Kindertransport

by Silvia E. Hines

part 1

I got the cheek swab from Grandma Rose and mailed it off with the DNA kit exactly one week before leaving for college. I’d wanted to find someone related to my grandmother since I was a child — someone other than Mom and myself — and this could be my last chance; Rose had just turned 95! I couldn’t have gotten the swab even a few years ago, because she would have been onto me and refused. I didn’t tell Mom what I’d done, because she’d have likely disapproved.

Rose had made it clear she didn’t want anyone to do any searching. She said she knew what happened to everyone, that no one had survived, and she didn’t want to talk about the past anymore. But back when I was a child in grade school, she didn’t seem to mind talking to me. We’d sit together on the patterned velour overstuffed couch in her Manhattan apartment, her feet, like mine, not reaching the plush carpet, and she’d answer my questions about her childhood in Poland.

I especially loved hearing about Ana, who was both her first cousin and her best friend. She told me about playing in wheat and potato fields and on the edge of a forest that abutted their village. When they had to play indoors, she said, she and Ana wrote stories and acted them out, since books were in short supply. She showed me a sepia-toned photo of Ana and her older brother, both posed formally, unsmiling, and both wearing dark clothes, all of which Grandma said was typical of photos of the time. She told me this was the only picture she had of Ana.

“Ana is so pretty,” I said when I first saw the photo. “I want to meet her, and her brother, too. How old are they now? Can we visit them?”

“We can’t,” she said.

“Do they live too far away?”

“Yes, very far,” she replied, rather abruptly.

The first time Grandma told me how heartbroken she and Ana had been when they were separated at the age of eight, I cried. I was also eight at the time. Grandma’s family had left Poland for the U.S. sometime in the very early 1920s, and Ana’s family had stayed behind.

Young as I was then, I realized Ana was dead. I understood that Ana’s family should have left for the U.S. also. But I also recognized there was something more than sadness in Grandma’s voice when she talked about the loss of Ana. I thought there was anger, too, which made no sense to me since Ana was a child back then and couldn’t have been in on the decision to stay in Poland.

When I was about twelve, Mom told me everything, or at least everything she knew. By that time, I’d read The Diary of Anne Frank and I thought I knew all there was to know. Mom was sitting at the edge of my bed after saying good night, and although I was tired and wanted to go to sleep, she continued talking. I could see she was about to tell me something important, so I kept my eyes open.

“Jenny,” she said, “you’ve been wondering about Rose and Ana. I think you’re old enough now—”

I bolted up in bed, alert again. We both laughed. I’d known there was a story.

“She told you about their separation when they were children?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, the two of them had corresponded by mail for as long as they could,” Mom said, “all through their childhoods, until 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland and the war started.”

“By then Grandma and Ana were grown up?” I asked. “But you weren’t born yet, right?”

“Right. Ana married early, in her teens,” Mom said. “And she had two children, a son named Piotr and a daughter, Raizel. They would have been our cousins.”

I did a quick calculation. “Second cousins for you,” I said, “and for me, second cousins once removed, I think.” I’d recently become interested in genealogy.

Mom smiled. She went on to tell me about a plan to send the children, Piotr and Raizel, to England on a humanitarian rescue mission called the Kindertransport. The children were about eight and four then, she said. Piotr was the older of the two and was going to look after Raizel until they arrived. It seemed this escape trip was planned but never happened. Grandma had waited to hear from the children or their English sponsors, according to the plan Ana had sent her, but she’d never been contacted. She’d tried to find the children soon after the war ended but wasn’t able to.

“Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t the children go on the escape trip?”

“Grandma assumes Ana couldn’t bring herself to part with them. I think that’s why she seems angry or, at least, annoyed when she talks about Ana.” She paused, and smiled ruefully. “Jenny, the parents who sent their children on the Kindertransport knew they’d probably never see them again.”

I gulped. “So to send them off would have been a... selfless sacrifice, wouldn’t it?” I said.

Mom nodded.

I was getting sleepy again, but I thought there could be more to the story. Maybe it’s because I’m planning to major in pre-med and eventually become a psychiatrist, or maybe it’s my love of thriller novels, where there’s always a twist you’d never expect. Mom and I agreed we’d never know the whole story for sure, and we didn’t talk about it anymore. Now, five years after that conversation, I packed for college and awaited the DNA results.

* * *

From: Judith Miller
To: Jenny Greene
Subject: We may be cousins!

Thank you, Jenny, for your email on behalf of your grandmother, Rose. I agree it’s amazing that she and I are such a close DNA match, on the order of first or second cousins according to the folks at Ancestry. However, I think I can solve the mystery. I’m pretty sure I know how we’re related.

My name is Judith Miller and I’m a psychotherapist living in San Diego. My mother, Rochelle (originally Raizel), was born in Poland in 1935. Her parents, Ana and Abe, died at the hands of the Nazis, apparently in Auschwitz, according to available information. I believe my mother is the daughter of the Ana you mentioned in your email.

My mother escaped the Nazis because she was sent to England in 1939, at the age of 4, as part of an organized evacuation program called the Kindertransport. She died just two years ago and, in going through her papers, my brother and I found a letter from Ana, the biological grandmother we’d never met.

The grandparents we did know had adopted our mother in England and then emigrated with her to the U.S. Although we knew our mother had been adopted, we knew nothing about her biological parents; it seemed to be a taboo subject, at least while we were children. The letter is addressed to Rose Stern at a New York City address that I can’t make out and is dated August 1939, exactly 75 years ago! Clearly, this Rose Stern is your grandmother.

I’ve been Googling Rose’s name for over a year, persisting because my son tells me documents are constantly being digitized and something may come up. But Rose Stern is a pretty common name, and I guessed Rose would probably be going by a married name, if she is even alive. Meanwhile, we’ve had the letter from Ana translated from the Yiddish, and if you reply to me and agree that we are truly related, I will scan it and send it your way.

As you will see, Ana asked my mother to mail this letter to Rose in the U.S. when she arrived in England. Ana probably was afraid the mail wouldn’t go through after the Nazis invaded Poland, which may have been anticipated in late summer 1939. But my mother was only four years old!

I can only conjecture what it was like for my mother to find herself alone in England at such a young age, to be cared for by people she didn’t know. When my mother spoke of this period in her life, she expressed anger at being separated from her parents. She said she would never forget the pain on her mother’s face when her parents brought her to the train. I think she used the word haunted.

She once said she would have preferred staying in Poland and dying together with her family. Then she looked at us, my brother and me, and apologized. It was hard for us to understand that we couldn’t completely make up to our mother for all she had lost.

So we think our mother forgot about mailing the letter, yet it stayed with her possessions all these years. Perhaps by the time she got to the U.S., she didn’t realize she had it with her, or thought it was too late to mail it.

If you can forgive a psychological cliché, I think my mother later developed what they call “survivor’s guilt.” She knew she was the only one alive from her immediate family and may not have known about the extended family, your mother’s family, who had left Europe so much earlier.

Now I know what you’re thinking: But there were two children. What happened to the boy? I’m going to leave that question for Ana herself to answer for you in her letter.

Jenny, I sent my DNA sample to Ancestry because I wanted information about my ethnic heritage and disease susceptibilities. I didn’t expect to find a close DNA match other than on my father’s side. And I certainly didn’t expect to find a clue to the identities of the people mentioned in the letter we’d found. Since my brother and I grew up with no biological relatives on our mother’s side, you can imagine how excited we are to have found you. Please write back!

Proceed to part 2...