Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport Page #8

as I say, what most of us don't do...

...which is to burden the household...

...the kitchens, the bedroom

and the living room with this foreigner.

Mariam was somewhat aloof.

It was her manner. She was loving, but...

... she didn't hug and kiss me.

My mother was the exact opposite.

She used to not just kiss me once...

...she sort of kissed me like "rat-tat-tat,"

like a machine gun.

But Mariam was distant and nice...

...and I think that's what I needed...

...because I had trouble...

...really...

...feeling that I belonged there.

To have sort of pushed me into it

would have been difficult.

He didn't cry, not at all.

I couldn't understand it.

This is London calling.

Just once...

... they used to like to listen

to some programs on the wireless.

He used to come sit on my knee.

And there was something in the news...

...I just heard him once go...

A little sob and that was all.

I tried really to please the Cohens

because I loved them...

... and I felt very dependent.

One of my main worries was

that I would be sent away.

I know this happened to

another boy, somewhat older...

...who was taken in by

some friends of the Cohens.

He was arrogant and impossible...

...and eventually they simply had

to send him to some other home.

I'd heard of other places

where this had happened.

So I felt very much...

...on edge.

Word came that my mother

was no longer in London.

She went back to Vienna...

... to get my father to move,

who was impassive.

So I really did make up my mind

that I would be as tough as nails.

Nothing would hurt me.

I would have no emotions.

And it carried me through

for about six or seven years.

I got a scholarship to a grammar school.

People were saying to me,

partly in jealousy:

"You know, they are snobs in these

schools and they're anti-Semites.

"You gotta watch yourself.

They're gonna take it out on you. "

And I went to school.

I had a school tie, I guess...

...or a blazer.

I was just entering a new world.

The sun was shining.

I went to school, and a fellow came

up to me and said, "Who are you?"

And I just knocked him down.

There was no doubt a cost...

...trying to be good all the

time and keeping my anger in.

Only once did it slip.

One day John and I

were having breakfast...

... and there was some silly argument

over who got the marmalade first.

And Kurt threw a knife. That

was the only time he was naughty.

John had a little wound here, which

was near his eye. It wasn't nice.

Dr. Rose, who was our friend,

and lived a few doors down...

...he came in and he was furious.

"You shouldn't have

taken this child in."

It terrified the entire family and me, too.

Since then I've been somewhat afraid

of my possibility of letting go to anger.

The other signs that I had

a lot inside me was that...

... I always had some

intestinal problems...

...until I went into the army, and then

I had the most terrible food and felt fine.

I have an analogy for this:

When all of us have had

the experience of finding...

...a bird with a broken wing...

...and you pick up this bird

and you hold it in your hand...

...and you think it's going to sit there,

quietly, sweetly...

...with its warm feathers, and be darling.

It's not. It immediately tries...

...to use its muscles and it's a very

uncomfortable thing to hold in your hand...

...because there's this fluttering.

What he wants is to get away.

It may need you to

hold it and nurse it...

...but what he wants is to

get the heck out of there.

I think that's what we were like.

Certainly, that's what I was like.

I was not nice to have around.

I got a new job in London...

... and I was working there

until June 28, 1940.

It was lunchtime and I

was having a sandwich...

...when suddenly two

guys appeared. Two men.

"CID."

"What have I done?" "Nothing."

"You are Abrascha Gorbulski?

"You are now under arrest."

"Under arrest? For what?"

"You are an enemy alien,

please come with us."

After Germany invaded Western Europe...

... the British began rounding up

all refugees from Germany and Austria...

... who were over the age of 16.

Although the vast majority were

refugees from Nazi persecution...

... anyone with a foreign accent

was viewed as a potential saboteur.

Within a few months...

... the government interned

approximately 30,000 men and women.

Plans were made to deport

as many as possible.

The good thing about life is you

remember all the good things...

...that happened to you.

Bad things, you forget about them.

In fact, you have to make an

effort to really remember them.

They came and we had to go to a ship.

Soldiers were standing

there with bayonets...

... mounted on their rifles.

And they pushed us along and said:

"Leave your luggage, you'll get it

later on." They pushed us along the deck.

Before long, we went down stairs,

then more stairs. I was on the third deck.

Over 2,500 prisoners...

... twice the capacity of the ship...

... were crammed onto the HMT Dunera...

... supposedly bound for Canada.

Two days out of Liverpool...

... the Dunera was spotted

by a German U-boat.

Suddenly, something hits the ship.

The lights went out.

This is the end of it.

Everybody gravitated

towards the stairway...

...which led to the deck above.

After about two minutes

you couldn't get up there...

...because there were many people

going up the stairs...

...we were just choking.

Suddenly, the lights went on again.

Everybody stopped in their...

...steps and went back down.

The torpedo didn't explode...

... but I was under the impression

that the torpedo hit us sideways.

It just bounced off.

Our luck, because if it had hit us...

... all of us would have been finished.

We were traveling, going

west for several days...

...but suddenly our outlook said:

"Something's happening and we are

not going west. We're going south."

We had no idea where we were going,

except it must have been Australia.

We were starving daily.

They were treating us like pigs.

Being hungry every day,

people were lining up in the kitchen...

...to get an empty pot where the

jam was, just to scrape it out.

And having one slice of bread.

The existence from one day to

another was worse than the day before.

And we were on the ship

for almost completely two months!

What happened on the Dunera?

Years later, I'm thinking:

"This didn't happen to me.

It must have been somebody else...

"...because it was too

horrible to describe."

From an overseas liner in Sydney harbor...

... a strange contingent of new arrivals

is transshipped aboard a ferry.

Enemy aliens who are being interned

in Australia for the duration of the war.

Before we knew it, we were off the ship.

The first thing I remember

is that each one of us...

...got a box...

...of food. That was the best meal

I ever had in my life.

After starving for two months...

...I opened up the box.

There were two cheese sandwiches...

...thick like this, and a banana...

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