Until The Stars Align

By Carolyn Summer Quinn

It's June1939.  Three young Jewish girls, Rosi, her sister Anni, and their cousin Emilie, wait to board the Kindertransport train that will take them away from Nazi Germany, and a life of discrimination, to kind foster families in England.  The parents hate to let them go, but realize it's for their own good, and that it may just be their only chance of survival.  When guarded Rosi arrives in London, she's placed in the East End with a welcoming family of "Pearlies," and begins to blossom into the happy young girl she was originally born to be, before the Nazis disrupted her world.  Anni goes to live with upper crust foster parents and their shy daughter, and Emilie with a newsagent and his wife.  They like their new country and adore their "new parents," but what has happened back home in Berlin to their "old" parents?  By 1945, when there's still no answers, Rosi is determined to find out.   Will the stars align to bring about a reunion or is it already too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Topaz Ocean Enterprises
• Release date: Jun 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224701056

Carolyn Summer Quinn

CAROLYN SUMMER QUINN, Author and Fine Art Photographer, grew up singing show tunes in Roselle and Scotch Plains, NJ, a member of an outrageous and rollicking extended family.  She has a B.A. in English and Theater/Media from Kean University and now delights in living in New York City.  She is the Author of 10 books (so far!) and they've garnered 17 writing awards!

Book preview

A person and a child looking at a flag Description automatically generated

Don’t be scared when there is no other choice.

Hob nit kain moirch ven du host nit kain ander braireh.

—Yiddish Proverb

"’Hope’ is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -"

—Emily Dickinson

Keep a stiff upper lip.

—Common British Saying to Encourage Strength and Fortitude

Part One

1939

Chapter One

June 1939

IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT at Zoo Station in the heart of Berlin.  The platform where they were waiting for word to board a train that was already there was the scene of a drama unlike any Rosi had ever seen in the movies.  The whole gamut of human emotions was on display everywhere she looked.  There was great joy on the faces of a lot of the children, relief on others, and tears rolling down the cheeks of many more kids and their parents.  Everybody was in a state.

This wasn’t a film, though.  It was real life.

Her real life.  The one that was about to be more disrupted than she could ever imagine for the first time in her twelve years.

Children and parents weren’t the only ones on the platform.  German soldiers could be seen here and there.  Just watching the proceedings, but with eyes like the reptiles she’d once seen in the nearby Berlin Zoo.  They managed to lend an ominous air to everything simply by being there, just as they always did.

Rosi stood with her mother, father and little sister, Anni, who was crying her ten-year-old eyes out. 

Cheer up, my little one, Mutti said to Anni.  You’re about to go on a great adventure!  Mutti, tall, stately and lovely as ever, with her light brown hair swept away from her sweet face, blinked away the tears that came into her own dark green eyes as she said it.  The woman was trying desperately to keep the misery of bidding goodbye to her daughters out of her voice as she put on as brave a front as she could muster.  The adventure of a lifetime, Anni!  You’re going to England!

Without you and Vati, Anni sobbed.  She reached out and put one arm around her mother, the other around her dad.  This wasn’t an adventure to her.  It felt more like the end of the world, and in a way, it was.  It was the last moments they would be together as a family for a long, long time.  Anni had an uneasy feeling about it.

I’m scared, the little girl admitted, looking from one parent to the other.

You know what my grandfather used to say?  Mutti told her.  It’s an old saying.  ‘Don’t be scared when there is no other choice.’

Anni said she could only wish there was one. 

Oh, don’t be a silly goose, dark-haired, blue-eyed, balding Vati, forcing a smile and a jolly tone he didn’t really feel, urged his little girl.  She was his darling, and he had always been both of his daughters’ best buddy, quick with a grin and up for some fun.  Your mother and I will be coming along too, as soon as we straighten out our situation with getting our visas.  We’ll all be reunited very soon in Britain, so in the meantime, you are to go there with your sister and have fun.  Besides, you’ve got Rosi, and she will always look out for you.

I realize that might be hard, Mutti said in an aside to Rosi, since the two of you will be in two different foster homes, but both of you are going to be in London.  They would be with two families she and Vati had never even heard of before, but what choice did they have except to entrust their daughters with them for a while?  I know you’ll find a way to see your sister as often as possible.

Rosi loved her little sister, and of course she would look out for her once they arrived at their destination.  Even so, it was a tall order.  They knew nothing about London.  Not yet.  Where would she be living in relation to Anni?  She didn’t know.  It would all have to be worked out once they got there.

Rosi had always been protective of Anni, especially in recent years when it seemed like half of Berlin, especially the neighborhood children in the Hitler Youth, had risen up like wild beasts and turned against Jews like them.  Many was the time when Anni was chased home from school by vicious German children screaming insults at her and Rosi had to come to her rescue.  That was one thing in Berlin, where as bad as things had become, at least Rosi had known what to expect.  Yet the idea of being asked to be there for her sister in a foreign country where they wouldn’t be living together and didn’t even know the language yet frightened her more than she could ever admit. 

Of course I will, Rosi said now though, just to reassure her parents and Anni.  We’re the Beyersdorf sisters and we’re going to stick together.  She forced a smile, but her eyes smarted with tears.

And your cousin Emilie will be living in a town near London too, Mutti reminded her now.  Make sure to watch after Emilie as well.  That child is too high spirited for her own good.

That’s all I need, Rosi thought.  Anni was one thing.  She was a child who played by the rules, at least most of the time, but Emilie?  That one never could.

But what Rosi said with more conviction than she felt at the moment was, We’re cousins, Anni, Emilie and me.  Nothing’s ever going to change that.  We’ll stay in close touch.  She just didn’t know yet how in the world she was going to manage to arrange that with the three of them living with three different host families.  It was the burden placed upon her by way of being the oldest girl of the three.  Anni was luckier, being the youngest.

Learn the lay of the land over there, you two, Vati added half teasingly, that’s your special job, your top-secret assignment from your mother and me, so that you can teach us everything about England when we land there and join you.  Probably within the year. 

Probably.

He only said probably, and that was with a catch in his voice.  It didn’t mean surely or definitely.  Rosi knew it.  She hoped it flew over the levels of understanding of Anni and Emilie.  Mutti, Vati and Emilie’s mother, Tante Charlotte, might get trapped here if they didn’t get out soon, before the war that was supposedly about to begin any minute actually started. Germany had been gearing up towards a war for years now, complete with men enlisting in the military, and everyone figured war was inevitable.  And it was coming soon.

Vati smiled, but not with his eyes, just with his mouth.  An unintentionally eerie kind of a smile.  One with a sad thought behind it.

There was something odd about the way her father said that last statement as well.  Rosi couldn’t put her finger on it, but it set off alarm bells inside of her. 

A foreboding.

There you are!  A familiar musical voice called out. 

It was their elegant aunt, Tante Charlotte Keppler, their mother’s fraternal twin sister, who was making her way through the crowd with their eleven-year-old cousin Emilie.  Unlike the Beyersdorf sisters, who felt miserable about leaving their parents, Emilie looked happy and excited at the prospect of getting the heck out of Germany.  She had somehow or other, probably due to her mother’s powers of persuasion, been added to the Kindertransport list for this particular train at the very last minute.  Rosi and Anni may have been rather miserable at the thought of temporarily leaving their parents, but they were both glad to know Emilie was going to England, too.

An official woman was walking up and down the platform, reminding the children, Be sure to wear your number tags.  Keep your number tags around your necks.  You cannot take them off until we reach our destination.  Wear your number tags!

All three of the girls had left the house wearing cardboard signs with numbers on them attached with strings around their necks, as they’d been instructed to do.  The same numbers were also affixed to their suitcases.  Each child about to board the train was only allowed one suitcase and had been given a list of practical items to bring along, like dresses, pajamas, and underwear.  They weren’t allowed to bring money or valuables.  That was against the rules.  Nazi guards, they knew, could board the train at the border and search through their luggage to make sure none of the children were carrying anything they shouldn’t be. 

Why is this train leaving so late at night anyway?  Anni asked their parents now, wiping the tears from her eyes with one hand while still encircling Vati’s waist with the other.  She was a daddy’s girl, while Rosi had always been closer with Mutti.

Who cares why?  So long as we get out of here, Emilie grinned, although she kept her voice down.  It was not a good idea to criticize the regime, especially with some of those Nazi guards lurking about the station, but Rosi knew what she meant. 

The situation for the Jews in Germany was flat-out terrible and had been getting increasingly worse since the Nazis came to power back in 1933.  Vati had been a teacher, but he had lost his job because Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party had decreed they didn’t want Jews in civil service positions.  Rosi, Anni and Emilie weren’t allowed to go to school with Aryan children and had to attend a school for Jews only, which segregated them, as if they weren’t good enough to associate with non-Jews.  No Jews could attend the cinema, the theater, or go to sporting events.  They weren’t allowed to go swimming at Tegel Lake.  There were even benches in the park that Jews were forbidden from sitting on!  It was completely insane. 

Rosi ached at the thought of leaving her parents and her aunt behind in the middle of such enforced madness, but what could she do?

Get ready to board the train, another official on the platform, a man this time, said through a megaphone.  The doors will open in just another minute.  Say your goodbyes.

The girls hugged their parents and aunt in turn.  Mutti held Rosi close and said, We will do everything in our power to join you soon, my child.  But if we can’t, look after your sister, and Emilie too, and come back to us later, when you can.  She didn’t have to add it, but Rosi knew by later, her mother meant after the war.  The one that was certain to start.  Their crazy leader Hitler seemed to want one to happen.  Imagine wishing for a war! 

I will, Rosi said, trying her best not to burst into tears as so many of the other children on the platform were doing.  I promise, Mutti.  One day we’ll be together.  If need be I’ll come back to find you and Vati and Tante Charlotte and Uncle Gustav, too, I swear it.  Uncle Gustav was Charlotte’s husband and Emilie’s father.  He was currently in a work camp.

I know you will, Mutti said, giving her beloved daughter one final squeeze.  How could she let this precious girl go, or her sister, either?  Yet how could she not, under the circumstances? She knew her Rosi was the sort of wonderful girl who would always fulfill a promise.  She’d watch Anni and Emilie like a hawk. 

We’ll see you again, my darling girl, Mutti added to Rosi, fighting back tears, whenever the stars align, and the world turns right-side up again.

POOR ANNI. 

She was crying so hard Rosi had to all but physically drag the little girl away from their parents and onto the train.  It wasn’t easy since both of them were also carrying their single allowed suitcases.  Emilie, meanwhile, told her mother, aunt and uncle she would see them soon and practically skipped up the few steps leading into the train car. 

Rosi had to wonder about that.  It was entirely possible that seeing Mutti, Vati and Tante Charlotte soon, let alone again, just might not turn out to be the case.  Everything in Germany had been constantly getting worse for the Jews, and not better, especially after the pogrom that was Kristallnacht, the horrible so-called Night of Broken Glass.  The Nazis had destroyed synagogues, burning more than two hundred and fifty of them down to the ground, including the one where the Beyersdorf family went for the high holy days.  They smashed the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses.  What was the point of that, except to be vicious and nasty, and to destroy the stores and businesses the Jews had built? 

The Nazis hadn’t stopped there, either.  They arrested thousands upon thousands of men for no reason, including Emilie’s father, Onkel Gustav, which was why he wasn’t at the station to see them off, too. 

These destructive actions had all happened in retaliation for the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy. 

It was sad, Rosi thought, that the diplomat had been killed, and wrong, too.  Yet was it right for the Nazis to go so very far against so many other Jews, who had nothing to do with it, in avenging that murder?

It was right after Kristallnacht when the plans for this very Kindertransport movement had begun.  Kindertransport meant children’s transport.  What happened during Kristallnacht was like a wake-up call for people of goodwill who heard about it in Great Britain.  It was obvious to them that the situation in Germany was not, would probably never, get any better for the Jews.

As a result, official in Britain agreed to allow for temporarily taking in 10,000 Jewish children.  It was a terrific development for girls like Anni, Emilie and me, Rosi thought to herself as she pulled Anni along the train corridor, but the very fact that the English saw the need to give so many Jewish children sanctuary in the first place filled her with a strange dread.  There had to be more to it, she figured.  Worse to come.

The three cousins found a train compartment together and settled inside of it with two boys and a girl they didn’t know sitting on the plush seat facing theirs.  The older boy helped them put their suitcases onto the overhead racks.  The smaller boy, meanwhile, like Anni, couldn’t stop crying.  The bigger one returned to stand at the window to wave to his parents and the girl looked exhausted enough to be almost falling asleep. 

Of course.  It was midnight, after all. 

Rosi was about to join the boy at the window when the train began to roll out of the station.  She missed her last chance to see her parents and her aunt.

Stop crying, Anni.  And you should stop too, Emilie said with a kind smile to the little boy.  My mother said we won’t be gone long.  We’ll be back in a few months, when everything returns to normal.

The older boy, who Rosi now noticed was very handsome, with sandy blonde hair and brown eyes, turned away from the window and sat down on the opposite bench between the younger boy and the girl.  Normal?  It’s going to take a lot longer than a few months for that to happen.  Don’t you know? 

Hitler and his kind won’t last, Emilie replied with conviction.  It was something her mother often said at home.

The boy let out a guffaw at that.  "They’ve lasted