My Name is Eva An absolutely gripping and emotional historical novel - Suzanne Goldring Page 0,73

the future.

‘I’m praying they’ll find happiness,’ said Eva. ‘Who knows what awaits them in their old villages at the end of their journey. Will their homes still be standing? They may have been looted, their animals slaughtered. Their fields will be empty.’

‘And what kind of welcome will they receive on their return?’ Sally added. ‘Those who were left behind may have suffered terribly too.’

The girls could barely hear themselves talk over the carnival of clashing music and the jostling of whirling polka dancers on the platform, all celebrating this momentous day. Everyone was dressed in his or her best clothes for this long-awaited journey. The men were smart in white shirts and black suits and many of the women wore white aprons round their waists and had covered their heads with kerchiefs of red, blue and yellow, echoing the colours of the bright flowers embroidered on their skirts.

The train was filling with people and their bundles of possessions. Eva and Sally peered inside the carriages. Each one was lit with flickering candles, mounted on every available ledge with molten wax.

And there was warmth too, with small iron stoves alight, their chimneys like bent arms punching out through a hole in the wall. Every time a stove door was opened, the light of the glowing red-hot embers glinted on glasses of plum liqueur, shining like rubies, set out all around on makeshift tables made from boxes and rough pieces of wood. ‘Come,’ the occupants called, ‘you must have a drink with us. Na zdrowie,’ they cried to the girls, inviting them to share their drinks and their happiness.

These laughing, home-going Poles were the ones who hadn’t wanted US visas, or had not been eligible for them. The precious visas were so slow in coming and only those who could prove they had suffered persecution were automatically considered.

‘I can’t help remembering the words of those American Baptist pastors who visited,’ Eva said. ‘They were trying to get a bill through Congress to admit displaced persons. I heard them speaking to camp residents and they said, “You are not strangers to us. America was founded by the voluntarily displaced. We are a nation of the displaced from all the lands.” It’s such an enormous huge country. Surely they could relax the rules and take many more people.’

‘You’d think so,’ Sally said, ‘but America only wants the fittest to come. They want workers who are completely healthy. They need farmers and strong labourers. Why on earth would they want many of the people here? We may have done our best to feed them up and get them fit, but after their years of deprivation so many are not good enough for the United States. Or they’ve got relatives who are in a poor state of health, or children with handicaps. America doesn’t want to be burdened with people like that.’

‘At least everyone leaving today is stronger and healthier than when they first arrived here. We’re sending them back in better condition.’

‘Yes, but they’re not the same people who left their villages all those years ago,’ Sally said. ‘Look around you. In every car there are tired mothers with demanding babies and grandmothers weakened by years of starvation and gruelling labour. They may all be happy to be going home, but not everyone of them is able to dance with the energy of those girls.’

They watched as children chased each other up and down the platform, laughing. ‘It’s hard to believe that not so long ago, even the youngest were working in German factories,’ Eva said.

‘Children are so resilient. But many of them have seen terrible things during their time as slave workers. Things they may never be able to forget. Brutal punishment, even executions.’

‘One boy told me the bright and clever ones were picked out and started work from the age of ten,’ Eva said.

‘How typically efficient of the Germans, spotting their nimble fast fingers could assemble small machinery parts with precision and speed,’ Sally said, frowning with disgust.

‘When we unpacked those Red Cross parcels at Christmas,’ Eva said, ‘they sorted and stacked the contents so quickly and neatly.’

For the camp’s first Christmas the staff had decided all the residents should have a gift. Some of the older orphaned children, who had formed a group under a team leader, were entrusted with the task of splitting the consignment. The children had filed across the snowy paths from their quarters to the warehouse, singing as they marched and swinging their arms in time, just as