Out of the Hitler Time trilogy: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Bombs on Aunt Dainty, A Small Person Far Away

“Not only because we’re Jews. Papa thinks no one would be allowed to say what they thought any more, and he wouldn’t be able to write. The Nazis don’t like people to disagree with them.” Mama drank some of her coffee and looked more cheerful. “Of course it may never happen and if it did it probably wouldn’t last for long – maybe six months or so. But at the moment we just don’t know.”

“But why did Papa leave so suddenly?” asked Max.

“Because yesterday someone rang him up and warned him that they might be going to take away his passport. So I packed him a small suitcase and he caught the night train to Prague – that’s the quickest way out of Germany.”

“Who could take away his passport?”

“The police. There are quite a few Nazis in the police.”

“And who rang him up to warn him?”

Mama smiled for the first time.

“Another policeman. One Papa had never met – but who had read his books and liked them.”

It took Anna and Max some time to digest all this.

Then Max asked, “But what’s going to happen now?”

“Well,” said Mama, “it’s only about ten days until the elections. Either the Nazis lose, in which case Papa comes back – or they win, in which case we join him.”

“In Prague?” asked Max.

“No, probably in Switzerland. They speak German there – Papa would be able to write. We’d probably rent a little house and stay there until all this has blown over.”

“Heimpi too?” asked Anna.

“Heimpi too.”

It sounded quite exciting. Anna was beginning to imagine it – a house in the mountains …goats …or was it cows? …when Mama said, “There is one thing more.” Her voice was very serious.

“This is the most important thing of all,” said Mama, “and we need you to help us with it. Papa does not want anyone to know that he has left Germany. So you must not tell anyone. If anyone asks you about him you must say that he’s still in bed with ‘flu.”

“Can’t I even tell Gunther?” asked Max.

“No. Not Gunther, nor Elsbeth, not anyone.”

“All right,” said Max. “But it won’t be easy. People are always asking after him.”

“Why can’t we tell anyone?” asked Anna. “Why doesn’t Papa want anyone to know?”

“Look,” said Mama. “I’ve explained it all to you as well as I can. But you’re both still children – you can’t understand everything. Papa thinks the Nazis might …cause us some bother if they knew that he’d gone. So he does not want you to talk about it. Now are you going to do what he asks or not?”

Anna said, yes, of course she would.

Then Heimpi bundled them both off to school. Anna was worried about what to say if anyone asked her why she was late, but Max said, “Just tell them Mama overslept – she did, anyway!”

In fact, no one was very interested. They did high-jump in Gym and Anna jumped higher than anyone else in her class. She was so pleased about this that for the rest of the morning she almost forgot about Papa being in Prague.

When it was time to go home it all came back to her and she hoped Elsbeth would not ask her any awkward questions – but Elsbeth’s mind was on more important matters. Her aunt was coming to take her out that afternoon to buy her a yo-yo. What kind did Anna think she should choose? And what colour? The wooden ones worked best on the whole, but Elsbeth had seen a bright orange one which, though made of tin, had so impressed her with its beauty that she was tempted. Anna only had to say Yes and No, and by the time she got home for lunch the day felt more ordinary than she would ever have thought possible that morning.

Neither Anna nor Max had any homework and it was too cold to go out, so in the afternoon they sat on the radiator in the nursery and looked out of the window. The wind was rattling the shutters and blowing great lumps of cloud across the sky.

“We might get more snow,” said Max.

“Max,” said Anna, “do you hope that we will go to Switzerland?”

“I don’t know,” said Max. There were so many things he would miss. Gunther …his gang with whom he played football …school …He said, “I suppose we’d go to a school in Switzerland.”

“Oh yes,” said Anna. “I think it would be quite fun.” She was almost ashamed to admit it, but the more she thought about it the more she wanted to go. To be in a strange country where everything would be different – to live in a different house, go to a different school with different children – a huge urge to experience it all overcame her and though she knew it was heartless, a smile appeared on her face.

“It would only be for six months,” she said apologetically, “and we’d all be together.”

The next few days passed fairly normally. Mama got a letter from Papa. He was comfortably installed in a hotel in Prague and was feeling much better. This cheered everyone up.

A few people inquired after him but were quite satisfied when the children said he had ‘flu. There was so much of it about that it was not surprising. The weather continued very cold and the puddles caused by the thaw all froze hard again – but still there was no snow.

At last on the afternoon of the Sunday before the elections the sky turned very dark and then suddenly opened up to release a mass of floating, drifting, whirling white. Anna and Max were playing with the Kentner children who lived across the road. They stopped to watch the snow come down.

“If only it had started a bit earlier,” said Max. “By the time it’s thick enough for tobogganing, it will be too dark.”

At five o’clock when Anna and Max were going home it had only just stopped. Peter and Marianne Kentner saw them to the door. The snow lay thick and dry and crunchy all over the road and the moon was shining down on it.

“Why don’t we go tobogganing in the moonlight?” said Peter.

“Do you think they’d let us?”

“We’ve done it before,” said Peter, who was fourteen. “Go and ask your mother.”

Mama said they could go provided they all stayed together and got home by seven. They put on their warmest clothes and set off.

It was only a quarter of an hour’s walk to the Grunewald, where a wooden slope made an ideal run down to a frozen lake. They had tobogganed there many times before, but it had always been daylight and the air had been loud with the shouts of other children. Now all they could hear was the soughing of the wind in the trees, the crunching of the new snow under their feet, and the gentle whir of the sledges as they slid along behind them. Above their heads the sky was dark but the ground shone blue in the moonlight and the shadows of the trees broke like black bands across it.

At the top of the slope they stopped and looked down. Nobody had been on it before them. The shimmering path of snow stretched ahead, perfect and unmarked, right down to the edge of the lake.

“Who’s going down first?” asked Max.

Anna did not mean to, but she found herself hopping up and down and saying. “Oh please – please …!”

Peter said, “All right – youngest first.”

That meant her because Marianne was ten.

She sat on her sledge, held on to the steering rope, took a deep breath and pushed off. The sledge began to move, rather gently, down the hill.

“Go on!” shouted the boys behind her. “Give it another push!”

But she didn’t. She kept her feet on the runners and let the sledge gather speed slowly. The powdery snow sprayed up all round her as the sledge struck it. The trees moved past, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The moonlight leapt all round her. At last she seemed to be flying through a mass of silver. Then the sledge hit the hump at the bottom of the slope, shot across it, and landed in a dapple of moonlight on the frozen lake. It was beautiful.