Shores Beyond Shores

by Irene Butter

  “I can’t, Lex,” I said.

  I looked into his sad brown eyes.

  “You know that. Everything’s in motion. I have to be with my family again. There’s nothing left for me in Holland: no family, no home.”

  “But I’d be there,” he said.

  “I want to be with you,” I said. “But I need to be with Mutti and Werner.”

  He looked out over the ocean to the buzz of insects and the breeze-bent grass. Distant ships crawled over the ocean. Then, as if to explain myself, I told him about the miracles that had saved me and most of my family: the passports mysteriously arriving at Westerbork, being saved from the train to Auschwitz, and being confused for my mother. Pappi’s work to save our family from the camps had worked. Now I had to make sure the dream came true. The three of us had to be together.

  “You never know” Lex said. “America might not work out. Your English isn’t so great. You could still end up in Holland.”

  “True.”

  “Promise me we’ll always be friends and that some day, somewhere, we’ll see each other again.”

  “I promise,” I said, and meant it.

  We sat there until darkness seeped into the grass and sea. Lights flickered on across Phillippeville far below us and pinpointed the crawling ships. And the stars glimmered.

  Lex and I said a tearful good-bye the next day. I hugged him, trying to burn a snapshot of him in my mind, as I had no photo. I vowed to think of him when I thought of the ocean, and the motion that was always there and alive.

  46

  Camp Jeanne d’Arc Algeria

  September–October 1945

  Mutti sent photos of her and Werner: it was the first time I’d seen them in half a year. I scrutinized them for any and all details. Werner looked terrific, his hair flawless. People who knew Mutti agreed that she looked exactly the way she used to look, and those people who never met her were amazed how young she looked considering how sick she had been. I wrote back saying I needed to lose weight. I needed a diet.

  The camp kept emptying. People packed, boarded buses, and disappeared down the road. The last we saw were hands waving out windows. Moving to America took the most paperwork, so those of us who were bound for the United States would soon move to Algiers and wait for available ships.

  Just before the Abrahams left, they hugged me by the bus. Mr. Abraham reached his hand out to me, and I saw it held 200 francs.

  “Go on. Take it. It is out of friendship for your father.”

  “Mr. Abraham. Thank you.”

  Saying good-bye to the Joskis and the other kids was hardest. I’d never done so much hugging in my life. Mrs. Joski reminded me that I was wonderful. Dr. Joski and Ellen joined in, while Bob reminded me to clean my teeth after eating dates if I ever hoped to keep a boy.

  The Wolf family, including Mieke, would be going to Algiers with me, though leaving Jeanne d’Arc was hard for her. This was where her mother had died. This was the last place her family had been whole.

  My dreams of Pappi at the beach changed. He wasn’t in his suit on the beach, or in trunks swimming away. He was between worlds, standing in the shallows, the hem of his white, thick bathrobe, catching the tips of small waves. I had to squint against the blinding glare of the sun, sky, and reflection, not able to look at him directly as much as just knowing it was him, and knowing he was smiling. Let’s go, Hasenbergs, he ushered to me. I will, Pappi, I said, but not today. I’ll catch up with you later. When he did turn away I wasn’t scared or sad. I felt warm, even as he walked into or across the water—I couldn’t tell which. Did it matter? He was happy, so I felt happy, too.

  I would always be his sweet little one and most lovable, no matter how old I got. I would always belong to him, and him to me.

  Pappi had saved our family. Luck had been part of it, but not all of it. Mutti, Werner, and I would not be alive and seeking each other if he had not fought so hard to put miracles in motion. If anybody proved that one person can make a difference, it was Pappi. I decided I would best honor Pappi by always fighting for what was right, no matter if that fight seemed impossibly small or impossibly big. Small like soothing Vitek’s screams, or big like crossing an ocean to be with my family.

  I walked through the flowers and around stones to the beach, and waded into the surf. Nobody was there. The ropes and markers had been pulled, but I wanted to go out one more time. The waves fought me, but it didn’t matter. They had always pushed and pulled, long before I arrived on shore and would continue long after. I dove under, re-emerging with strong strokes that cut into the water with ease. I didn’t know when I would see Mutti and Werner again, but I knew I would. I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow, but I could make it. I was fourteen, and would swim through any waters.

  Postscript

  December 2017. I’m looking back across more than seventy years to December 1945. I should have expected that my journey from the shores of Algeria to the shores of the United States would not be simple.

  After Camp Jeanne d’Arc was closed in late summer of 1945, I spent three months in Algiers, the beautiful, whitewashed capitol of Algeria, waiting for a ship bound for America. It was hard to find ships that had room for passengers. Following the war’s end, the United States government had a new mission: get hundreds of thousands of soldiers back home by the holidays. When word arrived that a ship had room, it was 150 miles away in the port of Bougie. It would be leaving the next day.

  I, along with other female refugees from Poland, climbed into a taxi and a small truck and headed across the mountains and desert. Clouds of dust, kicked up by our churning tires, billowed around us as we raced over the ragged and sandy roads. At times, we could barely see, and it was at one of those times on a steep turn on the high road that our taxi crashed into the small truck. Our belongings flew everywhere. Some of the women broke bones, but I was only bruised. We were in the middle of nowhere, but lucky to be alive. We waited in the heat, treating our wounds, as our drivers tried to fix the taxi, which refused to start back up again. Hours ticked by. Finally the engine sputtered back to life, and we were once again speeding to the ocean. We made our ship, the SS Cleveland Forbes, with just moments to spare.

  You’d think my adventure ended there, but it didn’t. I crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a Liberty Ship, a military cargo ship meant to carry supplies and not people. The ship had tall turrets, large guns, and many layers of decks that creaked and moaned over the waves. It was three weeks of dark gray water, light gray sky, and bracing white spray—so different from the calm, aqua blue Mediterranean Sea where I had learned to swim. Another passenger on board, a doctor, told me that the American Liberty ships were so quickly and poorly built that some broke in half during large storms and only the half with the engine made it to land. I know now he was kidding, but at the time I was terrified. There were frequent storms, and I didn’t want to be too far away from the engine room. During the worst tempests, all of us refugees were instructed to sleep on benches in the dining room, which was closer to the decks and lifeboats than our sleeping quarters. One night, silverware crashed to the floor when the roiling sea opened an unsecured drawer. I stayed awake, listening for the sound of the ship splitting in half as the forks and spoons rattled back and forth across the floor.

  Days later, under a brittle, blue clear sky, we carved our way into Baltimore harbor, slicing through frozen ocean until we couldn’t go any further. I climbed into a lifeboat that was lowered into the watery space between ice floes, and stepped ashore: it was December 25, 1945. I was a fifteen-year-old refugee with a sixth grade education, broken English, and a small knapsack of belongings.

  My journey, up until that point in my life, had been by command and not by choice. Pappi and Mutti hadn’t chosen to move to Amsterdam; they were forced to. We didn’t choose to be hurled through the camps, we were forced to. I didn’t choose to live in Algeria alone; I was forced to. But finally, in America, I had choices and could exercise my free will. There were no
restrictions. No yellow stars on clothing. No men with guns stopping people to see papers. My distant relatives and the beautiful city of New York welcomed me with open arms.

  Six months after I landed, Mutti and Werner arrived. I will never forget Werner’s hug. Over the year and a half since we had last seen each other in Switzerland, he had grown taller and bigger. Our hold was full, solid, and strong, and not just bone against bone. We were healthy, and we were together.

  We lived with the Kaplans, Mutti’s cousins, and there was only one rule: we must start over. This meant no talking of the past, especially about the war. No ruminating, and no whining. Beginning fresh necessitated forgetting.

  Werner and I entered high school. It was hard because I had been out of school for three years, but exciting to be in a classroom and learning again! Compared to the camps, high school was a piece of cake. Mutti took a job as a factory worker. She had a much harder time recovering. She had gone from being a wealthy banker’s wife in Berlin to a widow and a low-paid cashier. I privately reminisced about Pappi daily, but she missed him to the core of her being.

  Mieke and Jaap Wolf ended up in New York as well. Early on, we saw each other a few times and then fell out of touch. You’d think we would have clung to each other, given what we’d gone through, but we embraced forgetting, and forgetting was easier without reminders. Even Lex and I lost touch. We wrote a few letters, and he sent me a photo of himself in Amsterdam, inviting me to come, saying the city had changed and I would be welcome. But I didn’t respond. I had a new life, of my own making.

  After high school, Werner and I attended Queens College while continuing to live at home. Werner worked in an insurance company by day and took classes at night, while I was on the opposite schedule, attending classes during the day and working two evening jobs, as a sales clerk in a department store and in a local bakery. I majored in economics, as I loved understanding how the world worked. I also loved philosophy and art history. I wanted to keep studying, keep learning, as if I had a lifetime to make up for. I applied to graduate schools and was accepted at Duke University and found myself the only female in a PhD program in economics, earning my doctorate in 1960.

  It was also where I met my husband. Charlie was a fellow PhD student, studying neuroscience. He was brilliant and kind, moral, and dapper. Pappi would have loved him. I returned to Amsterdam to do my thesis work, and it was there that Charlie and I married in 1957. I saw Lex during that time: he was married and had started a family.

  Charlie and I spent our careers as professors at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Charlie in Neuroscience, and me in Public Health. I taught the economics of healthcare and women’s health, and conducted research on the “brain drain” of doctors. Charlie and I had two children, our daughter, Ella, and our son, Noah, both adults now. We lived a life filled with art, especially modern art, music, and laughter. Werner married, too, had a son and daughter and settled in Washington, D.C.

  I very rarely spoke about the past. It was buried under my job, family, and activities, but sometimes I experienced a shiver. Like when I walked Jubilee, our yellow lab, along the Huron River, and a train passed: the whistle, the steel wheels passing from rail to rail. I froze until the beast rounded the corner while poor Jubilee pulled on the leash to keep going. Or the time I was served turnip soup at a friend’s house and couldn’t lift the spoon to my lips. Or when my kids left food on their plate and I saved it as leftovers, even when it was the smallest of crusts. When something about the Holocaust came up on TV or in the news, I quickly changed the topic.

  In 1986, I was asked to serve on a panel about Anne Frank at the Detroit Holocaust Center. My friends in the Jewish community had pieced together enough of my story to suggest my participation. It was a turning point. During the panel question-and-answer period it dawned on me that Anne wasn’t here to tell her story, but I was. Yes, there was her Diary, but Anne and six million others had been forced into silence. I was fifty-six years old and had chosen to stay silent.

  I had survived. Why? Was there a message attached to my survival? Was I supposed to do something great? My life was so good. My career and marriage were successful, and my children, healthy. How could I pay back for this privilege of being alive? I knew I must bear witness to suffering and use my experiences to lessen the burden of others. I decided that I didn’t want to identify with being a victim, but a survivor with the responsibility to put my strength and privilege to good use. Elie Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor, wrote:

  “If you were there, if you breathed the air and heard the silence of the dead, you must continue to bear witness…to prevent the dead from dying again.”

  My silence had helped others to forget the Holocaust, and silence meant that the dead would have died in vain. But action was hard. I was still locked in the habit of keeping quiet, and I was also scared of revisiting my past too closely—some memories cut to my soul. Yet I knew that silence about what happened to me during the Holocaust was no longer an option. I thought of my parents, especially my Pappi, and all they had sacrificed for me. I had to exhibit that kind of courage and be the voice that others were denied.

  So I began to speak, and I haven’t been quiet since. What surprised me most was that students who were the same age as me when I lived through the Holocaust were interested in my story! At first I was afraid to speak about my personal history in front of hundreds of middle school and high school students. Looking back, I was most afraid of being laughed at, of being judged, being misunderstood, or facing an auditorium of yawns and blank stares. But the unexpected happened. Not only did students listen and ask good, hard questions, but also they wrote me afterwards to share reflections on my story and share their own stories. They wrote me of losing a loved one and of being bullied, of having someone stick up for them and of sticking up for someone else, and of feeling discriminated against and not letting it get them down.

  From inner city high schools in Detroit, schools in Ann Arbor, and rural middle schools in Dexter, students in what has become my home state of Michigan are ready to hear a message about standing up against hatred, bullying, oppression, and discrimination. They seem naturally disposed to wanting to stand in the shoes of others, with compassion. Their writings, drawings, and poems hearten me, and give me the motivation to push through the pain and keep talking and sharing.

  “I love how much hope you have and that you kept reaching for your goal. I hope to be like you some day.”

  —Cora, 7th grade, Discovery Middle School,

  Canton, MI

  I can no longer remember my childhood in Germany or the Netherlands without students’ words dancing along the canals of Amsterdam, or their drawings floating down from the grey sky over Bergen-Belsen. They recognize that all of us are responsible for each other, regardless of our color, religion, or race. We are all hungry for stories of hope and triumph over tragedy.

  “Your story changed my view of the world we live in. Your lesson that we must protect each other and accept each other’s differences made a deep impression on us.”

  —Anthony, 11th grade, Henry Ford Academy,

  School for Creative Studies, Detroit

  The idea of “never a bystander,” of standing up for others even when they aren’t members of your “tribe” is a strong theme in my life’s work. With this idea in mind, I helped found The Wallenberg Lecture Series at the University of Michigan. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swede—not a Jew—who risked his life, and lost it, in order to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews at the end of 1944. He is one of the greatest heroes of the war. Each year since 1990, The Wallenberg Lecture brings an outstanding humanitarian hero to give a lecture, receive a medal, and inspire students and all of us to serve. The Lecture’s motto is “One Person Can Make A Difference In Building A Better World.” With that motto, I remember Pappi’s contact and the Swedish man who helped get our Ecuadorian passports. I may never know them, and the Swede was not Raoul Wallenberg, but they were people wh
o took a risk to help when they had plenty of excuses to do otherwise.

  I also co-founded a women’s group called Zeitouna, named for the olive tree, a symbol of peace. It’s a way of building a bridge between two peoples that normally do not connect with one another. Zeitouna is a group of six Arab and six Jewish women. We refuse to be enemies; we find common language, common ground, and have even traveled to Israel and Palestine to experience our homeland together.

  I am now eighty-seven, and, like many women of my tender age, I find deep joy in my grandchildren. My granddaughters were born in Israel to a Jewish mother—my daughter—and a Palestinian father. This hasn’t always been easy for them. But I’ve learned that the surest path to peace may be when the “other” becomes your own. My grandson, born in San Francisco, is ten years old and the youngest of the bunch. In a few years, he’ll be the age I was when I entered the camps. He looks at the world with eyes full of wonder, and feet always ready to explore. I talk about my past for him. He is Pappi’s great-grandson, after all. The family courses through his veins. I also do it for his classmates, for Vitek’s grandchildren (for I think surely he must have them), and for young people everywhere. They give me hope that we will lay aside our differences and build a better world, together. One world, one family.

  Character Biographies

  Abraham Family

  Siegfried (1899–1974): father

  Gerda (1911–2000): mother

  Hans (1933–2006): son

  Ruth (b. 1938): daughter

  The Abrahams were neighborhood friends from Amsterdam. Siegfried was also a business friend of Pappi. Like my family, they were deported from Amsterdam to Westerbork in 1943 and to Bergen-Belsen eight months later in 1944. They became part of the prisoner exchange transport to Switzerland in January 1945 and finally to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) Camp Jeanne d’Arc in Philippeville (now Skikda), Algeria. They immigrated to New York City in 1946.