Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads

by S. R. Mallery

“Mama, tell me again, why are we here? Why did the police come in the middle of the night and take us away?” Her twelve-year-old daughter Berta, old enough to demand answers, was still too young to interpret her mother’s frightened eyes and the changing world around them.

  “I don’t know Berta, but hopefully we can go home soon. Now try to sleep. Go shushy…” she soothed, using the same, comforting phrase she had always uttered when sending her children off to sleep. But as Berta and her young sister huddled against their mother, the girl’s mind stayed active. If they make us go to Poland, I will write Herschel in Paris to send us money; he has always taken care of us ever since Papa died. My brother will never let us down.

  Just thinking of Herschel relaxed her and she started to doze off, when suddenly, hoarse, guttural words ripped through the night air. “Get up! You must cross the border now! Your new home will be in Lodz, Poland. Now, get going!” The guard’s ferocity matched his twisted face.

  By the time they had reached Lodz, they were marched behind large wrought-iron gates and herded past various buildings whose shutters creaked and rattled in the wind as they trudged by. Once inside their sleeping quarters, Berta managed to scribble a quick note to her brother, “We have been picked up by the police and are penniless. Please send some money to us at Lodz. Love to you from us all, Berta.”

  She gently unclipped a pendant from around her neck that she had always treasured and handed it over to a woman who claimed she could get the note out safely to Herschel as an exchange. She knew she would have to lie to her mother later and claim her heirloom jewelry had gotten lost in the shuffle somehow when they were detained at the border, but for now, all she could think of was Herschel coming to the rescue.

  Herschel did receive the note a few days later, and promptly threw up his consommé avec pain lunch. That afternoon, wandering the pulsing Parisian streets, he ended up at a shop where he purchased a small, but accurate gun.

  He had had enough. The next day, before anyone knew to stop him, he entered the German Embassy, marched directly up to the first official he saw and shot him squarely in the chest, then turned to face four guards with pistols aimed at his head.

  Ernst vom Rath, a bit player in the Nazi government, would have surely gone through his entire life unknown and unappreciated had it not been for his encounter with Herschel, which instantly engraved his name into history books forever. As vom Rath lay dying, Herschel told the police, “Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on this earth!”

  But Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, was not convinced. When vom Rath died, he blamed all Jews for Herschel’s work, and devised an immediate plan of retaliation.

  In the dark, Marthe dressed haphazardly, with missed buttons and an unzipped-to-the-top skirt, anxious to get to work early to make sure all was well with Herr Kaiser. But approaching the boarding house, she stalled. There, in front of the entrance, was an assortment of furniture pieces, along with boxes and trunks overflowing with clothing, knick-knacks, books, and dishes, all juxtaposed against the building and blocking the sidewalk. Passerby’s, trying to edge their way through, had given up and finally, simply milled around with the boarders, comparing notes and talking excitedly.

  “What is happening?” Marthe asked one of them leaning against a sofa back.

  “Why, haven’t you heard? They’ve arrested Herr Kaiser, and Herr Gutterman is leaving us to join the Gestapo!”

  “Arrested Herr Kaiser?” Marthe’s stomach flip-flopped. “Why?”

  “They said he had Jewish connections; I don’t really know the details.” The boarder sounded slightly annoyed; after all, Herr Kaiser’s safety wasn’t nearly as important as losing a good concierge.

  Barely touching the banister, Marthe flew up the stairs to Herr Kaiser’s room, where she encountered the movers already hauling off his furniture piece by piece. The comforter still lay there, neatly folded on the end of the bed, but she didn’t dare check for passports in front of the big, burly men. Instead, she feigned a nonchalant attitude while dusting, humming slightly as she worked her way over towards the bed. They seemed amused by her cleaning at the last minute, but she didn’t care. It provided her with an excuse to stay close as they continued carrying items downstairs to load onto a large van.

  Checking the comforter proved difficult; she had performed her job so well, she had to struggle to push two fingers way up into the batting. Frantically twisting her hand to the right then to the left, she couldn’t feel anything. She breathed a sigh of relief and started to withdraw her fingers, when she felt it. One of the hard, leather corners blocked her hand on the way out, bending her index finger. Shoving her other trembling fingers to the left of the passport, she touched another hard edge, and another, and another until finally, she realized all fifty of them were there, intact, ready for an exchange.

  “You, please, let us finish our job. Danke,” one of the movers grumbled as he entered the room on his eighth trip from downstairs.

  On pins and needles, she stood back and watched the rest of the furniture being carted off—his bedside table, dressing table with the beveled-edged mirror, his prized phonograph player, his Beidermeir armoire as well as a red, gold, brown, and black Oriental rug, all slated for the small moving van parked below. Angling further out of the window, her heart still hammering, she could see the men slowly filling the truck with not only Herr Kaiser’s furniture, but other people’s property as well. After all, decent antiques could still fetch a hefty price at local auction houses.

  Back in the room, she scooped up the comforter just in time to hear Herr Gutterman’s triumphant voice blasting from the street.

  “I tell you, it was one of the most exciting moments of my life, Frau Lieppman. I should have joined up with the Fuhrer a long time ago. Yes, it is a very big honor to be part of his great movement!”

  Marthe quickly restored the comforter to the end of the bed, seconds before a mover came into the room, grabbed it, flung it carelessly over his shoulder, and marched downstairs to toss it out on the street where it remained, along with Herr Kaiser’s less important items, abandoned and unguarded.

  People were beginning to stroll past the quilt, unaware of its significance and Marthe’s heartbeat gathered speed. As soon as Herr Gutterman’s voice faded around the corner, she double-stepped down the stairs and hurried across the street to a local restaurant, to wait for the perfect moment to seize the comforter. But with each passing hour of slowly sipped tea, Marthe became more and more agitated. She didn’t dare attempt a rescue in the midst of so much activity, yet the thought of fifty Jews unable to obtain their freedom made it difficult to breathe.

  “Madam, are you planning on staying at your table all day?” the waiter’s tone was unmistakable.

  Quickly paying the bill, she slipped a generous tip under her napkin and went scouting for another spot to wait. An old, abandoned car proved to be perfect. Near an alleyway, it was off the beaten path and crouching down behind it, she began her possibly long vigil.

  As the night sky infused navy blues with a deep rose, she noticed fewer people mingling about. This was her chance. She stood up, stretched, and was cautiously inching out from behind the automobile when she heard the first sound. Unable to identify it at first, its eerie quality instantly put her on edge. Soon, tiny staccato clinks were sounding everywhere, like delicate wine glasses splintering against stone walls. At first they appeared faint and inconsistent. But as the din increased, so did the thuds and high-pitched fractures until Marthe became truly alarmed.

  She raced around the corner to a neighboring street where she knew a Jewish school was located. Stunned, she could hear screams coming from inside as she watched one of the children opening up a window and yelling, “Help us, they’ve locked us in—please dear Gott, help us!” The girl struggled to escape onto a windowsill, but someone inside pulled her back, kicking and screaming.

  “They’ve set fire to
the synagogue down the block. Come and look!” a man bellowed as he ran by. Marthe saw other people streaming towards a freshly painted building she must have passed by hundreds of times in the past, but never noticed. Its wooden front doors were wide open and inside, men in brown shirts and swastikas were pouring gasoline on the seats, even the holy arks, then in unison, igniting everything. As the flames danced and crackled, Marthe could hear the fire trucks coming, their sirens howling so ferociously she had to cover her ears. When they arrived, their brakes shuddered and squealed as firemen leapt off of die loschfahrzeuge and sprung into action, concentrating only on the neighboring buildings. The synagogue was left to burn.

  Once each section of the temple started to kindle, the white walls grayed, then blackened with smoke. Flames reached up and licked the large Jewish star, incinerating each of the six points until finally, all that was left of the symbol was a small part of its original center, hollowed out.

  In his living room, Hans paced endlessly. Not having heard from Marthe all day, now, with the evening air settling in, he was beginning to panic.

  After a long bus ride, he began his trek towards the boarding house, aided by hazy streetlights gently beaming down a spotted path on city block after city block. Suddenly, he heard a loud, harrowing thud followed by a scream. Barreling forward, he felt something graze his left cheek and as he raised his fingers to touch it, felt his skin there moisten. Fresh blood, he thought, what the hell is going on?

  Up ahead, a mob had gathered around the old Wasserman store. Chairs, pipes, bricks, loose cobblestone, anything they could grab, were being hurled at the storefront windows and when the plate glass splintered and fell, the crowd cheered, laughing and slapping each other on the back.

  Hans hurried on, his heart rapping, his mouth dry. Passing by his favorite movie house, he could feel another crowd swelling behind him, driving him inside. At first he couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black theater as people pressed against him so vehemently he had to hold onto the wall for support. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, he could discern a few people down in the front row being dragged up on stage, crying and pleading.

  Once the house lights were flipped on, he recognized several of the victims. It was members of the Federman family—Moshe Federman, Sadie, and Sarah cowering together Stage Right, sobbing, as two guards came forward and started beating them. Half-hearted protests burst from the front row, while Judith Federman and her sons Leo and Hirsch were forced to watch their family attacked.

  Nausea instantly made Hans gag, and pushing his way out of the theater, he broke into a dead run towards the boardinghouse, gulping air and thinking of the Av Harachamin—a prayer for Jewish martyrs he had learned at the university from his Semitic friends. Around the corner, broken glass glistened on the streets as the largest mob of the night swelled and rumbled towards the Lieberstrasse House.

  In front of the building, a lone man straddled several huge crates stacked together, waving his arms and shouting, “Germany is for true Germans only. Juden es Vorboten! Jews are forbidden!”

  The crowd took up the cry. “Germany is for true Germans only! Juden es Verboten! Jews are forbidden!”

  Reflections from the different fires bounced and flickered against buildings, cars, and faces, reminding him of a horror picture he and Marthe had seen not so long before, where a vampire’s face was illuminated by the glow from people’s torches. The orator’s face remained hidden from view, the swell of the crowd keeping his voice unrecognizable. But then the crowd cheered again, and the man slowly turned his face in Hans’ direction. It was Herr Gutterman, distorted with power and rage.

  Hans gasped, and when people turned to stare at him, immediately ducked back into the shadows of a nearby alley, frantic at the thought of trying to find Marthe to extricate her from this frenzy. Seconds later, he had slowly inched his way out when suddenly two small arms encircled him from behind. Jerking backward, he nearly knocked Marthe over as they both fell hard onto an overflowing garbage can, all four legs splaying upward.

  “I thought I would never find you!” Hans murmured, stroking her hair and trying to blink back tears.

  “Hans, the comforter—Herr Kaiser—it’s horrible…” Marthe could only string a few words together at one time as she stood up, flipping off bits of garbage from her skirt.

  “What is it? What are you trying to say?” he coaxed.

  Finally, she managed to spit out a complete sentence. “Herr Kaiser was arrested before he could transfer the passports! All fifty of them are still in the comforter!”

  They both pivoted towards the forgotten coverlet, thrown recklessly over a dresser sitting on the sidewalk to the left of Herr Gutterman. Then slowly, they turned to face each other, their eyes the size of a Nickel 1 Reichsmark.

  Krystallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was in full swing. Books were being yanked out of stores and libraries and thrown onto huge bonfires that hissed and crackled up towards the blackened sky as possessed people danced up and down, laughing, howling, out of control.

  Marthe and Hans watched Herr Gutterman suddenly leap down from his makeshift podium to yell, “Help me people! Let’s fill this comforter with more books so we can forge the largest fire in the world! We’ll wipe out every Communist intellectual and Jewish book in existence!”

  With the help of three other men, they dragged the comforter over to a nearby store and started loading it with dozens of books. Hoisting it up like a tent, they marched over to the fire and on the count of One-two-three–go! flipped the books up into the air and onto the fire.

  The enraptured crowd chorused a one-two-three–go! with each new toss of books onto the snapping, popping fire. On the last trip, when the coverlet came dangerously close to the flames, Hans had to pin Marthe back from charging over to try and stop the proceedings.

  After a while, Herr Gutterman and his cohorts had depleted all the books and were on to the next inspired offense. “Let’s gather up the glass from the street and throw it all into their ghetto. Let glass rain down on all the Juden! Down with the Juden!”

  People applauded and cheered before gathering shards of glass to fling beyond the ghetto walls. Bleeding hands left the glass red, but they were oblivious; this night had become far too exciting to worry about such trivialities.

  Frustrated, Herr Gutterman started hunting for some sort of tool to expedite the process. His eyes lit on the comforter and running towards it, called out for everyone to bring their glass pieces over to him. As soon as he laid the quilt flat on the street, jagged fragments were dumped onto its soft folds, mounding a pile of glass at least a foot high. Then each corner was grabbed and soon, the comforter was swinging back and forth as it was shifted over to the iron gates just outside the ghetto. Crussssshhhh—crussshhh—crussshhh—crussshhh—it chimed, until at last, the men halted in front of the gates.

  “One-two-three–go!” Everyone screamed, watching the glass fly up into the air, disappear into the dark, then fall like slivered rain from a noiseless sky onto the courtyard of the ghetto.

  Craving an encore, Herr Gutterman started in again. “Let’s do it again, only this time, let the comforter GO! Ready?”

  The crowd followed suit, chanting, “One-two-three—Let GO!” Suddenly, the entire comforter was released, flying over the gates like an Arabian carpet floating in space.

  Hans and Marthe held their breaths, waiting. From out of the ghetto came only stillness; no one stepped out or even showed their head. After a few minutes, the crowd drifted off, bored, eager for better entertainment elsewhere, and as their footsteps faded, Marthe and Hans inched forward cautiously, gripping each other’s hand, hoping for any sign of life rustling behind those ghetto walls. But everything stayed as silent as a snow’s first fall.

  That night, safe in their apartment, Hans and Marthe collapsed together on their sofa, sobbing and promising each other they would exit Germany at the very next opportunity. But first, they had to make sure. By morning, after
a hurried cup of coffee and day-old apple strudel, they gingerly walked down Lebenstrausse Street, stopping by the ghetto gates. Still, there was no sign of life.

  And no sign of the comforter.

  Shaking their heads, they moved on, Hans grim, Marthe tear-stained, just as fifty men, women, and children gratefully boarded a train out of Germany.

  A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

  As a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, it remained a mystery to Lizzy why her mother, Ruth, would always swear upon entering her daughter’s bedroom. Never mind the fact that stepping into Lizzy’s bedroom was similar to guerilla warfare; the land mine of socks, shoes, stuffed animals, and Barbies scattered on the floor often made Ruth trip, and one time catapulted her so far into the room, if there hadn’t been a bed or chair to break her fall, her neck could easily have been broken.

  “Let’s face it. You’re a slob. I was a slob. Hell, we come from several generations of slobs,” Ruth kept muttering, shaking her head in acknowledgment of their bad family trait.

  On the other hand, in Manhattan, Mark was the model child. His mother never swore at him; there was no need. By evening, after a quiet meal with the nanny, Mark was already in his bedroom tidying up, a good half hour before his mother even got a chance to visit. Anything to avoid her disapproval.

  Sometimes his mother would attempt a smile at the fastidiousness of her boy, her thin, tight lips flat-lining. In her heart, she knew no girl would ever be good enough for him.

  Each night after Lizzy had crawled into bed and received at least twenty hugs and kisses from her mom, her favorite thing to do was to sleep with only her undies on, wrapped up like a blintz in her treasured rose-colored satin comforter, sewn by her great grandmother. She would rub the quilt with her fingers as she wriggled around inside her soft cave until finally, she would settle down to let the ‘Sandman’ do his thing.

  Mark would have loved to cuddle as well, but somehow his mother was never able to take enough time out of her busy schedule to stay with him for very long. He did get a goodnight kiss of course, but often it didn’t quite make his cheek. Still, he knew how to keep up appearances, and being the perfect child, never complained. He had learned early about locking in his sadness.