Shattered Crystals by Mia Amalia Kanner (management books to read .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Mia Amalia Kanner
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Lea pulled at the sleeve of my spring suit. “Bring me chocolate, Mama,” she pleaded.
“All right, but you must be a good girl.”
“We’ll all be good while you’re gone,” Eva promised solemnly.
On the train to Magdeburg, I was convinced I was going to prison, yet I could not imagine myself incarcerated. I kept picturing my arrival at the courthouse, but I could not think beyond that. I felt totally alone. I was separated from my father and children in Leipzig, from Sal in Paris, from all the people I loved. I felt separated from things, from our home on the Reilstrasse, from all my belongings still crated in that dreadful warehouse in Halle.
I no longer have a home, I thought. For the first time since I had left the Reilstrasse, I wondered who was living in my apartment. Did the new tenants like the rooms as I had them rebuilt before moving in? Had they repaired the noisy motor in the icebox?
At the courthouse, I presented my summons and was directed to a waiting room where I joined eight or ten men. They were silent and apprehensive, their faces grim. The silence was broken periodically when a door opened and a guard called out a name.
I longed to ask, “How long will I have to wait?” But no one else spoke. I stared uneasily at the Roman numerals of the wall clock. The second hand circled around and around, stroking the black numbers. At eleven o’clock when the door opened once more, I heard my name. Moving past a line of seated people, an old man smiled gently at me. The unexpected support steadied me as I followed the guard out of the waiting room.
The courtroom had windows on three sides. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the bright sunlight streaming into the chamber. A large photograph of Hitler filled the wall between the windows. It hung directly behind the magistrate. The bench was elevated, and the judge towered over me. The shining mahogany desk, formed a forbidding wall between him and me.
I cursed my four-foot eleven-inch frame. My neck hurt as I forced myself to look up at the judge, a huge man, enveloped in a black robe. I was amazed at how large his forehead was, but then I realized he was completely bald. His head was a ball of gleaming skin. I felt the glare of his spectacles, the glare of the many window panes, the glare of the glass covering the photograph of Hitler.
“Amalia Kanner.” My name echoed harshly through the courtroom, and I cringed. “Amalia Kanner, you are accused of attempting to smuggle silver out of Germany. Answer the charge.”
“No, no, Your Honor, everything was declared. You talk of three bracelets. They had only sentimental value.”
“The silver bracelets were found in your crate and not declared,” the judge said.
“I intended to wear them sir, but at the last moment tossed them into the carton. In the rush to finish packing, I forgot to write them down.”
“Forgot!” the magistrate thundered.
“It was not intentional,” I whispered.
“Speak up,” he ordered.
“It was not intentional.”
The magistrate plucked his pen from the inkwell and wrote. The ringing in my head was incredibly loud. I felt myself swaying in front of the bench. I heard the firm voice of Dr. Milstein tell me, “You must get hold of yourself.” I breathed deeply.
“Two thousand marks,” I heard the magistrate say. “Pay within two days.”
I stood unsteadily, waiting for the sentence.
“Pay the fine,” the judge bellowed. “Go, go, go! Next case.”
The guard led me out of the courtroom to the clerk. He sat behind a barred window, and recorded my fine. And that was it. I was free.
Outside the courthouse, I took deep breaths of the spring air, clutching the priceless paper that said I was free. Then I started to run and did not stop running until I reached the railroad station. I jumped onto the blessedly-waiting train and fell asleep. I slept until the conductor woke me as the train pulled into Leipzig.
My eyes filled with tears just walking through that familiar station, passing the schedule boards, the waiting room, the information booth. Then I was out of the station, ready to return to my children. Before I boarded the trolley back to the Nordstrasse, I remembered Lea’s request. I stopped in a candy shop and bought the three largest bars of milk chocolate in the store.
“Halle will be Judenrein.”
By June of 1939, the number of Jews in Halle had dwindled to less than fifty. With so few Jews remaining, the Nazis closed the Halle Judenrat and ordered Neman to join the office in Leipzig.
At the same time, I was ordered by government officials to pay the export tax on my household belongings. I paid the tax, and our crates were finally shipped to Tel Aviv. This step was very important. To me, it was tangible evidence that we would get out. If the Germans let me ship the crates, they would let me and my family go. I visualized all our possessions in Palestine. Perhaps the old dream that we might be together and contribute to the building of the Jewish homeland, the dream that I had all but abandoned in these last weeks, would yet become reality.
In Halle, I felt isolated and alone. When I was with my father and my children in Leipzig, I felt more secure. I took comfort from the Jewish community that still existed there. The children still went daily to the Jewish school. Old men still came together for a minyan, and Jewish families were still together both in my father’s home and in the other designated apartments on the Nordstrasse.
Although I had little business left in Halle, I knew it was imprudent not to be there and sign Frau Feldman’s register. So I shuttled back and forth between Halle and Leipzig. I also continued making fruitless journeys to Berlin each week. My hope that the girls and I would escape from Germany alternated with my fear that I would be arrested again. If I were caught again, I would not escape with a mere fine. Of that I was sure. But I was equally certain that I could not take the kind of risk that Marthe had taken, no matter how strenuously Sal argued that I should.
When I telephoned Sal after my trial to tell him I was safe, he said, “Thank God. I was a hundred times more frightened when I knew you were in Magdeburg than when the Gestapo took me away during the pogrom. This is the best news I could have heard.”
“For me, also, Sal.”
“We can no longer wait and count on the Zionist Bureau. We must look for another way.”
“What way?”
“I will go to Karfiol.”
Karfiol was Markus’s cousin. When Karfiol’s business collapsed during World War I, Markus had taken him into his home. Karfiol stayed there for months until he reestablished himself in Belgium. Then, for no particular reason, the men lost contact with each other.
When Sal discovered that Karfiol owned a lingerie shop in an exclusive section of Paris, he decided to visit. My sister tried to discourage him. “A rich man like Karfiol will want nothing to do with a poor refugee like you,” Hannah said. “He will throw you out of his store.”
Hannah was wrong. Karfiol had been delighted to see Sal and took him to his opulent home for lunch. He urged Sal to visit regularly. Sal accepted this hospitality, but he refused Karfiol’s offers of cash, asking him to send the money to Markus in Poland.
All this Sal had told me during our frequent telephone calls. Now Sal described a plan Karfiol had devised. Karfiol would send his limousine to a designated point, just inside France. I was to find a smuggler who would lead us to that spot across the Franco-German border. A chauffeur would meet us there and drive us to Paris. Sal thought it was a generous offer and a good plan, but in my view it was too risky.
I thought of Marthe struggling across the wheat fields. What if Ruth or Eva became too tired to go on in the middle of the night? What then? And Lea was a baby, not even three years old. She would have to be carried much of the way. Suppose she cried out? How far were the Gestapo patrols from the smuggler’s route? What if we were picked up?
Sal and I talked for a long time on two separate evenings. I knew he was afraid for us and wanted us to leave immediately, but he did not fully comprehend how hard it would be with children, even children as good and responsible as our girls. It was just too dangerous. I would not undertake such a dangerous journey.
“You and Karfiol must find another, safer way,” I insisted.
The next time I spoke to Sal, he gave me a cryptic message. “Go to the French Consul in Leipzig tomorrow morning. Give him your name, and tell him to check the diplomatic pouch.”
“Yes, and…?”
“I can’t say any more, Mia. It will be all right. I know it.”
At the consular office, I identified myself to the receptionist and said, “Please ask the Consul to check the diplomatic mail.”
I saw a momentary flicker of suspicion in the woman’s eyes. Then she pushed back her chair and got up. “Stay here, Madame.”
I waited, my mind a blank. The minutes passed.
I did not hear the receptionist return to the waiting room and was startled by the sound of her voice. “The Consul will see you. Please follow me.”
I entered a small room dominated by the broad blue, white and red stripes of the tricolor hanging on a flagpole behind his desk. The Consul rose when I entered his office.
“Please sit down, Madame. You have identification?”
I sat on the edge of the seat and handed the Frenchman my passport.
“Yes, yes, very good,” he said with a smile. “I have a letter from our Banque Nationale that you have an account totaling one million francs. On the strength of these assets, the French government is pleased to issue an entry visa for you and your three children. It will take me a few minutes to fill out the forms.”
Now I understood the ploy. I leaned back in the chair while he wrote. It was Karfiol’s money. That was how they did it. Karfiol opened an account in my name and put one million francs in it.
“Voila, Madame,” the Consul said. “Here are the visas. It is my pleasure to give them to you. I trust you will have a good journey to our country and a safe stay there.”
I rushed back to my father’s house. “We’re getting out,” I shouted. “Papa, Papa! A genuine exit visa! Look at this wonderful document. It’s real. The Consul himself filled it out and signed it while I was there. No smugglers or scheming or middlemen. We can go!”
The joy on my father’s face made him look young in spite of the wrinkles on his forehead.
“Papa, you know what I’ve decided to do? We’ll go by airplane. I’ve had enough of German trains.”
During my last week in Germany, I purchased five first class boat tickets for passage from Marseilles to Tel Aviv. Then I went to Huth’s Department Store in Halle for the last time. I chose a summer suit of blue silk with a hat to match. For the girls I selected pastel cotton dresses with short puffed sleeves edged with white lace. I was going to travel to Paris in style.
I had
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