Kindergarten by Peter Rushforth

school but as he approached the final file of late 1939, he had got to know some of the families well. Intent, absorbed, he read on, unable to draw himself away, as the letters and postcards poured in from Berlin, month after month, sometimes couched in the awkward English of commercial communications, asking if there was any possibility of a vacancy at the school: ordinary men and women, mothers and fathers, decent people, trying to learn how to plead, for themselves, and for their children.
    H E PLACED the two postcards on the window-seat in front of him, side by side.
    Berlin- Charlottenburg 4

15th May 1934
    Dear Sir,
    I would be happy if you could please be so kind to send me a prospectus of your school. I was given your address by Miss Leonie Matthias, “Elternhilf a fur die judische jugend.” My boys whom I want to send to England are 10 years old and 13 years old. They have some knowledge of English, and can understand when people speak English to them, but they cannot really speak. More than 6oL each for a year I cannot devote to my boys’ education. I know it is a small sum. We are Jews. Will this mean difficulties in the school with their comrades? We are not political, and do not belong to any organisation. We have a great desire to give our sons under your care.
    Yours faithfully,
Frau Katherina Viehmann
    Berlin-Charlottenburg 2
18th January 1938
    Dear Mr. High,
    I need an attestation for the german authorities that my daughter Charlotte Goetzel is going to Southwold School. Please send me this paper in the next days.
    Lotte cannot speak English and it is the first time that she is separated from her home and from her parents. She is our only child. Please treat her with great love and solicitude. Please, if you have a little time, let us know whether you are content with her.
    Thank you for your kind help in our bad circumstances.
    With sincere good wishes,
Peter and Aline Goetzel
    He turned the two postcards over, and again studied the sepia photographs carefully.
    Blick vom Hotel Adlon auf den Pariser Platz; im Hintergrund Tiergarten, Siegessäule, Reichstag, Berlin. (Sight from the Hotel Adlon on the Parisian Place; in the background the Tiergarten, column of victory, parliament-building, Berlin.)
    The Brandenburg Gate, with its six banks of neo-classical columns, the triumphal arch at the start of Berlin’s major central thoroughfare, seemed like a gate in Roman times, a clear boundary between the city and the countryside. In front of the Gate, the wide empty expanse of the start of Unter den Linden stretched away. On the right, buildings were crammed together, as though crowded within the walls of an over-populated and rapidly growing city, the square towers and shallow central dome of the Reichstag rising above everything else. Behind the Gate, as though it were wild and open countryside, were the trees of the Tiergarten. Beyond these was Charlottenburg, and the other fashionable western suburbs, safe, middle-class, comfortable. From amongst the trees of the Tiergarten, Victory rose up on her column, and above the Gate another figure of Victory, in a chariot pulled by four horses, faced down Unter den Linden.
    The photograph on the second postcard—
Reich stagsgebäude und Brandenburger Tor, Berlin. (Parliament-building and Brandenburger Gate, Berlin)
—showed a wide empty avenue, leafless trees, and, opposite the massive frontage of the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, its columned frontage facing the entrance to a bridge. The Gate appeared to be a solid structure with no way through.
    The same buildings appeared over and over again in all the postcards: shifting angles, changing viewpoints, the same immense structures blocking the sky.
    O N C HRISTMAS D AY , in one of the surviving files for 1933, he found the first letter from Rachel House, and then, soon afterwards, all the others.
    EMERGENCY COMMITTEE FOR THE
CARE OF GERMAN JEWISH CHILDREN
Rachel House, London W. 1
    19th July 1933
    Dear Mr.