Census

The little girl watched the fly flitting around the other children’s heads, occasionally settling for a moment before setting off again. The speaker walked to the front of the hall and was introduced by the headteacher. The general chatter around her faded as the screen was filled by a picture of an old piece of paper and the smart lady that looked like a glamorous granny regarded them and took a deep breath. She looked down at the image of the piece of paper on her screen. It was yellowed and flaking away. The folds had become tears and it was really just fragments rather than a page. The ink was faded and the words written in the various columns barely recognisable as a language other than English. Her mother had told her the story before and now it was her turn, albeit without the hint of an accent that her mother had retained throughout her long life. She faced the fidgety seated children and began.

This dusty page was from the 1939 census in Nazi Germany. It, like many other census documents before and since, contained details of every person living in the house...

She explained how the piece of paper shouldn’t be in her possession. Nearly 80 years ago it should have made its way to the offices of the census bureau in Germany where the information written on it was collated and analysed. She passed on the family legend of how the piece of paper was in one way their death sentence and in another their lifeline.

She began to warm to her theme and told the story of how the local official, and family friend, had knocked at her mother’s door accompanied by a police officer and dutifully wrote down everyone’s name, age, gender and occupation. Her mother could remember the visit, the frightening uniform worn by the official and the nervousness of the friend who was also the mother of a girl she regularly played with. At the time her mother hadn’t known about the column for 'Jew' that was filled in for her and all her family. But she told her daughter how she remembered it being discussed later, a new addition to past census documents but still seemingly innocuous at the time.

Some months later, her mother recalled, the friend slipped into the house one evening, careful not to be seen. She had given them the paper and after hushed and worried words hurried away, never to be seen again. Their bags were soon packed.

The lady at the front of the hall told a harrowing tale of escape across Europe. Night-time travels by cart and foot. Aborted train journeys where they were threatened by officials and forced to disembark and were lucky to escape. Crossing borders at night away from official eyes and finally a terrifying ordeal cramped into a fishing boat that took them to safety.

The little girl was listening and trying to understand the significance of the piece of paper. The next images that appeared on the screen were old photographs. There was a happy family group, smiling in the sunshine, arms around each other in old fashioned looking shorts and shirts.

The lady introduced some of the people in the photos but she didn’t have happy stories to tell. She explained that these pictures were all that remained of most of her mother’s family. Only the younger children and their mother had made the harrowing journey and not all of them had survived the ordeal. The smiling father and an older brother had remained to look after the family home. The grandparents that hadn’t been well enough to travel has also stayed behind. With a pause and a glance to the teacher for reassurance the lady continued. She explained the significance of the piece of paper.

She told how information from the census was used throughout Germany during the Nazi regime, and later other occupied countries. Her grandfather, uncle, numerous cousins and friends of the family had all been murdered. The census data was used to identify and locate them and other people who were Jewish, who came from Romany backgrounds or other groups that were selected by Nazi officials and persecuted, imprisoned and killed.

The friend that had removed the page from the census had bought enough time for some of them to escape. Without their name, faith and address recorded on the census, to begin with they slipped through the net. But, bureaucracy eventually caught up with the ones left behind and once identified it was easy for them to be rounded up and ultimately for many of them to be killed.

The lady put the picture of the piece of paper back on the screen.

Not many of their belongings had made it to their destination, she said. But with a tear in her eye the lady at the front told of the significance of the piece of paper that had survived and been preserved. It was a reminder of the kindness of a neighbour. It was a reminder of the value of information.

She said that similar pages like this had led to the death and torture of countless people. The fact that they had the page had helped to save their lives. But ultimately it was an example of how data about us can be used against our will to do us harm.

The children were quiet as they filed out of the hall. The elegant lady gathered her things. Her head full of thoughts about her family and the ancestors she’d never met that didn’t survive. Her mother’s friends that didn’t have a kindly neighbour risking their own safety and life by tearing a page out of the census.

As she moved to stand and file out of the hall with her friends. The little girl realised her foot had gone numb, and she hadn’t noticed the hardness of the floor like she did usually. A noise above her head caught her attention, this time she could hear the fly buzzing around the room.