Isabel’s War by Lila Perl

anything about her family, as Sibby’s mother suggested? Why does she gloss over everything as if nothing bad ever happened?
    I’m chomping away on my gluey cheese-coated macaroni, watching Helga eat hardly anything as usual, when an idea comes to me.
    â€œHelga, maybe you could help me with my homework after dinner. I need some information for my history class tomorrow. It’s an assignment about something that happened in Germany a couple of years ago, you know, when you were still living there.”
    Helga is toying with some string beans on her plate. She looks up. “Ah, Isabel, I no longer studied anything at that time because the government had already burned down the school where the Jewish children were sent. So, you see, I have nothing to tell you.”
    My mother is gasping with indignation at the Nazis having burned the Jewish children’s school. But after learning about the Jewish blood song from Mrs. Simon, this afternoon, I’m not surprised. “No, no, you wouldn’t have learned about this in school,” I assure Helga. “You would know it just by having lived in Germany at that time. It’s about the Children’s Transports...”
    â€œ Die Kindertransporte ,” Helga blurts out in German. Her ordinarily pale complexion takes on an ashen hue and her gray-green eyes grow stormy. “ Nein , Isabel, it is nothing to talk about.”
    â€œBut, Helga,” I implore, “isn’t the...the Kindertransport, the Children’s Transport...the way you got from Germany to England? It...well, it probably saved your life. I know it took you away from your family, but...Oh please, couldn’t you tell me just a little bit about it?”
    My mother, who’s been standing over us with two small glass dishes of chocolate pudding topped with dabs of whipped cream, puts our desserts in front of us and sits down beside Helga. She places her arm around Helga’s shoulders.
    â€œNow, Helga dear, I know it’s hard for you to talk about some things, but couldn’t you maybe help Isabel out with her assignment. She hasn’t been getting the greatest marks at school, except in French. And I think it’s because she doesn’t work hard enough at anything else.”
    I give my mother a sour look and stare down at my pudding, the only halfway decent thing that’s been served at this meal.
    Then I glance up at Helga. She looks like a trapped animal but, to my surprise, she actually admits that she was one of the many refugee children who were sent to England between December 1938 and September 1939 to escape the Nazis. “Only from babies to under age seventeen were taken. The rest of my family did not go. Papa was already in a labor camp because he was Jewish. My mother and my two sisters were hiding with relatives who were not Jewish.”
    â€œBut they must have written to you?” I ask hesitantly. I can never admit that I’ve seen those letters in German that Helga keeps in her chocolate box.
    â€œ Ja , Mutti , my mother, wrote for a time after the war broke out, and she and my sisters escaped to Holland.Nothing at all from Papa. And Mutti had nothing to tell about him. In May 1940, the Nazis took over Holland. I remained in England two more years, but no more letters came after that. Never.”
    Helga stops and looks away. I’m afraid this is all she’s going to tell me. But then she gulps and says, “Please, Isabel, about the transport, I can only tell you that Mutti went with me to the train station. It was September 1, 1939. There were so many children, boys and girls, from orphanages, from broken families, some older children who took care of the babies. Mutti said, Soon we will all come to England and be together again .
    â€œThen Achtung! The train whistle blew. We were pushed into the railway cars like rabbits. Some of the children did not smell so nice. Some were frightened and they soiled themselves.