‘I won’t do it, Frieda – we agree to this and then whatever rights we have will be taken away.’
‘Rights? We don’t have many left – and without these new documents we won’t be allowed to work at all!’
‘Think, Frieda, if we do it we won’t be able to leave. That’s why they want the passports stamped, so that Jews can’t pretend to be Christian and go to Switzerland.’
Papa didn’t settle into his new job, like Mutti had done, it was hard for him to find peace in it – as he had one eye so firmly on getting them out of the country, hiding away the passports he’d refused to hand over.
In the end, though, the authorities came for them.
It appeared that Papa had made a scene at the Jewish clinic where he worked, when an SS officer came in asking to see everyone’s documentation and he refused to show them.
The twins were on their way home when their world imploded. One of the nurses – who they knew only as Frau Kaplan – rushed over to tell them the news. She came running up to them in the street, her face red and streaked with tears. She was out of breath. ‘Oh, my dears,’ she gasped, clutching at them. ‘You can’t go home.’ A fresh set of tears began leaking down her face. ‘They’ve taken them both.’
‘Our parents?’ breathed Asta, her knees buckling. Frau Kaplan held her up. Her curly hair was glistening with sweat; she must have run all this way to tell them.
‘Taken them where?’
‘To Dachau, the labour camp – for refusing to change their documentation.’
Asta and Jürgen gasped. ‘No – just for that – they can’t have taken them!’
‘I saw it myself. Your mother gave me a look to tell me to run here, knowing you’d just be getting out from school. The police are going to come for you next, I’m sure of it – I don’t know where they send the children, I think it’s some sort of camp somewhere else, but don’t let them take you.’
She handed them some money. It wasn’t a lot. ‘I’m sorry, there was no time to get more – I heard them say that they would be going to your flat today to find you both, and to search the flat, so I couldn’t even risk getting your things, in case they found me there.’
Asta clutched Jürgen’s hand. ‘We can’t go home?’
Frau Kaplan shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, it’s the last place you should go now. I’d take you home with me, but they could look for you there.’ She swallowed. ‘They would know that I’m friendly with your mother and could figure out quickly that I came to get you. They could make trouble for us all. I’m sorry, I think it’s best if you find somewhere safe to go. Somewhere they won’t know. If you came with me, or any of your parents’ hospital friends, there is the chance that they could find you and take you away too. Technically, you’ve broken the law too – as you haven’t registered your documents either. I’m not sure they would be as harsh with you but…’ She broke off.
They nodded. There was the chance they would. Who knew what they would do? They weren’t kids anymore – sixteen was old enough to be prosecuted, wasn’t it? It would be some time before they realised that she’d saved them, that she had risked a lot to protect them, but right then, they were told to run, and Frau Kaplan watched them dart away, before she, too, turned to go back to work. Hoping that no one had seen her leave.
8
They spent the night in Polgo Hausman’s water taxi. He still kept the keys in the same place, and with the winter season fast approaching he wasn’t running it as frequently anymore. It was freezing cold, but they shivered from more than just the cold.
‘I keep feeling like we need to go back there, that it’s all just a misunderstanding,’ said Asta. ‘That Mutti and Papa are there waiting for us and worried like hell.’
‘Me too,’ said Jürgen. His arms were wrapped around his knees. All they possessed were the clothes on their backs, which were easily identifiable as school uniforms.
Someone was bound to notice and ask questions.
‘I think if we could just get into the flat – or find out more…’ he said.
‘You heard what Frau Kaplan said, though – they were coming for us, and going to search the flat. I doubt they’d give up that easily.’
He nodded, tears beginning to course down his cheeks, which he dashed angrily away. ‘We should have taken Papa’s side when he wanted to emigrate, then we wouldn’t be in this mess now. We’d be in Denmark or somewhere safe, together.’
Asta nodded, wiping away her own tears. ‘Mutti wanted to go a few weeks ago – she wanted to look into getting a visa. If Papa wasn’t so stubborn maybe we wouldn’t be here now either.’
Jürgen’s head snapped up in anger. ‘So, it’s his fault that they were taken?’
‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked softly. ‘Couldn’t he have avoided this just by letting us change our paperwork? He made us hide our passports – that we never even used; he was saving them for what, for things to get worse than they already are? All he did was talk! Mutti said that Trine sent two letters asking if we were coming. Even she was worried about us. And now look at us – we’re stuck – our documents are at home, probably to be found by those damned SS, giving them the proof they need and making it harder to deny that he was planning something. What’s worse is they’re there and we can’t even use them – how far are we going to get without them?’
Jürgen stared at her for a long moment. She was right, of course. But it felt horrible blaming their father, when he was only trying to protect them. Asta dashed away a tear and groaned. ‘Of course, it’s not Papa that’s done this – they did – they forced him.’
Jürgen nodded, then stood up to pace within the small interior of the bridge. ‘We’ll have to get them. Tomorrow. Papa hid them well, so I don’t think that they will have found them that easily.’
Asta raised a brow. They’d managed to figure out that their father hadn’t had his documentation altered… and come looking. Besides, the one thing you could never accuse the Nazis of was a lack of attention to detail, of not being thorough enough…
Still, there was always the chance that they hadn’t found the documents. The advantage the twins had was that with any luck, they didn’t yet know about the hidden passports. She nodded.
‘Yes, tomorrow, we’ll go.’ There were other more pressing concerns too. ‘Either way, we need to go and get more clothes, food. Hopefully by then they would have moved on.’
Jürgen nodded. ‘And Trine – Papa’s sister – the one who lives in Denmark. We’ll need her address too. I just know it is somewhere near the sea – Elsinore.’
Asta blinked. Then slowly began to nod. He was right. Of course he was – it was time to leave Germany. Past time. They would be going to Denmark.
They left the boat well before dawn, not having slept a wink. They were overtired, hungry and desperately sad and anxious by the time they arrived at their street. They kept to the shadows, stationing themselves by a set of bins outside the apartment block across from theirs. It was a well-practised move from years of being pranksters and hiding away from Mutti and their old cook. Even so, when they saw two officers stationed outside their building, it was all they could do to stop themselves from crying out.