The Recliner, Part 1

     “I’m expecting money, a wire transfer. It should be over a thousand dollars. Has it come?”  Dad sounded a bit panicked over the phone line. It was still early in Berkeley. I was quietly working my way through my emails and a cup of coffee. For roughly the last year, I’d been balancing Dad’s checkbook, paying his bills. What was he worried about? Had I made a mistake with something?

I opened a computer screen to log into Dad’s bank account. I scrolled through the list of semi-decipherable bank-speak notations of the account’s recent history: auto-payments for his rent, reimbursement checks to my sister for buying him orange juice, bagels, and Scotch, incoming wire transfers from Social Security and his IRA.

My eyes stopped at Wire Deposit Conference On Je 000. “Yes,” I said. “I found a deposit for $1,307.”

“Good, good,” said Dad though he didn’t sound particularly relieved. I was still confused about why he’d sounded so panicked. There was plenty of money in his account. Why the panic over $1307? I asked him who the deposit was from.

“Compensation for my experiences with the Nazis.”

“Oh?” I heard my voice rise at the end of the word. How did Wire Deposit Conference On Je 000 translate to compensation for experiences with the Nazis? Then it clicked that “Conference” might mean Claims Conference,^[1] the organization distributing German reparations to Holocaust survivors.

“Beautiful day in Rochester,” Dad changed the subject. “What’s going on in Berkeley?” I was about to answer him when he continued, “I’m glad the deposit came.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Should I be on the lookout for more transfers?”

“I don’t know.” Sadly, Dad’s most common answer these days was “I don’t know.” Before COVID, Dad was not only on top of finances, but current events, family parties, his neighbors’ activities, and yesterday’s sports scores. Since COVID, Dad hadn’t been to the VA to get his hearing aids adjusted, his daily bridge games had been curtailed, and often his dinner came in a paper bag to be eaten alone in his apartment in an independent living facility. He never mastered Facetime or Zoom. When Dad said, “I don’t know,” he was being honest.

“Is this from the Kindertransport Fund?” Several years back, Dad’s sister told him about the fund. Germany was offering 1,000 Euro one-time payments to any of the 10,000-ish children that went on Kindertransports. I filled out the form for Dad. I wasn’t aware of other funds that Dad qualified for.

“I don’t know,” Dad said again. “How’s the weather in Berkeley?”

Dad directed the conversation as he always had ever since I was a little girl. First, we covered the weather (good in both Berkeley and Rochester), what I was doing for the day (I had to facilitate a meeting in a couple of hours), and what time his bridge game was (2:00 p.m., he thought, but wasn’t sure). Dad went on to inquire about what my adult children were up to. I repeated the same few sentences as earlier in the week, earlier in the month, and earlier in the year. Dad said “oh,” or “really,” as if all this information was new. Finally, Dad moved to sign off. “Bleib gesund,” he said.

“Du auch.” Before COVID, Dad and I never bantered in German. But since COVID, Dad learned that one of my cousins was expert in this good-bye repartee. Dad now closed every call, “Bleib gesund.” The first ten times, I said “Du auch,” Dad said, “What?” while I repeated it over and over until he started giggling. Now, he offered a quick ha-ha, and hung up. I pictured Dad in his huge black leatherette recliner chair, the one Mom hated, shoving the chair back to his favorite recline position, turning on the television, ready to sleep through the noonday news.

I continued to stare at Dad’s checking account thinking about that $1,307, ruminating on his experiences with the Nazis. The last time I visited Dad, he mentioned something about his years in school in Germany, and his SOB Nazi teacher. I asked him how often he still thought about this teacher. “Every day,” Dad said looking down at his hands. Why Dad had only one teacher in his four years of school in Germany remains a mystery to me. Both of his sisters had new teachers every year. Both sisters told me that were relatively happy at school until their expulsion the day after Kristallnacht. Not so for Dad. He was miserable. Dad said that when his parents told him about the Kindertransport, that he was going to Belgium to live with his aunt and uncle in Mechelen, “I thought I was going on an adventure. I was relieved to be getting the hell out of there.”

I’d always taken Dad at his word. Then, about a year or so ago, I read an article that other children sent on Kindertransports reported that their parents told them that they were going on an adventure.[2] Perhaps the Jewish agencies that organized the Kindertransports offered a script for parents to soften the blow for their children who were being asked to leave home for somewhere unknown for an unspecified time. Maybe ten-year-old Dad wasn’t as intrepid as I’d thought.

I remembered evenings spent with one or the other of Dad’s sisters when I was a child. Dad rarely brought his “adventure” if Hilda or Lucie wasn’t there, bringing it up for him. We’d be sitting in our living room, or one the living room at one of my aunts’ houses, everyone cozy on their couch or chair or pillow on the floor. Then seemingly out of the blue, Lucie would rail against horrible, mean Aunt Mathilde, avaricious Uncle Hugo, and stuck-up Cousin Lore. The nadir of Lucie’s life (till then) was her time in Belgium.

Hilda was more diplomatic: she learned Flemish seemingly overnight; she made friends and did well in school; she saw the ocean for the first time when Aunt Mathilde took them on vacation. Hilda also loved spending time with Cousin Doris, who came on the same Kindertransport from Köln to Brussels just before Christmas 1938 (roughly six weeks after Kristallnacht).

My aunts worried they’d never see their parents again. Aunt Mathilde took the children to the US Consulate in Antwerp to get them visas to the US. But their parents’ visa appointments weren’t scheduled until May 1940. The children were stuck in Mechelen wondering how their parents were doing and waiting for them. Neither aunt said anything in front of Dad, but when I was older, both told me that Dad was a bed-wetter in Belgium, something he’d never done in Germany. Each time Aunt Mathilde found wet sheets, she would scream at Dad. On some level, Dad’s adventure was not going well.

Back to those evenings long ago, when I was allowed to stay up late, to listen to my aunts tell the story of the Kindertransport, their time in Belgium. They were both so excited when the spring of 1940 finally arrived. They imagined that their time away from their parents (well over a year now) was coming to an end, that, as promised by their parents, they would be picked up in Mechelen and the entire family would immigrate to the United States. No more terrible Aunt Mathilde. I’d look at Dad for his reaction. Was he, too, excited? I couldn’t tell. He was still staring down at his lap, twirling his amethyst college class ring.

Then, Dad would clear his voice. “May 10^th, 1940: We were awakened in the middle of the night to Nazi planes flying over head. They knocked out most of the Belgian air force before they got any planes off the ground….” All eyes turned to Dad. I was proud and impressed by his authoritative tone, as if he had spent May 1940 in Belgium as a war correspondent instead of an eleven-year-old boy. Now his sisters would cede the floor to their little brother who had finally stopped looking down to his fidgety hands. Dad looked around the room face to face, eye to eye, and continued….

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR PART 2

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[1] The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), a nonprofit organization with offices in New York, Israel and Germany, secures material compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world… since 1952, the German government has paid approximately $90 billion in indemnification to individuals for suffering and losses resulting from persecution by the Nazis. (https://www.claimscon.org/about/)

[2]  The Kindertransport children 80 years on: 'We thought we were going on an adventure', an article from the Guardian in London interviews six children who were on Kindertransports to England.