and supported Hitler and for those who were simply victims of the times. Tini described a day when she had been scheduled to take the train on an urgent errand. Some inexplicable premonition had kept her from doing so. At the very moment she would have been there, the railway station had received a direct hit from a bomb and many people had been killed or wounded.
Repeatedly, we returned to the subject of the war, each time from a different angle. There was much that Tini had not told her own children, preferring to put the war years behind her. Tini’s daughter Erni had come to meet me the first evening of my arrival. We bonded immediately.
“I had to come,”
Erni said.
“I have heard about you ever since I was born. My mother has never stopped talking about you, and about the terrible loss that seemed to leave a hole in her heart.”
Erni and I found that we had much in common, including a reluctance to upset our mothers by asking questions about the past. Erni and her husband Rudi took time off from work to show me Germany. I learned to drink
Hefeweizen
from tall glasses, and to order German dishes that featured more meat than I would normally eat in a month. Arm in arm, Tini and I walked through picturesque towns where geraniums cascaded from every window, where cobbled streets led to historic houses where my favourite poets had once dwelt, where coffee houses and the aroma of freshly baked pastries invited us to linger. To linger and to talk.
It was with real reluctance that I left Tini and her family. She had mothered me in ways that I had missed. For many years, I had experienced myself as parent to my mother, and the recent period of care giving had strengthened that feeling. Tini was able to provide a different kind of love, an unconditional love that I ate up as eagerly as her freshly baked
Vanil-lakipferln.
————
My family expands to include Tini, Erni and Rudi
From left to right: Erni, Rudi, Helen, Tini
TINI CONFIRMED WHAT I HAD learned in Linz about the Fränkels.
“They often visited
,” she told me.
“There would be great excitement as we got the house ready. ‘The Linzers are coming,’ your grandmother would say. They usually stayed overnight, so I would air all the sheets and bedding and iron the good tablecloths as well as doing some extra cooking and baking. Your grandmother always pitched in, so I never minded the work.”
She knew no details about the later years, only that she’d heard Frau Martha was expecting a baby. After my family fled, Tini had gone to live nearby with her own parents. She knew nothing further.
Tini did know something about my father’s sister Else and her husband. He bore the same name as his brother-in-law Emil, but Else’s husband was a doctor.
Herr Doktor Emil Urbach.
He was a renowned specialist and people travelled great distances to consult him. The Urbachs lived in Krumlau, a medieval town popular with visitors from abroad. Tini had been quite in awe of him.
Frau Else had been more approachable, and she often came into the kitchen. Despite being a very elegant lady, always carefully coiffed and attired, she never put on airs. Tini said that on the contrary, Else was very easy to talk to, even if their conversation was rather limited. Still, Tini liked the polite way in which Frau Else always couched her requests:
“Only if you have time, dear Tini. I know how busy you are. Tini, my mother always says that neither she nor my sister-in-law Gretl could manage without you.”
On the last evening of my visit, Tini again fetched the postcard my mother had sent to her from Prague. This time, she pressed it into my hands and told me it was mine.
The card is addressed to Fraulein Christine Trinko, Erdweis bei Gmünd, Sudetenland. The postal stamp is smudged, but the words remain clear.
Prague, November 18, 1938.
Dear Tini
I have written to you several times in Strobnitz, but have received no reply. Now I shall write to your homeland. Perhaps my
Repeatedly, we returned to the subject of the war, each time from a different angle. There was much that Tini had not told her own children, preferring to put the war years behind her. Tini’s daughter Erni had come to meet me the first evening of my arrival. We bonded immediately.
“I had to come,”
Erni said.
“I have heard about you ever since I was born. My mother has never stopped talking about you, and about the terrible loss that seemed to leave a hole in her heart.”
Erni and I found that we had much in common, including a reluctance to upset our mothers by asking questions about the past. Erni and her husband Rudi took time off from work to show me Germany. I learned to drink
Hefeweizen
from tall glasses, and to order German dishes that featured more meat than I would normally eat in a month. Arm in arm, Tini and I walked through picturesque towns where geraniums cascaded from every window, where cobbled streets led to historic houses where my favourite poets had once dwelt, where coffee houses and the aroma of freshly baked pastries invited us to linger. To linger and to talk.
It was with real reluctance that I left Tini and her family. She had mothered me in ways that I had missed. For many years, I had experienced myself as parent to my mother, and the recent period of care giving had strengthened that feeling. Tini was able to provide a different kind of love, an unconditional love that I ate up as eagerly as her freshly baked
Vanil-lakipferln.
————
My family expands to include Tini, Erni and Rudi
From left to right: Erni, Rudi, Helen, Tini
TINI CONFIRMED WHAT I HAD learned in Linz about the Fränkels.
“They often visited
,” she told me.
“There would be great excitement as we got the house ready. ‘The Linzers are coming,’ your grandmother would say. They usually stayed overnight, so I would air all the sheets and bedding and iron the good tablecloths as well as doing some extra cooking and baking. Your grandmother always pitched in, so I never minded the work.”
She knew no details about the later years, only that she’d heard Frau Martha was expecting a baby. After my family fled, Tini had gone to live nearby with her own parents. She knew nothing further.
Tini did know something about my father’s sister Else and her husband. He bore the same name as his brother-in-law Emil, but Else’s husband was a doctor.
Herr Doktor Emil Urbach.
He was a renowned specialist and people travelled great distances to consult him. The Urbachs lived in Krumlau, a medieval town popular with visitors from abroad. Tini had been quite in awe of him.
Frau Else had been more approachable, and she often came into the kitchen. Despite being a very elegant lady, always carefully coiffed and attired, she never put on airs. Tini said that on the contrary, Else was very easy to talk to, even if their conversation was rather limited. Still, Tini liked the polite way in which Frau Else always couched her requests:
“Only if you have time, dear Tini. I know how busy you are. Tini, my mother always says that neither she nor my sister-in-law Gretl could manage without you.”
On the last evening of my visit, Tini again fetched the postcard my mother had sent to her from Prague. This time, she pressed it into my hands and told me it was mine.
The card is addressed to Fraulein Christine Trinko, Erdweis bei Gmünd, Sudetenland. The postal stamp is smudged, but the words remain clear.
Prague, November 18, 1938.
Dear Tini
I have written to you several times in Strobnitz, but have received no reply. Now I shall write to your homeland. Perhaps my
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