Chapter 33

CONSTANT WORRY

Around the table at breakfast, lunch and dinner, the students read and discussed the newspaper articles and maps of the worsening situation in Europe. Often, Eva read the papers aloud to the others, and she frequently had to translate from English into German. The headlines of the Times-Dispatch on May 8, 1940, were worrisome: “Dutch Forces on War Footing” and “Germans Reported Moving on Holland.” On May 10: “Nazis Invade Holland.” Those students who had emigrated from Holland just a few months earlier struggled to comprehend their luck. Tragically, not all of the Gross Breesen students who were living in the transit camps in Holland got out in time. Everyone was worried that Bondy might be caught in the Nazi blitzkrieg that hammered western Europe. They did not know if he had escaped from Amsterdam in time to flee south into France.

Töpper’s family was trapped in Amsterdam when the invasion commenced, and not hearing anything from them was maddening. At the end of every one of his diary entries between May 10 and June 24, 1940, he wrote: “No news”…“Still no news”…“When will I get mail from my parents? I could go crazy!”¹⁶⁰

Ten days after the German invasion of Holland, Hyde Farmlands was hit by a severe rainstorm accompanied by thunder and lightning. Töpper went out at night into the storm and walked in the buffeting winds. The dark sky was slashed by bolts of lightning that illuminated the fields. The chaos of the storm mirrored the unbridled pain that he felt: “It is horrendous, glow worms, lightning and rain. Fantastic. No news from Europe. War situation unclear, apparently more German advances in the heart of France. The Germans? The Nazis! But, unfortunately also the Germans.”¹⁶¹ The feelings of helplessness and betrayal, accompanied by guilt, drove the young people into quiet anguish. The raging storm of the natural world that night reflected the affairs of man, as if a grand Shakespearean tragedy descended on Burkeville. Every day, news of the war fatigued the students with worry for family, friends and their beloved Bo. They could do nothing to prevent the catastrophic events that wore down their optimism. Especially for those who had been imprisoned in Buchenwald, they could do little to outrun the invisible phantoms that stalked them or silence the desperate voices of their families that called to them in their sleep.

No one knew if Dr. Bondy was safe. If only he could join his students at Hyde Farmlands.

BONDY’S ESCAPE

On May 9, Bondy was in Brussels working on plans for two hundred young people to immigrate to San Domingo.¹⁶² There, he heard the first bombs dropped on Brussels as the Nazi invasion began. When he tried to return to Amsterdam, he found that all the northbound trains had stopped running. The only escape route was south into France. The train never reached Paris; he was stuck for three days and three nights without being allowed to disembark. On his way south, after weeks of close calls, he was incarcerated in an internment camp. After several days, because he held a San Domingo passport, he was released and made his way to Lisbon, Portugal. On August 10, exactly three months to the day of the German invasion of Holland, he sailed to America with a U.S. non-quota visa as a professor. Thalhimer’s friend John Stuart Bryan, president of the College of William and Mary, arranged for Bondy to become a faculty member of Richmond Professional Institute, a division of the College of William and Mary. When the students at Hyde Farmlands learned that Bondy had landed safely in New York on August 21, they were elated, and his arrival at the farm was anticipated with joy and relief. The news was exactly what the students needed.

After a welcoming celebration of gratitude that Bondy had rejoined his beloved students, it became evident that “Herr Professor” had changed. The endless toil of trying to rescue young people and his own internments in Buchenwald and France had sapped much of his energy. His escape exhausted him. He was a tired man, not broken, but not the same. The aura of self-assured leadership, the spirit that had inspired and molded his Gross Breesen wards, was diminished. It would take time to regain his strength and energy.