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LIN VAN HEK

Anna’s Box

Under my stairs is a box of old linens belonging to my great grandmother. She owned a shop in Berlin:

ANNA WESOLOSKI FINE LINEN and EMBROIDERY

Women wanted their linens embroidered with their family name back then, dark red was the dominating colour or white on white, letters entwined and scrolled.

" You could not wash the body from this linen," said Anna Wesoloski.

The box had traveled with Anna’s daughter, Gertrude. Firstly to Singapore where she ran a guesthouse and later to Australia. The box was used as a table in the internment camp where the Jews were treated like Germans, undesirable aliens, the enemy, because no one knew what a Jew was in Australia back then. Never mind, said Gertrude, it is enough to be alive. Gertrude made herself a sun frock from a blue embroidered tablecloth from Anna’s Box.

Anna Wesoloski had not wanted to leave Germany. She believed that the Brown Shirts were delinquents nothing more and when they first appeared on the streets of Berlin she pushed through them. A bustling old Jewish dowager disbanded them momentarily and they roared with laughter at her.

Things changed rapidly. That which you were laughed at for in January you would be killed for in May. Anna Wesoloski had no fear; her world was the cloth before her, her head bent to the task from seven in the morning until nine at night. She formed scrolls and letters, borders, buttonholes and eyelets. Her eyes were strong and she threaded the finest needles by instinct. She had no inkling that within months she would be fashioning yellow stars for everyone she knew. She did not approve of her daughter’s husband always in the cafe talking poetry and politics. One day this husband- Werner was his name - received a notice to appear at the administration building. He went there and did not return.

Days went by and Gertrude was distraught. They went every day to the administration office for information about his whereabouts. A slow terror was accelerating all around them. They were told in clipped tones never to come to the administration building again or they would go missing too.

Anna’s shop window was broken and longtime customers came and called her jude bitch and filled their baskets with the most expensive linen. She tried to stop one such woman and the woman punched her in the face and whispered obscenities. This shocked Anna and she retreated into the back room of her boarded-up shop and continued with the few orders that she still had.

Three weeks after Werner went missing Gertrude was given a letter. It was Werner's handwriting. He said that she must do three things if she wanted to see him again. There were no reassurances or endearments. She must purchase one-way tickets out of the country… forfeit their house and goods. He named a sum of cash that should be in an envelope when she came to pick him up. These three things she did trying to persuade Anna to leave the country with them.

“ I am going to my sister in Poland ,” insisted Anna. "I will be safe there".

Finally the departure papers were stamped and she was directed to go to a place outside the city. There on the roadside she found Werner. He had on a strange coat. She asked:

"Who does this coat belong to?"

He smiled at her. She had no idea of his time in the labour camp. His beautiful red hair had been shorn; his fine boned face looked inquisitively up at her. He had a new knowledge now; he pulled himself up from the place where he had slumped rising heavily like an animal that had decided to die. Under the skin on his hands was a layer of pus. She touched it; a small wounded groan escaped from him. They had been such sheltered children with no experience of discomfort; they were not prepared for this change in their lives. Back at the house there was a goodbye letter. Anna had gone to her sister’s.

Sixteen weeks later they were expecting to disembark in Trinidad but discovered that they had sailed instead to Singapore. They slept on the deck with hundreds of other confused talkative people.

The ship is sailing in circles, thought Gertrude. They began in Singapore. All they had was Anna’s box, They found an abandoned building in Orchard Road and filled it with camp beds and cheap bamboo chairs where elderly Europeans sang songs and listened to the radio and cried for home. No one knew yet of Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen or Buchenwald. Anna Wesoloski was in a camp. Letters to her sister’s in Poland were not answered because her sister was also in a camp and no letters were delivered to that house anymore. During the time Anna had been on the terrible train she closed her eyes and thought up new designs for her needlework. She laid them out in her head and catalogued them.

When the train stopped she prepared for the worst. She knew she was trapped in something unbelievable and that she must live through it. All the people were stripped and divided; two lines were formed. She was in the least desirable one though she did not know it.

A commandeering man barked:

"STEP FORWARD SEAMSTRESSES!”

Many who could have were too afraid to obey; they were in a catatonic trance of fear. Anna stepped forward her hands clasped calmly before her. She held her head up; an old Jewish woman not arrogant but erect. The man was impatient to make his choice.

"And you?" he asked Anna.

"I am the proprietor of the finest embroidery establishment in Berlin.”

"The finest?" he laughed.

“Without a doubt," she answered and so she was saved.

She was in the sorting shed for a while and then taken to the compound behind a fairytale picket fence where a high-ranking officer lived with his wife and family. It was a postage stamp of German folklore. Anna sat at a machine and made seven covers for feather beds. They were monogrammed and scrolled in six colours. She tried all the designs that she had made up on the train. She monogrammed everything for the family just as she had made yellow stars for her neighbours in Berlin. In the afternoons the German wife, Tineka, had the other wives over for tea.

"These are my designs for my new slip covers,” she would boast handing around Anna’s immaculate drawings that she had drawn that day in the basement.

She did not talk about Anna; she wanted to keep her to herself. Every day Anna was called to the house behind the picket fence to work at the white linens. She had to be clean. She was scrubbed raw with a washing compound and dressed in a white housedress whilst she worked at the white lace and handkerchief edging for small gifts for the other wives. At night she returned to the barracks to the grim faces of the other women. She was searched but she always had something stitched into the hem of her dress. A reminder of life outside; an almond biscuit or a small piece of cheese and some hard jubes that you could only buy in Berlin.

All the women in Anna’s shed died but Anna kept on due to her needlework. When someone died her eyes would be red at work and Tineka would ask,

"What is the matter with you?”

She did not say that her friend had been kicked in her head so hard that her eye had come out of its socket and that this woman had been known for her beautiful blue eyes that made you think of heaven.

She simply answered,

"I am thinking of home."

Tineka nodded, this was acceptable, she herself often cried for home. She knew that despite the FATHERLAND all women were the same under the skin.

One day Tineka sent Anna on an errand. She was sent into the yards to deliver a package to Tineka's husband. This was dangerous and forbidden and she walked warily. She came around the corner of a wooden building and stopped. A child stood there, sobbing, her feet and legs were splattered with blood. A uniformed man stood to the left of Anna. He was turned towards the child and spoke to another officer.

"You can see she’s ripe,” he giggled, spluttering in a crazy sort of mirth.

Anna now saw that it was Tineka's husband and his friend Heinrich who she had often seen behind the picket fence. The package that she was to deliver was a large pocket-handkerchief that she herself had embroidered. It was extremely special. It had the man’s full name, entwined in relief with a swastika emblem and the face of Hitler behind the lettering. She had been given a photograph of the Führer which she had reduced to light and shade and embroidered in several tones of grey. Tineka intended that her husband should present this gift to his friend this afternoon for his birthday. Also the mans departure from the camp would take place that afternoon. The handkerchief was plump and white, with one thin strand of black velvet ribbon holding it together beneath its thin covering of transparent tissue; the embroidery was visible through the paper.

The man lifted the hem of the child’s skirt with the barrel of his gun. Both men seemed oblivious to Anna. The child’s face streamed with silent tears. She could have been eleven but the evidence of menstruation made it likely she was older. Under her skirt she wore a ragged pair of men’s underpants that were streaked with blood. The man told her to take them off and wipe her face.

It was then that Anna decided that this would be her courageous moment. She had known it would come; she had saved herself for it as women once did for marriage. She took two giant running steps forward and stood between the men and the girl. All attention was now on her. She shook the large handkerchief free by a gentle pull on the velvet ribbon. The handkerchief was startling. White and brilliant and clever. The two men focused on it immediately, saw what it was. Hitler’s face; a masterwork in tonal contrast with the bold lettering, HEINRICH, in red.

Anna held it aloft for a few seconds before she moved towards the girl and wiped her face. The men were immobile until she began to move away with the girl. One came quickly; the gun raised his outline against the grey sky. As she looked up he bought the gun down into her face. Heinrich was keen to finish her off, especially when he saw his handkerchief had been messed up by that old Jew's blood.

"No No! This is Tineka's woman,” said the husband and they made the girl hose her down with water.

Anna was pleased that she had lived through her moment of courage.

"It may be my only one,” she told the girl. Her nose was broken and she lost two teeth and she looked lopsided when she smiled. She patted her nose and thought its still a Jew’s nose.

She was surprised when she was sent again to the picket fence. Tineka had grown irrational and her husband couldn't control her; she demanded to have Anna come immediately. Anna began a tablecloth appliquéd with cherries, with napkins to match. She had long conversations with Tineka. They made lists of things to ‘make’ and sometimes the German woman thought Anna was her mother and she did not want her to go back to the barracks. She kept her there until the husband came home and nodded Anna towards the door and had the capos come and take her back. He would shake his head at the new dress that Tineka had dressed this ugly old Jew in. It was why he loved her she was a soft thing, goodness all through.

"OTTO… " Tineka would sigh, when her husband came in, and she took his cruel hands in hers and tried to purify him and play the game of marriage. The strange smells on him made her shudder. Otto told her that she must never go out of the picket fence.

“I shall be so glad when this embarrassment is over and out of the way," he told her.

She heard the screaming of children; he told her it was a dream and there was no room for such dreaming here.

"Don’t be afraid, you are a good wife… remember our secret smile.”

He feared however that her spring had snapped, she was always coming towards him and laying her hands on his shoulders and looking him squarely in the eye. This made him more afraid than anything the war had bought him. Once she had gone through the picket fence and into the barracks yards. He was livid and slapped her hard. She walked back through the mud and blood in her white dress. He dragged her through the gates by her wrists and she did not resist.

Once inside she turned to him:

"Murderers are not murderers twenty four hours a day, are they?"

"We will soon be away, " he told her. " There will be snow on the mountains, when we go home, ice on the streams…"

Tineka thought how his laugh had turned sour and squeezed tight like a frightful password. HE is one of them… blemished all through… I could shoot him in his sleep… take careful aim… it was a high price to pay so she allowed herself to go a little mad.

"Good evening, Otto darling. Is death made of metal and are they still wailing out there?”

Her husband kissed her and took her to bed. He knew she was damning him.

Later in another time Anna would see the LIFE magazine photographs of German soldiers goose-stepping and she tried to find OTTO or HEINRICH who drank cognac on the granite steps and beat old women down in the night and laughed behind the pergola as Tineka leaned over the balustrade of the house behind the picket fence. The air smelled foul at certain times of the day. Heinrich with his bourgeois moustache sang seriously his Fatherland songs. He made children stand for days in the ice until loathsome purple blotches spread along their legs. Their leg muscles and chest muscles cramped and they would sink down while he was at sleep behind the picket fence.

When Anna had come to Melbourne, Australia, she often thought about Tineka, and sometimes she would say things that people thought were strange.

"Even in concentration camp I always had a pretty dress."

Of course, they had not heard the story of Tineka so how could they know.

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You can read Lin van Hek’s work and view her upcoming events here:
www.linvanhek.com