Read Online Living with Strangers by Elizabeth Ellis - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Ellis
Ads: Link
outside his house. I’m sure there was another photo too, one that Jakob took of the three of us – you, me and Papa in front of the Marienkirche – the church with two steeples and the broken bells – but I can’t find it anywhere.
Jakob died in June, you know. Papa went back and cleared the house, though there wasn’t much to clear – Jakob was so neat and tidy wasn’t he? But there were letters and papers, which he’d kept tied with ribbons, from Oma and Papa, written when they first came to England. I’ve learned a bit more recently – it’s better at home at the moment – when Gil’s with us. Do you remember him?
I found out that Opa Josef was put in a prison camp just outside Berlin. It was called Sachsenhausen and they kept political prisoners there. How could he have been political? He was a teacher like Papa, wasn’t he? He’d been a teacher for twenty-five years, only he wasn’t allowed to teach any more. So he ran a school for Jewish children in Jakob’s factory until that shut down too. But Opa died because of what he tried to do, because of who he was. Papa told me he was shot. It took Oma three years after the War to find out what had happened.
It’s hard to imagine really. Perhaps if we’d known more we’d have understood, but Papa never talked about it much, did he? I think he’s always kept himself a secret – hidden away. Does he open up to Molly, I wonder? Does she know him at all? How do we manage to keep so much from each other? All this that we don’t know. It’s like living with strangers.
And you, I wonder, there among real strangers. Is it home yet? Do you miss us? Will you ever come back?
M x
Until that trip to Lübeck, my father had rarely mentioned his family, his German past. I knew only a little of what had happened, small droplets of information Molly would supply if I asked. There was no elaboration, just a few facts – like the facts of life. Saul was born in a small village to the north of Berlin in 1916 and moved to the city at the age of ten. His mother, our Oma, played with the Berlin Symphony orchestra. Her beautiful antique cello stood in the schoolroom for years after she died.
After the rise of fascism, Saul fled to England with Oma and his younger brother Stefan in 1936. He met my mother at night school during the war. She wanted to train as a nurse and Saul was her night school teacher for biology. They bonded, he once told me, over a dissecting kit and the internal workings of a dead frog.
Yet I knew there was much more to learn. I knew that a war had been fought and won – yet lost too, because we were German. Half German. At primary school, the boys would play war games, racing round the playground firing imaginary machine guns. Adam would try to stop them, goaded by taunts of
Your dad’s a Kraut!
but he ended up being ignored or shoved aside.
To my relief, he gave up. I didn’t realise then that he was pitting himself against the flow of contemporary thinking; it was just not good to have your big brother fight a losing battle with tears in his eyes. I was aware too that the issues for us went far beyond nationality. There was something much greater, a backdrop to Saul’s life, a concealed weight he seemed to carry with him, in the deliberateness of his movements and the slow resignation of his smile when it came.
Before she died, Oma had talked a great deal of the past – piecemeal fragments just as Molly’s answers had been – that I absorbed into the fabric of who we were without needing to know more. I realised even then that holding back was endemic, the guarding of truths unable to be expressed embedded deep in the spirit of our family’s collective past.
***
One evening, Saul sits down at the supper table. ‘I’ve had a letter from Jakob,’ he says. ‘It seems he would like us to visit.’
‘Uncle Jakob?’ Adam asks, ‘Oma’s brother?’
‘Is he still in Lübeck?’ Molly hands Sophie fingers of toast.
‘He’s
Jakob died in June, you know. Papa went back and cleared the house, though there wasn’t much to clear – Jakob was so neat and tidy wasn’t he? But there were letters and papers, which he’d kept tied with ribbons, from Oma and Papa, written when they first came to England. I’ve learned a bit more recently – it’s better at home at the moment – when Gil’s with us. Do you remember him?
I found out that Opa Josef was put in a prison camp just outside Berlin. It was called Sachsenhausen and they kept political prisoners there. How could he have been political? He was a teacher like Papa, wasn’t he? He’d been a teacher for twenty-five years, only he wasn’t allowed to teach any more. So he ran a school for Jewish children in Jakob’s factory until that shut down too. But Opa died because of what he tried to do, because of who he was. Papa told me he was shot. It took Oma three years after the War to find out what had happened.
It’s hard to imagine really. Perhaps if we’d known more we’d have understood, but Papa never talked about it much, did he? I think he’s always kept himself a secret – hidden away. Does he open up to Molly, I wonder? Does she know him at all? How do we manage to keep so much from each other? All this that we don’t know. It’s like living with strangers.
And you, I wonder, there among real strangers. Is it home yet? Do you miss us? Will you ever come back?
M x
Until that trip to Lübeck, my father had rarely mentioned his family, his German past. I knew only a little of what had happened, small droplets of information Molly would supply if I asked. There was no elaboration, just a few facts – like the facts of life. Saul was born in a small village to the north of Berlin in 1916 and moved to the city at the age of ten. His mother, our Oma, played with the Berlin Symphony orchestra. Her beautiful antique cello stood in the schoolroom for years after she died.
After the rise of fascism, Saul fled to England with Oma and his younger brother Stefan in 1936. He met my mother at night school during the war. She wanted to train as a nurse and Saul was her night school teacher for biology. They bonded, he once told me, over a dissecting kit and the internal workings of a dead frog.
Yet I knew there was much more to learn. I knew that a war had been fought and won – yet lost too, because we were German. Half German. At primary school, the boys would play war games, racing round the playground firing imaginary machine guns. Adam would try to stop them, goaded by taunts of
Your dad’s a Kraut!
but he ended up being ignored or shoved aside.
To my relief, he gave up. I didn’t realise then that he was pitting himself against the flow of contemporary thinking; it was just not good to have your big brother fight a losing battle with tears in his eyes. I was aware too that the issues for us went far beyond nationality. There was something much greater, a backdrop to Saul’s life, a concealed weight he seemed to carry with him, in the deliberateness of his movements and the slow resignation of his smile when it came.
Before she died, Oma had talked a great deal of the past – piecemeal fragments just as Molly’s answers had been – that I absorbed into the fabric of who we were without needing to know more. I realised even then that holding back was endemic, the guarding of truths unable to be expressed embedded deep in the spirit of our family’s collective past.
***
One evening, Saul sits down at the supper table. ‘I’ve had a letter from Jakob,’ he says. ‘It seems he would like us to visit.’
‘Uncle Jakob?’ Adam asks, ‘Oma’s brother?’
‘Is he still in Lübeck?’ Molly hands Sophie fingers of toast.
‘He’s
Similar Books
