The Young Rebecca
2016 – The Atwell Gallery, Edinburgh
It was April 8th, an important anniversary for Clara. The old lady knew exactly where to go. Declining to take the lift, she carefully negotiated the main staircase. Turning right at the 1st Floor landing she made the familiar, short journey to Gallery 3 – Twentieth Century European Art.
Apart from the invigilator sitting near the door, no one else was in Gallery 3. The young girl in the painting looked straight into Clara’s eyes. This connection always produced the same emotion. Once again the tears flowed silently. ‘Mutti,’ she said softly to herself. Through blurred vision, she carefully sat down on the bench seat and composed herself.
‘Are you all right love?’ asked the worried attendant.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll be fine in a minute,’ Clara replied, feeling embarrassed at having revealed her emotions. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
‘Is there something in here that’s upsetting you?’
‘Well, I do get emotional when I look at the Wintersteller,’ replied Clara, slowly recovering her composure. ‘Sorry to be a nuisance, it’s just that it means such a lot to me.’
‘You’re not a nuisance love. It’s a wonderful painting. Why is it so special to you?’
As Clara replied, the tears returned, ‘It’s a painting of my mother!’
1922 / 32 - Josef Wintersteller’s studio, Vienna
The artist had worked with many models over the years, but Rebecca became his favourite. Her widowed mother, Ellen Frankl, supplemented her meagre income from seamstress work by cleaning old Josef’s house at weekends. Rebecca couldn’t be left at home, so she accompanied her mother, and helped to sweep up and dust, or played with Spritzen, the old man’s overweight cat.
It wasn’t long before Josef began to sketch the young Rebecca. After her 14th birthday he paid her mother a little extra to allow the girl to pose whilst he made a study for a painting. Thus began a 2 year period during which he made several studies of his latest muse.
Ellen was delighted that her daughter was the artist’s choice – it seemed a compliment to her parenting to have produced such a lovely girl, and the extra money was very welcome! Rebecca, who was also rewarded with a little pocket money for each session, enjoyed listening to Josef’s stories and was very happy to sit for him whilst her mother carried out her more arduous chores.
Josef was captivated by the girl’s confident and unabashed manner – unusual for one so young. He managed to capture her character and beauty in the finished paintings but the most striking achievement was the way he caught her defiant gaze. The ‘Young Rebeccas’ are generally regarded as Wintersteller’s finest work. Somehow the aging artist had combined the innocence of a Gauguin Polynesian with the challenging insouciance of Klimt’s ‘Mäda Primavesi’.
Rebecca Frankl continued to visit Josef until her mother became ill in 1928 and could no longer work. The following year she married Hans, the proprietor of a second hand furniture shop, and became Rebecca Bergmann. Their daughter Klara was born in 1932
1935-40, Vienna
The work of a Jewish artist in Austria or Germany was always in danger of being seized and destroyed by the Nazis in the late 1930s. That the paintings should also feature a Jewish subject provided all the more excuse for them to be classified as degenerate. Of the ‘Young Rebeccas’, only 3 are believed to have survived the war. One belongs to the Leopold Museum in Vienna. One is in the Art Institute of Chicago, and the other is in Edinburgh’s Atwell Gallery. These paintings were amongst the works that Josef managed to take to Switzerland when he fled from Nazi persecution in 1938.
For a few years prior to the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 (the Anschluss) there was an alarming rise in anti-Semitism. One afternoon in 1936, Nazi thugs broke into Hans’ shop. They smashed the windows and the furniture. Hans didn’t come home that night. The following day, a distraught Rebecca was asked to identify a body that had been recovered from the Danube. It was her husband. At 28 she was a widow with a 4-year-old daughter. The police had no appetite, resources or inclination to investigate the crime.
The next 2 years were incredibly hard on the young widow. Klara was now of school age but in 1938 Jewish children were excluded from state facilities and she had to attend a special school for non-Aryans. Rebecca asked Wintersteller if he needed either a domestic or a model. Although old Josef already employed a housemaid, he was delighted to work with his favourite muse again after a break of 10 years.
Unfortunately, none of his ‘adult Rebeccas’ survived the Nazi looting and burning. A number of sketches were saved when he escaped to Switzerland however. He suggested that she and Klara leave Austria too, and offered her a job looking after him. Sadly, Rebecca's visa application was refused.
By November, 1938, life as a Jew in Vienna was intolerable. Increasing numbers were being arrested in dawn raids and transported to concentration camps. The UK had agreed to a humanitarian project which evacuated almost 10 thousand child refugees (mostly Jewish) into British foster homes. The initiative was known as the ‘Kindertransport’. Schools and orphanages in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland hastily drew up lists of potential evacuees.
Poor Rebecca was torn. Klara’s safety was her main concern, yet she couldn’t bear to be parted from her only child. She agonised for a day before asking the school to put her 6-year-old on the list. Not to have given her daughter this chance would have been foolish – she knew that Klara’s only realistic hope of safety was for her to leave Austria. Once she was in Great Britain maybe a visa would be granted for Rebecca to join her daughter.
‘How would you like to go to England where there will be kind people to look after you and none of Hitler’s police to frighten you?’
‘Yes please’ said Klara without pausing to consider any of the ramifications. ‘Can we really go? When?’
‘Well, it will only be the children first. Later on I hope that I can come and join you too.’
‘No, you must come too Mummy,’ Klara suddenly looked fearful and her mother held her tightly so that her tears wouldn’t give away her absolute distress.
1939 – The Long Journey
At 5:15 am on April 8th, 1939 Klara was woken by her mother.
‘Wake up sweetheart – we have to leave for the station in half an hour.’
Rebecca hadn’t been to bed that night. She spent the time packing her daughter’s small suitcase, sewing her clothes (with her initials embroidered onto all items), watching her sleep, and sobbing in total despair.
It was Saturday. From pure vindictiveness, the Nazis arranged many of the Kindertransport evacuations to take place on the Jewish Sabbath, the day of rest. The children were all required to be at Vienna’s Westbahnhof station by 6:30 am, an hour before departure. The youth leaders and teachers who had been nominated to travel as chaperones (on condition that they returned immediately) checked off their children against the passenger lists. Each child was issued with a numbered cardboard label to be worn around the neck. Klara was number 124.
That morning two hundred frightened and bewildered children said tearful goodbyes to their distraught parents. They boarded the train, clutching their small suitcases, and were shut into their allocated compartments. Klara, at 6-years-old, was one of the smallest, but the 8-year-old Hannah Klein, a friend from the same Jewish school, had been placed in her compartment. Hannah made it her business to look after her friend.
The children all waved at the window – even though they probably couldn’t pick out their parents in the throng. Rebecca tried not to think the worst, but all of the parents who bravely waved goodbye to their children that day knew that there was a strong likelihood of never seeing them again.
The children were not allowed to take jewellery or valuables of any kind. Rebecca had sewn a small silver locket containing miniature photographic portraits of herself and Hans into the belt of Klara’s coat. She also slipped into her drawing book, a sketch of herself that Wintersteller had given her before he fled to Switzerland a few months earlier. Most of the younger children clutched dolls or teddies. Oskar travelled with Klara. She would never have left without her little blue bear – she loved him quite as much as her mother once did.
The journey across three countries took 14 hours. When they reached the last station before the Dutch border, German guards boarded the train and alarmed the children by bursting into each compartment to search the luggage. No unauthorised belongings were found in Klara’s suitcase. The locket sewn inside her coat belt remained undiscovered - even Klara didn’t know it was there.
Shortly after crossing into Holland the train stopped again. This time there was a very warm reception from the Dutch guards and the generous folk who greeted the youngsters. Every passenger was given a drink of hot cocoa, a bag of sandwiches, a chocolate bar and an orange. For the hungry and bewildered children this was a wonderful welcome to their new life away from the Nazi dystopia.
Having eaten her sandwiches, Klara, still clutching Oskar, fell asleep cuddled up against her friend Hannah. They were on the last leg of their journey to the Hook of Holland. Klara was now wearing the silver locket. At Rebecca’s request, the chaperone on the Kindertransport train had unpicked it from its hiding place inside the youngster’s coat belt once they had crossed into Holland.
‘Get all of your luggage ready children, and make sure you are wearing your ID labels.’ The young teacher made a quick check of the compartments for which she was responsible. ‘We will be boarding the boat for England very shortly.’
The long North Sea crossing should have been exciting, but the sea was rough and many of the unfortunate children were seasick. Klara was lucky. Totally exhausted from the ordeal of the interminable rail journey, she fell asleep on the bunk that she shared with Hannah.
‘Wake up Klara, we are in England.’
Hannah was as white faced as the other two children in the cabin, but all were now excited by the loud clankings, engine noises and vibrations that signalled their arrival in Harwich. Here, they were checked against the register. Those who hadn’t yet been allocated foster homes went by bus to the nearby Dovercourt Camp. The others were all London bound. The train from Harwich carried its precious cargo to Liverpool Street station where the foster parents were waiting to collect their new family members.
‘Hello Klara, I’m Penny,’ said a small, middle-aged lady, with kind eyes and ginger hair escaping from beneath a grey hat. ‘You can call me Auntie Penny. This is Uncle Colin. We live near the sea in Wales.’
Klara, who had been taught some basic English at school, didn’t understand much, but Penny and Colin Williams seemed very kind and friendly. Hannah’s fosterers were in a rush to catch their Brighton train, but the two friends were allowed to have a final hug before they went their separate ways – faces blotched with tears. Klara sobbed uncontrollably for several minutes.
1942 – Vienna / Czechoslovakia / Poland
Rebecca Bergmann continued to live in Vienna, having no prospect of obtaining a visa to join her daughter in England. By 1942, unable to afford the rent, Rebecca moved in with her cousin Gisela, two miles south of the city. This was a slightly safer location but she knew that the police could come at any time.
The fateful day came on 15th September, 1942. Rebecca and Gisela were arrested in the evening and given ten minutes to pack a case. They were told that they were being taken to a relocation centre in Czechoslovakia. They endured appalling conditions during the long rail journey in cattle trucks but they were permitted to send one briefly worded postcard upon arrival.
‘Gisela and I are safe in a relocation centre in Czechoslovakia. We have food to eat and are treated well. Remember I love you always and hope to join you when the war is over. Mutti’
This card was sent to Klara from Theresienstadt camp. It was the last card that she received from her mother. Two weeks later Rebecca and Gisela were amongst the prisoners who were transferred to Poland. They probably knew their fate when they saw the station name after another dreadful journey in hugely overcrowded trucks. Treblinka!
Apart from a few strong men who were selected for unspeakably grisly work, all of the new arrivals perished within the hour. It is unlikely that many of them really believed that they were being taken to the showers.
1939 / 88 - England
When Klara enrolled at her junior school she was advised to change the spelling of her name to the Anglicized Clara. She also took her foster surname, Williams, which helped to avoid anti-German feeling both during and after the war.
The postcards from her mother had stopped coming after September, 1942. Clara still hoped that she would hear good news, right up until that terrible day in 1945 when the Red Cross reported that Rebecca and Gisela had not survived their transfer to Treblinka. The postcards, the locket with her parents’ photos, the Wintersteller sketch and the faithful Oskar were the only reminders that she possessed of her heroic Mutti and Vati.
As the years passed, Clara bonded very strongly with the kindly Williamses. They in turn loved her as much as if she’d been their own daughter. They were there to comfort her when, aged 13, she learned that she had lost her mother. They encouraged the interest that she had developed in art and helped her gain a place in the local college. There was never any question of her leaving their home, until she met Simon Wallace, a young theatre set designer. They courted for two years whilst she was working for the Arts & Culture team of her county council.
After Simon was offered a post with the New Empire Theatre in Scunthorpe, the young couple moved to the east coast where they married. Their daughter, born in 1959, was named Rebecca in honour of the wonderful mother who Clara remembered every day of her life. The young Rebecca took her turn in looking after Oskar, the faded blue teddy bear. He’d been treated well through the years, and a few sewing repairs kept him in good shape. When granddaughter Ellen arrived in 1988, she took over the responsibility of giving the faithful Oskar her continuing and unconditional love.
2016 – The Atwell Gallery, Edinburgh
‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ the worried attendant asked Clara.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m quite alright - just being a bit silly. My granddaughter and her children are on the way up.’
Shortly there was a commotion at the entrance to Gallery 3 and a young woman with her two children rushed in. Ellen sat next to her grandmother and put a comforting arm around her.
‘Sorry Gran, Tomas and Anna both needed the loo.’
Clara motioned the 4-year-old twins to come and sit with her.
‘That’s a painting of my mother,’ she explained to them, pointing at Wintersteller’s ‘Rebecca’. ‘Can you see what she’s holding?’
In the young girl’s hand, casually dangling by her side, was a familiar figure.
‘OSKAR!’ they both exclaimed.
(c) Alan Carr, December 2017
