s lives were at stake. So we listened to him anxiously. However, when he had expressed himself he felt better, got us some food himself, and said he’d wait three days more and take all the children on the last boat.
We lay down and slept for four hours, got up at 6 a.m., drove back to Belsen and immediately started final preparations for the evacuation of the children within forty-eight hours.
Some time in his boyhood nearly every man has played with trains, most have imagined that the greatest joy that life could bring would be to become an engine driver; to own a train was beyond our fondest dreams.
But now we had one all of our own, a children’s train, with big Red Crosses painted on it, a real kitchen and sleeping berths. The engine was rather a poor rusty old thing with steam pouring from its numerous vents and leaks. The children, however, were quite satisfied with it.
There were all the children from the Children’s Hospital and the ‘well’ block, and twenty-two mothers, together with the entire Red Cross personnel who had been looking after them, Paddy MacClancy and his assistant Jean Moerman, and of course Luba and Hermina.
Everything went without a hitch, that is, everything except the official registration. The arrangements for the latter were modelled on the procedure adopted for making nominal lists on the trains for sick adults, which had been leaving Belsen for the last three weeks. Filling in a card for an adult, and interrogating a child are very different things. Indeed, we all got very cross and pandemonium reigned while seven registrating women asked questions in seven languages, They refused to accept our list, but insisted upon making a new one of their own. In the end they left out thirty names altogether, which was most unfortunate as their list was the official one which went to Head-Quarters.
The registration of displaced persons is one of the most important and most difficult tasks, Unless it is done more efficiently in future and a proper central sorting centre established, thousands of people will go wandering round and round Europe for many years to come, searching for their lost relatives and friends.
The last official eventually left and we were ready to start. It was a great moment. The children crowded round the carriage windows. We stood on the platforms at the end of the carriages. All waved and kissed good-bye to the large crowd which had come to see us off. There was a lot of whistling from guards and persons in uniform, the engine gave a frightful lurch, emitted a vast quantity of steam and gradually we began to move, reaching in five minutes about fifteen miles an hour, at which speed we chugged along through the forests.
The children pressed their noses against the glass. Some huts, like those at Belsen, appeared in a clearing amid tall pine trees. It was the Lager at Munster. Tibor Mikko proudly announced that it was one of his concentration camps. He had been there some weeks, he said, to an admiring audience of smaller boys. We stopped for a long wait at the station which was crowded with fascist Italian prisoners of war. These strutted up and down wearing the queerest military hats, some in shorts, others in elaborate uniforms and togas. They looked extremely silly, like grown-up boy scouts, still playing parts taken from boy thrillers.
The children found them highly entertaining and called to them. Gradually the stiffness of the southern men gave place to smiles, and they came forward and laughed with the children at themselves.
The train went on. Now a hot meal was served. It was not a very exciting meal, being composed chiefly of potatoes and minced-up, heated bully beef and milk. But it was a meal in a train, in our train, and we dramatized it to the full. Hermina, always our cook in emergencies, on journeys by road or rail or sea, was in her element, carrying the steaming trays into the carriages where the children shouted as she came. It was a gorgeous picnic. Poor Luba, however, was very sad. She was train sick and sat dispirited, with a heaving stomach and nausea, praying that she might die. The cheery comments and happy exhortations of the passers-by in no way lessened the dark hour of her tragedy.
As night came on we made an inspection, passing right down the twenty-two coaches of the train. The passageway led down the middle of each coach, the bunks being constructed on each side in the long axis of the train. In these the children now lay, trying to keep awake and gain the last thrill of passing slowly through the darkening country-side. Many had already been overcome by tiredness and lay asleep, their arms and legs flung fan-wise, their bodies twisted into funny shapes, sleep having caught them while they still gazed out. As we tucked them in we saw their sleeping faces calm, unlined, it seemed, with any care. Zsuzsi lay rolled up in a ball, with Tibor, the faithful brother, asleep beside her, his two arms round her head. Olga was awake, the white mastoid bandage round her head giving her a strangely wistful look. We stopped and took her hands. They felt hot. She looked at us with bright, feverish eyes but said nothing. Genny tossed. Her pulse was fast, her heart was troubling her, and little Joseph Katz lay flushed, breathing fast with a high temperature.
At last we went to bed ourselves and slept—a funny sleep, full of queer dreams, where phantom trains and buses, children and Russian commandants got all mixed up.
Next morning very early we were taken to a combined U.N.R.R.A. and Swedish Red Cross transit camp, where we spent a very trying day, handing over to the Swedes, making a complete new registry with U.N.R.R.A., trying not to lose the children and being ruthlessly deloused.
The Swedes are the most ‘nordic’ race on earth, though they don’t call it that. They are more English than the English, more German than the Germans, more Scandinavian than the Scandinavians. They are the most completely sure people in the world, and being absolutely sure, there is nothing left to laugh about.
They know quite well that they do everything as well, perhaps better, than everybody else. They don’t tell you so, but they just know it and they expect you to know it too and act accordingly. You mustn’t ever be surprised or question why they serve queer meals of heaps of different kinds of fish at funny hours or suddenly take off all their clothes. The Swedes know that fish is good for you and nakedness a natural and healthy thing. They’re quite right, of course, but all the same we had a difficult twenty-four hours.
‘You must all pass through our delousing department,’ they said. We laughed a little at that but saw their point, or thought we did, and said, ‘All right.’
The delousing department was housed in tents in the main barrack square. You went in dirty at one end and came out cleaner than you had ever been before at the other. First you removed your clothes, which sometimes you never found again, then passed into a Turkish bath, or rather a tent full of suffocating hot steam. Here you were washed and scrubbed with green-coloured soap by male or female attendants as the case might be. After every kind of bug had been thus swept away, you were put under an icy spray and then discharged.
Some of our Sisters had a shocking time. They’d hardly got off all their clothes before seven men came in and began to undress beside them. Hastily they picked up some towels, and, covering themselves as best as they could, fled into the room next door, the steam room, but here their towels were snatched away and they were told to cover themselves with hot water and sweat a bit. Almost at once the seven men came in, too, and they all stood together. One tall dark English lady of uncertain age stood cold and gauntly in a corner, her feelings too strong for words. In a few minutes they were seized and scrubbed with the green soap. Bonsel just turned her head away and cried.
I was allowed the privilege of being deloused last with the Swedish doctors themselves. They trotted up and down twixt steam room and cold shower till their fair sun-browned skins shone with a healthy glow. They did it every day, they said. It made them feel fine.
Next day we went on board a lovely ship, polished and clean. It had a large Red Cross painted on its side and from its mast hung the Swedish flag. It was no easy job to fit everybody in, as it was the last ship to leave and all who had been left behind from the other boats had to be got on board too. There were thirty-four babies whose mothers were Norwegian, their ‘sires’, that was the word used, unknown German men. There were a lot of Poles, among whom were two courteous priests in battle-dress. All went well till we were due to sail, when suddenly two little sergeants belonging to the British Security said that Han and Bonsel hadn’t Shaef permits and therefore couldn’t go. A Shaef permit is a little card which is the hardest of all papers to obtain—the chief reason being that it always has to be got from somebody other than the person to whom one normally applies. It requires some august authority to demand its need and no underling will therefore take the responsibility of issuing it. High authorities are never there, being always in conference, and of course they cannot be reached on the telephone. The position was explained to the sergeant—Han and Bonsel were an integral part of our big evacuation plan which had been arranged at the very highest level. They were now essential for the smooth running of the present movement of these children. The sergeants understood, they almost wept in sympathy, but they could do nothing by themselves, they said. Their officer could do nothing without getting somebody else in some other corps on the ‘phone, and so it went on till the Swedish captain lost his temper and ordered the girls ashore and said he’d sail. I was standing halfway up the gangway, not knowing what to do, when I spied a tall figure approaching along the quay. He had a very handsome face and spoke as Scotsmen do. I told him in one sentence what the crisis was. He bent his head down towards the little sergeants and said:
‘I’ll take the responsibility for sending on these nurses.’
‘Oh thank you, Colonel,’ the sergeants replied, their sad faces now all smiles.
We leapt on board again and before more could be said the captain sailed out to sea. As the quay receded from our view we saw the tall Scotsman standing waving to us.
‘Colonel MacCallum is a lovely man,’ a fair American speaking Swedish nurse remarked. ‘All the girls on this ship want to kiss him…’
Next moring when we awoke the ship was sailing slowly through the bluest sea we’d ever seen, under a cloudless sky. The Baltic has a sheen upon it making all colours fresh and clear. That morning ushered in the clearest, sweetest day. It seemed we had a toy ship that steamed on through a calm, almost rippleless sea, its wake breaking the bright, cloth-like surface and stretching out behind like a white tape held across a blue billiard table. There was enough breeze to keep us cool but not enough to make us cold.
As the day went on we brought the children up on the foredeck. There we laid the sick on mattresses while the well ones played or sang or just looked out across the flat expanse of sea, letting the sun’s rays caress their cheeks and the wind blow through their hair. Luba looked her best, her fair curls floating in the breeze. Around her gathered the Czech children and began to sing a lovely Russian song she’d taught them.
As the afternoon wore on we approached a peninsula which ran far out to sea and through which cut the Trelleborg ship canal. We steamed straight forwards and ran in between its two high banks, upon which were many Swedish bathers, whose brown bodies gave forth a glow of healthy life.
As we moved past them, while they waved and called greetings to the children who stood singing on the fore-deck, it really seemed as if we’d reached our journey’s end, as if we had found ‘our faëry land of heart’s desire’, our ‘Tir-na-Oge’. For a moment, as we stood upon our spotless ship, from whose high masthead hung that golden cross upon its bright blue ground, heard all the children sing, and saw the waving welcome of the northern folk, we felt that we’d got right outside Time.
Then on we sailed, out to sea again, from the northern end of the canal, upon the last lap of the journey to Malmö.
I looked at Han and the Sparrow then. Their eyes were extra bright as if tears were not far off. We mounted to the upper deck and stood looking forward across the lower fore-deck upon which the children still stood and sang, and out beyond the ship’s bows which cleft a passage through the calm Baltic. To star-board the Swedish coast ran northward to meet the distant horizon, to port there stretched an endless expanse of blue sea. Above, the sun shone from a cloudless sky. We and the children there had come together out of torture, pain and fear, away from dirt and lice and sickness into this clean sunshine and fresh beauty, and yet… The throbbing engines of the ship and its relentless passage onwards through the sea brought back to us the ever urgency of moving Time, and then we knew that neither they nor we would ever find again on earth such happiness and full content of mind as all had known in the Children’s Hospital at Belsen Camp when the Devil had been banished and Love crowned king.
Our arrival at Malmö was indeed a descent from the sublime. We had made every effort to divide the children into their respective groups: sick children, well orphans, and mothers and children, each controlled by one of our accompanying staff. As the boat docked, however, the usual visa formalities began. Of course we hadn’t exactly the right stamp on our papers, and a good deal of restamping had to be done. This kept Han and me closeted for a considerable period with the immigration authorities, in spite of the fact that they were much the most efficient and helpful members of that bureaucratic vocation we had ever met. By the time we did reach the shore we found all our carefully prearranged plans had been ruined, and chaos reigned. The Swedes had organized everything themselves in their usual efficient way, but they hadn’t realized that no group of Belsenites could, or would, obey any order in principle and that the Belsen children held the gold medal for disrupting capabilities. On the quay a nice meal had been prepared and laid out on trestle tables. A large number of good-looking Swedes of both sexes, under the command of a magnificent Viking of six feet two inches, in army uniform, was explaining to our children and mothers in Swedish what they wanted them to do. The latter were talking, arguing screaming, laughing, crying, and howling in Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, and a number of mixtures.
As we came ashore, the Viking approached us and held out a splendid hand. He spoke a few phrases in excellently pronounced English, which gave us the impression that he knew the language, but we soon discovered that he didn’t understand anything we said to him. A bus drew up, and it was intimated that the well children should get in and be driven off and redeloused somewhere. All the wrong ones got in and had to be got out again and others got in. Mothers lost their children, children lost their mothers. Luba burst into uncontrollable sobs, as she was separated from Hermina. Miss Fernandes, protesting violently in the English of the British county, was taken off and deloused all over again.
Han ran up and down, trying to explain to everybody what they were supposed to do, but for the first time in her life she was completely defeated by a language. Swedish as yet just meant nothing to her.
In the end most of the sick children under the Sparrow were taken to the New Lung Clinic in Malmö. The mothers and well children, about fifty in all, with Miss Fernandes, Bonsel, and Hermina, were driven to a Home called Sundsgården, arriving there, after a final delousing, some time in the early hours.
Luba, sobbing, was driven off to Bjärred with about twenty of the bigger girls. The boys, escaping in high form, in a bus of their own, were taken to Gåsebäck, a rambling old house near Helsingborg.
The Viking, Han and I were left on the quay. The silence was frightening after the turmoil. We still shouted at each other when we spoke. Then we collected all the things that had been left behind, hats, bags and toys, and put them into a pile and presented the remaining Red Cross parcels to the captain of the ship.
Next day I proceeded to the Lung Clinic to hand over the case reports, X-rays, &c., of the sick children to the doctor in charge, while Han set out upon a round of the homes to sort out the position before our Red Cross staff should be withdrawn.
The Lung Clinic was brand new. The children had been given a complete floor to themselves, facing south. It was as nearly perfect as a children’s hospital could be. Dr. Jacobson, who was in charge, spoke English and German perfectly. He was a first-class children’s physician, knowledgeable, considerate and kind. The nursing was extremely good and the Sparrow was treated with every courtesy. They received me as a friend and allowed me to wander about and talk to the children, who were made to feel very happy immediately. When it is remembered that the Swedes had already taken into their country tens of thousands of displaced persons, this incredible hospitality will be appreciated by all those who have ever tried to cope with refugees of any kind.
Needless to say, the children did very well in the Lung Clinic. As soon as they were convalescent, they were removed to a beautiful house with a lovely walled garden in the outskirts of the city called Velanderhemmet, where Sister May loved and managed them with charm and true understanding.
I had a very easy and pleasant task, and was able to let the Sparrow return to Germany almost at once. She left sadly, for although her English training precluded the showing of emotion, she had been personally responsible for saving the lives of many children and had become, almost unknown to herself, inordinately attached to them. On the other hand, she had been for once out-professionalized by the Swedish Sisters and felt positively embarrassed by their absolute nursing efficiency. Or perhaps it was that she had become Belsenized like the rest of us.
The management of sick children, and the care of well ones, is quite a different matter, however, and our northern hosts were far less successful in the Homes where our mid-European well children and mothers were sent.
Han found the group of mothers and children, Miss Fernandes, Bonsel, and Hermina all in a state of emotional misery at Sundsgården. The house was gaunt and tall, though it stood in as fair a setting as any in the world, amidst green and golden Swedish hills which sloped gently towards the brightest of blue seas, upon which an island seemed to float, like a ship painted dark blue, and the Danish coast appeared like a faint pencil line in the far distance.
The sister-in-charge was the human equivalent of the House. She disapproved. She protected herself with many rules. Her nurses must be separate from ‘the foreign’ nurses and attendants. Miss Fernandes had got a nasty shock when she discovered she was ‘foreign’. To the English the term ‘foreign’, applied to oneself, is a kind of blasphemy. Bonsel they treated simply as a D.P. She took it humorously but murder was not far off. As for the mothers, the way they eyed the men around was just disgusting, the Swedish sister thought. Han listened to it all. Each day the telophone rang and there was Luba, her voice choked with tears, speaking from Bjärred, threatening to commit suicide if she was not rejoined immediately by Hermina. She could not be consoled. She rang up again and again. She said she had a rope. At last Han decided: Hermina and Luba must be reunited. The Swedish sister protested that she must keep Hermina to control the mothers. But Han insisted quietly that she must take her when she and Bonsel were going to Bjärred. If the truth were known, she had had about enough of that sister.
On the morning of departure, coming into her room she saw a little shape sitting on her bed. He had tousled hair, blue eyes and enormous boots without any laces.
‘Egon, you know you’re not allowed to come here,’ she said. ‘It’s against Sister’s rules!’ In reply he pulled the blanket over his head, as a tent, and said in a muffled voice, ‘Tante Schwester, one nice story before you go away. You won’t be able to do it any more.’ But just then the mothers and some of the bigger girls came in. They crowded the room, they sat on the bed breaking rule number one. They sat on the table, on the floor, everywhere. They began to polish Han’s shoes, press her battle-dress, mend her stockings, while they talked, laughed, gesticulated, and wept. Hermina, dressed in black satin, superintended the packing of Han’s suitcase. Then, with Bonsel, they all went round the wards where the sick children were:—‘Tante Schwester in Belsen war es viel schöner—Tante Schwester…’ Terka, cross-eyed Eugen’s mother, produced a huge bunch of flowers with the inscription, ‘For our dear Sister, in deepest gratitude.’
Finally they went down to the hall. Outside, a large shining black car was standing, driven by a very superior-looking Swede.
All the children and the mothers came, laughing and crying. Suddenly there was a silence and little Rosa Gercenowitz stepped forward, her long black plaits swinging, but her dark eyes very solemn. She carried two large bouquets, done up, Victorian-like, in white manchets, with flying blue-and-white ribbons, the Jewish colours. She made a speech in a little high voice, accompanied by exaggerated gestures and coquettish glances around. But suddenly her voice faltered, she stopped, and flung herself, flowers and all, into Han’s arms, sobbing. At this everybody burst into tears and sobbed and sobbed while the Swedish sister looked on, too surprised even to disprove. Then all brought forward their flowers, each with a little note: ‘All love from Paulina and Regina,’ ‘Grüsse von Isaac,’ &c…. Anetka Niecicka, aged two years, offered a miniature bouquet, with an entrancing effort at a curtsey. In the end they had so many flowers they could not hold them all and the car was like a greenhouse.
The chauffeur tapped his wheel impatiently. They had to go. They got in. Han saw Egon, the little Czech, standing alone in the middle of the lawn, howling. Only Hermina had dry eyes, she was going to Luba. ‘It’s O.K.!’ she cried. The car started. Rosa, her shrill voice trembling, commenced to sing the first notes of ‘Ha Tikva’, their national anthem that contains all the sadness and tragedy of the Jewish race. All took it up and sang, and sang. Standing motioness around the door, their young voices rang out in the clear northern air, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Roumanians, but now all one. The Swedish driver did not speak, but having driven round the circle of the lawn towards the gate, he suddenly swung round and did the complete circle a second time before turning off towards the main road.
Han looked back through the masses of flowers in the car and saw the children standing, blowing kisses and singing their song and, behind them, the square, grey, unfriendly house.
The drive to Bjärred took about an hour. At first the road ran along by the sea, past the lovely old town of Landskrona, and then turned inland and passed across low undulating hills or through birch woods shining bright silver in the sunshine. Everywhere were little wooden houses painted red and white with wooden staircases leading up to a porch in front. The air was warm and full of the scents of midsummer. Suddenly Han knew why the Swedish colours were bright blue and gold:—the clear blue sky and the golden cornfields of Skåne. They came to the small village of Bjärred, on Malmö bay, and found the children billeted in a rather gloomy-looking wooden hotel with outside staircases running down its front, sides, and back.
The car drew up in front of the hotel. There was a scream and Luba came running down the front staircase. She was wearing the same vivid yellow blouse that Han had first seen her in at Belsen. As she reached them she burst into a flood of tears which coursed down her cheeks in cataracts. She flung her arms round Han and kissed and kissed her. She embraced Bonsel and then literally fell into Hermina’s arms, who just said, ‘O.K., Luba, O.K.!’
Then the children came out and surrounded them. They looked well and happy and were very gay and full of endless stories of new clothes, new toys, new food. They all chattered at once —Eva and Vera Weiss, the Czech twins, Renée Gross, Estucia Kohn, whom we had found all alone and very sick somewhere in the adult hospital area in Belsen—and insisted on telling the same story all together. Renée, the deaf mute, made funny, endearing noises. They seized Han and Bonsel and carried them off into the garden. Here the lawns stretched down to the sea, intersected by dark shady lanes and clumps of silver birch.
All that day Han listened, while the children poured out their adventures, and she had no time to talk to Luba. Next morning, however, she took her for a walk down to the sea. They strolled out on to a little wooden pier, sitting down at the end and dangling their legs over the water. As they walked down Luba had remained quite silent, holding Han’s small hand in her large one, very tightly. At last Han said, ‘Well, Luba, tell me all about it.’
Luba burst into tears. ‘I can’t stay. I can’t stay. Please, Schwester An,’ (she never could pronounce Han’s H), ‘send me back to Belsen. Please, I can’t bear it here. The Swedes treat me like—like a D.P. and…sniff…my father had sixteen horses.’… There she sat sobbing like a frightened child. ‘I’ll kill myself, that’s what I’ll do,’ she said, ‘if you leave me here.’
‘But Luba,’ Han said,’ what about the children! You know how much they love you and depend upon you for protection. You know how little Renée cannot do without you. How could you leave her all alone in a silent world?’ But Luba just sobbed. Then Hermina came along the pier and sat down on Han’s other side and also swung her legs over the edge. It was very hot. Two lovely brown Swedish girls were playing and splashing in the sea. The sky and the bay shone clear northern blue.
‘Well, Hermina,’ Han said,’ what do you say about it? I’m sure you ought to stay and, besides, I don’t see how I could get you passes back into Germany just now!’
‘I go wherever Luba goes,’ Hermina said, ‘Luba to Belsen, Hermina to Belsen, Luba in Sweden, Hermina in Sweden—O.K.!’
‘Well, think it over, both of you, and tell me to-morrow,’ Han said, rising and going back to the children.
That night a member of the Jewish committee from Stockholm turned up. He gave each of the children five crowns. The excitement was terrific. None of them had seen money for years. Many had never before possessed a cent. They all talked at once. Some were for getting a new dress, others new shoes, but most decided that watches were the thing.
Next morning a number set off for Malmö after a secret girlish confabulation. Officially, they were supposed to be visiting the dentist, but this terror was forgotten in the excitement of their shopping mission.
All morning Luba sat alone with little Renée, the deaf mute, on the lawn, looking out over the sea.
The children returned from Malmö. At one o’clock dinner was served. The head of the camp had asked Han and Bonsel to sit with him and the Swedish staff, but they begged to be allowed to sit with the children as it was their farewell meal. He understood and conducted them to the big children’s table himself.
‘Where is Luba?’ all the children called. At last she entered with slow dragging steps, her head sunk forward, her face the picture of awful tragedy.
‘Russian gloom!’ Han whispered to Bonsel.
‘Sh, sh,’ Bonsel said, as Luba sat down silently in her chair at the head of the table. There was complete silence. All looked at her. On her plate was a small square parcel.
‘Oh, Schwester Luba—look—isn’t that a present for you?— Open it!’
Slowly she untied the string and unfolded the paper, without showing much interest. She found a little white box inside. She opened it. It contained a small golden heart, in the centre of which was set a large white pearl. With it was a scrap of paper. Luba pushed it silently across the table to Han. On it was written, ‘For our most beloved mother Luba.’ Thus had all the children spent all their new wealth.
Luba sat there quite still. Her face was no longer pale and drawn and her eyes like deep dead pools. They flashed again with all the passion of her being; her cheeks were scarlet. Slowly she wrapped up the golden heart, put it back in its little box and placed it in her left breast pocket. ‘That’s where it belongs,’ she said, ‘on my heart.’
She never spoke again of leaving.
A few days later when all the other homes had been visited and all was accomplished, Han set out for Malmö to rejoin me and come up to Stockholm for final arrangements with U.N.R.R.A. and the Central Swedish Committee. Bonsel, Hermina, and Luba went with her. They had two hours to wait in Malmö before going back to Bjärred. Luba decided to buy a new outfit.
‘But what about money?’ Han asked.
‘Oh, that’s O.K.,’ Hermina said. ‘We got some money from the Rabbi and more from the Jewish Committee and I’ve got some myself.’
They went into a large emporium and got into the lift. It shot up. Hermina let out a terrifying scream that could be heard all over the shop and yelled to be let out. Having reached the tailoring department, a desperate hour ensued. Luba pulled out one thing after another. All were too expensive or didn’t fit. At last she set her heart on a black coat and skirt rather like the one Han had bought, but she and Han not being the same shape it wouldn’t button up. She was determined to have it, however. Then she said she must have a hat to go with it and a second desperate hour ensued. In the end, one with an enormous brim was chosen.
‘Tell them I’ll have this hat, and the coat and skirt if they knock off fifty crowns.’ Luba said.
‘But, Luba, you can’t, not here,’ Han said. ‘They don’t bargain here.’
‘O.K.,’ Hermina said. She paid.
Luba now discarded her old clothes and put on her new finery, and they all sallied forth into the square again. Suddenly it was time to say ‘good-bye’. In a flash Han knew that these last two desperate hours had been Luba’s way of putting out of her mind the knowledge of the parting which was coming.
There they stood in the Malmö square, the Swedish crowd all around them, eyeing them with curiosity.
‘Come, Bonsel,’ Han whispered, ‘let’s go quickly. I can’t bear it.’ She kissed Luba and then Hermina. Bonsel did the same. The Dutch girls walked quickly away. ‘Don’t look back,’ Bonsel said, but Han did, as she reached the corner—there in the middle of the square still stood Luba and Hermina, the former in all her new glory, the latter still in her old faded print dress. They were standing quite still together, looking at the ground and holding hands like two lost schoolgirls out of some Victorian novel.
The train going to Stockholm seemed most luxurious to us who had travelled so far by truck, ambulance, and battered German railcoach. We sat and dozed upon upholstered cushions, or idly gazed out upon the fair Swedish landscape whose vegetation reminded me of Ireland. I saw oak woods full of mossy, ferny undergrowth, dark golden rivers and many loughs. But the human dwellings were quite un-Irish, clean, wooden and showing all the signs of prosperous years. We dined, partaking of the usual unequalled Swedish hors d’œuvres, and when at last we reached the capital, we found Professor Arvid Wallgren waiting for us upon the platform.
Professor Wallgren is perhaps the best children’s physician in the world. His work is known in every country. And yet he looks so young and has such a modest gentle manner that none would guess to look at him that he is one of the greatest men on earth. He had no car and not being the kind of man whom taxi-men serve quickly, we had to wait outside the station for a while, as all the cars for hire were snatched up by thrusting American business men and others of their ilk. This gave us time to gaze around at the new city which we found ourselves in. In Stockholm, as everywhere in Sweden, the air is very clear. There is no coal smoke. Everything is spotlessly clean and the many inlets around which the city is built, shining blue in the sun, dazzle the eye. Here we found no slums and no apparent poverty. Order, precision and a clear-cut way of life appeared to be the spirit which governed everything. The hospitals and clinics which we visited later were better than any others we had ever seen. The Swedes seemed to do everything a little better than the best. During the following days we wandered round the shops seeing all the things we had not even thought of for years. The food was wonderful. Mr. Andreassen, the Scandinavian head of U.N.R.R.A., an American of Norwegian descent, was kindness and efficiency itself. He solved all our financial troubles, which was by no means easy, as all the money I had been given for the expedition was in Allied German marks, valueless and unchangeable in Sweden. We saw the various committees and wandered round the town while Han shopped again.
On the day before we were to leave, our host brought us on a journey by sea upon a little steamer, which took us out through the wooded islands and peninsulas which surround the city. Often the passage was so narrow that we could see into the little wooden houses in the pine forests by the water’s edge. They looked like the dream house which each builds for himself when fancy is allowed to take charge of the thoughts that wander through the relaxed mind about to turn to sleep.
After more than an hour of sailing thus we crossed an open bay and came into the little port of Waxholm. Here a narrow channel ran through to another bay. It was not more than a hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, guarded on one side by a large rounded granite fort which rose straight out of the water, and bounded on the other by the village of Waxholm.
Here our boat ran its nose against the quay and we stepped ashore. The professor took us to a restaurant overlooking the sea channel and the port and there we sat and dined off all the different kinds of fish that the Swedes know better how to serve than any folk on earth. At first the professor talked to me of child health and all the problems of our daily work, while the others talked of less technical affairs. Then after a pause, when we had looked away to the open sea north-east, across the Baltic towards Finland, we began to talk of the menacing grey cloud which seemed to hang there. Never was man less political than this professor, yet it was clear he feared this unleashed power might sweep west and destroy all that the Swedes had built and thought through all the years when they had cultivated peace. His attitude was cool and very different from the fevered comments of those from the European mainland or the Westerners, British and American. He seemed unaffected by any form of propaganda: English, German, or Russian. To him his country seemed to be the one that had found a reasoned way of life more than any other. He was not quick or humorous in his talk as men in Dublin are, nor was he bitter like them either. He did not speak with the self-assurance of the Englishmen nor with the dogmatic utterance of the Americans. He did not plead his case as Germans do. He spoke with all the calm of one whose life is spent in healing thought. Yet all he said showed that he feared the conflict was not over and that unless man’s hearts altered in some miraculous way, a last and worst great fight would come engulfing all.
As the sun was going down we set out homeward, sailing across a blood-red sea, between dark purple forests, and I thought that if an artist had painted the scene as it was then, he would have been called a surrealist.
At last we reached the city, now lit by a thousand lights, and came ashore below the Royal Palace.