The Secrets of the Notebook: A royal love affair and a woman’s quest to uncover her incredible family secret. Eve Haas
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СКАЧАТЬ that war would inevitably be coming to Britain as early as 1936 my father had reinforced the wine cellar of the new Elgar house and transformed it into an air-raid shelter, thinking that would add to its sales appeal. He had already knocked down the original house, rebuilding it together with three other houses on the huge site. When he showed the house, a year or so later, to the famous music hall star, Bud Flanagan (the other half of double act Flanagan and Allen), Flanagan saw the air-raid shelter and promptly stormed out with his wife, accusing my father of being a warmonger. In fact it was a blessing in disguise that the sale fell through because when the air raids did start we were able to walk the few steps round the corner and shelter safely in the cellar of our own house instead of having to sleep crammed in with the hundreds of poor folk seeking shelter on Hampstead’s underground station platforms. The station was reputed to have the deepest underground shaft in London.

      When the headmistress announced that Kingsley School was moving out of London in 1939 to the safety of rural Cornwall I absolutely refused to go with them. There was no way I was willing to be separated from my parents again. It was bad enough being separated from Granny Anna and worrying every day about what could have happened to her: I couldn’t have borne to be in that same situation with my entire family. I would have preferred to die with them in an air raid, if that was what was meant to be, than to be left alone in the world. My memory of being in Berlin on my own, not knowing where they were or what was happening to them, was still vivid and frightening. It made me all the more aware of how acutely my father and Uncle Freddy must be suffering from being unable to look after their own mother when she was living in such a dangerous place during such a cruel time. I prayed that I would never have to face a similar dilemma to the one forced on them when they had to leave her behind in Prague.

      When I turned sixteen in 1940 I became a legal adult, which meant there was a possibility I would be interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, an even more terrifying prospect than being evacuated to Cornwall. Just in time, however, the law changed and I was told I had to apply for an ‘alien’s book’ instead. This entailed my making an appearance on my birthday at Bow Street Magistrates Court in Mayfair so that I could be cleared of any suspicion that I might be a foreign agent. I was flanked by two huge policemen as I entered the courtroom as a possible spy, while my father waited nervously outside on a bench, my protector as always.

      ‘Did you belong to the Hitler Youth?’ the magistrate asked.

      ‘No,’ I replied, indignant at the very thought but trying not to show it.

      ‘Are you in touch with anyone in Germany?’ he went on.

      ‘No,’ I answered truthfully, silently thanking God that my father had had the foresight to ban me from writing any more letters to Lottie.

      When my father was called into the courtroom the only question the magistrate had for him was ironic.

      ‘Does she ever need a good spanking?’ he enquired.

      My father responded with a polite and relieved show of amusement and at the end of the hearing the Court granted me my alien’s book and spared me the horror of an internment camp.

      Once I had got used to the idea of its existence I didn’t think a great deal more about the mysterious pocket-book over the following years. There were so many other things to occupy the mind of a young woman growing up in London at the time. I liked the idea that we had such a romantic tale in our past, but once I had thought about it I could see the sense of my father’s warnings about keeping it a secret and not asking any more questions. How would it have sounded if I started telling my friends that I was descended from a Prussian prince? At best it would have sounded like the foolish fantasies of a romantic young girl, at worst it would have sounded boastful. And how could I have proved my story to any doubters anyway?

      He was right, I decided, it was better to just forget about it and get on with our lives in Hampstead where we enjoyed as good a life as was possible in the austere days of the war.

       2

       GRANNY ANNA – No NEWS from PRAGUE

      BY 1940, ALTHOUGH we barely dared to talk about it, I shared my father’s fears and sadness about Granny Anna. I had such wonderful memories of her, which were being kept vividly alive by the letters and cards she had been writing to me from Czechoslovakia after we first escaped to England. They were full of love but gave no clues as to what the future might hold in store for her now the Germans were occupying Prague and Uncle Freddy was in London with us.

      ‘To my beloved Evchen,’ she wrote in one (in German), which I still treasure to this day.

      I send you the heartiest wishes, my most beloved child. I send you in spirit a thousand heartfelt kisses, enclosed that my little grandchild shall be forever happy and shall stay healthy in body and soul and that in life her choices will always be right. That she remains her parents’ great delight and that God graciously guides the ways of her life so that we will soon meet in peace again before your Oma must leave this earth.

      Your old true Grossmuttechen, Anna.

      In another she wrote:

      My beloved Evchen, how much I would like to see you again my beloved child, and Claude. I cannot describe the longing I have for you.

      After the German invasion her letters began to arrive via the Red Cross and not the normal post. They still gave us no clues as to what might really be happening to her or what terrors she might be enduring. She wouldn’t have wanted to burden anyone else with her worries anyway, particularly not her granddaughter.

      When the German Army invaded the Sudetenland in 1938, where Reichenberg was situated, Uncle Freddy and the family had fled to Prague, with Granny Anna, his wife Lotte, and his daughter. But it wasn’t long before the German troops were pouring into that city too. So they had to escape the country extremely fast to avoid capture. Uncle Freddy told me how he witnessed the soldiers arriving in the Wenceslas Platz and knew that they had to get away as quickly as they could, but that he realised it would have to be without his mother, my granny Anna. By that stage it was no longer possible for a Jewish family to travel across the borders openly and Freddy was forced to flee with his wife and daughter on foot, using a secret escape route over the border into Italy. They then journeyed on to join us in London, where they settled. When they arrived without Granny Anna I was devastated. I had been so sure they would bring her with them and I could hardly bear the thought of her being the only one of the family left behind.

      I was told that she had been quite adamant that she didn’t go with them, insisting that she was too old and arthritic to make the trip and that she would only be a liability to them. Uncle Freddy had eventually given in, seeing that he had no choice and hoping that an old lady living on her own in a city as big as Prague would not attract the attention of the Nazis. She hardly ever went out any more anyway, he reasoned, so how would they even know she was there? With any luck she would be able to live out her days in peace and comfort if he could find her somewhere pleasant to live.

      Whatever happened he knew he had to save his wife and child before it was too late, even if it meant he had to leave his mother to take her chances. Before he set out to Italy he went in search of an apartment for her in a good area of the city. A man called Dr Borakova agreed to take her in as a tenant in his attic flat in the Praha 6 district, which was an affluent area, СКАЧАТЬ