Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

“Say goodbye to your children.”

Gradually, my little daughter Lea acquiesced in the separation from me. Her teachers reported she had become pleasant and cooperative. One of the youngest children in the home, she was loved by staff and children alike. Although Lea never stopped asking at the end of my weekly Sunday visits, “Can I come with you, Mama?” she accepted the inevitable. “No,” I had to answer.

The children at Villa Helvetia and Eaubonne followed a set routine. They made their own beds, tidied their own rooms, ate together, and attended classes. Jewish teachers who had fled Germany and Austria held classes in mathematics, writing, literature and science.

Some of the OSE children, mainly girls over the age of ten, were enrolled at the village school. Ruth was among those chosen, and she was quickly becoming fluent in French. She had no difficulty with the lessons, quickly grasping French geography and history to which she had no previous exposure. Sewing was another matter, however.

“It’s very hard to do, Mama, but I’m trying,” she said. “I made this doily, but I had to do it three times. The teacher said my stitches were too big and made me take them out. It takes so long to make the tiny stitches.”

“It looks fine to me,” I said. “You are doing very well.” I was proud of her success in grasping all the unfamiliar subjects taught in a new language.

Her achievements were all the more remarkable as all our children missed a full day of lessons every week. French schools held lessons on Saturday, and our children would not attend school on Shabbos.

Not all the children were happy in the French school. One of the Eaubonne girls complained every Monday she had to bring a note explaining why she was not in school on the previous Saturday. “They do it on purpose,” Friedl said. “They don’t like Jewish children and want to make us feel really bad.”

“How does your teacher make you feel bad? I asked the child.

“She makes fun of me. She waves my note in front of the class and says, “These children should be in school on Saturday, but they come up with a different excuse every week.” She hates us because we’re shomer Shabbos.”

After weeks of scapegoating, the girl escaped from her anti-Semitic teacher, but not without one final humiliation. During recess, she spotted a friend from her hometown of Saarbrucken. The girl, a year younger than Friedl, said her teacher was nice. Friedl made an abrupt decision to seek a transfer to her friend’s class. She walked over to the principal and said, “Please, I would very much like to be in a class with my friend.” The principal pointed out it was a lower grade and would be a demotion, but Friedl said she didn’t care as long as she could be with her friend.

The principal blew her whistle. The children stopped playing and became quiet. The principal spoke. “Listen, everybody, I have to tell you something strange. Here, look at this girl. She is a foreign girl, and do you know what she wants? She wants to be put back into a lower grade.”

Friedl’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Everybody stared at me and laughed, everybody in the school yard, and felt so terrible. I am with my friend now, but why are they so mean?”

Who would have thought that anti-Semitism would follow these children from Germany and Austria? I should not have been surprised when the French interned Jews who happened to be German nationals.

Because I spent Sundays with the girls, I saw very little of Hannah and Herman, but I kept in touch by telephone. Sal and I wrote to each other weekly. He also wrote to his father in Poland, but Markus’s replies were brief and uninformative. Sal felt well though restless with his confinement. He wrote that some meladim established study groups in the camps, and Jewish musicians formed a symphony orchestra. They gave weekly concerts “…as good as anything we used to hear in Halle and Berlin. So there are some worthwhile ways to pass our time.”

The routine we all settled into did not last. In the spring of 1940, the German armies moved south and west. On the 10th May, they invaded Holland and Belgium. A week later, as Hitler’s troops entered Northern France, the Nazis intensified their air attacks on the areas surrounding Paris. At the OSE homes, hardly a night went by now that children and adults did not crowd into damp basement air raid shelters. Cots were set up in basement shelters so the children could get some rest. Many were very frightened, but somehow they knew not to cry. We wrapped them in blankets, but still they shivered from the cold and the fear of the din of the bombs. During the day, we carried on.

Eva said that she was always cold in the shelter at Villa Helvetia. “Sometimes we sing songs and tell each other stories to try to shut out the cold and the sound of the bombs.”

The children were issued gas masks that they kept next to their beds and brought to the shelter. Those who attended the village school carried their masks along with their schoolbooks. If the sirens went off on their way to school, they ran into one of the shelters the French had built in the village.

The Jews who lived in and around the French capital now believed it would not be too much longer before Nazi armies marched down Paris’s renowned Champs Elysees. The fall of Belgium to the Nazis on May 28th was the signal for a mass exodus, not only by the large number of Jewish refugees, but also by many French Jews. They fled south, some with definite plans, many uncertain of their destination. Hannah and Herman withdrew their money from the bank and prepared for departure to Villeneuve-sur-Lot, a small mountain town in South-Central France with a modest Jewish community.

The OSE also had plans. At the outbreak of war, the organization had begun to purchase estates in Central and Southern France anticipating an increase in the number of homeless Jewish children who would be placed in their care. With the German armies advancing into France, OSE officials decided to evacuate the children of the Montmorency homes to one of their estates in the region of Haute Vienne.

Everyone took part in the preparations. In the kitchen, we packed dishes, silverware, pots and pans. Teachers packed linens and blankets as well as books. Children packed their personal belongings. The OSE officials’ job was to negotiate with railroad and government officials for several hundred seats on the packed trains that now left Paris day and night.

Late in the afternoon on June 4th, I was standing in the Eaubonne kitchen mixing raw vegetables and eggs for a sandwich spread. The sandwiches would be our meals on the journey. The evacuation of the children, postponed twice when the promised train reservations failed to materialize, was definitely taking place next morning.

One of my three young assistants asked, “Madame Amalia, do you really think we’ll go tomorrow?”

At Eaubonne, no one used the diminutive “Mia.” When Lene introduced me as Madame Amalia the first day, I did not contradict her. Madame Amalia was the cook at an orphanage, Mia was the person I had been before Hitler and fervently prayed to be again one day. It was a name reserved for family and friends.

“I think it’s certain this time,” I said. “After supper tonight, we’ll wrap these sandwiches for the journey.”

Lene came into the kitchen then. “Amalia, take the afternoon off and say goodbye to your children,” she said.

She was not making sense. “Goodbye? I don’t understand.”

“You can’t come with us, Amalia. You have no papers.”

“But you got me papers,” I said.

“No, Amalia. Those documents are valid only in Montmorency. You have no rights or legal standing in any other section of France.”

I was flabbergasted. This was not possible.

Lene seemed not to have time to discuss matters of great personal import diplomatically or privately. Continuing to ignore the presence of the three young girls now resolutely concentrating on the sandwich spread, she said, “You are not the only one. Three others on our staff are in the same position. There is nothing I can do. We are not known outside this area. If the police stop us and discover you have no papers, you will endanger us all. We just can’t risk it.”

Lene spoke with even greater authority than usual. It was clear to me that neither reasoning nor pleading would alter her decision. I would not be traveling with the group. The children would go to the new home in Central France without me.

Lene’s voice softened. “We will take all three girls, Ruth, Eva and Lea, to Montintin. We will take care of your children and keep them safe. That I promise you, Amalia.” At the kitchen door, Lene turned and said, “Oh, by the way, a letter came for you. Here, I brought it for you.”

I put the letter in my pocket and began to walk to Helvetia. At the Villa, I could feel the excitement and tension