Shattered Crystals by Mia Amalia Kanner (management books to read .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Mia Amalia Kanner
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A light sleeper at the best of times, I was shocked when I saw it was eleven o’clock. I had slept for seven hours, without waking once.
Peter and Eugene were sitting at a large oblong table when I walked into the bright kitchen of the farmhouse. A motherly woman, gray hair braided into a bun at the nape of her neck, welcomed me into her home. Though it was summer, she wore a long-sleeved, high-necked cotton print dress, its full skirt ending just above her ankles.
“Meet Madame Laurette,” Peter said as the woman piled eggs and cooked vegetables on a plate for me. She bustled over me as though I were a loved daughter who returned home after a long absence. I sipped coffee with boiled milk from a thick, ceramic mug, feeling as if I had been spirited out of France to another country.
“I’ve been to the station,” Peter said. “No one knows when we can board another train. They go through without stopping.”
Paris fell on our second day in the village. Madame Laurette was kind and solicitous, but I became increasingly restless. My head told me the children had arrived safely in Montintin, but in my heart I was worried. I needed to see for myself. I wanted to know where they ate and slept and studied and played. I had never let them go before without personally seeing exactly where they would be. If I could just see them in their new surroundings, I would be less uneasy about them.
Sitting with my friends from Montmorency, on an old wooden bench in the town square, I said, “Ah, Hilda, if only we were on our way to Montintin.”
“You’ll have to walk there,” Hilda said, nodding toward clusters of women and men wandering aimlessly past us. All of them had been on the freight train with us.
It was the push I needed. “All right,” I said, suddenly full of determination. “I will.”
“I’ll go with you, Amalia,” Hilda said. “How about it, Peter? Eugene?”
Together, the men answered, “Yes.”
I think we had known all along, walking was the only way.
In the morning, Madame Laurette fed us a huge breakfast. Her husband came into the kitchen and gave us directions, while she packed a basket with bread, cheese and fruit. We tried to pay her, but she refused. “What we have, we share with our friends.”
We walked all day. At night, we spread blankets in a field, slept outdoors, and when the sun rose we went on, sleeping once more in a field when night came. In sharp contrast to the roads outside of Paris a week before, we saw no refugees on these roads, only local people. Late on the third afternoon, a farmer on his way home from a market town gave us a ride in his empty wagon. That night we slept in his barn, and in the morning walked on.
In every town and village we reached, we stopped at the railroad station and asked about the trains, but there were no schedules. On the fifth day, a village stationmaster told us a train en route to Limoges might arrive at noon. Miraculously, it did. When we boarded, we found the passenger compartments full, and were happy to sit on the floor in the corridor.
A half hour outside of Limoges, Eugene said, “I’m not getting off. I’ve decided. I don’t owe the OSE anything. I’ll go to Spain. I’ll ride as far as I can, and then, if I have to, I’ll walk again.”
“Spain is neutral territory,” Peter said. “I think I’ll go with you.”
I did not attempt to sway them. Unlike me, they had no ties to the OSE, so why shouldn’t they try to get out of France altogether?
“I understand,” Hilda said. “I wish you luck, both of you.”
My eyes filled with tears. “I would never have made it without you,” I said.
“Yes, you would, Amalia,” Peter said. “You’re dauntless.”
The train pulled into Limoges. “Goodbye, my friends. Who knows if we will meet again. May God guide and inspire you and keep you from harm,” I said.
On the platform, Hilda and I watched until the train was out of sight. Then, we sought directions to Montintin, “where the Jewish children are staying.” It was forty miles away, in the countryside. There was no public transportation, and again we walked and sought rides on carts. A friendly farmer dropped us off a half mile from the estate.
“It’s straight ahead of you,” he said. “You can’t miss the castle.”
We had made it to Montintin. A castle it was, a large three-storied stone structure with turrets, a building from a bygone era. Lene stood at the entrance and showed no surprise at seeing us. Here we were, two weary, dust-covered women she had abandoned at Montmorency two weeks earlier and all she said was, “More and more people are arriving. The teenage boys who could not get on our train came yesterday.”
She led us into a large, dark foyer. “Your girls are fine, Amalia. You’ll want to see them before you go to the kitchen. We need you there. And Hilda, we’re trying to organize lessons.” She stopped a boy who was running along and said, “Ben, run and find the Kanner girls, quickly, all three of them. Their mother has arrived.”
Speechless, I smiled at her.
“So,” she said, finally giving her first sign of welcome. “It’s good that you’re here.”
The girls came running, Ruth holding Lea by the hand.
“Mama,” Lea shrieked and pulled loose from her sister.
Then all three children were clambering all over me, and we were hugging and kissing each other.
“Mama, I knew you would come,” Ruth said, “But what took you so long?”
“We ate on the floor when we got here,” Lea said.
“We tossed the cartons with our dishes out the train windows to make room for people,” Ruth explained.
Once more she threw her arms around me. “Oh, I knew you would get here, Mama. See, Eva? You were a silly goose. Didn’t I tell you?”
“It was the longest ride ever,” Lea said. “I don’t like trains anymore.”
I saw Eva’s tears, and knew they were my middle daughter’s expression of relief. Ruth and Lea were talking together, over each other. How often had I told these two it was rude to interrupt, and now I was barely aware of their breach of manners. Nor did I feel the blister on my foot or the soreness of my weary legs. I was reunited with my children. Nothing else was of any importance at all.
Children’s Homes
in Haute Vienne
“The kitchen did not have a stove.”
On a hill next to Chateau Montintin stood an old house that had once slept servants. Called La Chevrette, it became the new home for the children of Eaubonne. The building had never been intended as anything other than sleeping quarters for servants. Naturally enough, it did not have a proper kitchen suitable for preparing food for one hundred children and adults. The room designated as a kitchen did not even have a stove. It did, however, have an enormous fireplace, and that was where I did my cooking.
I had to work much harder at La Chevrette than at Eaubonne. I was up and dressed at six o’clock in the morning to build a fire. A forest surrounded the Chateau, so there was never a shortage of fuel. But it was not easy to get a fire going. I needed paper to ignite twigs, and I had to make sure the flames spread to thin strips of kindling before the paper turned to ash. Paper was scarce, and I dared not waste any of it. I worked carefully to make sure the logs caught fire quickly.
When the fire was ready, I cooked a farina-based soup made with watered-down milk. That was breakfast. After cleaning up, I immediately began preparing and cooking two more meals.
We relied heavily on produce for our meals. Potatoes, carrots, and cabbage came from markets or directly from surrounding farms, which also supplied us with fresh milk. When there was a shortage of vegetables, I had to fall back on tobinambour, a tough tuber, grown as pigfeed. Under normal conditions, it was scarcely considered fit for human consumption.
Trees on the grounds of the estate provided us with apples and chestnuts in season. The road leading up to the estate was lined with cherry trees, and though we did not own the land on which the trees stood, we appropriated the fruit. The forest was the source of blackberries and other wild berries.
I prepared everything in the kitchen manually, without adequate utensils. Peeling and cleaning vegetables, potatoes and fruit for one hundred people was an exhausting task, even with the help of some children. By the time my kitchen duties were finished at seven o’clock in the evening, I was bone tired. My exhaustion gave way to delight for a few minutes when my children and I were together. Ruth and Eva came to my room to tell me about their day, and Frau Mandel returned Lea to me. Frau Mandel, who had a little boy of her own, looked after Lea during the day. Lea slept in my room in a box filled with straw until a cot became available. Ruth and Eva were more comfortably quartered in the castle of Montintin.
After the girls left and I put Lea to sleep, I spent evenings by myself, too tired to be with others. In truth, I would not have made good company because I dwelt on the subjects of Hitler and the Nazis and the war. Except for my children, I had lost contact with all the people who were dear to me. Most especially, I had no idea what had happened to my husband or my father. Sometimes, I wished the morning would rise quickly. I would be back at my hard tasks and have no time to brood.
Soon after I arrived, there was a change of administration at Montintin as Lene and Ernst Papanek left for the United States in the summer of 1940. The Papaneks had a long and well-known history of anti-Fascist activities. Friendly French officials warned them that their names were on a list of undesirable Jews and they were likely to be arrested at any time. Lene and Ernst were not safe in Montintin nor any place in France. How fortunate that they had American visas.
My main quarrel with Madame Krakowski, when she took charge, was that she forbade Ruth and Eva to see or talk to me except for half an hour in the evening. Yes, forbade. She was totally rigid on this point. “Your children are the only ones who have a mother here,” she said. “If the other children see that Ruth and Eva can run to their mother any time they wish, they will become jealous, and that will affect discipline. I cannot allow it.”
Ironically, while other children stopped in the kitchen to chat, show me a new stamp or beg an extra morsel, the kitchen became forbidden territory for my own children. Now the only time Ruth and Eva could spend with me was after the evening meal for a brief thirty minutes.
Eva learned in classes held at Chateau Montintin, but Ruth, who was ten years old, was assigned to the school in the village, along with the other older girls. They had lessons in mathematics, French geography and French history. “You would think France was the center of the world,” Ruth said. “The teacher never talks
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