Open Writing

Until the end of 1946 the pattern of my life in Paris changed little. I managed to incorporate the English classes into my working week, leaving evenings and weekends for social life. Dates with Kali grew increasingly awkward and sometimes even explosive. Clearly, we could not recapture the blissful abandon sparked off by the holiday atmosphere of Champagny-le-Bas. In spite of his protestations, in reality, we were slowly drifting apart.

To add to my woes, the far-off prospect of leaving France raised again its ugly head. Shortly before Christmas 1946 I received advice that my ship was likely to sail for Australia sometime in the New Year. Apparently a couple of passenger liners were to be released by the army. At the beginning of hostilities they were requisitioned to transport the French reserves to Indochina.

At the Polish Centre many students, similarly deprived of their university stipends, engaged in plotting some hair-raising schemes. By fair means or foul they were determined to stay afloat. One particularly brazen fellow, in response to a French businessman's advertisement seeking a Swedish teacher, volunteered for the position and then, unknown to the victim, taught him Polish instead.

Others tried their hand at dealing in false papers. No sooner did the news of my Australian connection surface at the Centre, than a smart alec urged me to buy an 'authentic' signed degree certificate from some regional French university in the discipline of my choice. Empowered by such a document, he claimed, I could easily foster a worthwhile career at the antipodes. I was baffled!

I declined the offer instantly. There was absolutely no point in explaining to him that I planned to start this new phase in my life with a clean slate.

Just a week before Christmas, very reluctantly, I broke the news of my impending departure to my C.G.T. employers. On my last working day, the 24th December, I received my final salary and a reference. My surrender was now complete.

On that Christmas Eve, which the French traditionally celebrate with the Midnight Mass, Mutti chose to throw a dinner party in my honour. All my friends were there to cheer me on and to say their farewells. Given the circumstances, their task was not an easy one. Neither was mine! Beneath a buoyant facade I was battling a sense of total wretchedness that overwhelmed me. I abhorred the notion of being driven, for the second time in my life, to abandon my closest friends. The likelihood of not seeing their familiar faces again haunted me throughout the night. I have kept a good wishes card Mutti gave me that evening. To parody the occasion, it begins with: 'Elle est nee, l'enfant divine..'

As the month of January 1947 rolled on, the shipping company notified me that S/S Bir Hakeim would not be available for the time being. They counselled me to wait and see. I was flabbergasted by the news. What was I supposed to do, left without a job or income, and nowhere to go?

The extreme winter conditions precluded any suggestion of outdoor activities. In the busy Hepner household hardly anyone stayed home during the day. The same applied to my other friends. To keep my sanity it was crucial that I find something to do for the time being.

After many deliberations, I came upon the idea of studying art at the Louvre, a field which I had never before had the occasion to explore in depth. What an opportune time to expand my knowledge of the Great Masters, while I was waiting for my ship to sail! Moreover, the Louvre had one major factor in its favour in the midst of the bleak Parisian winter - it was centrally heated.

Throughout January, February, and into March 1947, armed with a catalogue and reference books I whiled away several hours every day in one of the world's most famous art galleries. I contemplated, researched and took notes.

Wholly engrossed in these exquisite masterpieces around me, I followed methodically the development of painting from the pagan times through to the Medieval era, the Renaissance, and the amazing variety of schools and styles from then on until the outbreak of war in 1939. Many of the famous works were missing from the collections at that time, probably still in storage; overall though my perseverance paid off. Thanks to the enforced period of study I gained an invaluable insight into the subject of art.

Subsequently, in later years, it was with the eyes of a 'connoisseur' that I was able to consider art styles and movements as I explored the world's famous collections: the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Prado, and Uffizi, to mention but a few.

At the end of February I received news that the Bir Hakeim was still unavailable but that my passage to Australia had been booked on S/S Johann de Witt, a Dutch troopship carrier. It was scheduled to sail from Marseilles in early March. After such an inconceivable delay I felt not only reconciled to the idea of leaving but almost relieved.

In the last few days, I packed said my tearful goodbyes to Mrs Taub and exchanged the last letters with Jasia and Stasio. Saying goodbye to Kali was the moment I dreaded most. Even though he knew all along that my departure from France was only a question of time, he consistently kept avoiding the subject. His misery, coupled with my own pangs of conscience, made our last encounter particularly distressing.

Kali has remained in Paris ever since. He never married. For some years we kept in touch, and we met a couple of times during my visits to France.

My train was leaving for Marseilles from the Gare de Lyon. On the fateful day Mutti came to see me off. The moment we had both dreaded finally arrived!

As we both stood on the platform, we could barely look at each other. We must have appeared somewhat droll - two friends talking to each other, and each looking in a different direction. Finally our eyes met. She reached for my hand. Our conversation must have been the shortest on record.

'Et bien,'...She started.

'Alors,'....I said.

We could say no more. Although we both smiled, tears welled up in our eyes. Mutti put her arms around me and I put my head on her shoulder.

Then we both sobbed.

'Here,' she muttered through tears.' And she pressed some American dollar bills into my hand. They were to tide me over during my long journey.

'Adieu, Mutti, ma cherie.'

'If you don't like Australia, you know that you are always welcome to come back.'

'I know. Thank you.'

'Au revoir, Christine.' And she was gone. And so was I.

As the train got under way, forlorn, I watched Paris recede from sight. Had I known then that I would return in two years time, the experience would have been less distressing.

Because of its bulk Johann de Witt, docked at the Port of Marseilles, caught immediately my attention. It soared over the crowds of the anxious passengers assembled by the gangplank. The queues were just beginning to form prior to embarkation.

The vessel's maximum capacity was 750 people. This time, instead of carrying soldiers, it was rapidly filling up with Jewish refugees of the Holocaust. Young and old alike, they all spoke German; they did Hitler proud.

There was great commotion. Multitudes of individuals clutching their possessions pushed and shoved along the decks and narrow gangways, each one in search of the designated dormitory . How reminiscent was the scene of my evacuation from K.D.F. Stadt.

I was allotted a bunk in a very large female dormitory. A slight vibration in the floorboards, combined with the oppressive heat rising from underneath, left no doubt that we were perched practically on top of the engine room. The place was fitted out with rows upon rows of bunks in clusters of three, and the air, stifling. In the absence of proper cupboards in which to store their belongings, the passengers were obliged to fit them on top or around the bunks.

On my right a very distressed lady was preparing to settle in the middle bunk. She stood by her trunk. As I looked at her, I could see that her mind was attempting to deal with the change that confronted her. Like most of us, she had looked forward to this moment, but now that it was there she did not know quite what to do.

Her blank face and hollow eyes told her story. It seemed that she must be working hard to dismantle the past, but, without a tangible view of the future, she was finding the transition all too hard to make. I knew the feeling well; when I left the Ghetto, I wondered where in the world fate would lead me. And over the months and years it seemed that, for me at least, it was getting a little easier to adjust each time I faced another change.

But at this moment this gentle lady seemed almost unable to move. She held in her hand a bunch of long Hungarian salamis. She looked at the floor and then looked at the salamis and then looked at her bunk. She appeared quite unsure of how to dispose of them. They were obviously one of those little security treasures that one grabs to take into the future as one leaves the past behind.

Except that it was such a passionate scene, it was almost comical. Then I realized that she was crying. I approached her slowly, reached out my hand and took the salamis from her. After all, I remembered, a salami always hung in some inconspicuous corner of our flat in Lodz.

She looked up at me, and her eyes seemed to say that she had just watched me solve some deeply mysterious puzzle.

'Thank you so much', she said. She spoke to me in German.

'It is all right,' I replied, in German. 'Let me help you,' and I tied them by the string to the bars of the bunk.

'Thank you so much,' she said again.

Thus I began my long friendship with Mrs K. and her family. They were the first Hungarians I had ever met. Over the next few hours Mrs K. and I continued talking. We did not have much else to do on board until the ship was ready to sail the following day. Mrs K. still carried the scars of the war as I did. To start with, she was very reluctant to reveal her life to a stranger, but little by little she opened up.

'We came from Budapest,' she began. ‘Before the war my husband was a major grain exporter. In his line of business he had very little contact with Jews. That's probably why we managed to leave the country in relative safety. We lost everything though, some of it to the Nazis and the rest to the Soviets,' she went on. 'It is hard to believe that our old world vanished so completely.'

'I came from Lodz, Poland,' I carried my end of the conversation forward. ‘My family was also very well off. But of course we lost everything at the beginning of the war. We ended in the Warsaw Ghetto. My whole family perished.'

'How did you escape?' she asked me.

'By the grace of my Arian features,' I explained.

'Oh. Yes. We did much the same thing. We did not dare to reveal who we were or how we lived prior to the war. It was safer to appear uneducated and ignorant. I certainly did not tell anyone about my musical career in Budapest.'

At that point her husband, an imperious looking Hungarian, bald-headed and heavily moustached, popped in to comfort his wife. He chipped in, 'She has a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice and was renown to the music lovers for her rendition of the German Lieder.'

This contribution widened considerably the scope and depth of our exchanges and led us back to a more enlightened era. My kitchen German was no match for the couple's literary version. To boot, I gathered that Mr K. spoke English as well.

One fine, mild afternoon in March 1947, after some twenty four hours of bedlam on board, the ship was finally ready for departure. In anticipation of the great moment the multitudes gathered on every deck, eager to find a vacant spot by the railings. As the castaways jostled for positions, many bare arms exposed the Nazi concentration camp numbers.

At the sound of the siren everyone gazed through the dark clouds of smoke that billowed from the funnel to see the wondrous sight of our floating refuge, released from its moorings. There was complete silence on board as the ship drew slowly away. No one stayed on the wharf to bid us farewell.

Not surprisingly, the atmosphere was charged with emotion. We were leaving behind Europe, the land of our birth, where the hopes and dreams of our youth had turned to ashes. From then on our future destiny, for better or for worse, lay in the New World.

As I stood there crammed amongst my fellow exiles watching the French foreshore vanish into the distance, my heart was in turmoil. I loathed deserting France, not just because of a strong affinity for its spirit and culture that I had acquired during the critical post-war period; but on top of that, it meant severing a strong bond that I had established with so many wonderful people. Yet, in spite of all such considerations, my sadness did not entirely curb the youthful resilience, faith and optimism of a 24-year-old.

Luckily for me, I could not at that early stage envisage the many setbacks that would confront me in Australia, both within and outside my family circle; nor could I anticipate the compromises and adjustments I ultimately had to make before I was finally ready to concede a sense of belonging to my adopted country.