Yes, Karen understood it all and told Aage and Meta she didn’t mind staying with them for the time being.
“And Karen, darling. Because we are borrowing you for a little while and because we love you so much, we wonder … would you mind borrowing our name?”
Karen thought about that. It seemed to her that Aage had other reasons. His question had that grown-up sound … like the sound of her mommy and daddy talking behind closed doors. She nodded and said that it would be fine with her too.
“Good! Karen Hansen it is, then.”
They took her hands as they did every night and led her to her room and put on the low lamp. Aage played with her and tickled her, and Maximilian got mixed up in the fracas. She laughed until she couldn’t stand any more. Then she got under the covers and said her prayers.
“… God bless Mommy and Daddy and Hans and my new baby brother and all my aunts and uncles and cousins … and God bless the Hansens who are so nice … and God bless both Maximilians.”
“I will be back in a few minutes to sit with you,” Meta said.
“That’s all right. You don’t have to stay with me any more. Maximilian will take care of me.” “Good night, Karen.” “Aage?” “Yes?” “Do the Danish people hate the Jews too?”
My dear Dr. and Mrs. Clement,
Has it already been six weeks since Karen came to us? What an exceptional child she is. Her teacher tells us she is doing extremely well in school. It is amazing how quickly she is picking up Danish. I suppose that is because she is with children her own age. She has already gathered a large number of girl friends.
The dentist advised us to have one tooth pulled to make
room for another. It was a small matter. We want to start her on some sort of music lessons soon and will write more about that.
Every night in her prayers ..
And there was a letter from Karen in big block print:
DEAR MOMMY, DADDY, HANS, MAXIMILIAN, AND MY NEW BABY BROTHER: I MISS YOU MORE THAN I CAN TELL YOU… .
Wintertime is a time for ice skating on the frozen banks of the Limfjorden and for building snow castles and for sledding and for sitting before a blazing fire and having Aage rub your icy feet.
But winter passed and the Limfjorden flowed again and the countryside burst into wild bloom. And summertime came and they all went away to the beach at Blokhus on the North Sea and she and Meta and Aage took a sailboat a hundred miles out.
Life was full and rich with the Hansens. She had a flock of “best” girl friends, and she loved to shop with Meta at the smelly fish market or stand beside her in the kitchen learning to bake. And Meta was so good in so many things like sewing or with studies, and she was a wonderful comfort at Karen’s bedside if there was a sudden fever or sore throat.
Aage always had a smile and open arms and seemed nearly as wise and gentle as her own daddy. Aage could be mighty stern, too, when the occasion demanded.
One day, Aage told Meta to come into the office when Karen was at her dancing lesson. He was pale and excited.
“I have just heard from the Red Cross,” he said to his wife. “They have all disappeared. Completely, no trace. The entire family. I cannot get any information from Germany. I’ve tried everything… .”
“What do you think, Aage?”
“What is there to think? They’ve all been put into a concentration camp … or worse.”
“Oh, dear God.”
They could not bring themselves to tell Karen that her entire family had disappeared. Karen was suspicious when the letters stopped coming from Germany, but she was too frightened to ask questions. She loved the Hansens and trusted them implicitly. Instinct told her that if they did not mention her family there was a reason for it.
Then, too, a strange thing was happening. Karen missed her family a great deal, but somehow the images of her mother and father seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer. When a child of eight has been removed from her parents
for such a long time, it gets harder and harder to remember. Karen felt bad sometimes that she could not remember more vividly.
At the end of a year she could hardly remember when she was not Karen Hansen and a Dane.
CHRISTMAS 1939
There was a war in Europe and a year had passed since Karen arrived at the Hansen house. Her bell-like voice carried a sweet hymn as Meta played the piano. After the hymns Karen went to the closet in her room where she had hidden the Christmas present she had made at school. She handed them the package proudly. It bore a label printed in her hand that read: to mommy and daddy from your daughter,
KAREN.
APRIL 8, 1940
The night was filled with treachery. A misty dawn brought the chilling sound of marching boots to the frontiers of Denmark. Dawn brought barge after barge of gray-helmeted soldiers creeping through fog-filled inlets and canals. The German Army moved in silently with robot-like efficiency and dispersed over the length and breadth of Denmark.
April 9, 1940!
Karen and her classmates rushed to the window and looked up at a sky black with thundering airplanes, which one by one descended on the Aalborg airdrome.
April 9, 1940!
People rushed into the streets in confusion.
“This is the Danish State Radio. Today at 4:15 the German Army crossed our frontier at Saed and Krussa!”
Completely shocked by the lightning stroke and its masterful execution, the Danes clung desperately to their radios to await word from King Christian. Then the proclamation came. Denmark capitulated without firing a shot in her own defense. The crushing of Poland had taught them that resistance was futile.
Meta Hansen pulled Karen out of school and packed to flee to Bornholm or some other remote island. Aage calmed her and persuaded her to sit and wait it out. It would be weeks, even months, before the Germans got the government functioning.
The sight of the swastika and German soldiers opened a flood of memories for Karen, and with them came fear. Everyone was confused these first weeks, but Aage remained calm.
The German administration and occupation forces made
glowing promises. The Danes, they said, were Aryans like themselves. They were, indeed, little brothers, and the main reason for the occupation was to protect the Danes from Bolsheviks. Denmark, they said, would be allowed to continue to run her own internal affairs. She would become a model protectorate. Thus, after the initial shock had subsided, a semblance of normalcy returned.
The venerable King Christian resumed his daily horseback rides from the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen. He rode proudly alone through the streets, and his people followed his lead. Passive resistance was the order of the day.
Aage had been right. Karen returned to school and to her dancing lessons, and life resumed in Aalborg almost as though nothing had happened.
The year of 1941 came. Eight months of German occupation. It was becoming more obvious each day that tension was growing between the Germans and the people of their “model protectorate.” King Christian continued to irritate the conquerors by snubbing them. The people, too, ignored the Germans as much as they could, or, worse, poked fun at their struttings and laughed at the proclamations. The more the Danes laughed the angrier the Germans became.
Any illusions the Danes had had at the beginning of the German occupation were soon dispelled. There was a place for Danish machinery and Danish food and Danish geography in the German master plan; Denmark was to become another cog in the German war machine. So with the example of their fellow Scandinavians in Norway before them, the Danes, by the middle of 1941, had established a small but determined little underground.