Danielle Byers

“I can’t remember a specific time when the comments and the name-calling started, but one evening in November it all got much worse,’ she said. ‘My brother Tobias and me were doing our homework at the dining room table like we always did.’
‘You’ve got a brother?’
She hesitated before nodding. ‘Papa was working late at the clinic in a friend’s back room – it was against the law for Jews to work as doctors. Mama was making supper in the kitchen, and I remember her cursing because she’d just burned her hand on the griddle. Tobias and me couldn’t stop laughing because Mama never swore.’ The memory of it made her mouth twitch in an almost-smile.
Then someone banged on our front door. It was late – too late for social calling. Mama told us not to answer it. Everyone knew someone who’d had a knock on the door like that.’
‘Who was it?’
‘The police, usually. Sometimes Hitler’s soldiers. It was never for a good reason, and it never ended happily. We all dreaded it happening to us. So, Mama turned the lights out and put her hand over the dog’s nose.’ Esther, glancing sideways at me, explained: ‘We had a sausage dog called Gerta who barked at everything.
‘The knocking went on and they started shouting through the letter box, saying they’d burn the house down if we didn’t answer the door. Mama told us to hide under the table and went to speak to them. They wanted Papa. They said he’d been treating non-Jewish patients at the clinic and it had to stop. Mama told them he wasn’t here but they didn’t believe her and came in anyway. There were four of them in Nazi uniform, stomping through our house in their filthy great boots. Finding us hiding under the table, they decided to take Tobias as a substitute for Papa. ‘When your husband hands himself in, we’ll release the boy,’ was what they said.
‘It was cold outside – a freezing Austrian winter’s night – but they wouldn’t let Tobias fetch his coat. As soon as they laid hands on him, Mama started screaming. She let go of Gerta and grabbed Tobias – we both did – pulling on his arms, yelling that they couldn’t take him, that he’d done nothing wrong. Gerta was barking. I saw one of the men swing his boot at ther. She went flying across the room, hitting the mantelpiece. It was awful. She didn’t bark after that.’
It took a moment for the horror of what she was saying to sink in.
‘Don’t tell me any more if you don’t want to,’ I said gently.
She stared straight ahead like she hadn’t heard me. ‘They took my brother anyway. He was ten years old.
‘We ran into the street after them, and it was chaos – like the end of the world or something. The whole town was fully of Nazi uniforms. There were broken windows, burning houses, people sobbing in the gutter. The synagogue at the end of our street was on fire. I was terrified. So terrified I couldn’t move. But Mum kept running. Shouting and yelling and running after my brother. I didn’t see what happened but I heard the gunshot.’
She stopped. Rubbed her face in her hands. ‘Afterwards they gave it a very pretty name: Kristallnacht – meaning “the night of broken glass”. But it was the night I lost my mother and my brother. I was sent away soon after as part of the Kindertransport, though Papa never got used to losing us all at once. Nor did I. That’s why he came to find me. He always promised he’d try.’
Anything I might’ve said stayed stuck in my throat. There weren’t words for it, not really. So I put my arm through Esther’s and we sat, gazing out to sea, two old enemies who were, at last, friends. She was right – it was her story to tell. And I could think of plenty who might benefit from hearing it.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Bit by bit, the noise died away. The pupils began to look quite intrigued. Some sat forward, chins in hands. You could see the mockery still lingering in their faces like they were waiting for something to make fun of. But as Esther explained the yellow stars and what they meant, their expressions changed.
It was like watching newspaper catch light when you made a fire. Once it took hold, the flames began to spread and glow. At last, the class were starting to understand. This was someone their age, who they sort of knew, explaining what prejudice felt like from the other side. That horrible sense that if people were your enemy it meant they didn’t feel, didn’t breath, didn’t think like you did. Really, they were hardly proper people at all. So it was all right to drop bombs and destroy people’s lives, or treat them no better than animals.
Except it wasn’t.
The mood grew ever more sombre. By the time Esther finished talking, a few pupils were wiping their eyes. The rest of the class looked stunned.
‘Thank you for listening,’ Esther said, her chin held high. I was close enough to see the tiniest tremble in her bottom lip. And it made me think her even more magnificent.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I looked at her properly then, drinking in this person I thought I knew so well. Even the familiar bits – the chocolate brown eyes, the dark wavy hair – looked different somehow.
What surprised me most was the pride I had for my mum. These past months I’d seen her become a sad person who cried too much. Yet, even then, there were parts to her that were stronger than I’d ever imagined. Thinking over all she’d done, how Queenie and Ephraim and the others held her in such high regard, and how she’d inspired Sukie, I began to feel different too. The uneasiness that she wasn’t well was still there. Mixed in with it, though, was the belief that she’d recover. I supposed what I was feeling was hope.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“The Jenkins family, who took her in after the Kindertransport, gave her their surname. She didn’t expect to see any of her family again. This was supposed to be a fresh start for her, here in England. Her mother, God bless her, was already dead. Her father was in trouble with the authorities.’
‘For doing what?’ Though I had pretty much guessed the answer: he was Jewish.
‘It’s just so stupid,’ I said, drying the plate rather roughly. ‘How can you hate someone just because of how they live their life?’
Mrs. Henderson sighed. ‘People like to have something to hate – it makes life easier when things go wrong if there’s someone to blame. Think about what happened here today with that pilot, Olive.’
She meant how quickly the crowd turned on him. It was frightening how easily normal, pleasant people got whipped up into nastiness. The possibility that something similar had happened to Esther’s family disturbed me.
‘But it’s worse than that, isn’t it?’ I said, thinking ‘The German pilot was a fighter from the enemy side. Esther’s family were… well… just people.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Mrs. Henderson sighed again, blowing damp strands of hair off her face. ‘Normal, educated, cultured people. It was all very well, the Kindertransport, but what good’s a child without its parents? You saw what it did to Esther.’
‘Well, I’m glad they’re all here,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you helped them.’
Mrs. Henderson looked sad. ‘But we can’t save everyone… our government needs to take some responsibility and do much, much more. We should be helping them flee Hitler, not turning them away. We’ve had to smuggle these good people in like criminals.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse