Chapter Five
‘They are ringing the church bells. Can you hear them?’ Elsa knelt by her grandfather’s chair and stroked his frail hand.
Since her mother had left, he had withered, along with his mind.
His deterioration is due to a bleed on the brain, his doctor had said before he had left.
It was not the diagnosis Elsa had wanted to hear.
‘It is time to leave,’ she encouraged softly.
Gustav’s gaze met hers. ‘Go where?’
‘To Bremen. We talked about this.’
‘No we didn’t.’
Elsa sighed. ‘Yes we did. Last night, remember? People are saying the Russians are fighting in the outlying villages and that they will be here any day now.’
He tilted his head. ‘I hear bells. Why are they ringing St Catherine’s bells?’
‘To tell us we must leave. They have been ringing all morning.’ The town was in utter chaos, but she would not tell him that.
‘I’ve found us a ride. Herr Fellhaber is leaving and taking his mother in a wagon.
You can sit beside her.’ It was quite an achievement, but she fought to control the elation and urgency she felt as it would only upset him.
‘But I don’t want to leave.’
‘I know, but everyone is leaving now. Most are heading for the station in the hope of travelling west.’ Artillery fire peppered the air outside and she found herself cowering beside his chair.
The British and Americans had complete control of the sky now and were strafing the ground with bullets, killing German soldiers and civilians alike.
Her patience snapped. ‘We must leave now. Today.’
His watery smile gave her little hope that he truly understood how dire their situation had become.
Elsa wished she still had such ignorance.
In the last few days everyone appeared to be fleeing.
She did not tell her grandfather of the awful thing she had been told yesterday: some parents were murdering their own children, and then killing themselves, in terror at being captured by the Russian Army.
Every day more news reached them about the reprisals being meted out to German civilians.
Elsa would have left many weeks ago if it had not been for her grandfather’s ill health and rapid deterioration.
His attention had slipped again. ‘Sauerbraten. Can we have Sauerbraten?’
Elsa shook her head. ‘No, we can’t. Not today. We don’t have the meat.’ She quickly gathered their identification papers and ration cards and slipped them into the lining of her coat.
‘Hasenpfeffer?’
‘I told you, I don’t have any meat. Not even rabbit.
’ She fetched his coat and cajoled him into standing.
‘It’s cold outside and Herr Fellhaber will be here any minute.
’ He obeyed like a child, threading his arms through the sleeves in turn as if they had all the time in the world.
‘Now sit down. I’ll let you know when he has arrived.
I promised the Pastor B?hr I would tell him I was leaving. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Elsa ran out of the house, down the street and knocked on the pastor’s door. She would not linger; Herr Fellhaber could arrive at any minute. The door opened immediately and, to her shock, the pastor pulled her inside.
‘Are you leaving today?’ he asked excitedly, gesturing her into his study.
She followed him. ‘Yes. Are you sure you won’t come with us?’
‘I am sure, but I have something for you.’ He went to his desk and pulled out the top drawer.
As he rummaged through it, Elsa couldn’t resist looking around the room — she had never been invited inside before.
A bookshelf stood erect against one wall, crammed with books.
The writing desk he was searching was covered in an assortment of scattered stationery, under a single lamp.
A vacant, threadbare chair stood by the fire grate, still showing a single indentation of its occupier in its sagging upholstery.
He found some documents with a cry of triumph.
‘What are these?’ she asked as he handed them to her. The first document was a recent Christian baptism certificate signed by the pastor. The second was a birth certificate of a girl named Klara Scheider, who had been born at the end of 1939, in Bremen.
She looked up at him.
‘I want you to take this girl with you.’
‘Where is her family?’
‘You are her family . . . if you will take her.’
Elsa swallowed. ‘I . . . don’t understand.’ You know what he is asking you.
‘Her real name is Miriam Sara Leske.’
‘Sara? She is a Jew?’ she asked needlessly. Since 1938 Jewish women and girls had been forced by legislation to adopt the middle name Sara, while men and boys had to use the name Israel. She lifted the documents. ‘So these are false.’
He nodded. ‘Klara doesn’t know her real name. It was thought best she doesn’t so she can’t accidentally expose her true identity.’
‘How long have you been hiding her?’
‘Less than a year.’
She was shocked. ‘I had no idea.’ Yet as the words left her lips she realized it explained why he no longer received visitors at home.
‘Her parents left her at a nunnery early in 1940. The nuns hid and cared for several Jewish babies. They changed their names and obtained false documents through a corrupt official who was easily bribed by money and a promise of a place in heaven. They kept them for some years until the official’s widow later betrayed them.
They were raided. Fortunately, the children had already been fostered by other families and she was not able to identify them.
Klara was hidden by her new family, but it is not easy and circumstances change.
I’m her fourth family . . . you will be her fifth. ’
Elsa looked at the child’s baptism record, signed by the pastor himself. She didn’t want a new family. Especially one that would put her own family at risk. No, Elsa. No.
‘Pastor, you know as well as I do that the authorities are not interested in baptism certificates, only in race. You cannot change blood as easily as religion. The journey I’m taking is going to be difficult and out in the open—’
‘I know that what I’m asking you to do is dangerous.’
‘Too dangerous.’ Elsa didn’t want to see his pleading eyes.
‘And I understand that if Klara is found to be Jewish, you may be sent to a labour camp—’
‘So could Miriam,’ said Elsa. She looked at the documents again.
‘Klara. Klara,’ insisted the old man. ‘Don’t ever call her Miriam.’ His voice softened. ‘But if she stays here—’
‘Where did her parents come from?’ Don’t get involved, Elsa. Don’t.
‘Stettin. Not long after they left her with the nuns, all the Jews in Stettin were sent to Lublin.’
‘Are they still there?’
His silence frightened her. No one had heard from anyone who had been sent to the labour camps and ghetto for several years. She thought of the burned-out synagogue in Gollnow . . . and all the Jewish people who had been moved on to a place she knew so little of.
‘She’s such a good little girl. She will do whatever you tell her.’
Elsa thought of the good little girls who had disappeared since her childhood. Being good had not helped them or their families.
‘I don’t know if I am the right person to ask.’ The doubt in her voice was palpable.
‘Which makes you the perfect person. No one will suspect you.’
She touched her fair hair, for the first time feeling ashamed of it.
‘Haven’t you always wanted to speak out? To help?’
She remembered the Rabbi’s terrified face on that terrible night, and waking in the night to her mother’s weeping when Margot and Josef had disappeared. ‘I’ve wanted to do more,’ she conceded. ‘I just didn’t know how.’
‘Well now you do.’
‘What will happen to her if I say no?’
‘She will have to stay with me. I fear the Russians won’t believe me or care if I tell them she is a Jew. And they may well kill me before I can plead her case. The Red Army is showing no mercy.’
‘Nor Hitler. Even if I reach Bremen, I will have to continue this deception if she is to survive.’
‘I’m sorry to put this on you, Elsa. But you have always impressed me with your empathy and kindness.’
She shook her head. ‘No! Don’t give me praise when I deserve none of it!’
‘Elsa?’
She frowned. ‘Let me think.’ Silence fell. It hung heavy as lead between them. ‘Tell me her name again. Her real name.’
He hesitated. ‘Miriam Leske.’ His earlier confidence in her was visibly dwindling. ‘Why ask this?’
She nodded, her mind made up. ‘In case I lose this.’ She put the documents inside the lining of her coat. ‘I want to look for her real family and tell them she is safe when the war is over.’
His eyes brightened. ‘You will take her?’
‘How can I not? I can’t leave her for the Russians to find. They want revenge and they are killing children too. As you said, they won’t care who is German or Jewish or Polish when they come.’ The church bells began to ring again. They had little time left.
‘I’ll fetch her,’ he said.
Elsa listened to the pastor’s footfalls on the stairs.
She looked around the room. The house was so quiet and singular in comforts — how was it possible a five-year-old child had been living here for almost a year?
In the silence, doubts flooded through her again.
She was about to expose a child who had spent her entire life in hiding to a long journey across the country.
How would she react? How would Elsa keep her identity hidden in plain sight?
What would she do with her if they ever reached Bremen?
The enormity of her task loomed large before her.
Perhaps she should tell Pastor B?hr she had changed her mind.
The pastor appeared in the doorway with the young child.
Dark shoulder-length hair framed brown eyes and a wary expression.
She was dressed in a coat, scarf and hat, with gloves and thick woollen tights.
From her rosy heated cheeks, the pastor had already prepared her for the freezing temperatures outside before Elsa had even entered the house.