by Jana Zinser
“My mother used to say that,” Peter said, wistfully.
“She sounds like she was a wonderful mother.”
“She is.”
Eddie, Oma Greta, and Anna trudged back against the wind from the brick factory. Oma Greta, walking hunched over from back pain, coughed and scratched the rash on her arm.
“Are you okay, Oma?” Eddie asked.
“I am old, and bricks do not agree with me,” Oma Greta said, smiling.
The wind blew Eddie’s hat off. As he chased after it, a policeman suddenly grabbed Eddie’s arm and spun him around.
“How has this one escaped? Operation T-4 calls for mercy deaths for all incurable imbeciles. He needs to come with me,” the policeman shouted.
Anna grabbed Eddie’s other arm. “He works at the brick factory. He’s small enough to crawl in and clean out the brick kilns. No one else can do that,” Anna lied.
The policeman eyed the small boy. “Perhaps he is useful.”
Anna nodded.
“Keep him out of sight,” the policemen said as he hurried away and left Eddie to live, thanks to the insistence of his clever mother.
Sylvia woke up in her makeshift tent on the front yard of the burned synagogue, cradling Baby Lilly, as the September sun rose against the Berlin skyline.
Lilly didn’t move, and her skin with the red rash was blue.
“Wake up, Lilly. Wake up now. Open your . . .” Sylvia felt Lilly’s cold skin.
She screamed and rocked her daughter’s limp and lifeless body. “My baby is dead! You killed my sweet Lilly!”
Across the yard at the guard station, the police officer stepped out. “Shut up, over there!” he shouted. “The Brits just declared war on us!”
Sylvia cradled Baby Lilly in her arms and stared unfocused, absorbing the man’s words. Then, she rose slowly and trudged across the yard, as if in a trance, searching the ground.
Near a trash pile, she bent down and picked up a jagged piece of broken windowpane from the destroyed synagogue. With one long, deep, and final slash, she sliced her arm down through her veins from her wrist to her elbow. She shook with a shiver of pain and its finality when she saw the resulting gash and the red stream of blood.
She lay down beside Baby Lilly and stroked her baby’s innocent face. “My Lilly, my Becca, my Peter, my Henry, I am lost without you.”
As the blood spurted from her arm and spread out on the sacred ground of the synagogue, Sylvia put her dead baby on her chest and wrapped her arms around her precious Baby Lilly, now soaked in her blood.
“England, take care of my children. They belong to you, now.” Sylvia folded her hands over her little girl. Her head tilted toward the Nazi police. “And may God’s revenge be swift.”
CHAPTER 26
DOCTORS SAVE LIVES
(September 1939)
The windows of the Cohens’ house at 16 Poppleton Circle were covered with black curtains. A gas mask lay on the table beside Becca’s bed, as she thrashed around in her sleep. She cried out, “Mutti! Mutti!”
Mrs. Daniels tottered in sleepily and turned on the light. “What is it, dearie?”
Becca was crouched at the end of her bed with the covers over her head. Mrs. Daniels pulled the covers back. A disheveled, sweaty Becca peered at her with the distant eyes of horror.
“Another nasty nightmare, I suppose?” Mrs. Daniels asked.
Becca nodded.
“Let’s hear it, lass,” Mrs. Daniels said.
“Hitler found me. He was waiting for me under my bed. He tried to pull me under there.”
“I’d like to see him try. I’m from Swansea, Wales. We’re coal miners, a tough lot. Hitler wouldn’t stand a chance against me.” Mrs. Daniels smiled.
Becca looked up at her. “I miss my Mutti.”
“Of course, you do, lass.”
“But she’s never coming to get me.”
“That’s not true. Why do you say that?” Mrs. Daniels asked.
“Because Hitler had her and Baby Lilly under my bed, too,” Becca whispered.
Mrs. Daniels reached out her fleshy arms, pulled Becca to her large bosom, and hugged her. Becca clung to Mrs. Daniels’s strong embrace.
Mrs. Daniels knew that beneath Becca’s sassy, cheeky exterior, she was a frightened little girl, who was facing the end of everything she knew, and everything that made her who she was. As a motherless little girl, Mrs. Daniels had known that same all-consuming fear when the coal mine collapsed, trapping her father and two brothers. They’d suffocated when the mineshaft ran out of air. At fourteen, she’d moved to London to take care of other people’s families because she had none.
The door to the Berlin attic where Stephen’s parents lived opened. Clara held out a tray of pretzels and cheese, and a jug of water. “We’re going to the market,” she said.
“Thank you, Clara,” Jacob said, taking the tray. “The food looks delicious.”
Nora smiled at Clara. “Were you able to send Stephen the message?”
Clara nodded. “Yes. He’s a smart boy. He’ll understand.” She pulled the attic door shut.
Jacob and Nora heard the door shut downstairs as Klaus and Clara left the house. They ate the pretzels and cheese.
“I wonder what happened to Sylvia and Baby Lilly,” Nora said.
“I’m afraid to think of it,” Jacob said.
“It’s sad to think that we’re the lucky ones.”
Suddenly, there was a desperate pounding on the back door. “Klaus! Clara!” a woman’s voice yelled. “Oh, dear God, someone, help me!”
Jacob and Nora looked at each other. Then Jacob climbed on a chair to peep out the attic window. It was Mindy, the neighbor from the house next door. She was pregnant, and blood stained her dress. “Who is it?” Nora asked.
Jacob looked out the small window, watching as Mindy headed unsteadily back toward her house. She turned, looked up, and saw Jacob watching her. Suddenly, she clutched her stomach and fell to the ground.
“It’s the neighbor from the house next door. Mindy, the pregnant one. She’s in trouble!” Jacob picked up his doctor’s bag.
Nora grabbed his arm. “No, Jacob! Please, it isn’t safe.”
“But I’m a doctor,” Jacob said.
Nora nodded reluctantly.
Once outside, Jacob and Nora hurried to Mindy. She looked up at them. “Help me! Help me!” She pointed to the attic window. “Were you in . . . oh, thank God, you’re here. Don’t let me lose my baby! Oh, God, not my baby!”
“It’ll be all right now. Don’t worry, Jacob’s a good doctor,” Nora said. “He’s delivered many babies.”
“My prayers are answered,” Mindy said breathlessly.
They helped Mindy into her house.
Two hours later, with Jacob and Nora’s help, Mindy delivered a baby girl.
Nora wrapped a blanket around the baby and handed her to Mindy. “You’re lucky. Children are such a blessing.”
The door opened, and Min
dy’s wiry husband stood there staring at them. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
Jacob was startled, but smiled. “Are you the father?”
He nodded. “What are you doing in my house? Who are you?”
“I helped deliver the baby. Congratulations, it’s a girl!” Jacob said.
Mindy kissed the baby, smiling through her tears. “Look, isn’t she beautiful?”
Mindy’s husband stared, unable to fit what he saw into his orderly German world.
Mindy looked up at Dr. Levy. “Thank you, Doctor. You saved our lives,” she gushed. Her husband, a small man, paced angrily beside Mindy, huffing with each frantic stride.
“We’ll leave you alone now,” Jacob said, as he and Nora slipped out the door.
Mindy’s husband turned on her. “I don’t know that doctor. Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know. I was bleeding all over. I was in trouble,” Mindy said. “But the baby—”
Her husband roughly grabbed the baby out of her hands.
“No! No!” Mindy cried, with her arms outstretched. “Be careful.”
“Perhaps now you’ll remember,” he said, holding the baby hostage. “Where did the doctor come from?”
The baby cried the bleating sound of a newborn, able to pierce any new mother’s heart. Mindy reached out for the child who was her duty to protect. Her husband held the baby at an awkward angle, threatening to drop her.
Mindy cried. Her daughter was more important than anything. “Maybe from next door, maybe Klaus’s attic.”
He tossed the tiny bundle to Mindy. “She is cursed.” He looked out the window and nodded. “Klaus, you have betrayed Germany, and that Jew doctor has violated German law.”
Back in the attic, Jacob and Nora heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Then the door flew open.
“Clara, did you—” Nora asked, as she turned around.
It was not Clara. A policeman stood in the doorway.
“Klaus and Clara have been arrested,” he said. “And you will be too, for practicing medicine on non-Jews.”
Across the yard, Mindy held her baby girl protectively and watched out the window of her house as Jacob and Nora were dragged from their hiding place. Stunned at the consequences of the doctor’s humanity and her selfish betrayal, Mindy cried and buried her face against her new little daughter, the one she had sold her soul to keep. “God forgive me,” she whispered, “and bless the Jewish people.”
Her husband slid up behind her and jerked her away from the window. “Don’t cry for Jews. Cry for the daughter you have contaminated.”
In Coventry, Peter waved goodbye to Emil and Maude as they drove the mule cart into town for needed supplies. He watched them clop down the dirt road until they turned a corner and could no longer be seen. He turned and smiled. With them gone, it was finally quiet, except for the hens clucking inside the chicken house, and even that seemed unexpectedly soothing. He had come to appreciate how the hens defended their unhatched chicks.
He was headed into the quiet house when he heard Olga, the cow, loudly mooing another complaint. What’s her problem now? he wondered. He stopped and sighed, his shoulders slumped, but he turned around and walked to the barn.
Olga, the bad-tempered cow he sang to in order for the milk to flow, was lying down. When Peter walked up to her, she raised her head and mooed, scolding him for not coming sooner.
He knelt down beside the persnickety beast. “What is it this time, Olga?” She mooed and strained in distress. Peter looked anxiously toward the empty road that a minute ago had been his relief, as Olga turned restlessly.
Peter heard a whoosh of water being released. He moved down the cow to check for any injuries. When he got to Olga’s hind legs, he saw the head of a calf emerging.
“Oh, no!” He looked around in panic. “You had to do this now, didn’t you? Just to spite me.”
Olga strained again, working hard to give life to her baby. The calf’s legs unfolded. Olga gave another moo and a push, but the calf was stuck. No matter how Olga strained, the calf did not move. Peter looked at his hands. He would do what he had to do to save Olga and her calf.
He got in position between the cow’s back legs, reached out his nimble musician-turned-farmer hands, and grasped the calf. He set his feet, and when Olga pushed, Peter pulled until he was sweating, but nothing worked.
“Try again, Olga girl,” he said to the cow. Then he sang “Schmetterling” as he tried twisting the calf with his hands again and pulling with his hay-pitching muscles. The calf finally slipped free with his turning and was born.
Peter breathed heavily as he stared at the new farm life before him. He leaned his head back and laughed. He hollered, “A baby cow! I delivered a baby cow!”
The calf’s legs were wobbly, and it rested, panting next to its mother. Olga nudged the calf, licking it clean of its afterbirth. Tears came to Peter’s eyes, as he watched the once crotchety cow become a loving mother. He dropped to his knees beside the cow. “You’re a mutti now!” Peter exclaimed, as he put one arm around Olga and his other around her new calf. Olga, in an unguarded moment of grateful motherhood, let him.
At the Bockenburg Camp, Eva was covered with thick rock dust as she worked in the gravel pit. She glanced around to make sure Grundy wasn’t watching. He seemed determined to make her life miserable. She put the hammer down and wiped the sweat from her forehead, despite the coolness of the fall air.
Jacob and Nora shuffled off the train and were herded into the back of crowded trucks like unwanted cargo.
After traveling a great distance, the trucks stopped, and the door opened. They had arrived at Dinsdorf. The designated districts now accepted any Jewish people that Germany didn’t know what to do with, since the jails and concentration camps, like Sothausen, were overflowing.
As Jacob and Nora stumbled out of the truck and onto the street, they spotted a boy throwing rocks against the curb. Nora nudged Jacob with her elbow. “Jacob, look, is that Eddie Vogner? It is! Eddie!” she called.
Eddie looked up, smiled, and waved to them, as if they were expected for dinner.
“Hey, I know you! They got you, too?” He ran and hugged them, as he jumped up and down.
“Eddie! Eddie, where’s your mother?” asked Nora, smiling at his warm greeting.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Eddie said, happy to see his old friends.
Eddie bounded up the stairway and burst into the small apartment, followed by Nora and Jacob. “Look who the Nazis found!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, dear God,” Anna said, as she hugged Nora.
“I have good news for you, Anna. We got a letter from Stephen before they arrested us. Hans is in England,” Nora said. “He is fine.”
Anna and Oma Greta cried with relief. “Well, at least the children are all safe,” Anna said.
“Yeah, the children are safe,” Eddie said. He nodded and smiled.
Later that night, Jacob and Nora lay on a thin mattress on the floor in Anna’s apartment, behind a makeshift door made out of a tattered sheet. “I worry about Klaus and Clara. They risked their lives for
us,” Jacob said.
“Such good people. Do you think they’ll be able to get another letter to Stephen?” Nora asked.
“Klaus will find a way,” Jacob said.
“How long can we last?” Nora asked, lying in the embrace of her husband, the only familiar thing that still remained of their old life.
“We can outlast the Nazis. God is on our side,” Jacob said, smiling.
Nora kissed Jacob. “I would hate to see what our lives would be if God wasn’t on our side.”
“Well, perhaps, God could see his way to giving us a little bit better mattress.” Jacob patted the dilapidated and stained pad. Nora laughed and hugged her husband.
CHAPTER 27
BAMBOO STICK
(February 1940)
In London at dusk, William Rosenberg waited in Regent’s Park, by the rowboats at the Boating Lake. Waterfowl swam at their leisure despite the chilling wind, unaware of the escalating war.
A man with heavy eyebrows and yellow teeth sauntered over to William. He stomped his feet at the ducks sitting in the grass. They waddled off, quacking in fright.
“I hate ducks. They’re so useless,” the man commented.
“They taste good,” William said.
The man nodded. “So, do you have the stuff?”
William pulled the bacon, butter, and sugar food ration books from under his jacket.
“Well, you’re a regular Harrods, ain’t you, mate?” The man smiled his yellow-toothed grin as he took the stolen ration books. He slipped William the money, and William took off briskly through the gardens, as if he were out for a vigorous evening stroll.