Shirley Temple | Image Source: Good Housekeeping/Bettman/Getty Images
What Really Happened in Coventry, that Summer of 1939?
Sifting through the past, connecting the dots, looking for substance among the shadows, comparing two children’s memories of the same events, stirring painful memories.
Sorting through old photos and papers, I carefully read the handwritten letters sent in 2012 from Coventry, England by Rod Calcott. I look intensely at the fuzzy photos and try to compare our two narratives.
Around 2008, after years of procrastination I began writing my memoir, A Garland for Ashes.
Searching for what really happened was a huge challenge.
No close relatives had survived the Holocaust and
the two English families that had taken in “the refugee” had died, years ago.
Then I remembered the name of the little son who welcomed me into the first family. I began to search the internet for Roddy Calcott.
To find each other after so many years of silence felt like a miracle.
He was still the friendly, hopeful boy I remembered.
We talked on the phone, he sent letters and photos, describing those fleeting summer days back in 1939 when we were children….
The first page of the first letter from Rod dated 12th September, 2012.
And then I sat comparing our memories filtering them through adult perceptions.
The Calcotts
Jack, Kath and their young son, Roddy welcomed me into their home in Coventry, at the end of July 1939.
As a last resort, to save the life of their 7 year old only child, my parents Amalie and Markus Zack sent me into the unknown with the Kindertransport.
Because of this hastily devised plan to rescue Jewish children out of the tightening net of persecution, a German, Jewish, spoiled, only child entered a thoroughly English, Gentile, family. Moved by compassion, they embraced a bewildered, disoriented girl,
But then…. it didn’t work out and I was moved to live with a stricter older couple, the Dodds.
Over the years my favorite way to deal with layers of loss was avoidance which contributed to the fading of memories.
In 2008 something within me shifted and I began to slowly dig deep into the past, gathering information for an autobiography, A Garland for Ashes.
For the first time I asked,
Who am I?
What really happened ?
What were the circumstances around me living in an England poised for war?
How can I understand life with the Calcotts and the Dodds?
Kath and Jack Calcott, 47 Sussex Road, Coventry
Roddy remembers his mother
I slowly read and reread Roddy’s letters. He describes his mother’s joy in curling my hair. Did that really happen?
I have no such memory, I look at the fuzzy photo of the two of us together in the garden.
Roddy and I in an English garden
I see the evidence, the waves in my unruly hair.
Why did Kath Calcott try to make me part of her family by curling my plain, straight hair?
Why were curls so desirable for little girls in the 1930’s?
Suddenly I’m back in Coventry, the 4 of us are sitting together in velvet, tipping seats, the lights dim and I am transported to another world.
I see real people, beautiful, larger than life, speaking, singing, smiling, laughing, I hear the music, register the emotions without understanding a word.
All the shades of black and white, there she is, the star, Shirley Temple, singing, dancing, curls bouncing.
An influencer of her time, making curls the standard of beauty, cuteness…
Why was I so entranced by that first “pictures” (cinema) experience in Coventry?
My thoughts return to Gemünd and I feel again the trauma and disappointment.
Full of anticipation my teen aged friend, Ruth, and I approached the local Kino to see the first ever full length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but at the entrance we were turned away… because we were Jews.
Untangling memories, bearing again the crushing social pressures, seeing a child’s changed, unchosen hairstyle, a symbol of loss…. then I remember,
Why, even all the hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear not …
Luke 12:7