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- Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
In July 1940, Erich Fischer found himself in Liverpool being herded onto a British transport ship bound for Australia, along with 2,500 other men. Conditions on board were horrific, with men locked below decks with overflowing latrines and only seawater to clean themselves. Separated from family, friends and removed from any semblance of a normal life, Erich is unsure whether he will ever see wife and child again. Erica Fischer's The King's Children tells the extraordinary story of her own parents and at the same time sheds light on a little-known and little-discussed chapter in British history. Fischer's parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother, Irka, was a Polish Jew and her father, Erich, was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. Faced with growing unrest in Europe, Irka fled to the United Kingdom in 1938, her husband followed a year later. However at the outbreak of war, Erich had been arrested as an 'enemy alien', and having been interned was deported to the opposite side of the world. Faced with unimaginable hardships, the deportees banded together in solidarity to face their new life in Australia and Erich was, against the odds, able to make contact with Irka and their letters established a lifeline between continents. The King's Children is astonishing true tale dealing with an unexposed and unexplored period in British history but also a story of the resilience of love.
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OVERTHE OCEAN
ERICA FISCHER
Translated by Andrew Brown
For my parents
OVERTHE OCEAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
It is 20th June 1940, a sunny Thursday morning in London. In Hyde Park, the birds are chirruping, and swans are gliding over the motionless waters of the Serpentine. On the deserted lawn sit a woman and a man in deckchairs. The woman is wearing a floral dress and has taken off her shoes. Absently, she considers her feet with their red painted toenails. The man’s sports jacket hangs over the back of his deck chair, his unbuttoned shirt is creased. The two are holding each other’s hands and making low conversation, without looking at one another.
‘You must be strong now, sweetheart.’
She turns to him. Her eyes are big and brown. Her close-cropped dark hair falls softly onto her forehead. ‘It can’t be much longer. We’ve been separated so often, but this time it’s different. I’m afraid.’
‘Who knows? Maybe they’ll overlook me.’
‘First they classify us as “refugees from Nazi oppression”, and now we’re supposed to be Fifth Columnists. At least you are: I’m just a woman.’
She speaks German with a harsh accent.
‘They’re right, of course. Or perhaps you were in a position to plan the overthrow of the British government? But you have to admit: mutating in a single day from a pitiful refugee to an enemy alien and Fifth Columnist isn’t without its funny side.’
His Viennese idiom gives a certain familiarity to the sarcastic undertone of his remarks, a familiarity which she finds irresistible.
‘Your eyes are so blue,’ she whispers.
He smiles and caresses her cheek.
‘It’ll all be fine. We’ve been through so much together.’
‘Yes, but that was together! If the Germans come, and you’re not with me, then what, Erich?’
‘The Germans won’t come.’
‘You and your optimism! You know that the Picture Post has devoted its entire latest issue to how to behave when the Germans come. For the Post, invasion is quite a realistic prospect.’
‘Yes, yes, and we should all stock up with Molotov cocktails! What nonsense.’
‘And Churchill? If the German paratroopers arrive, it will be better for both the English and for us not to be here. That’s what he said, right? I can still distinctly remember you showing me the newspaper with his speech.’
Erich cannot think of a good answer.
‘Sweetheart, look how blue the sky is. But behind this tree you can definitely see a grey cloud. Right?’
‘When I look at you, my dear, everything in front of my eyes turns blue. It’s as if the sky shines through your eyes.’
Erich smiles. He knows what effect his eyes have.
‘It’s so peaceful here. We’re sitting in this green oasis, this evening we’ll be spreading juicy English butter on our bread, and on the other side of the Channel all hell has broken loose. It’s all a bit unreal. France has capitulated. De Gaulle’s in London. Who could have imagined that, just one year ago?’
‘Who can stop the Germans now? When they come, only people with Aryan identity will be able to walk on the grass. Then we won’t be able to sit on the grass here together.’
‘Didn’t you hear de Gaulle’s speech on the radio?’ Erich spreads his arms theatrically. ‘The flame of French resistance will not go out! We must have faith.’
‘The French! They’ve always been good at patriotic songs. Like my Poles. Just don’t look reality in the face. I read in the paper that the British don’t even have any more cement to carry on building the public shelters.’
‘Irka! The other day I saw a group of English soldiers on the street, evacuated from Dunkirk – a splendid piece of logistics on the part of the English, by the way. They were laughing, shaking their fists and giving a thumbs up. They shouted to the passers-by, “We’ll be back in France before long!”’
‘They’re naive, they don’t know the Nazis. They don’t know what that lot are capable of. We do know. But anyway, Emmerich: I’m happy to be pocieszać – how do you say it? Happy to be comforted by you. Who’ll do it when you’re gone?’
‘Emmerich? Have things got that bad in these parts?’
‘Sometimes I just have to tease you with your funny name. You’re my boy, my lad, my dearest chłopak, and I have to take good care of you. If they send you to Canada, I’ll buy you some warm underwear.’
‘For the time being I’m still here, and it’s warmer than it’s been for ages. We mustn’t let the opportunity slip. Who knows when we’ll get another one? We’re in England, at last. Let’s go to the swimming pool! I’ll buy you an ice cream.’
Hand in hand they stroll over to Lansbury’s Lido. Despite her high-heeled shoes, Irka looks like a little girl next to him. The swimming area on the lake, crowded at weekends, is deserted this morning.
Erich opens the shutter of his camera, and the lens automatically pops out. Each time, Irka finds this fascinating. She places one foot in front of the other and puts on her melancholy smile, which in her view suits her face best. It is rather risky, for an ‘enemy alien’ to take photos in public, as they really ought to have handed their camera in at the outbreak of war. But Erich could not be separated from his Voigtländer Bessa: he loves taking photos with it – black and white, 45×60 mm.
An elderly gentleman, observing them with a blissful smile, offers to take a picture of them. Erich puts his arm round his little wife.
‘A lovely couple,’ the Englishman murmurs as he looks through the viewfinder. Then he presses the shutter release. It clicks.
With a slight bow he hands the camera back to Erich. ‘My pleasure.’
‘Thank you.’ Now it is Erich’s turn to give a graceful bow. He stretches out his hand. ‘I’m Erich. That’s Irene. We’re enemy aliens.’
Irka digs Erich in the ribs. ‘Are you meshugge?’
‘You’re well camouflaged – no one can tell!’ laughs the man.
‘You see,’ Erich says with a smile, ‘the English won’t let the Jerries in. They have way too much humour. And now for our dip. I’d like to see the shape of your breasts in a wet swimming costume. I’ll take a photo to go with me to Canada!’
Irka gives an embarrassed giggle. She likes it when her boy makes suggestive remarks.
CHAPTER TWO
When war broke out, Irka and Erich had to register with the English police and report once a week. They were asked to appear in front of a tribunal whose job it was to decide which German and Austrian foreigners were genuine refugees, and they blissfully imagined that they would be safe in refugee category C, officially classified as ‘refugees from Nazi oppression’. Irka’s case seemed cut and dried from the start, since she was Jewish, but Erich was lucky, because some tribunals did not realise that so-called Aryans could also be committed anti-Nazis.
About 600 people were placed in Category A. They were viewed, whether justifiably or not, as a higher level security risk and were immediately interned. About as many fell into Category B, and were subject to certain restrictions on travel. The vast majority, about 55,000 people, were recognised as refugees and could continue to move freely.
With a sigh of relief, Erich and Irka were able to continue working as domestic workers, the only activity allowed them. They were employed on a country estate in the south of England, in the hills of Wiltshire: Erich as a butler, Irka as a housemaid. They had food and a roof over their heads, and they were together. While Irka kept the living quarters clean, Erich’s job involved tidying up the billiard room and laying the table for the family of the house. As a boy from a working-class background, he had no idea where to put the fish knife and the dessert spoon. Holding a sketch that Irka had drawn for him, he just about got by.
They were not badly off in Wiltshire. Around the magnificent building there was nothing but rich meadows and herds of sheep, the family’s property with lush gardens and old English cottages with thatched roofs. On their days off they took trips into Shaftesbury and Salisbury. But the very idyllic quality of their lives was hard to cope with. With increasing concern they followed the progress of the war. They had lost all contact with their relatives. Erich’s father and his brothers in Vienna, and even more Irka’s parents and her younger brother in occupied Warsaw, lived in another world, now out of reach.
In the spring, Irka handed in her notice and moved to London. She had an opportunity to work there as a goldsmith, a profession for which she had trained at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, and she assembled a collection of her pieces. In Vienna she had started to earn good money for her work. She mainly designed silver jewellery – a successful blend of the Vienna workshop that had been founded at the beginning of the century and was dissolved in 1932 together with influences from her homeland. So she was fond of using the red coral so popular in Poland for the decoration of stylized flowers.
However, the British jeweller she was negotiating with expected a financial advance that she could not provide, and the matter fell through. In times of war, people have other things on their mind than buying jewellery. In May, Erich joined her: the promoter of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain, had just resigned as prime minister, and the charismatic Winston Churchill had formed a national coalition government.
It looked increasingly likely that Erich would be interned, so they decided for now to live on their savings and spend their remaining time together. Then, the mood gradually began to change. The British public had so far been well disposed towards the refugees, even when in January some tabloids blackened their name, calling them spies and saboteurs. A commentator from the left-wing New Statesman, Erich’s favourite magazine, expressed the view that the allegations had been put about by the army. The smears published in the Daily Express and the Daily Herald paved the way for a new direction in foreign policy. Erich spent his mornings reading the newspapers in the public library and making notes on whatever struck him as important.
The German army’s Fourth Panzer Division reached the French coast opposite England on 10th May, and the first Cabinet meeting of the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was held on 11th May. (And on 12th May the Royal Air Force started bombing German cities, the first of them being Mönchengladbach.) The item was listed on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting as ‘Invasion of Great Britain’. Home Secretary Sir John Anderson was asked by the British generals to clear the coastal area of foreigners, so Anderson immediately declared the entire east coast from Inverness down to Dorset to be a protected zone. Two thousand two hundred German and Austrian men between sixteen and sixty who lived in this region were ‘temporarily interned’ as it was called. Among them were tourists who had the misfortune to have been taking a Whitsun weekend trip to the seaside.
When the Netherlands surrendered, all male Germans and Austrians in category B were quickly arrested and escorted by soldiers in close formation to a detention centre. ‘Act! Act! Act! Do it now,’ cried the title of a report in the Daily Mail on 24th May. Erich anxiously saw that even reputable newspapers like The Times were adopting the same line.
‘We have to be prepared,’ he warned Irka. ‘And don’t you place your charms at the disposal of any men working in the munitions industry during my absence!’
Irka looked at him, puzzled.
‘Here, read this. I’ve copied it down for you from the Sunday Chronicle: “There is no dirty trick that Hitler would not pull, and there is a very considerable amount of evidence to suggest that some of the women – who are very pretty – are not above offering their charms to any young man who may care to take them, particularly if he works in a munition factory or the Public Works.”’
She laughed. But as if the newspaper had arranged it, 3,000 women in Category B were next day interned on the Isle of Man.
After the withdrawal of British troops from Dunkirk, a night curfew was imposed on all foreigners, with the exception of the French. Racist propaganda against ‘local Italians’ living in England had already been published for some time: the Daily Mirror was particularly outspoken. In one article, it described the 11,000 Italians living in London as ‘an undigestable unit of population’, despite which ships would continue to wash ashore ‘all kinds of brown-eyed Francescas and Marias, beetle-browed Ginos, Titos and Marios.’ A storm was brewing in the Mediterranean, and ‘even the peaceful, law-abiding proprietor of the backstreet coffee shop bounces into a fine patriotic frenzy at the sound of Mussolini’s name’.
Erich and Irka were horrified to experience xenophobia in England too, having just escaped it in Austria.
After Mussolini’s declaration of war on England and France on 10th June, Italians were arrested and anti-Italian sentiment resulted in attacks on Italian shops and cafes. British domestic intelligence put together lists of allegedly dangerous persons who were rounded up at dawn by police officers. Eventually, 4,500 Italians were arrested and interned, including many who had lived for decades in England, whose sons had been born there and were serving in the British Army. The writer George Orwell complained that you could not get a decent meal in London any more because the chefs of the Savoy, the Café Royal, the Piccadilly and many other restaurants in Soho and Little Italy had been locked up.
Cheered on by Churchill’s rallying cry ‘Collar the lot’, that at first no one took really seriously, the authorities interned ever more innocent German and Austrian men from the second half of June onwards, without even bothering to point out that this was just a provisional measure. The public was led to believe that the detainees were persons who had aroused suspicion in some way.
This was what angered Erich the most. He knew people whose health had been permanently damaged in Dachau and were now again being put behind barbed wire. At the same time, no one thought of interning a British demagogue like Sir Oswald Mosley, whose gangs of fascist thugs had provoked riots in the predominantly Jewish East End of London. Erich had no illusions that his impeccable political background could still protect him now.
Anderson had a standard formula ready to silence any criticism of the practice of internment. ‘I am afraid that hardship is inseparable from the conditions in which we live at the moment.’
Fear of a German invasion had gripped wide circles of the population. Increasingly, the call rang out, ‘Intern them all!’ There was a rumour going around that the royal family had fled to Canada, and children whose parents could afford it were evacuated in thousands. Although negotiations with Canada and Australia to accept refugees were secret, the news was leaked that the government was thinking of shipping ‘enemy aliens’ overseas.
So it is that Erich and Irka are prepared for the police to come knocking at their door. Their packed suitcase has been ready for days. They have considered how they can use the ‘unavoidable measure’ of internment to their advantage. If the men are to be sent overseas, they have agreed that Erich will hand himself in, provided Irka can follow him soon. In the Dominions, far away from the battlefields, an opportunity for them to be released will probably arise. After years of persecution, first by the Austro-fascists, then by the Nazis, they only want one thing: to live together in peace and freedom.
The approaching farewell is nevertheless difficult. Irka sobs: she has lived through too many separations in recent years. Her pregnant sister managed, just before the war, to emigrate with her husband from Poland to Australia. At least she is safe. Irka does not want to think about her parents and her brother in Warsaw. In England she can confide in only a few people: Erich is her mainstay. The fact that he was able to join her two months after her escape from Vienna on a tourist visa, and then was also recognised as a refugee, has restored her joie de vivre for some time now. With Erich she can even laugh about the way that she, the elegant daughter of a Warsaw felt manufacturer and an optimistic, enthusiastic art student from Vienna, now has to enter service as a cleaning lady.
Before Erich arrived in England, she had not been much in the mood for laughing. Her first job, one that she found through an employment agency, brought her in October 1938 to the house of a grouchy old woman whose only idea of fun was making life difficult for her young housemaid. She had no idea of the hell Irka had just escaped from, and did not care.
‘Why do you have so many bags?’ she asked when Irka arrived.
‘I had to bring everything with me.’
The old woman shook her head in disbelief. ‘I’ve never had a home help with three suitcases before.’
The cook of the house led Irka up to her attic room.
‘Why isn’t there any light here?’
‘Servants don’t need any light.’
The cook gave her six bottles and a handful of candles that Irka stuck into the bottle necks and set up around her. She lay in her bed as if it were her coffin, and wept.
The only advantage to this house was that her old woman rarely got up before lunch. In the morning, Irka plugged in the vacuum cleaner and made herself comfortable with her English vocabulary lists, in one of the soft armchairs. To learn English as quickly as possible was her most urgent task now. At school in Warsaw she had had only French lessons.
When Erich arrived, she could already make herself understood in broken English. With her head held high, she gave notice to her old woman and moved into Erich’s boarding house. He applied for a work permit, and as a married couple they started looking for a job. On one particular day, they had to present themselves in a draughty warehouse, and English ladies from the provinces came along to choose their servants. They were examined like horses at a fair. With his dazzling good looks, Erich held all the aces. ‘I’ll take him!’ echoed across the hall. The lady was reluctantly obliged to take Irka along as well.
When, a few months later, she tried to force Erich to clean the windows on a Sunday, his trade-union consciousness was stirred. ‘Up yours!’ he said, and they gave in their notice.
With their suitcases they went along the road singing ‘Why do we have a road? To march along, to march along out into the big wide world.’ They had nothing to lose. They were young and in love. And between them and the Nazis lay the Channel.
CHAPTER THREE
On 24th June, early in the morning, there is a knock on the door of the furnished room in Paddington, where Irka and Erich made their home a few months ago.
‘It’s time,’ whispers Irka, instantly awake, and clings to her husband.
Erich extricates himself from her embrace, kisses her on the forehead and goes to open the door.
The landlady Mrs Needham tells him that two policemen are asking for him. She wears a pink dressing gown and has curlers in her hair. He has never seen her looking like this before.
‘You’ve come for me,’ says Erich thickly.
‘We have instructions to take you into internment,’ drones one of the two tall men, as if he has learned his words off by heart. Their high black police helmets make them look even taller. ‘Please pack toiletries, clothes and a change of underwear and other essential things. We’ll give you half an hour.’
Erich feels like Kafka’s Joseph K., whom two guards inform of his arrest without letting him know what he stands accused of. Unlike Joseph K., however, Erich does not make a fuss, as he has been preparing for this moment for weeks.
There is little time to say goodbye, the police are waiting outside the door. But they are polite and apologise for the early morning hour, they are just following orders. ‘It’s only temporary,’ they assure him. ‘You’ll soon be back.’
With tears in her eyes, Irka bends out of the window and gazes after Erich. Before he gets into the waiting car, he turns around again and puts on the boyish grin that she loves so much. He gives her a thumbs up, copied from the English soldiers he saw.
‘Don’t smoke too much,’ Irka calls after him and lights a cigarette.
Shortly afterwards the same morning, there is a second knock at the door. This time, the landlady is dressed, and her silver hair lies in careful waves on her head like a cap. Irka is still wearing her pyjamas. Mrs Needham brings a tray with a pot of tea, a little jug of milk and some butter biscuits on a flowered china plate.
‘This will cheer you up, Irka.’
‘Oh, thank you. This is exactly what I need right now.’
Still snuffling, Irka heaves a stack of newspapers that Erich was studying the night before onto the bed and invites her landlady to sit with her at the round tea table.
‘I know it’s hard for you, all alone in a foreign country. I’m so sorry. Let me know if I can be of any help.’
Irka attempts to put on a brave smile. ‘If they send him overseas, he’ll make sure that I can follow him. That’s my only hope.’
‘He’ll manage, I’m sure he will. He’s such a nice gentleman, your Erich. They’ll all believe him when he says he isn’t up to anything bad. Maybe they’ll send him back to you soon.’
‘We’re used to being separated. In Vienna, we were both in prison. Unfortunately, not in the same cell.’
‘In prison?’
Maybe she could have phrased it better. They had been so careful and told Mrs Needham hardly anything about their past lives. Now Irka needs to explain.
‘Well, it was like this: when the Nazis came to power in Germany, a fascist corporate state was introduced in Austria. Perhaps you’ve heard of Engelbert Dollfuss? A tiny man. No? Well, all anyone knows about Austria is that Hitler comes from Braunau. In February of ’34 the game was up. All political parties and trade unions were banned. Later, the Nazis murdered Dollfuss. Serves him right.’
Irka feels that talking is helping her to calm down. She pours herself some milk from the jug into the cup, as the English have taught her, and then the black tea, which takes on a wonderful light brown colour.
‘At that time I was studying at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna. Erich wrote articles for a union newspaper, I drew the covers. The paper was typed on wax matrices and – powielać – what’s the word? Oh yes, reproduced. You had to turn a crank, like this. It was dangerous because it was illegal, but we also had a lot of fun.’
This variant seems best to Irka because, after all, the English have a long trade-union tradition. The Communist Party, banned in Austria under Austro-fascist rule, which they had both entered out of frustration at the failure of the Social Democrats after the brief civil war in February 1934, is something she prefers not to mention.
‘And that was banned?’
‘Oh yes, all political activity was banned. Everything. On 1st May, we were clubbed down in Vienna by mounted police officers. When our work for the trade-union newspaper was discovered, we were sent to prison. That was in ’36. Erich got nine months, I got six. At that time we weren’t yet married. I was then deported to Poland as a Polish citizen, I couldn’t go back to Austria. When Erich was released, he travelled to Warsaw to join me, and there we got married. By marrying an Austrian, I became Austrian too. Look at this photo. That’s us on our wedding day. Doesn’t he look gorgeous?’
‘A beautiful couple. And those lion cubs in your lap!’
‘They gave them to us to hold, for a photo in Warsaw Zoo.’
‘Drink your tea, Irka, it’s getting cold. So your name – Irka – is Polish?’
‘My name’s Irena. Irene in English. Irka is the diminutive. It’s what I was called from birth. In Polish, every name has a diminutive, sometimes there’s more than one. My sister’s name’s Ludwika, we’ve always called her Ludka. Even for common words such as “bottle” or “table” we use diminutives – buteleczka, stoliczek. The language is full of them. You don’t have them in English. Who knows what that says about the people who speak these languages? I’ve never thought about it.’
Suddenly she feels a yearning in her heart. How long it has been since she spoke Polish, and how much she’d like to lean her head on her big sister’s shoulder and listen to her whispering Polish diminutives to her. She misses the warmth of her mother language. Even with Erich, she converses in a foreign language. Sometimes she cannot really tell him what she thinks and feels; with her limited vocabulary every thought is coarsened. She is never quite herself. Will they also speak English together, one day? In Canada, perhaps? Hard to imagine that anyone in the future will still want to hear the German language.
‘Interesting,’ Mrs Needham remarks politely after a pause, steering the conversation back to the prison. ‘Was it bad there? I’ve never met anyone who was in prison.’
‘Being separated from Erich was bad, of course. But I also met women there that I’d never have met in real life. Prostitutes for example. They just couldn’t understand how anyone would let themselves get locked up for a political idea. They thought I was szalona – er… crazy. For them to spend time in jail now and again was quite normal. Then I couldn’t understand how you can sleep with a man without loving him. A lesbian woman even wanted to convince me that the love of women is much better.’
‘Oh!’ Mrs Needham blushes.
‘Compared with what came afterwards – the Nazis – the jail in Vienna was a piece of cake – Erich taught me this cheerful phrase,’ says Irka, in a hurry to get away from the topic of sexuality. ‘You didn’t have to fear for your life. After Austria was annexed by Germany in ’38, it all changed in one fell swoop. For the Jews it was pure hell, anyone who could got out of the country as fast as possible. But it wasn’t easy, you needed a visa. Not a single country would take you without a visa. It took several months before I could find a housekeeping job and was allowed to travel to England.’
This is the first time that Irka has told her landlady about her escape. You can never tell how many English people are anti-Semitic.
‘So you’re… er… Jewish?’ stammers Mrs Needham.
‘Yes, I am. At least that’s what Hitler says. I’m not religious, I’ve only been to a synagogue once. But that’s not what matters for the Nazis. My blood is Jewish, they say.’
‘Incredible. You know, I’ve never seen a Jew.’
‘But I’m perfectly normal, aren’t I?’
‘That’s not what I meant…’
‘It’s okay, I’m not sensitive. Without the Nazis, I’d never have thought about it. In my family, we felt Polish. But thanks to Hitler I became a “refugee from Nazi oppression”. Erich too, even though he’s not a Jew. I’m grateful to the English for taking us in. Only now…’
‘Now they’ve taken your husband away from you. You’re right, that’s shameful.’
‘Yes, it is. But I’m not afraid for him.’
This conversation cheers Irka. Her confidence returns. Somehow or other, it will all turn out all right. ‘We’re in a democratic country now. Nothing’s going to happen to him. The government’s panicking – it’s understandable.’
‘I hope you’ve have some good experiences in England too?’
‘Oh yes, of course. Just think what’s happening in the Ostmark now – there’s no Austria any more. What we liked best was the small private school in Norfolk where we went a few months after arriving. We’d have happily stayed there. We worked as kitchen assistant and gardener. Erich even learned how to… oh yes, curry, is that right?… the three horses in the school. We lived in a large room with windows from floor to ceiling. What you call “French windows”, right? So bright it was there! In the school everything was done on strictly democratic principles. Imagine: the entire staff was paid the same salary, so as a kitchen help I earned the same as a teacher. And there was a school committee in which the teachers and two dozen or so students were equal partners in discussion. The teachers had to put up with criticism. For us, coming as we did from authoritarian Austria, it was an incredible experience. And everyone was on first name terms.’
Mrs Needham looks sceptical.
‘But after six months the Ministry of Labour intervened. I’d entered with a visa that only allowed me to take a job in a private household. My position at the school didn’t comply with this condition, they wrote. The school board asked the Labour Ministry if they could keep me because they wouldn’t find any English manpower as good as me. That’s right! As the cook was sometimes sick, I slaved up to sixteen hours a day and cooked for thirty people. It didn’t bother me at all. And I couldn’t cook at all when I went to Vienna after I graduated from high school – at home in Warsaw we had a cook. We even found a politician who stood up for me. But nothing came of it. “We cannot go back on our previous position,” they wrote to me. Erich was also sad that we had to leave that wonderful place. He’s such a mól ksiązkowy – a bookworm, and in the school there was loads to read.’
The tea has been drunk, the cakes consumed. Mrs Needham gets up to clear away the dishes.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she says. ‘We won’t be beaten so easily. Just let those Krauts come. We’re not like the French!’
‘Don’t tempt fate, Mrs Needham. That’s what they say, isn’t it?’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Pack of Nazis!’ – ‘Huns out of England!’ – ‘Fifth Columnists not wanted here!’ – ‘Down with the spies!’ A hostile, howling crowd welcomes the refugees. In a long line, the men carry their luggage from the railway station to Huyton Alien Internment Camp in a suburb of Liverpool, escorted by soldiers with bayonets fixed, and repeatedly urged to get a move on. They have to run the gauntlet.
‘We could have had a similar welcome in Munich,’ says one.
Erich turns round: ‘But not with a military escort!’
The first thing they see when they approach Huyton is barbed wire fences and watchtowers. Behind it, on open space next to a still unfinished brick council estate, an encampment has been erected.
On the wide parade ground they stand in rank and file. A respectful commanding officer informs them of their status as ‘enemy aliens’ and instructs them in the camp rules, while the other officers bark orders into the chaos. Roll call at 7.30 and 21.00, inspection at 10.45, lights out at 21.15, mealtimes in between. After this has all been explained, it is time to queue for blankets and tin mugs.
‘Not all that different from Sachsenhausen,’ mutters one.
Through a guard of men who have been in the camp for longer, the newcomers march to the reception tent where a suspicious-eyed sergeant takes down their details. Then they have to fill out a questionnaire and receive a piece of paper with scribbled instructions for a place to sleep.
Erich is lucky, he has been assigned a mattress in an unfurnished house. Those who were brought here in May only got a bag to sleep on, which they stuffed with straw. Others have to make do with one of the tents that, after days of continuous rain, are swimmwho have alreadying in a sea of mud. The mealtimes, the newcomers are informed, will be taken in one of the large tents.
The camp was obviously set up in haste, and there is organisational chaos: every day, new refugees flood in. In the houses there is cold water, but no towels and very little toilet paper. Everyone gets a small piece of soap which has to last him a week. English food has a bad reputation, as Erich knows already: but in Huyton you eat only because a man has to eat in order not to starve.
The sixteen-year-olds can make even uncomfortable camp life enjoyable, but – contrary to Home Office instructions – many men have been interned despite suffering from diseases, including diabetes, heart problems, stomach illnesses, tuberculosis and blindness. There are even some cases of mentally and physically disabled men. An estimated forty per cent of the interned men are over fifty, many over sixty. For those who have already experienced German concentration camps, the flood lights switched on at night awaken distressing memories.
An infirmary has been quickly improvised, where insulin and stethoscopes, enemas and bedpans are all lacking. In the camp there is just a single doctor, but soon internee doctors and medical students are giving him a hand. For the doctors who have fled from Germany and Austria, it is a welcome opportunity to finally be able to work again, as the British Medical Association did not allow them to practise their profession in the UK. Once a week the camp is visited by a dentist, who cannot cope with the work that awaits him.
In Huyton, thousands of men are housed. Some have been living there for several weeks. Some are depressed and apathetic, others become amazingly vivacious. Anyone with money can eat better food in the canteen. Those who do not must offer their labour in the market place: cleaning shoes, darning socks, washing clothes. Some have even hung up a company nameplate on their property.
When Erich looks around on the camp road, he notices in the crowd a gaunt man with a long, thin neck and constantly bobbing Adam’s apple. His outfit is as creased as that of all the others standing together in groups and talking. What will become of them? How long will they have to endure life in this inhospitable place? There is only one topic for discussion.
‘Kurt Neufeld!’
‘Erich! So we meet again. Not only is the pretender to the Austrian throne here, but you too!’
‘You don’t say! Him too?’
The two know each other from their time in police detention in the Vienna court, where they indulged in many a political joust with one another.
‘It’s much better than the grey house, don’t you think?’ Kurt calls out in his falsetto tones and slaps Erich firmly on the shoulder.
Actually, they do not like each other. Erich cannot stand dogmatic people, and Kurt sees Erich as an intellectual lightweight. Also, Erich does not like Kurt’s smooth baby face with its small nose, which somehow reminds him of Lenin. But in this anonymous crowd, you are glad to see any familiar faces.
The familiar faces increase in number over the following days. Over six foot tall, with the stooping posture he has adopted so as not to keep banging his head on everything, Otto can be seen in the distance. Erich is really pleased to see him here. Otto Hirschfeld is a warm-hearted man, whose grey-blue eyes under their bushy brows stare attentively at the person he is talking to. In Vienna, he taught printmaking at the School of Art where Irka studied. Through her, the two men got to know each other and became friends.
In Vienna, Otto had made a pen drawing of Erich and Irka, a precious gift that Erich had left with his brother in Vienna. With a few strokes he was able to capture the essence of both of their faces, Erich’s ironically raised left eyebrow and Irka’s melancholy gaze and thin lips. Erich tried in vain to track down Otto through the Austrian Centre in London. Now they have found each other again. A friend is far more important than a good lunch, given the uncertainty of the future.
‘What about Else?’ asks Erich.
‘She stayed in Vienna,’ Otto replies without visible concern, ‘she’s now working for the underground. She didn’t want to come to England. Nobody could quite understand why, but I respect her decision. Since the war began, I’ve received two telegrams from her, via the Red Cross. I think she’s fine.’
Erich can remember Else clearly, an exceptional small woman with a sharp profile and hair combed straight back, like a man’s. The fact that she deliberately chose a giant for her husband caused great merriment among her friends, as she only came up to Otto’s chest. Else’s political radicalism has always frightened Erich. He likes it when women are cuddly and wear lipstick. Like Irka.
Even those in the camp who play neither skat nor chess, and do not attend to their business, are not bored. Every event triggers extensive discussions: there is plenty of time for them. One man tries to escape, another ends up in the camp’s jail when he is caught with a smuggled newspaper. The Communists, of whom there are quite a few, are busy rallying their comrades and building up party groups. Erich writes – in English, to practise the language – in a small notebook, describing all the comic and ridiculous events that happen in the camp, and he reads the little book he has brought along, with plays by George Bernard Shaw, a playwright and satirist whose wit and political passion he reveres. Although Shaw always deals with social problems in his works, his humanitarian commitment is tempered by a humorous view of the world. Erich, who cannot stand the deadly seriousness of the Communists and therefore keeps away from them, likes this attitude. Even Shaw’s take on women and marriage amuses him. For a wedding gift he gave Irka Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. And if he wants to annoy her, he cites Shaw’s attitude to marriage: ‘The harbour of marriage is like all other harbours. The longer the ships stay in them, the greater the risk that they will rust.’ Irka promptly gets annoyed and asks him irritably why, in that case, he ever married her. Sometimes Erich is not sure whether this is what he really wants from life. But he has long since not been able to have much say in his own life.
Apart from the newspapers that are occasionally smuggled in, and the information wrested from the guards, a news blackout has been imposed on Huyton, and wild rumours are going round. They are all going to be shipped off, they hear on the grapevine – and the proximity of the port of Liverpool makes this more probable. Canada, Australia and even Madagascar are the destinations aired.
However, you can never keep information away from an assembly of educated men, especially as new refugees keep flooding in, who have read the newspapers and listened to the radio. When, on 2nd July, the former luxury ocean liner Arandora Star is torpedoed by a German submarine off the Irish coast on its way to Canada, and hundreds of people, including a large number of German, Austrian and Italian internees, are drowned, the camp is abuzz with rumour.
What this embarrassing incident will mean for the German-Italian alliance is a question that is soon being hotly debated on the camp road. This is, strangely enough, of greater interest than the very real danger of the internees themselves being caught up in the battle on the high seas. Only Kurt, usually so eager for discussion, does not join in this time. When he was arrested at dawn he had to leave his son behind, and does not know what has happened to him since then. Was he also interned, was he perhaps on the Arandora Star? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Irka too must have heard or read about the disaster. Is she spending sleepless nights worrying about Erich? Surely she knows that, according to the official statements, those on board the ship were not innocent refugees but only Nazi sympathizers and Italian fascists. Erich has no way of reassuring her, because after arrival in the camp, the newcomers have to wait ten days before they are allowed any postal contact with the outside world. He can hardly wait to write to her. Only recently has stationery been handed out: two sheets of writing paper per head – a special chalk paper on which it is impossible to write with invisible ink. Those with nobody to write to sell their paper. It sells like hot cakes, although some sellers demand the outrageous sum of five shillings per sheet.
A few days after the sinking of the Arandora Star, quite a large group of survivors from the disaster is brought to Huyton. They wear khaki uniforms with a large red spot on the back and are assailed with questions.
‘We thought we’d be taken to the Isle of Man, that’s what we were told. Canada was never mentioned. But when we saw the ship at the pier, definitely a 15,000-ton vessel, we soon started to feel a bit uneasy. The ship was painted grey, and on the front and back decks we could see the outline of two guns. All portholes were closed with flaps, and the promenade deck was boarded up. The ship looked like a coffin.’
The man relating this, the words tumbling out of his mouth, is a young Italian from Bolzano, who seems to have survived the traumatic experience with no ill effects and enjoys the concentrated attention with which the men listen to his report.
‘When we embarked they took everything away from us, but we thought that on the Isle of Man – or wherever – we’d get it back again. My father was a sailor, so I know a bit about ships. The Arandora Star was hopelessly overloaded, that was obvious right away. There were more than one thousand five hundred of us internees – Italians, Germans, Austrians, and Nazis and fascists, too, but mostly decent people like me, I can assure you. Among the Germans and Austrians there were a lot of Jews. The ship had not been painted with the Red Cross, though it should have been, as there were prisoners of war on board. But otherwise everything went fine, the food was tasty, and we even got drinks. If this continues, I thought, then it’s going to be Canada all right.
‘On the second day, early in the morning, the ship followed a wild zigzag course, the captain knew that we were in dangerous waters. But maybe it was just this conspicuous course that alerted the submarine to our presence. And because of the two guns, it probably took us for a warship. If the German captain had known that we were prisoners of war, he certainly wouldn’t have fired at us.’
‘Hm, well, I’m not so sure,’ mutters one.
‘And then what? Why did so many people drown? You were close to the Irish coast.’
‘The Italians were herded together in the lower decks. I mixed with the Germans, who were housed above. I knew that I would have a greater chance of survival there in the case of a torpedo attack. You have to expect this in a war. The Italians down there would drown like rats. And that’s what happened. Many people were still asleep when there was a big bang. We’ve been hit, I thought straightaway. The ship stopped immediately, so the turbines must have been struck, and the light went out. It was pitch black, there was not even an emergency light, broken glass everywhere, and stinking smoke poured out of the burst pipes. Otherwise total silence. No emergency orders, nothing. We were left to ourselves. So, best to go on deck! Our stairs were barricaded with barbed wire, but somehow I managed. Outside was an English soldier, with fixed bayonet, but he didn’t dare to leave his post. “Run! Run for your life!” I shouted.
‘The screams, the death agony of those trapped below is something I will never forget. Above, everyone was fighting for a place in the lifeboats and rafts. They shot at people who wanted to get into a boat that was reserved for the English soldiers. There weren’t even enough lifebelts and life jackets. And wherever you looked, no officer or seaman to help us. No one told us how to put the life jackets on. Men jumped into the water and broke their necks on impact. I also saw soldiers hacking away with an axe at the ropes holding a lifeboat, as the boat was still hanging in the air. It then fell into the sea, and all those on board drowned. The Nazis were naturally more organised than us Italians. They had a captain as leader and he made them stand in two rows on the deck. Among them were many seamen who immediately secured a few lifeboats and safely lowered themselves onto the water.
‘When I noticed that the ship was tilting and sinking rapidly, I clambered down a rope ladder and jumped into the sea. And I quickly swam away, so that I wouldn’t be sucked back into the ship’s body by the water pouring in. When I was a child, my father told me stories about the sinking of the Titanic, and I immediately thought about the suction. Older men just stayed at the highest point possible and waited for the water to swallow them. They probably couldn’t swim, like many Italians. Later I heard that one man hanged himself for fear of the water. Some knelt down and prayed.’
The men standing around in silence are moved.
‘I clung to a piece of wreckage and saw how the ship went down, the stern first, the bow sticking straight up to the sky. And from the portholes the water came hissing. It took half an hour. A tremendous roar, a gurgling noise, and that was that. For a short while the sea churned, then there was an awful silence, just a gentle murmur.
‘I was in the water until the afternoon, when the crew of the Canadian St. Laurent brought me on board. Mamma mia
