Far to Go

Chapter Eight



SUMMER SOLSTICE ARRIVED LIKE A slap across the face. The Jews were officially expelled from the economic life of Prague. The whole Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would be Aryanized: this was the word the Nazis were using. The singing of “Má Vlast,” the patriotic song that had caused such an uproar at the National Theatre the previous winter, was banned in pubs and cafés. It was against the law to boo during German newsreels. Cutting German telephone lines was punishable by death. And Reichsprotektor von Neurath could now make laws on his own. No confirmation needed from the courts; his whims would become part of the Czech criminal code, just like that.

Karl Frank had given a speech: “Where once the swastika flies, there it will fly forever.”

By law—as Ernst had predicted to Marta—the Bauers were forced to register all their assets.

“I’m a respectable citizen,” Pavel said sadly as he sat in the dining room one evening. “A factory owner. Kind to my workers.” He held a paper clip in his hand, bending it into a straight line. “I even supported the land reform,” he said. “Which meant giving up land out of principle.”

His papers were spread over every piece of furniture. Marta was in the kitchen, chopping onions. She wondered how she was supposed to set the table for their meal when it was covered with carbon paper and pencil shavings. “What if I just don’t do it?” Pavel asked. “What if I don’t register my assets?”

Marta saw Anneliese look up from the Prager tagblatt.

“You’ll get us killed,” she said evenly. She was wearing a new navy blue dress, her dark curls pinned in two buns on either side of her head.

“But how will they know?” Marta heard Pavel ask. “The company, fine. But the other . . .” He cleared his throat. Marta wasn’t sure if he was referring to the Canadian railway bonds or to his mother’s villa on the Seine or to various bank accounts he might or might not have opened in other countries. Ernst had got his hands on some of Pavel’s money but had been unsuccessful, Marta surmised, at accessing the bulk of his estate. So at least there was that small consolation.

The onions stung her eyes; she wiped away a tear with the back of her arm. Through the open kitchen arch she saw Pavel jab at the paper in front of him with the tip of his pencil. “How do they define a Jewish company?” he asked Anneliese. “What does it mean, ‘under the decisive influence of Jews’?” He made quotes in the air with his fingers. “It means nothing. You can’t prove that anything is ‘under the decisive influence’ of anyone at all!”

Anneliese put her newspaper down and crossed the room. She stood with her back to her husband, staring out the window. “They’re going to take it all now. Turn everything over to the Treuhänder. No exceptions.” She lifted a foot, balancing on one ruby heel.

“How are you such an expert all of a sudden?”

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Anneliese said.

Marta thought Anneliese sounded a little defensive. She wiped her hands on her apron and dumped the onion peels in the bin. She came into the parlour.

“My father,” Pavel was saying, “fought for the Germans in the Great War.”

“Really?” Marta asked.

“Yes,” he said. Surprised she didn’t already know. He picked up the paperclip and dug the point into the pad of his thumb. “So they’ll come and take the flat. And send us where? On vacation?”

“Just wait a little longer.” Anneliese’s voice was firm. “Something will happen.”

But Pavel loosened his blue silk tie, pulled it off, and threw it down on the table. “What do you mean, ‘something will happen’? Something like God sending down an Egyptian plague? Or something more along the lines of our child being sent out into the wild blue yonder never to be heard from again?”

Because this was the heart of it, Marta knew, the thing nobody was saying. It had been almost a month, and still no word from the Millings. Mathilde Baeck had received several letters, two from the foster parents, and a drawing by her Clara of the Hook of Holland, the sun rising over the bow of a big ship on which a herd of stick children were grinning. Marta tried to feel happy for the Baecks, happy that at least some people knew the whereabouts of their child, but despite herself she felt the unfairness of it, and a bitter jealousy. It was not that she begrudged Mrs. Baeck her knowledge of her daughter but that she so wished for something comparable from Pepik. Her longing for news of him was physical; her arms hurt for wanting to hold him. Already she was beginning to forget his voice, the little suckling sounds he made as he was falling asleep. His train was abandoned; the track was dismantled and pushed to the back of the closet. The lead soldiers were buried like casualties in a shoebox beneath the bottom bunk. There was no train under the parlour table now, but a ghost train had replaced the real one, and this at least was vivid in Marta’s imagination. She could see it flashing around the silver loop of its track, could hear the little bell singing its departure.

Anneliese was now gone from home almost all the time. She reappeared at odd hours, wearing shoes Marta didn’t recognize. Once she came home with a big bouquet of roses—difficult to get under the ruling Nazis—and Marta found a card torn up past legibility in the wastebasket. Not that she was snooping, of course. It was her job to take out the garbage.

She went into Max’s study to empty the bin there and found Pavel sitting behind the desk. The room smelled musty, like dust and ink. Darkness had fallen; Marta crossed the room and switched on the lamp. The little pool of light lit up Pavel’s face from below; he was wearing an expression of perfect sadness, his mouth turned down at the corners.

Pepik’s Sad face.

“Are you busy?” Marta asked.

There was a piece of paper in front of Pavel, a sheet of Bauer and Sons stationery. He was holding a fountain pen in his hand. “No, not busy,” he said. But he was casually trying to cover the letter with his elbow.

“I can just . . .” she said, nodding at the door. “If you’re in the middle of something.”

“No,” Pavel said. “Please.” He motioned to the straight-backed chair across from him. She wished he would come out from behind the desk and sit with her, as he sometimes did, in the velvet armchairs by the window—she felt like a client in a law office with the huge expanse of wood between them. But he stayed where he was and Marta made herself as comfortable as she could. Pavel, she saw, had pushed his paper under an atlas.

“I had a hopeful letter yesterday, from the embassy in Argentina,” he said. “When I followed up today, though, they told me my contact had been terminated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marta said. Truthfully, though, it was to be expected. Nobody was able to get out anymore. She was a little surprised that Pavel kept trying.

“Where’s the bin?” she asked, remembering what she’d come to do. She bent and looked under the desk.

Pavel ignored the question. “Slivovitz?” he asked. There was a silver tray with a bottle on the desk, and two little shot glasses.

She straightened and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “Then let’s write to Pepik.”

Pavel uncorked the decanter; it made a loud pop. He cleared his throat. “I was just doing that.”

“Of course,” Marta said; she tried to keep her voice steady. But she lowered her eyes and looked at her hands. She’d thought writing to Pepik was something they shared, a common activity that drew them together. They’d been writing to him for days now: it was like reading to someone in a coma—there was no way to know how much was getting through. Pavel wrote in big block letters, as though his son might be able to read them himself, and Marta didn’t remind him otherwise. She felt it excused her own childlike hand. She addressed each envelope, added an AIRMAIL sticker, and affixed the Nazi postage. She sent each letter separately, so there would be more for Pepik to open.

The days went by and they waited. No reply.

“I was writing to the Millings, in fact,” Pavel said now, filling their glasses. Marta knew that he wrote frequently to his son’s temporary parents, thanking them for the safekeeping of his son. He never forgot to ask after Arthur, he’d told her, and send his best wishes for their son’s speedy recovery. He even went so far as to send his prayers.

He stoppered the bottle and looked up at her. “I was asking if the Millings need any work done. You know,” he said, speaking quickly, “if they need a handyman. Or someone to drive their car.”

Marta squinted, not comprehending.

“If they need me to do any work,” Pavel said. He looked at her fiercely, ashamed but defiant, and she saw all at once: he would be a butler, or a chauffeur. Anything to get them out. It was much easier to get the exit papers, she knew, if you had a letter of employment.

Still, this was wrong. It was not the way the world was meant to be. There was an order to things, and Marta did not want to think of Pavel, so kind and upstanding, as a servant in someone else’s home. She did not want to imagine him humbled that way. If this could happen to him then nobody was safe; there was no way of protecting oneself after all. A bit of blackness began to creep into her body. It was instantly recognizable, a grey haze at the edge of her vision that made her see things as other than they were. And the weight in her chest, the sense she was drowning . . .

She tried to change the subject. “Who is this Adolf Eichmann exactly?” She’d heard someone in line at the butcher’s say that the high-ranking Nazi had arrived in Prague.

Pavel’s voice was brisk. “The SS Jewish expert. So-called.” He drained his glass in the manner of the Russians: politely, but completely. He raised his hand. “Another?”

But Marta’s drink was untouched.

“Eichmann heads the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung,” Pavel said. “The SS department in charge of robbing and expelling the Jews. They set up shop in Vienna last year.” He paused, and she knew he was thinking of his brother Misha, forced to scrub the streets and then drink his pail of dirty water. Where was he now? And his son, Tomáš, and his young wife, Lore?

Pavel tipped his head back and swallowed again: two short bobs of his Adam’s apple. The room had gone from dusky to dark. The light from the lamp barely touched it. Marta expected this would be the end of the conversation, but Pavel said, “I saw him last week. Eichmann. Passing in the street. He looked . . .” He gave a half-smile. “He looked like a dog.”

“Eichmann? You saw him?”

Pavel nodded and she tried to imagine the man: small black eyes like messengers of death. Just then the doorbell rang. Marta put down her glass and ran a hand over her curls, stood up and straightened her skirt. She went into the front hall, Pavel following, both of them expecting a boy with a telegram. But it was as if Pavel’s description had conjured Eichmann out of thin air, and there he was in front of them.

“Guten tag,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you.” His jaw was vaguely canine, it was true, but he was cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, and so polite that Marta felt the Nazi uniform must be a mistake: he must be heading out to some sort of costume party or masquerade.

Behind her she felt Pavel freeze. He was taking in the stylized swastika, the military decorations. She could tell his instinct was to turn and run, but faced with this man, this paragon of good behaviour, the gentleman in Pavel rose to the surface to meet him. “Please come in,” he said, his German perfect. One man of the world recognizing another.

The man introduced himself: “Ich bin? Werner Axmann.”

So, not Adolf Eichmann after all. But a Nazi on your doorstep could mean only one thing.

And yet, Marta thought, the man was behaving strangely. He did not seem about to drag them off and throw them in prison. He hesitated, like a shy boy summoned to the front of the classroom to give a speech. Like Pepik, she thought for a moment, but the comparison was unseemly and she pushed it quickly from her mind. In front of her the officer stood waiting for inspiration, waiting for something to materialize from within the flat to guide him. A moment of silence passed. He looked down into his folded hands as though trying to read crib notes hidden there. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Bauer,” he said again, “but is your wife at home?”

The question was met by Pavel’s blank stare. “Sicherlich,” he said, but he made no move to fetch Anneliese.

The officer’s square jaw was set. He had green eyes, Marta saw, that looked almost like chips of emerald. He cleared his throat and shifted from one foot to the other. Somebody had to do something, Marta thought. She turned to get Anneliese and saw that Mrs. Bauer had already come into the room behind them. Her red lipstick was fresh, her eyes wide with fear. Marta said, “Mrs. Bauer, there’s somebody here to—” And then she looked at Anneliese again and saw surprise of a different kind on her face. Mrs. Bauer already knew this young officer. All at once it was clear to Marta that Anneliese was not about to be hauled off to Dachau. That the German was paying her a different kind of visit.

Anneliese stared at the man. “What are you doing here?” She closed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “You promised me you wouldn’t . . .”

Marta looked over at Pavel. His cheeks were burning red. He too was starting to understand.

“I told you never to—” Anneliese said, but she couldn’t finish. Her eyes were full of tears. She looked from the young man to Pavel and back, two parts of her life colliding. The officer took a step into the hallway. His boots squeaked on the floorboards. He was younger than Pavel, bashful but emboldened. There was nothing Pavel could do to hurt him.

It was Pavel who spoke first. “If you have business to attend to with my wife,” he said stiffly, “I would ask that you attend to it elsewhere.” He did not look at Anneliese.

The younger man acquiesced, apologetic. “It will take only a moment.” He said to Anneliese, “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Bauer.” He spoke formally, Marta thought, but his expression betrayed a close familiarity. He raised his eyebrows at her: Let’s get out of here.

Anneliese had no choice. She crossed the floor and took her hat with the blue ribbon from the stand. She followed her young officer out the door.

It occurred to Marta then that life was inherently unstable. That things were always changing, and just when you thought you’d reached some sort of balance, some kind of understanding, everything would change again. That this, ultimately, was the only thing to count on. She’d thought she knew Anneliese—she did, she supposed, in many ways—but here was the wild card, the blind spot made suddenly clear. And though it was easy to judge what she now saw, she realized also that it wasn’t that simple.

The officer, for example: he must actually care deeply for Anneliese. Whatever was going on between them exactly, he was willing to risk his position—and maybe his life—to spend time in her company.

They looked good together, Marta thought. An attractive German couple.

You’d never guess. If you didn’t already know.

That evening Marta followed Pavel into the study. They stayed in there with the door closed for quite some time.

They did not speak of what had happened earlier, of the German or the various repercussions of what had been revealed. Instead they wrote Pepik, and then sat in quietness drinking their tea.

“I received an odd telegram from Ernst today,” Pavel said. “I wonder about him sometimes.”

“You wonder?”

“I just get the feeling—I can’t really believe—”

Marta stopped with her teacup halfway between the saucer and her lips. The linden-scented steam. “You can’t believe what?”

But Pavel only shook his head. He was too loyal, Marta thought. An optimist. Even with what he’d just learned about his wife, it was still in his nature to give people the benefit of the doubt. Marta admired this, as she admired so much about him.

“I met a man who was in Dachau,” Pavel said instead. “The rumours are true.”

Marta set her cup down on her saucer. The china made a small tinkling sound.

“Dachau. The camp,” Pavel said.

“There’s sugar,” Marta said, for she’d heard enough about camps in the past weeks to last her a lifetime. Nobody seemed to know exactly what went on in them, and she couldn’t help but picture the row of little fishing cabins she’d once seen in a sporting magazine. But she knew that the truth was something more ominous. She wanted to speak about something else, but Pavel wouldn’t be dissuaded. “The man I know who was in Dachau. He’s a Sudeten Jew.” He looked at her. “Like us,” he said. He paused. “Like me,” he corrected, and looked away.

“What did he say?” Marta asked. “About the camp.”

“He wouldn’t say anything. Nothing of substance.” Pavel scratched his forehead and looked up at the chandelier. “He was released under oath.”

“But they let him out?”

“Business reasons, probably. His children are still in there. They know he won’t talk. They’ve got hostages.”

“So he wouldn’t say anything?”

“Only that he’s seen the worst.”

They were quiet then. Marta wondered what exactly the worst might mean.

Pavel cracked his knuckles. “I was wrong?” he asked. “About all of this? Getting out, being Jewish? Anneliese was right and I was wrong?” He was looking at Marta, wide-eyed. “My life’s fallen apart. Should I have seen it coming?” he asked.

Something rose up then in Marta, a fierce desire to protect, not unlike what she’d felt at the train station months earlier, when the Ackerman boy had hit Pepik with the stone.

“You were brave,” she said gently. “You did what you thought was best.”

Pavel laid his hand palm down on the desk.

“I did,” he said forcefully. “I did do what I thought was best. I simply could not have imagined . . .” His words were loud, and then quiet again. “I miss my son,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

Marta looked up at Pavel. She covered his hand with her own.

A rumour was going around that Adolf Hitler was compiling a list of all the Jews. Strange as it was, the image had weight to it in Marta’s imagination: a long piece of paper stuck in an Underwood typewriter, unscrolling down the back of a card table, across a polished office floor, and out into the reaches of eternity.

Pavel in the end had registered his assets, so if such a list existed he was on it.

“But what would the Nazis do with that list?” Marta ventured.

Pavel looked up. He didn’t answer.

It was August 1939. The only thing anyone talked about was what would happen when the Germans invaded Poland. Marta remembered Anneliese’s words: Just wait a bit longer. Something will happen. But nothing did. Marta waited for Mrs. Bauer to explain, to reveal the exact way in which officer Axmann would come to the rescue. Anneliese had been promised that her officer would help. If Axmann had been sincere, though, he had obviously come up short. No visas materialized, no affidavits—her man had failed her. There was nothing Anneliese could say, so she didn’t defend herself; it was useless. Pavel would never believe her.

Marta understood that Anneliese really had been trying to save them, that a beautiful woman had very few options. She’d been trying in the best way she knew how. But still the Bauers’ empire crumbled under Marta’s eyes. There would never be peace in their time.

Pavel was cordial with his wife, as though she were a houseguest. In another era, Marta thought, they might have kept up more of a pretense, fooling those around them into thinking that their marriage was still solid. But now, with the country falling to pieces and their only son lost to them, there was no point. The stakes of their life together had been torn up. Anneliese stayed in the bedroom smoking cigarettes and painting her face. Pavel moved his things into the guest room: his cotton nightshirts, his robe. His shirts loose and empty on their hangers like the shirts of men gone to their execution.

One evening he took Marta for a stroll.

“What about the curfew?”

“What about it?” Pavel said.

They avoided Vinohradská Square, sticking to the side streets, the leafy avenues and parks. Marta saw that Pavel had been holding back for the sake of appearances. But now that he knew his wife had strayed, he would permit himself the same.

“It’s not as though I’ve behaved perfectly,” Marta said. But Pavel only laughed. “You couldn’t be more perfect if you tried.”

Pavel still didn’t know about the grave mistakes she’d made with Ernst, and Marta pretended that his love equalled forgiveness. She pushed back her unease about Anneliese at home alone, with nobody. Here, finally, was the acceptance Marta had longed for all her life. The love she’d so craved. She let Pavel guide her through the breezy evening under the full moon and told herself she had no choice, told herself she wasn’t responsible for whatever had gone on between the Bauers. She knew this wasn’t entirely right, but the truth was that something had been torn open inside her and something even more powerful released. Something swift and warm between herself and Pavel that she was helpless to resist.

Marta wanted to lay herself down in it. She had a very strong urge to submerge, to submit. Were there words for this feeling?

“I’m happy,” she said.

It seemed improbable in the face of her guilt, in the face of what was happening all around them, but Pavel just squeezed her arm. “I’m glad.”

He leaned over and touched her dimple with his nose.

“I’m ready,” she said.

He eyed her.

“I’m sure.”

He said, “Follow me.”

Max and Alžběta’s flat was on the top floor of the building. Pavel led Marta up the staircase to the roof. She stepped on the heel of his shoe and he winced but didn’t let go of her hand. When they got to the top there was a little door, like in a fairy tale: you could squeeze through it and come out in another world entirely.

They stood up on the top of the building; the air smelled like rubber, or asphalt, and the perfume from the magnolia blossoms was almost oppressive. Darkness had fallen; the flowers were huge and pink, like planets orbiting the blackness. From far away came the sound of a siren. The lights of Prague were spread out beneath them, and above them, the sky’s fireflies. This was what they had been waiting for, this particular night, this place. Pavel took off his coat and Marta lay down on it without speaking.

There was no talk, no foreplay, and yet he was so gentle. He kneeled down and pulled up her dress; he pulled her stockings down as if he was unwrapping a most precious package. He looked at her lying there, exposed, with a kind of longing on his face that scared her. Then he undid his fly. She saw him for the first time, fully erect, above her. He knelt down with his pants still on and spread her legs and entered her.

It didn’t hurt—not like it had with other men—or rather, the brief pain was more like unbearable pleasure. He covered her face in kisses. There had been so much waiting, so much building; he could not move swiftly enough now. He thrust into her again and again, as though he too was trying to absolve himself of something, or push himself into a future he couldn’t imagine.

It was as if he’d opened up a part of her she hadn’t known existed. Marta heard a low moan and realized the sound had come from her own mouth. Pavel was gathering her in, all the lost pieces, drawing them up to the surface of her skin. Every bit of her tingled; when she opened her eyes, it was as if she were flying through a field full of shimmering stars. They were whizzing past her in all directions, little explosions of colour and light, filling her eyes and her face and her mouth until she was full everywhere, until every part of her was glimmer and heat.

Marta herself was the star that Pavel wished on.

And me? I was the answer to their wish.





MY NAME, AS I’VE TOLD YOU, IS ANNELIESE.

I didn’t tell you?

Just Lisa, for short.

I don’t know why my mother, Marta, chose to name me after Anneliese Bauer. After the woman who must have been, in some ways at least, her competition. Perhaps she felt guilty for the sins she’d committed against her. Or perhaps it was a gesture of love and respect towards someone who had just been deported to the east.

I have no reason to think that my mother was a betrayer, except for a slight tendency in that direction I have noted in myself.

I’ve taken some leaps in writing this tale. I’ve been fanciful, sure, as a writer is allowed to be. As she must be. And Pepik was a very generous collaborator. It was his idea for me to tell the story from Marta’s perspective. To have Pavel choose Marta over Anneliese, letting our father’s final love be for my mother, not his own. We were both aware that the opposite could have been true: that Pavel’s affair with Marta might have been a one-time, meaningless tryst, a mere distraction in the midst of encroaching desperation.

After all, the Bauers had had two children together. The infant from the photo, whom Pepik didn’t remember, went to the gas chambers too. There must not have been room left for her on the children’s transports, or else her parents did not want to send such a young baby. I gave her a different death. It was just wishful thinking.

Pepik’s cousin Tomáš got out from Vienna but died in the bombings in London.

Here are the few other things I do know for certain:

Pavel and Anneliese Bauer lived in a small town in Bohemia. Just after the Münich Agreement they relocated to Prague. There was a cook in their employ whom they left behind. They chose for some reason to bring the governess—my mother—along with them.

There are documents showing that the Bauer family tried to leave the country prior to the Ides of March, just before the Nazis entered Prague. I don’t know what exactly happened that day, only that they did not make it out.

Pavel and Marta had sex at least once. The proof—what is it they say?—is in the pudding.

The next, and final, trace of my father Pavel’s existence is the date he was deported to Auschwitz.

Ernst Anselm was a real man about whom a biography has been written. He lived in Moravia and had a wife and two teenaged daughters. A gentle man known especially for his love of animals, he was personally responsible for the betrayal of more than forty Jewish families. He seems to have made a sport of it: befriending them, engendering trust, and then, at the eleventh hour, turning them in. It’s a wonderful book, a perceptive study of the darker side of human nature—with which, in what are supposed to be my “golden years,” I am admittedly somewhat preoccupied. Ernst Anselm lived hours away from the Bauers, so it is unlikely that he knew them personally. He’s included here only to further expose him. It’s my own small way of holding him accountable.

As for me, I’ve told you what I set out to tell you. My mother, Marta, died when I was very young, and the intervening time, between that terrible event and my arrival as a young adult in Canada, is nobody else’s business. You might think it strange, given that I’ve spent my entire professional life hearing and recording other people’s stories, that I have chosen to withhold the bulk of my own. Well, I’ve observed that there is healing in the telling, but there is also something that gets lost. The past is gone, and we cannot get it back. In setting it down in one particular way, the other versions slip through the cracks. All the possibilities lost to the sands of time.

One thing I remember vividly: when I gave Pepik his mother’s diamond watch, he got a particular look in his eye. It was as though time had begun again, as though for him it was not too late.

I don’t know much about Pepik’s childhood. He himself remembered very little about his life in Prague or about the journey that brought him from Scotland to here. By the time I found the letters in the archive in Glasgow, both of the Millings were dead. There is no official record of their ever having a son of their own; it was common enough for a childless couple to sign up to be foster parents. But there is still the question of the letter from Pavel, of the Arthur referred to within.

Another thing we never figured out is why Pepik was moved to the orphanage. This again, unfortunately, was far from uncommon. It was wartime, money was scarce, people were displaced for all sorts of reasons. The memories Pepik had of the orphanage were few and far between, but they were clear, he said, even vivid. It is to protect his privacy that I have not included them here.

What I’m telling you—haltingly, I realize—is that this is just one way it might have happened. Nothing is certain, save what meets us at the end. After Pepik died I learned the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It doesn’t mention death but praises God and gives thanks. I marvel at this, at the faith woven into its words. I’m an old woman now and I can’t help but wonder. Who will pray for me when I’m gone?

I have tried, all these years, to see their faces. Not the images frozen in photos but their faces, their gestures, who they were. I would give almost anything—I would give anything—for a single memory of my father. The way he held a pen, the backs of his hands. To summon the sound of his voice. And my mother—the smell of her hair, damp after her bath; the weight of her arms pulling me in. In the end, though, all I have is a list of names and dates. And so I inscribe them here, the family I never knew. It might seem morose to end with the dead, but I am thinking of posterity. I don’t have to tell you the reason for this. Soon there’ll be nobody left to remember.





Rosa (Berman) Bauer 1885 – 1943

Pavel Bauer 1907 – 1943

Marta Meuller 1915 – 1946

Anneliese (Bondy) Bauer 1912 – 1943

Eliza Bauer 1939 – 1942

Alžběta (Bondy) Stein 1914 – 1943

Max Stein 1890 – 1943

Eva Stein 1937 – 1943

Vera Stein 1934 – 1943

Misha Bauer 1905 – 1943

Lore (Leverton) Bauer 1910 – 1943

Tomáš Bauer 1935 – 1941

Joseph (Pepik) Bauer 1933 – 2008

Anneliese (Meuller) Bauer 1940 –





THE TRAIN OF MEMORY SLEEPS ON ITS TRACKS. At night, in the station, the shadows gather around it, reaching out to touch its cool black sides. The train stretches back, far out of eyesight. Where it comes from is anyone’s guess.

At dawn the ghosts retreat, take their place as shadows in the corners of the lofty-domed station. The train sighs on its tracks, a traveller hoisting very heavy bags. We roll over in our beds; we cough, stretch a little; the train of memory starts to move forward. Slowly at first, but gathering speed. The landscape drifts by like the last wisps of a dream. In the early morning hours the train begins to move into the opposite of memory. Into a future time when someone will look back at us now, wondering what our days were like and why we did the things we did. Or why we did not act, as the case might equally be.

Someone will be unable to make our lives make sense.

The train has no answers, only forward momentum. We open our eyes; it is moving very quickly now. Moving always ahead. It never arrives.