Is she taking over?

I found myself the other day considering a situation at work and asking myself what Clara would do – and then decided to take that very same action.

Does this mean Clara and I are alike?

Or am I doing as all good writers advise and writing what I know?

22 August 1942

Now I really am getting to the crucial points in this story. This the date on which Clara is transported to Theresienstadt from Stuttgart.  The Jews to be transported were gathered at the Killesberg exhibition grounds. I’ve almost finished writing this scene. It is the last crossover with  The House on Schellberg Street. The writing has convinced me that Clara was still not absolutely certain of her fate.  Even now she remains hopeful.

The Killesberg still has a big outdoor exhibition site. When I was a student in Stuttgart in 1973 I mainly remember it as being a pleasant enough park. For some reason, though, I didn’t like it. There was no logic to this at all. Was I picking up some bad atmosphere form the place? Or had I actually come across the story of its past and forgotten it again and this was my subconscious telling me this?

The Zeichen der Erinnerung web site gives some information about the transports and a quite interesting account by a German eye witness who saw the transportees depart. It leaves us wondering still: did they know or didn’t they know? Clara’s transport is not mentioned here but it is on the memorial at the Nordbahnhof.

Now I have to deal with the journey to Theresienstadt, life there, and then the transport to Treblinka. I’m not doing any scenes at Treblinka. The final scene will be Clara’s granddaughter, Renate, finding the letter that she wrote but couldn’t send from Rexingen.

I shall put notes at the end of the book about what we think happened to her and how her life ended. We do know though that she was taken to Treblinka. Until we found out about eighteen months ago the family had thought she went to Auschwitz.  

It’s a little shocking that I’m so near the end of the book. It’s perhaps going to come out a little shorter than I’d intended. I do have a couple of extra scenes that I might put in but this must be because they’re necessary, not just to make the book longer. I’ll soon be into editing and redrafting.          

Closing in

The realities of the life of an undesirable person are beginning to hit Clara. She has to travel third class. She must dress sombrely, in second hand clothes. She experiences hunger and cold. She watches other people suffer. She begins to feel her age. 

The real dilemma

We’re moving rapidly into the Holocaust part of the story. The Hilfsklasse class has now received a second visit. Clara has her marching orders. She will now move to Rexingen. She will live amongst Jews even though she no longer considers herself Jewish. She loses her name and becomes Klara Sarah. She has to leave her home.   

Now I’m facing the real crux of this story. How can I make it palatable? If I do make it palatable am I in danger of sanitizing it?

I’m actually gradually discovering that there is an explanation as to why Clara did not escape. The story is uncovering what stopped her reacting to her situation in a more predictable way. Undoubtedly she had a great sense of loyalty towards the Hilfsklasse. She has a lot of faith in human nature. She is extremely optimistic. Surely it can’t get any worse. It has got to start getting better soon. She isn’t really Jewish. She has a sound religious faith.  

So now I give her a setting in Rexingen. Some of this still crosses over with The House on Schellberg Street. After that, though, it gets more challenging.  

Towards persecution

Now it begins in earnest. Clara has to sell her house. The SS arrive to make sure the transaction has gone through. World War II has started. They all worry about rationing and whether the young men will be called up to fight. I’m still in the autumn of 1939 so there’s still a hope that “it will all be over by Christmas”.

We’re moving gradually towards the darker times. Soon Clara will have to go and live in Rexingen. She will live there in poverty but at least she will be free. Then she will have to move on to Theriesenstadt and Treblinka. Will she at last accept that things are bad?  Soon she will bump into Hani at the Nordbahnhof in Stuttgart. I’m minded to make her try to stay optimistic for the young girl’s sake but I think at last in this scene she is beginning to see through the Nazi’s plans. She will still have some hope. And she will continue to see the best in everyone.

Holocaust stories are particularly difficult. If they’re too dark there is little motivation for the reader. If they are too sanitized there is no justice for the victims. A tricky balance.             

A slightly different creative process this time

Normally I know the end of the story before I start. I know the main hurdles it will go through and I have the structure firmly in my head, even if I haven’t written it down. Sure, the characters take off on their own a little but the skeleton of the story remains intact. This time it is a little bit different. 

Am I creating darlings that I’ll need to kill?

I enjoyed writing the end of one chapter and the beginning of another yesterday. I’m conveniently at a stage with this project now where it’s a pleasure to turn to it and I know exactly what I’m going to write. But is it all a little self-indulgent?  

Character building

I’ve worked a little more on Käthe and Hans and on Clara’s relationship with Käthe. The little scene I created there contains an important plot point: Käthe announces her pregnancy. We need to know that the baby should be born in August.  She will actually arrive in July, in a thunderstorm and will be christened wrongly. This latter fact may save her life. Her full story is told in The House on Schellberg Street. But do I need this story strand again in Clara’s Story? It remains to be seen.

In the second chapter, I have Clara feeling strange and working vigorously in the garden.  She’ll soon encounter Kurt again, a young boy with severe learning difficulties, who becomes a bit of a spiritual mentor to Clara. It may become important to both the plot and building the character. The drama of the day is that Rudolf Steiner dies. By the time we come to Rexingen, Clara must be firm in her religious beliefs and sunny and optimistic by nature.

Self-indulgence?

Oh, I am so enjoying writing the scene in the garden where Clara feels the soil in her hands and is filled with hope as she see the buds swelling and looks forward to the birth of her grandchild. I’m looking forward to the next bit where Kurt comes with his words of wisdom. But is all of this needed? Might I eventually have to cut it out? I have several scenes similar to this for The House on Schellberg Street. They seemed precious at the time.

Sometimes writers need to write what readers don’t need to read

Sometimes we just have to write to help ourselves along the way. Look how often first chapters get reduced to one paragraph. I probably need to write those scenes described above so that I get to know my characters a little better. I won’t know for sure if they’re needed until I’ve written the whole novel and started the editing.  Even if they are darlings that need killing it won’t really matter. They will still have been useful.       

Imagination – a tool that helps uncover truth

I’m finding out a lot about the lives of Clara and the people who surround her. Some of it comes from the facts I establish through the usual means – primary resources, documentary evidence from the time and archival records. Much too also comes from the testing with the imagination that all writers use. Thinking is not enough on its own. I guess as we write each answer poses new questions more rapidly than when we merely think. Here are three recent examples.

Leo in World War I

I decided I did need to include some scenes from World War I. I couldn’t really skip form 1913 to 1917 without some mention of it. Anyway something that happened then that made Leo, later called Ernst, turn from science to spirituality. Possibly the only way to find out what was to write about it.

Certainly, there are plenty of eye-witness accounts, several of which were made at the time so these are very authentic. Leo’s character has already been created in earlier chapters. We know also that he became an officer. What did this sensitive young man make of the mud, the cold and the constant fear? What did he do so well that they promoted him?

Still in the trenches, and to some extent joining in the “live and let live routine”, I have him  questioning the morality of it all. He knows the Brits are just sixty metres away and that they are sons, brothers, husbands and fiancés just like his own men. I get him to write it all in a diary that Clara later reads.

Clara and the Steiner Organisation

Clara had some doubts at first about the Steiner belief system. She was born a Jewess, became a protestant and believed, along with her children and husband, more in the natural sciences than in a deity. We know that eventually she was reconciled with the Steiner beliefs – we know that she used these to encourage herself and others when she was exiled to Rexingen. Presumably they also propped her up when she later moved to Theriesenstadt and then Treblinka. So how exactly did she become convinced?  

I’ve decided that Kurt, the young boy who actually was instrumental in persuading her to go and help at the Lauenstein was also an influence in this. I’ve made him obsessed with angels. He is a frequent companion of Clara’s and gets her thinking about angels, too. It is a way in.

It was also important to decide what Clara actually did at the Lauenstein. I imagine she was a manager rather than just a worker though she wouldn’t be afraid to get her hands dirty. I have just written a scene where she is sewing missing buttons on the boys’ shirts and darning the girl’s stockings on her afternoon off. She spends some time with Kurt talking about the angels. She generally gets on very well the children and the other staff despite her doubts. We know, from what is written of her future, that she was always a pleasant and sunny character.  

Käthe

We know that she was feisty.

·         She was the first woman to gain her driving license in Munich.

·         She astounded her husband by driving in the dark.

·          She astounded Munich taxi drivers when she lifted the bonnet on the car and started fiddling with the “sparkling plugs” as she called them.

·         She cursed herself for not shooting Hitler when she had the chance – she was shown into the same anteroom as him when she had a pistol in her bag and didn’t think to use it.

·         She fled to England soon after her daughter had come here on the Kindertransport.

·         She studied natural sciences at university – at a time when not many women went to university and even fewer to study science.

·         She married her professor.

·         She endured a Nazi-enforced divorce.

·         She worked for a London-based advertising company until a few weeks  before her death at the age of 83.

·         She had the audacity to teach English to other non-native speakers yet she spoke with a strong Yiddish accent – that she learned off German Jews living in London, rather than it being natural to her.

Some of these incidents may appear in the story – if they are in the timeline – but I’m now beginning to think she deserves a book of her own.  Does this mean I have another project sorted?

But what was she like as a person and how did she become so brave?

I’m making her slightly awkward. She is a middle child, and they often are uneasy with themselves. She is frustrated to some extent because her brothers seem to her to have it all easier. I’m assuming her courage comes partly from her highly-strung nature.

I’m currently in the middle of the scene where she arrives to tell her mother she is expecting a baby.      

Parallels with the stage

It almost becomes a type of  improvisation. It’s a matter of getting into the heads of characters and seeing what they make of the situations we actually know about and deciding what else is likely to be happening.

The reader, of course, sees mainly Clara’s point of view but I’ve had to pop into the heads of the others too.

I’m certainly learning a lot!