Read Let Me Whisper You My Story Online
Authors: Moya Simons
Let Me Whisper You My Story (17 page)
The ship sailed into Sydney Harbour on a day when the sun shone like a golden disc in a clear blue sky. We watched on deck as the ship passed through Sydney Heads into the harbour.
Greta seemed uneasy. ‘You know who’s meeting you. I don’t. Will they like me?’
‘They’ll love you.’
In the distance we saw the Harbour Bridge and knew we had arrived. Small sailing boats came to greet the ship. Soon we saw the dock where the ship would berth.
As the ship sailed closer, coloured pinpoints filled the dock. People. Among them, somewhere, were Papa and Miri.
Greta snuggled against me. ‘I’m nervous.’
I was too—giddy with excitement, almost frantic with hope.
The ship pulled up slowly alongside the dock. A huge crowd of people waited there, everyone looking for someone on board the ship. People near us called out: ‘There he is! There’s Uncle Joe! And Sally!’ I scanned the dock. They were there, somewhere. There were so many faces, and so many people screaming to one another.
Then I saw it, a sign held up high above heads:
Welcome, Rachel and Greta
. Papa. My papa. He was much smaller than I remembered and I couldn’t see his eyebrows from where I leaned against the rail; his hair appeared grey now, and his beard too, but it was my papa.
Oh, Mama, why aren’t you here too?
Was that my sister, Miri, holding the other end of the sign? She was grown-up. Could it be true? She seemed taller than I remembered, slim and pretty, no doubt smelling wonderful.
I screamed my lungs out. I held up Miri’s journal. I waved the world’s longest scarf. ‘Papa! Miri!’
Somewhere above the cries of other people, above the screech of the seagulls hovering over the ship, Papa heard me. He pointed me out to Miri and dropped the sign. He put a hand across his mouth. I was waving the world’s longest scarf at him. Papa remembered. His shoulders heaved. He waved to me, to Rachel, his youngest child; the family baby; the skinny one.
It was not a time for words. Shyly Greta, too, raised her arm and waved.
‘It will be all right, Greta. You’ll see.’
I thought of Gabi, the girl I’d met at Hartfield who had asked the rabbi where God was when the Jewish people were being killed. The rabbi said he couldn’t answer. If Gabi was right and God existed only in love, then God was here now. He was here in the loving knitting of Mama’s scarf, in the beauty of Miri’s journal, in the hearts of all those who had risked their lives to help others in the war. In time, Greta would know this too.
I am War
.
I am the battle trenches of World War One
.
I am the invading armies of World War Two
.
I am the face of Hitler
.
I was with Stalin when he murdered millions
.
I was in the killing fields of Cambodia
.
I was the fear in the eyes of the soldier in Vietnam
.
I am in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, other countries too
.
You’d be surprised where I turn up
.
I am always lurking, a formidable shadow, in the minds of people,
For I am War.
My cause is not about justice.
I do not discriminate between civilians and soldiers.
I do not worry about the shattered lives of survivors.
I have no conscience.
I have only one problem.
It is the peacemakers who simply
do not let me get on with my work.
| 1919 | Treaty of Versailles signed, and World War I ends. Germany is defeated by Britain, France, and their allies. |
| Germany is forced to accept sole responsibility for starting the war, and has to pay massive financial reparations and give up territory to the Allies. | |
| In the 1920s and 1930s, economic hardship caused by losing the war and the financial disaster of the ‘Great Depression’ leads to widespread public discontent in Germany. | |
| 1932 | |
| 31 July | National Socialist (Nazi) party under Adolf Hitler win 37% of vote, becoming largest party in the Reichstag (German Parliament). |
| 1933 | |
| 30 January | Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany. 20 March Opening of concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich, for Nazis’ political opponents. |
| 7 April | Civil service laws bar Jews and Nazis’ political opponents from holding government and university positions. |
| 26 April | Formation of Gestapo (secret state police) under Hermann Goering. |
| 14 July | Nazi party declared only political party in Germany; East European Jewish immigrants stripped of German citizenship. |
| 1934 | |
| 30 June | Night of the Long Knives; Hitler purges political rival Ernst Roehm and others. |
| 2 August | German president Paul von Hindenburg dies, and Hitler proclaims himself Führer. |
| 1935 | |
| 1 April | Jehovah’s Witness organisation outlawed. |
| 28 June | Homosexuality criminalised. |
| 15 September | Nuremberg Laws strip German Jews, blacks and Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) of citizenship and forbid intermarriage between German citizens and ‘non-Aryans’. |
| 1936 | |
| 17 June | Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, becomes chief of police for all German states. |
| 12 July | Construction of Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin begins. |
| 1–16 August | Berlin Olympic Games; anti-Jewish signs removed for the duration. Jesse Owens, a black athlete from the USA, triumphs at the Games, embarrassing Hitler’s government. |
| 1937 | |
| 15 July | Buchenwald, one of the first and biggest concentration camps, opens in Germany. The population of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen increased rapidly after Kristallnacht in November 1938 (see below). |
| 1938 | |
| 12–14 March | Germany annexes Austria. |
| 26 April | Mandatory registration of all Jewish property in the Third Reich. |
| 1 August | Adolf Eichmann opens office in Vienna to orchestrate expulsion of Austrian Jewry. |
| 30 September | Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of Sudetenland, the predominantly German-populated area of western Czechoslovakia. |
| 27 October | Nazis arrest and expel 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany. |
| 9–10 November | Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) pogrom in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland. |
| Synagogues, Jewish homes, shops and businesses attacked, burned and looted. About 100 Jews die, and 30,000 deported to concentration camps. | |
| 15 November | Jewish children expelled from German schools. |
| 1939 | |
| 24 January | Plans begin for removal of all Jews from Germany through emigration. |
| 15 March | Germany invades Czechoslovakia. |
| 1 September | Germany invades Poland. World War II begins. |
| 17 September | Soviet troops enter eastern Poland in accordance with Nazi–Soviet pact. |
| 29 September | Poland is partitioned; two million Jews live in the Nazi-controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet zone. |
| 23 November | Jews aged 10 and over in Poland ordered to wear a white armband with the Star of David. |
| 1940 | |
| 9 April | Germany invades Denmark and Norway. |
| 30 April | Nazis seal first major Jewish ghetto (a street or quarter of a city set apart as a legally enforced residence area for Jews) in Poland. |
| 10 May | Germany invades Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. |
| 20 May | Concentration camp established at Auschwitz. |
| 22 June | France surrenders to Germany. |
| 7 September | The Blitz – London is bombed by the German Luftwaffe (Airforce) for 57 consecutive nights, and then for months afterwards, eventually ending 10 May 1941. |
| 3 October | Vichy France passes anti-Jewish laws. |
| 15 November | Warsaw ghetto sealed. |
| 1941 | |
| 6 April | Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece. |
| 22 June | Germany invades Soviet Union. German Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) begin mass killing of Jews in the USSR. |
| 31 July | Hermann Goering plans The Final Solution, a euphemism for the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. |
| September | German Jews aged six and up required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. |
| 3 September | First experimental gassings with Zyklon B at Auschwitz. |
| 24 November | Walled ghetto established at Theresienstadt and used by Nazi Germany as a transit camp for Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. |
| 26 November | Opening of second camp at Auschwitz. |
| 7 December | Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; US enters World War II. |
| 8 December | SS begins killing Jews and Gypsies in mobile gas vans at an extermination camp in Poland. |
| 11 December | Germany and Italy declare war on the US. |
| 1942 | |
| 19 February | Japanese launch the first of 64 air raids on Darwin, Australia. Women and children have already been ordered to evacuate in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor was bombed. |
| 17 March | SS begins using stationary gas chambers for mass murder. |
| 2 June | BBC radio broadcasts underground report estimating that Nazis have murdered 700,000 Jews in Poland (real number is much higher). |
| 15 July | Mass deportation of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz begins. |
| 19 July | Himmler issues 31 December deadline for completion of The Final Solution in occupied Poland. |
| 22 July | Mass deportation from Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka death camp begins. |
| 4 August | Mass deportation of Belgian Jews begins. |
| 8 November | Britain and US invade Northern Africa. Australians (known as the ‘Desert Rats’) take on Rommel at Tobruk and El Alamein until mid-1943. |
| 17 December | Allies (Britain, United States, Australia and other countries) condemn German policy of mass extermination of Jews. |
| 1943 | |
| 18 January | First attempt at armed resistance by Jews in Warsaw ghetto. |
| March | Oskar Schindler, while witnessing a murderous raid on a Polish ghetto, becomes actively involved in saving Jewish lives. The Jews he had working for him as forced labourers, including disabled Jews, were protected by him throughout the war. In all he saved some 1200 lives. |
| 15 March | Mass deportation of Greek Jews to Auschwitz begins. |
| 19 April | Warsaw ghetto uprising. |
| 21 June | Heinrich Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland and Russia, and deportation of all Jews to concentration camps. |
| 28 June | Four large new gas chambers and crematoria are completed at Auschwitz–Birkenau, which at their peak consume nearly 5000 murdered victims in 24 hours. |
| 4 December | RAF bombs Leipzig, destroying large part of the city. |
| 1944 | |
| 19–20 | February Leipzig again bombed by Allied forces in what is called ‘Big Week’. |
| 18 March | Germany occupies Hungary. |
| 16 May | Mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins. |
| 6 June | D Day—Allied invasion at Normandy. |
| July–December | Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Hungary, issues Swedish ‘protective passes’ to Jews. As Sweden was a neutral country during the war, these passes saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. |
| 20 July | Attempt to assassinate Hitler fails. |
| 7 August | Polish ghetto liquidated; more than 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz. |
| 3 October | Germans crush the Warsaw uprising. |
| 7 October | Revolt at Auschwitz; one crematorium destroyed. |
| 25 November | SS begins to demolish gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz. |
| 1945 | |
| 18 January | SS abandons Auschwitz and sends about 58,000 prisoners on death marches towards the interior of Germany, away from advancing Soviet army. |
| 27 January | Soviet troops liberate 8000 remaining prisoners in Auschwitz. |
| 14 February | German city of Dresden bombed by the Allies. Death toll figures range from 35,000–100,000 or more. |
| 11 April | Americans liberate Buchenwald. |
| 15 April | British liberate Bergen–Belsen concentration camp. |
| 20 April | US troops capture Leipzig and hand it over to Soviet army. |
| 30 April | Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, commit suicide. |
| 7 May | Germany surrenders to Allies. |
| 8 May | Germany surrenders to the Soviets. Victory in Europe or VE Day—the war is over in Europe. |
| 6 August | Bombing of Hiroshima. |
| 9 August | Bombing of Nagasaki. |
| 15 August | Japan surrenders—effectively the end of World War II. |
| 2 September | Formal surrender is the end of World War II. |
| 20 November | Trial of 21 major Nazi leaders by Allied tribunal begins at Nuremberg. |
| 1946 | |
| November | First boat of Jewish migrants from Europe docks at Sydney, Australia. Over 17,000 more would follow over the next ten years, including refugees from the Hungarian uprising in 1956. |
| 1947 | |
| 29 November | United Nations approves the Partition Plan to separate what had been British Palestine into two states, with the UN taking charge of the city of Jerusalem. Jewish community accepts this plan, but Arab league rejects it. |
| 1948 | |
| 18 May | Jews declare Israel to be an independent state, and are attacked by armies from five neighbouring Arab states. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War lasts for a year. It is the first of a series of conflicts over the next six decades. |
| David Ben Gurion and the Zionists dominate Israeli politics. Mass migration of Holocaust survivors takes place over the next decade, increasing the population from 800,000 in 1948 to over 2 million in 1958. Many have to stay in makeshift camps. | |
| 1949 | |
| 19 May | United Nations accepts Israel as a member. |