While We’re Far Apart

by Lynn Austin

  “Because he knows that I was the one who made you stop seeing him.”

  “Oh no!” Esther felt sick to her stomach. Mr. Mendel was in terrible trouble, and she was to blame. She never should have trusted Jacky Hoffman. “Did Jacky really set the fire?” she asked her brother.

  “Y-yes,” Peter said. “Yes. Him and Gary . . . and . . . and me.”

  “You?” Esther breathed.

  Peter began to sob, making it hard to understand what he was saying. “I found the kerosene . . . I went inside with them because I was mad at Daddy for going away. . . .”

  “No,” Esther murmured. “Oh, Peter . . . no.”

  “And . . . and when it started to burn, they . . . they told me to keep my mouth shut or . . . or else . . .”

  “That’s why you couldn’t talk all this time?” Esther remembered how Peter had run into the bedroom as Daddy was packing to leave. Peter had clung to him, whimpering, just as the fire sirens began wailing in the distance. Peter hadn’t said another word since.

  “I didn’t mean to . . .” he wept. “I’m sorry!”

  “Shh . . . shh . . .” Mr. Mendel soothed. He held Peter tightly, consoling him. “I know, I know, Peter. It will be all right.”

  “No it won’t! . . . T-tell them it wasn’t you!”

  “You poor child, holding on to such a terrible secret all this time. No wonder . . . no wonder . . .”

  “Will Peter be in trouble with the police?” Esther asked.

  “He is just a child. Surely the older boy will be held responsible.”

  “What should we do now?” Penny asked.

  “Let him grieve. And then, when Peter is ready, I will call my lawyer and let him hear what Peter has to say.”

  They all sat down in Mr. Mendel’s apartment, and by the time the lawyer, Mr. Stein, arrived, Peter had calmed down. Esther listened in disbelief as Peter explained how he had found the can of kerosene in the basement by the washtubs. He had been angry with Daddy and had wanted to do something drastic to convince him to stay home. The two Hoffman brothers had come along just then. The three of them had crept into the synagogue while the back door was unlocked and hidden in a stairwell until after the men finished their prayers and went home.

  When the boys came out of hiding, Jacky found a room filled with books, and they’d emptied the shelves, ripping out pages and making a huge pile in the middle of the room. Gary poured the kerosene over them while Jacky handed Peter a box of matches. “You want to light it?”

  Peter had been afraid. All of a sudden it hadn’t been fun anymore, and he wanted to go home. They called him a chicken, then tried to force him to light it. Peter had tried to run away, but Jacky caught him and held on to him and made him watch while Gary lit the match and tossed it onto the pile. The paper ignited with a whoosh.

  “You’re guilty now,” Jacky had told him as the books began to smoke and burn. “You better keep your mouth shut, because if you tell anyone, we’ll set you and your house on fire next.”

  Jacky had held Peter’s arms behind his back and made him watch as the flames grew higher and higher, the smoke thicker. Peter had been terrified. He tried to scream but nothing came out. When the fire spread to the curtains, Jacky pushed Peter to the ground and ran. Peter scrambled to his feet and ran out of the synagogue, not stopping until he reached home.

  Esther stared at her brother when he finished his story. He was guilty of arson. She was astounded, grief-stricken. Everything was falling apart. She had wanted to get Mr. Mendel out of trouble, but not this way. “Are they going to arrest my brother?” she asked the lawyer.

  “I already looked into the backgrounds of the two so-called witnesses in preparation for the trial,” he replied. “Jack and Gary Hoffman have a record of vandalism and other delinquent acts. Your brother doesn’t, does he?”

  “No, he’s a good kid,” Esther said. “He didn’t mean to do it.”

  Mr. Stein had been taking notes on a tablet, which he now stowed in his briefcase, snapping the latches shut. “I’ll need a few days to file some motions and bring this new evidence to the police. I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up prematurely, but I think we can get this case closed and the charges against Mr. Mendel dropped.”

  “What about Peter?” Esther asked.

  “He is a minor. I will do my best to ensure that he isn’t charged.”

  Mr. Stein left a few minutes later. Mr. Mendel, Penny, and Peter sat looking at each other as if numb with shock. Esther couldn’t move, either. “I wish I had never trusted Jacky,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter murmured. “I didn’t mean it . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Listen to me, both of you,” Mr. Mendel said. “We all make mistakes, every one of us. But we Jews believe – and I think you Christians do, too – that if we confess our sins to Hashem, if we repent of our wrongdoings and promise to turn away from them and go in a new direction, then He will forgive us. We should make restitution for what we have done whenever possible. And sometimes there are natural consequences from our actions that must be faced. But the Scriptures say that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is Hashem’s mercy toward us. As far as the east is from the west, so far has Hashem removed our sins from us. We can be forgiven. And then we can begin to live new lives from that day forward.”

  Esther knew he was right. She had just listened to the Easter message in church earlier this month. Her sins were forgiven because of Jesus’ death. Peter’s would be, too.

  CHAPTER 48

  JUNE 1945

  JACOB HAD JUST STEPPED onto his porch to check his box for mail when he saw Esther skipping up the sidewalk. “They’re calling this ‘V-E Day,’ Mr. Mendel,” she said. “Victory in Europe Day.” She held up the newspaper she had just purchased to show him the headline: IT’S V-E DAY! Last German Units Yield.

  A week ago, Hitler had committed suicide. Yesterday, Germany had officially surrendered. Today, everyone celebrated. Well, nearly everyone. The Jewish community looked on in stunned horror as the secrets of the extermination camps became fully known, the death trains and gas chambers and crematoriums. The news was worse than anyone could have imagined. The battle-hardened soldiers who had liberated the camps were unable to hide their tears when they glimpsed the shriveled corpses and emaciated survivors. Jacob had made Esther promise not to look at the pictures.

  Now that the Russians occupied Hungary, news slowly trickled in. Jacob had learned that Jews from the villages and provinces had been among the first to be transported to the death camps – towns such as the ones where Avraham and Jacob’s brother Yehuda and most of their extended family lived. The Jews in Budapest, where his brother Baruch lived, had been deported last. Jacob tried desperately to find out about his loved ones, waiting in suspense while organizations like the Red Cross tried to locate missing people and reunite families and send word to relatives in America. These past few weeks of waiting seemed like a lifetime as Jacob braced himself for the worst.

  “I guess this means your father will be coming home soon, yes?” he asked Esther.

  “Yes! We’ll have our daddy back again!” She opened her mailbox and removed two letters. “I was mad at him for going away and leaving us, but now I understand why he had to fight.”

  And poor little Peter had been angry, too. Angry enough to commit a terrible act. Jacob had learned two days ago that all charges against himself – and Peter – had been dropped. He thought it fitting that Miriam Shoshanna had saved Peter Shaffer, and now Peter Shaffer had saved him.

  “When Daddy comes home I’m going to tell him that I’m proud of him,” Esther said. “See you later, Mr. Mendel.” She waved and ran up the stairs to her apartment. Jacob waved, then turned and opened his own mailbox.

  He found a letter inside addressed to Jacob and Miriam Mendel. He recognized the handwriting immediately. It was Avraham’s handwriting.

  Jacob staggered and nearly fell. He leaned against the porch wall, his heart lurching with
joy and hope. He turned the letter over to rip it open and saw a note in Hungarian scrawled on the back of the envelope in someone else’s writing: Our village is now in Russian hands. I am mailing this to you as I promised your son, Avraham Mendel, and trusting God that it will reach you safely.

  Jacob made his way to his apartment, holding on to the walls and doorframes for support. He sank onto the nearest chair to read the letter, written nineteen months ago.

  October 1943

  Dear Mama and Abba,

  It has been so long since I’ve received a letter from you, and I know the silence must be just as hard for you to bear in America as it is for me here in Hungary. Every time I look at my little daughter and I try to imagine being separated from her, not knowing if she is well or if she is suffering, I understand how you must feel. And so after much prayer, I have decided that I must write this letter to you and trust that Hashem will allow you to receive it in America someday.

  I have made friends with the minister of the Christian church here in our village. He is a very kind man, and I plan to give him this letter and ask him to mail it to you after the war ends . . .

  Jacob read through the rest of the letter quickly to learn what had happened to Avraham, hungry to hear his son’s voice after all this time. He would read it again when he finished, more slowly the second time.

  Avi had known what Hitler was doing to the Jews, even when the rest of the world hadn’t believed it. But his son hadn’t lost faith in Hashem.

  As the prophet Habakkuk has written: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in Hashem my Savior.”

  Avraham described how he had narrowly escaped being conscripted to work in a labor gang when all the other men in the village were taken. Afterward, Avi had decided to flee with his little family to Budapest to stay with Jacob’s brother Baruch.

  I love you, Mama and Abba. And I am hoping that even if the worst happens to us, you will receive this letter, someday. I place all of my trust in Hashem, who is able to keep us in His care.

  Love always,

  Avraham

  Two things in the letter gave Jacob hope: Avraham and his family had been in Budapest all this time, where some Jews had managed to survive. And his son had clung to his faith in Hashem, in spite of everything.

  Jacob hovered near his mailbox for the remainder of June, waiting for more news from Hungary. June turned to July, and he knew from newspaper reports that several organizations were working with the displaced refugees in liberated Europe, trying to reunite families with their loved ones. With millions of people unaccounted for, it was a daunting task. In August, America dropped two atomic bombs and Japan surrendered. The war was over at last.

  Jacob had just returned from prayer at the shul on a hot August afternoon when he found a thick envelope in his mailbox. According to the return address, it was from the Swedish Red Cross in Hungary. His heart pounded so hard with dread and hope and fear that he could scarcely breathe. He hurried across the street again with the parcel clutched to his chest and found Rebbe Grunfeld still in the study room.

  “Yaacov, what’s wrong? You look as white as a ghost.”

  “This came in the mail for me, from Hungary. I have waited for such a long time for news but now . . . I cannot do this alone.”

  “You’re right, Jacob. The very worst thing you could do is read something like that alone. We need one another. And on the day when my letter comes, I know you will stand with me.”

  Jacob handed him the envelope. “Here. Read it to me, please.” The contents would be in Hungarian, a language that the rebbe also spoke. Jacob sat down and waited for him to open it. He couldn’t stop shaking, as if he were standing outside naked in a bitter winter wind.

  “These look like letters, Yaacov. There are several of them.”

  Jacob quickly glanced at the pages. “They are not in Avi’s handwriting, though. That much I can see.”

  “The first one begins, ‘ Dear Mother and Father Mendel. This is your daughter-in-law, Sarah Rivkah, writing this letter to you. Avraham asked me to keep writing to you the way he used to do so that after the war you will know what has become of us.’ ”

  The rebbe stopped and thumbed through the packet. “There are several letters from her in here, all with different dates on them, like a diary.”

  “Then she and Fredeleh are alive?”

  “I will read the last one for you and see.”

  “No, Rebbe! Wait!”

  Now that news had finally come, Jacob wasn’t prepared for it. He wanted to postpone his grief for a little while longer. Hearing the truth would make everything final. “Read the letters in order, Rebbe. I need to hear Sarah Rivkah’s story unfold slowly, so it will be easier to bear when I learn how it ends.” Jacob sat down to listen while Sarah Rivkah told her story, his heart beating as slowly and ponderously as a tolling bell.

  She described how they had settled in Budapest with Jacob’s brother, but eventually Avraham had been taken away to work in a forced labor gang. Before leaving, he had found a Christian orphanage that had agreed to take Fredeleh and hide her there along with other Jewish children.

  “Then I can find my granddaughter there?” Jacob interrupted. “In this orphanage?”

  The rebbe read a little further. “I’m sorry, Yaacov. Sarah writes that she cannot bear to be separated from both Fredeleh and Avraham. She did not take Fredeleh there.”

  Jacob couldn’t blame her. He leaned back in the chair again to listen to the second letter, dated March of 1944, five months ago. The Nazis and Adolph Eichmann had arrived in Hungary. Sarah and the other Jews in Budapest had been rounded up and confined to the ghetto. Meanwhile, Sarah’s family and Jacob’s family – all of the Jews in the provinces – had been deported by train to the death camps.

  The rebbe paused. “Are you all right, Yaacov? Do you need a moment?”

  “I think I already knew the truth,” he said quietly. “We all knew, yes? Even so, it is hard to hear.”

  The news in Sarah’s next letter was even worse. The Nazis had come to liquidate the ghetto in Budapest. They had awakened Sarah, her mother, and Fredeleh at dawn and loaded them onto the deportation trains. But then a miracle, like the one Jacob had prayed for as he and the children had lit candles at Hanukkah: A group of Swedish men had arrived to rescue them, providing false identification papers, which the Nazis had accepted. Sarah, Fredeleh, and a little baby boy were among those who had been spared – but Sarah Rivkah’s mother was taken.

  The rebbe moved immediately to the next letter, which told how a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg had used funds sent by the War Refugee Board to save as many of Budapest’s Jews as he possibly could. Sarah Rivkah had found refuge in a Swedish safe house. The rebbe paused, and he and Jacob stared at each other for a moment. All the fund-raising they had done, all the prayers . . . Hashem had been at work behind the scenes.

  Jacob could hear Sarah’s despair on the next page as she finally took Fredeleh to the convent and surrendered her to the Christians for safekeeping. It meant that one of Jacob’s family members might have survived. His little granddaughter might still be alive, even if Sarah and Avi were not. Sarah then explained that the Nazis and Adolph Eichmann had returned in November, and even the safe houses were no longer safe.

  The rebbe drew a deep breath as he prepared to read the last few letters.

  “ ‘Dear Mother and Father Mendel,

  The few Jewish men who were left in Budapest – some as young as sixteen, some as old as sixty – were taken to the outskirts of Budapest to dig earthworks to stop the advancing Russians. We heard that the Soviet army is moving closer and closer. Meanwhile, the Nazis have never wavered from their plan to deport every last one of us to the camps. But since there are no more trains, Adolph Eichmann decided to round us up and
force us to walk to the German border, more than one hundred miles away.

  They came for us on a day when the weather was bitterly cold, and we were not dressed for it. Many of us were already weak from illness and malnutrition. The Nazis didn’t care. Anyone who collapsed with exhaustion along the way was shot. Those who couldn’t keep up were beaten to death. Some who fell down were later found frozen to the ground. I thought of Avraham and Fredeleh and made myself keep walking. I don’t even know how long or how far we walked.

  When I feared that I couldn’t go another step, Raoul Wallenberg arrived in his big black car like an angel from Hashem. “Does anyone here have a Swedish passport?” he asked. About three hundred of us were allowed to return with him to Budapest.

  I prayed that this nightmare would soon be over. We could hear the battles raging around us in Budapest. But once again, just as the Russians were about to set us free, the Nazis decided to blow up the Jewish ghetto and kill everyone in it who still remained. They took us from the safe houses and marched us to the ghetto to die with all the others. Again, Mr. Wallenberg intervened, warning the Nazis that if they did this horrific deed, he would make certain that they would be charged with murder and genocide after the war. Once again, he saved our lives.’ ”

  Rebbe Grunfeld paused as he struggled to clear the emotion from his throat.

  “So Sarah Rivkah is alive,” Jacob murmured. “I owe this man, Raoul Wallenberg, a great debt. But how do you repay a man for such a thing as this that he did?”

  The rebbe shook his head and turned to the next letter.

  “ ‘Dear Mother and Father Mendel,