Kindertransport trauma

I’ve finished the Renate thread now. She will appear in just one more scene at the end of the book with Hani. Her story arc has been about her not knowing her identity. Is she English? German? Jewish? Yiddish? Is she accepted? She battles with this lack of identity and finally accepts herself as English. She is less wounded than she thinks she would have been when she finds out that her father has remarried. She is surprised to find that she is almost relieved, though she is glad that he is alive and well. It confirms to her that she should stay in England and become English. In many ways she had it better than many of the Kinder: Both parents survived the war and the Holocaust. She was treated well by her host parents and had some good friends at the school where she was also treated well. However, there is always the guilt in the Kinder. She had the added problem too that was not Jewish and was an outsider again. Although people accepted her generally, the state still saw her as an enemy alien and she was not allowed to go to university.

Fitting the Timelines Together

World War II is still the glue that fits the three story liens together.  It can’t be the Holocaust as such because the players at the time did not know there was a Holocaust. There is a growing suspicion of something being not quite right. Readers will understand, of course but we have to allow the girls their innocence – especially the German girls.

Today we’ve had an incendiary bomb destroy the few valuable belongings that Kathe and Renate managed to bring out of Germany. Bing Crosby has recorded White Christmas and everyone is singing it at Christmas 1942. The Christmas treat is going to see Holiday Inn. The girls form the Post office has disappeared – she became nineteen just after women of nineteen were called up. Berlin is being hammered.

On a more personal level, and in line with Kindertransport trauma experience, Renate finds she has forgotten the words to the German Christmas carols. In fact she is beginning to forget her German entirely. And she wonders whether her friend Angela-from-the-Post-Office will soon be organising the dropping of bombs on Nuremberg and on her father.