Imperfect Elegy for Mary Richardson

We do not know exactly what she did. A Jewish woman,
Mary Richardson: she did not let the Jersey Field Command
deport her to be gassed. The Wannsee resolutions
did not apply to her. She must have been inspired, and had
remarkable wits about her, and a great composure. She must
have played the Taj Mahal of tricks. She ought to be as famous
as Napoleon. But we do not know. Here’s what we know.

Faced with the fascist need to write in pen and ink
the name, eye-colour, birthmarks and number of nose-hairs
of all the living, and the dead, and the soon to die,
she gave a false name and a false place of birth.
From Erica Richardson, née Olvenich, born Amsterdam,
she changed in a simple, admirable lie, to Christian Mary.
Mary Richardson, née Algernon, born New Amsterdam.

But some Nazi with an expert eye, like a bird-spotter,
thought she looked Jewish; did a bit of sleuthing.
Arrested, she was taken home to pack for shipping
to ‘a nice, respectable camp’, as the officer said.

But her greatest deed, her best ruse, is lost to us.
We know as much about it as we know about
the life and exploits of some Stone Age hunter. We know,
of course, about Hitler’s diet and the wacky pills he had
from Theodor Morell, and the tedious harangues he gave
to yawning groupies through the Berchtesgaden nights.

But as for Mary Richardson, who scored
one point against him, this

is what we know:

‘She managed to
divert the attention of
her German guards’

and escaped to the house of Albert Bedane, who had a cellar,
and he kept her safe until the end of the Hitler war.

‘There’s no record’, said the man at the Heritage Trust
(Research Department), ‘of what she actually said or did to make
the Germans look away, or move away, for long enough that when
they finally returned, or turned around, she had gone - escaped
completely.’ ‘Oh look,’ did she say? ‘There’s a sea-eagle’.
‘I have to change my clothes,’ did she say? ‘Do you mind?’

‘She managed to
divert the attention of
her German guards’

- better a blank page than this, better a silence. Words
should open dark curtains, not close them. Here’s
a great old story: not ‘Heracles sliced each Hydra head
then singed each severed neck with a burning brand
so another bunch of heads would not grow back’,
but merely: ‘Heracles managed to kill the Hydra’.

Stare all you like at the close-mouthed or deaf page
of the ‘most authoritative history of the Jews in Jersey’,
it will not tell. It seems she did not tell. ‘It was nothing,’
did she say in later years? ‘It was really nothing at all.’