‘Did you belong to the Hitler Youth?’ the magistrate asked.
‘No,’ I replied, indignant at the very thought but trying not to show it.
‘Are you in touch with anyone in Germany?’ he went on.
‘No,’ I answered truthfully, silently thanking God that my father had had the foresight to ban me from writing any more letters to Lottie.
When my father was called into the courtroom the only question the magistrate had for him was ironic.
‘Does she ever need a good spanking?’ he enquired.
My father responded with a polite and relieved show of amusement and at the end of the hearing the Court granted me my alien’s book and spared me the horror of an internment camp.
Once I had got used to the idea of its existence I didn’t think a great deal more about the mysterious pocket-book over the following years. There were so many other things to occupy the mind of a young woman growing up in London at the time. I liked the idea that we had such a romantic tale in our past, but once I had thought about it I could see the sense of my father’s warnings about keeping it a secret and not asking any more questions. How would it have sounded if I started telling my friends that I was descended from a Prussian prince? At best it would have sounded like the foolish fantasies of a romantic young girl, at worst it would have sounded boastful. And how could I have proved my story to any doubters anyway?
He was right, I decided, it was better to just forget about it and get on with our lives in Hampstead where we enjoyed as good a life as was possible in the austere days of the war.
GRANNY ANNA – No NEWS from PRAGUE
BY 1940, ALTHOUGH we barely dared to talk about it, I shared my father’s fears and sadness about Granny Anna. I had such wonderful memories of her, which were being kept vividly alive by the letters and cards she had been writing to me from Czechoslovakia after we first escaped to England. They were full of love but gave no clues as to what the future might hold in store for her now the Germans were occupying Prague and Uncle Freddy was in London with us.
‘To my beloved Evchen,’ she wrote in one (in German), which I still treasure to this day.
I send you the heartiest wishes, my most beloved child. I send you in spirit a thousand heartfelt kisses, enclosed that my little grandchild shall be forever happy and shall stay healthy in body and soul and that in life her choices will always be right. That she remains her parents’ great delight and that God graciously guides the ways of her life so that we will soon meet in peace again before your Oma must leave this earth.
Your old true Grossmuttechen, Anna.
In another she wrote:
My beloved Evchen, how much I would like to see you again my beloved child, and Claude. I cannot describe the longing I have for you.
After the German invasion her letters began to arrive via the Red Cross and not the normal post. They still gave us no clues as to what might really be happening to her or what terrors she might be enduring. She wouldn’t have wanted to burden anyone else with her worries anyway, particularly not her granddaughter.
When the German Army invaded the Sudetenland in 1938, where Reichenberg was situated, Uncle Freddy and the family had fled to Prague, with Granny Anna, his wife Lotte, and his daughter. But it wasn’t long before the German troops were pouring into that city too. So they had to escape the country extremely fast to avoid capture. Uncle Freddy told me how he witnessed the soldiers arriving in the Wenceslas Platz and knew that they had to get away as quickly as they could, but that he realised it would have to be without his mother, my granny Anna. By that stage it was no longer possible for a Jewish family to travel across the borders openly and Freddy was forced to flee with his wife and daughter on foot, using a secret escape route over the border into Italy. They then journeyed on to join us in London, where they settled. When they arrived without Granny Anna I was devastated. I had been so sure they would bring her with them and I could hardly bear the thought of her being the only one of the family left behind.
I was told that she had been quite adamant that she didn’t go with them, insisting that she was too old and arthritic to make the trip and that she would only be a liability to them. Uncle Freddy had eventually given in, seeing that he had no choice and hoping that an old lady living on her own in a city as big as Prague would not attract the attention of the Nazis. She hardly ever went out any more anyway, he reasoned, so how would they even know she was there? With any luck she would be able to live out her days in peace and comfort if he could find her somewhere pleasant to live.
Whatever happened he knew he had to save his wife and child before it was too late, even if it meant he had to leave his mother to take her chances. Before he set out to Italy he went in search of an apartment for her in a good area of the city. A man called Dr Borakova agreed to take her in as a tenant in his attic flat in the Praha 6 district, which was an affluent area, containing most of the foreign embassies. If she was going to be safe anywhere, Uncle Freddy decided, this would be the place. He left her with as much money as he could find. Their final goodbyes between mother and son must have been heartbreaking for both of them, neither knowing if they would ever see the other alive again. For me the separation from Anna was profound: it felt as if part of my very being had just disappeared.
Without any warning, after June 1942, there were no more letters. As each day passed I became more frozen with fear and more inconsolable. We were left with nothing but silence and not knowing, which made space for the darkest imaginings to invade our thoughts and dreams. We all pretended to hope for a while that it was just the war interrupting the postal services, including the Red Cross’s, but in our hearts I think we realised that something much worse had probably befallen her, although none of us wanted to put our fears into words and risk making them feel more real. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so helpless. I wanted to do something, to talk to my father or my mother but I knew I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been any use anyway because they didn’t know any more than I did.
Although I was fearful for Anna, I was also consoled because I knew my father felt the same way. He must have been tortured all through this very difficult time by Anna’s fate, just as I was. I knew that he worried about her every minute of every hour of every day, wondering if she was alive or dead, fearing that she might even at this moment be being arrested by the Nazis or suffering unknown horrors in Auschwitz. Even when her letters and postcards had been arriving they were taking so long to travel between countries it was impossible to tell if something awful had happened to her in the meantime. Part of him must have desperately wanted to hear her voice and see her face again, while the other part must have been telling him to be thankful that we were all safely in England. Such thoughts must have made him feel like he was being torn in two by his conflicting loyalties to his mother and his past, and his responsibility to my mother and me and our lives in war-torn London.
I WOKE UP on the morning