Lilli is much fleeter than the chunky-bodied Gerda, and easily slips past her on the staircase and races into the garden, just in time to see Helga disappear behind the untidy shrubs that conceal the hole beneath the crumbling wall. This time Lilli doesn’t hesitate. She dives crazily into the loose earth, wriggles through the opening, staggers to her feet on the deserted street, and chases after Helga.
Both girls have always been fast runners, winning races even back when they were quite small and attended the German school. But today Lilli fears she will never catch her sister, who is sprinting ahead. She musn’t lose sight of Helga, whose drab clothing could easily help her to vanish into the crowd on the next street, where a trolley line runs and there are shops rather than large houses surrounded by garden walls.
Where can Helga be going? Does she even know? Doesn’t she see the danger of attracting attention? Lilli has a vision of Helga causing a scuffle in the street and being arrested by the Nazi police, who will take her to headquarters. There, she will be forced to reveal the hideout of her half-Jewish sisters. Mutti and the Bayers will be found guilty, and they will all be swallowed up into one of the concentration camps.
These images push Lilli to pursue Helga with a renewed burst of energy. The busy traffic street at the corner is already in sight, and Lilli has very little time to pounce on the fleeing Helga and bring her to the ground. She imagines herself a cheetah, an animal she saw once on a visit to the zoo, said to be the fastest land animal on earth. She wills herself to give all she has to the chase.
The distance between the sisters begins to shrink. Lilli is getting closer and closer. Finally, with one fierce effort, she hurls her body into the air, thrusts her right arm as far ahead of her as she can, and catches the sleeve of Helga’s blouse.
There is a loud thud, followed by a cracking sound that sends a wave of sickness through Lilli’s body. Her stilled prey lies before her, moaning in pain.
True to his promise, on September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler sends Nazi Germany’s fiercest fighting divisions into neighboring Poland. True to their promise, the governments of Great Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later. World War II has begun.
The morning of September 1 finds Lilli and Mutti on the busy street with the trolley line, on the very block where Lilli tackled Helga to the ground just a few days before. Mutti, always much more stylishly dressed than the average German Frau, wears a flowered-chiffon summer dress and a brimmed straw hat, tilted at a charming angle.
Lilli, already tall for her age, walks beside her mother. She is dressed in her usual khaki clothing, high socks, and sturdy shoes. She carries both a small suitcase and a backpack. Her heart is racing. She could never have imagined this scene until the day of Helga’s accident . . . Helga, who now rests with her broken arm and dislocated shoulder in a cast, attended in the attic room by Gerda and a hired nurse.
After Helga’s fall, people began to gather, seemingly from nowhere, muttering and making suggestions for lifting her from the ground. Several older men and women scolded Lilli for having knocked her sister down. The police were sure to be arriving at any minute to investigate the hubbub.
It was Gerda who saved the day, huffing and puffing as she caught up with the runaway and her pursuer. With great strength and care, she lifted Helga to her feet, carefully embraced her wounded arm and shoulder, and walked her back to the house, with Lilli trailing shame-facedly behind.
“Just a bit of roughhousing,” Gerda soothed the slowly-dispersing crowd. “They are sisters and members of the Hitler Youth.”
The harried days that followed were taken up with Mutti’s daring plan to have Lilli substitute for Helga on the Kindertransport.
“How can this happen?” Lilli asked her mother. “I am a year older and Helga and I don’t look alike. They will not honor the passport. And what will happen to Helga, and to the rest who remain behind?” Lilli insisted that she was cheating Helga of a chance for freedom that was rightfully hers.
Mutti was gentle but persuasive. “You wanted to go from the very start, Lilli. How foolish to waste this chance for freedom. Once you are in England, you may be able to save us all.” With that, Mutti pressed into Lilli’s hand the name and address of Papa’s brother, Herman, who lived in America. Lilli remembered hearing her parents speak of the American relatives, with whom Papa had corresponded for years prior to his arrest. Herrman knew of their plight, but had been unable to help the family because of his country’s strict immigration laws. So, for Lilli, the Kindertransport would be more than just an escape from Nazi Germany—it would also be a mission to find a way to contact her uncle.
Before her departure, Lilli tried to make peace with her sister. “What are you so worried about, Lilli?” Helga remarked cynically. “You know I didn’t want to be sent away like a scared bunny. I’ll stay here and fight for my rights.”
“What rights?” Lilli exclaimed. “You haven’t any here in Germany. Where were you even running that day? Into the arms of the street police, or those brutes, the Brown Shirts, or straight to the Gestapo itself?”
Helga turned away, gingerly lifting her right arm and shoulder in their hard cast.
“We won’t talk about it anymore,” she pronounced.
The trolley is crowded and noisy, and there is an air of excitement everywhere. All along the route, groups of Hitler Youth are marching through the streets, cheering and carrying flags and large banners bearing swastikas. The news of the Fuhrer’s invasion of Poland has traveled fast, and the German people appear to be supporting him in his reckless grab for conquest and power.
Mutti and Lilli sit rigidly side by side and do not speak until Mutti announces, “We will get off at the next stop.”
Lilli peers out the window. They are still a few blocks away from the bustling railroad station. Mutti explains that it will be better to say goodbye at some distance from the train platform, as the Nazi authorities frown on too much public display.
Mother and daughter descend from the trolley and make their way through the congested streets. Lilli has already said goodbye to her Bayer grandparents and little Elspeth, as well as to Helga, the two sisters crying and hugging each other. Soon it will be time to say goodbye to Mutti, who remains a mystery to Lilli. Noting the presence of so many Hitler police and high-level Nazi officers surrounding the railroad station, Lilli thinks about the tall shadowy figure of Captain Koeppler. What is his true relationship to Mutti? Was Papa betrayed by Mutti’s “old school friend” or has he been helped? If Papa is alive, why can’t the Captain get word to them from him?
“I will write to you, Lilli my child,” Mutti says as they drawer closer to the station. “And you will write to me. We must never lose touch . . .”
“And you will let me know the first thing if you hear from Papa,” Lilli interrupts. “And tell me about Helga and Elspeth . . .”
Their words are drowned out by the noise of blaring announcements, harsh commands, and the shrillness of the train whistle. A moment later, mother and daughter are being wedged apart by the steely shoulders of the uniformed police. They manage one last embrace before Lilli is swept away in the direction of the nearest railroad car.
The Nazi guards shove the children onto the train like so many cattle. Toddlers are carried aboard by older children, and there are even some infants in the arms of brother and sisters, themselves no more than teenagers. No parents or guardians are allowed to go along. The only adults on the train will be the German officers.
Lilli reaches a seat beside a window in the dreary car, which quickly fills up and overflows into the next car and the next. There are perhaps two hundred children about to travel on what will likely be the last Kindertransport ever to leave Germany.
Lilli peers out the window, trying to get one more view of Mutti. She manages to catch a glimpse of her mother’s tall, lovely figure in