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

“I still didn’t understand everything. People, it seemed to me, were much harder to crack than codes. Yet it didn’t matter where we came from, our language, our nationality, or our religion. As long as we all looked to the light.”
― 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

“It didn’t take long to remove all the stars.
‘What do we do with them now?’ a boy at the front asked.
Mrs. Simmons gestured to the coal stove that burned in a corner of the classroom. But Esther shook her head: ‘Can everyone put their star into the pocket of the coat they removed it from, please?’
Mrs. Simmons looked confused. ‘Can’t we throw them away?’
‘They’re not yours to get rid of,’ Esther replied firmly. ‘What happens to each of those stars now is entirely up to the person who had to wear it.’
She was right: those stars were other people’s stories, not ours.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse