What World is Left

by Monique Polak

  We were told to report to the Hollandsche Schouwburg, the only Amsterdam theater where Jews were still allowed inside. The day before, we made our way from Broek to downtown Amsterdam. We spent the night with Oom Edouard, Tante Cooi and their children. Their names had not yet appeared on the dreaded list.

  There was little conversation at supper. Father and Oom Edouard discussed business. With whom had Father left the second set of keys to the house in Broek? Which farmer had agreed to hide Father’s car, his precious Delahaye, in his barn? What did his editors at the Telegraaf have to say, and would they continue to look after Father’s bills during our absence?

  After dinner we gathered in the parlor. Mother reached into her rucksack. I supposed she had some spices for Tante Cooi, or perhaps her apron with the tulips. Instead, Mother pulled out a flannel sheet. Something porcelain was wrapped inside. Mother’s Delft teapot perhaps?

  I nearly stopped breathing when I saw what it was. Not Mother’s teapot or spices or an apron. No, it was my porcelain tea set. The one I’d served tea in to Wilma and Trude when we were little. Why had Mother brought it here?

  Mother looked at me. “Anneke,” she said, “I knew you’d want Izabel to have your tea set.” She must have noticed my face turn red. I was so angry I thought I might explode. “Izabel will look after it while we’re away. Won’t you, Izabel?”

  Izabel got up from the horsehair chair where she was sitting and stepped toward the tea set. My tea set.

  But I got there first. I tore the tea set from Mother’s hands. Once I had it, my hands shaking with fury and sorrow and the injustice of it all, I took the tea set and hurled it down the stairway that led up to the apartment. The teapot and the cups and saucers made a clinking crashing sound as they hit first the wall and then the floor.

  Hot tears began to fall down my cheeks, but I didn’t cry out. I had no words for how unhappy and afraid I felt. Everything was being taken away from me! Everything!

  Mother raised her hand to her mouth. “Anneke, what have you done?” she asked.

  Only Father seemed to understand. When I looked at him, I saw his eyes were filled with tears. He looked at my mother. “Let Anneke be,” he said.

  Three

  We had to be at the Hollandsche Schouwburg at eight the next morning. It would take forty minutes to walk from Oom Edouard and Tante Cooi’s apartment. We’d never manage it with our suitcases and rucksacks. And by then, Jews were no longer permitted to ride the trams.

  So Father telephoned Muidermann. Muidermann used to come to our house in Broek to fetch Father’s sketches and deliver them to the Telegraaf office in Amsterdam. Mother sometimes rewarded Muidermann with a syrup waffle or a piece of gefulde koek—cake filled with marzipan. But today there wouldn’t be any sweets for Muidermann.

  He arrived twenty minutes later with his horse and flatbed wagon. Muidermann kept his eyes on the cobblestone street as the four of us sat together on the flatbed, our suitcases piled high behind us. We drove in silence to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. The streets were empty, and Muidermann’s horse whinnied when a crow flew by. Mother and Father held hands.

  I only turned around once to take a last look at the streets of Amsterdam. Even in the half-light, it was a beautiful city. I’d come here to go to school and to run errands with Mother. But I never dreamed that I would have to leave like this. My heart felt heavy in my chest. In the distance, I saw the Amstel River. Somewhere beyond that was our home in Broek.

  I wanted to cry, but I knew it would only make things worse for Mother and Father and Theo. So I bit down so hard on my lip I tasted blood. Would I ever see my little room under the rafters again?

  I never heard such wailing or saw such confusion as when we pushed open the heavy wood door to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. A white-haired boy cried for his mother. An old man with only one leg peered around the hall. “A German war veteran,” Father whispered. All I could think of was the stuffed leg game we’d played so long ago at my birthday party.

  “Keep moving!” an angry voice commanded us. When I turned to see who it was, I saw a Nazi soldier with a rifle tucked under his arm. For a moment, I froze. I’d never seen a gun up close before. If the soldier got any angrier, he might shoot at us! I could practically hear the sound of the bullet whizzing through the air. I drew closer to Mother and Father.

  “Keep moving, Jews!” the soldier barked. And we did.

  In all, there were over three hundred of us. There were other German war veterans who’d come to live in Holland. “Look!” Theo said excitedly, pointing to a tarnished medal hanging from an old man’s jacket. “That one has an Iron Cross!”

  Mother squeezed my hand. “It’s a good sign we’re with him,” she said, lifting her eyes toward the man with the Iron Cross. “The Nazis would never harm one of their own war heroes. Not even if he was a Jew.”

  I hoped she was right.

  In early afternoon, we were loaded onto the train. The seats had been removed so more of us could be crammed into each wagon. I sat on my suitcase, huddled between Theo and Mother. From outside, I heard a heavy thud as the doors slammed shut and then the snap of a padlock. There was no way out now. I looked at the anxious faces around me and my chest tightened. We were trapped.

  The train jerked once, then twice, before it pulled out of the station.

  I don’t know exactly how long we traveled. At first I looked up at the windows. I had to crane my neck from my spot on the floor. Outside I saw green fields and blue sky with an occasional puff of cloud. How was it the countryside could stay the same when our lives were changing so irrevocably? Later, we passed golden fields. Their brightness hurt my eyes. “Coleseed,” Father told me. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  But I knew what Father was thinking: that he’d like to draw the coleseed fields, capture them on paper. He often brought his sketchbook along when we went fishing in Broek. A few scratching sounds, then the sound of crumpled paper—Father was seldom happy with his first attempts—and then there was a sketch. A cow passing by a tulip field. A farmer wearing a straw hat, sitting atop his tractor.

  Some people thought drawing came easily to Father. “Quite the job you have, Meneer Van Raalte,” I’d heard one of our neighbors say to Father. “One small drawing and then your workday is done. A butcher like me has to slave behind the counter all day long.” But I knew the truth: Every image Father produced required careful, painstaking work. I wondered when he would be able to draw again.

  Soon we lost interest in what we could see from the train windows. All that mattered was emptying our bladders—and eventually, more than that. At first I tried to ignore the heaviness building below my navel. Don’t think about it, I told myself. But every time the train bumped against a rail, I remembered what I was trying so hard to forget.

  There was no bathroom. Only a rusty tin bucket, dented in the middle. The man with the Iron Cross had already used it. I averted my eyes when I heard him loosen his trousers. He wasn’t the only one to use the bucket. Soon, the wagon reeked of urine—and worse. I tried not to gag.

  On the train, the adults argued about where we were headed. “We’re going to a model city,” said a woman who wore her hair in a tight gray bun. Her husband walked with a limp: another German war veteran. The woman pulled a brown envelope from her purse. “See,” she said, “we’ve bought ourselves land in the model city. They told us we’ll have a beautiful view of the countryside.”

  A young man scowled. “You’ve wasted your money. They’re sending us to the ovens,” he said.

  Mother put her hands over Theo’s ears. “Don’t listen,” she told us.

  “Aren’t you Joseph Van Raalte?” a woman asked Father.

  Father looked pleased. He loved it when people recognized him. “Yes, I am.”

  “I so admire your drawings.”

  “Thank you,” Father said. He shrugged his shoulders as if he was shaking off the compliment.

  The man with the s
cowl looked up. “That drawing you made of Hitler on the ladder landed you in some trouble, didn’t it?” he asked.

  When Father nodded, I sensed his mind was drifting far away, perhaps back to the Dutch prison where he was kept in solitary confinement. “In these times,” he said a moment later, “drawing can be a dangerous business.”

  Eventually the combination of the conversation, the terrible odors and the way we were crammed into the wagon began to wear me down. “I can’t bear it anymore!” I whimpered. “It stinks in here!” My whimper turned to a scream.

  The woman who recognized Father turned away.

  Theo started whimpering.

  “Let me out of here!” I cried.

  Father’s shoulders tensed. I could tell he didn’t know what to do.

  Mother clamped her hand over my mouth. I tried to push her hand away, but she wouldn’t let me. “Anneke,” she said sternly, meeting my eye, “stop it. Stop it now. You’re only making things worse. Think of Theo. Set an example for your little brother.”

  I swallowed my tears. Of course Mother was right. There was no use in making a fuss. I was only making things worse. I stared down at the floor. And I tried to ignore the foul odors of the wagon.

  Hours passed and turned into days. The misery of the journey wore me out, and finally I managed to get some sleep. It was dark when the train finally sputtered to a halt. I didn’t know how long I’d slept. My tongue felt furry, and I’d drooled on Mother’s shoulder. There were dark rings of sweat under her armpits.

  “Raus! Raus!” German voices called. “Get going! Get going!”

  Dogs barked.

  Father helped Theo and me to our feet. I held my nose as I passed the stinky pail. Anything would be better than this crowded wagon.

  Outside it was pitch dark, but the Nazi soldiers who were urging us to hurry up were carrying lanterns, which gave off an eerie light. I could just make out a road, lined with tall, spindly, poplar trees.

  “Where are we going?” Theo asked.

  “They’re taking us into the forest. Like Hansel and Gretel,” I told him.

  “But we don’t have pebbles to mark the way,” Theo said in a sleepy voice. In the dark, I could see the dogs’ fangs and the long shapes of rifles, hanging from the soldiers’ sides. The soldiers pointed in the direction of a narrow road. “Raus! Raus!” Was that all they could say? And then, as if in answer to the question I’d just asked myself, one of the Nazis added, “Juden schwein!”

  My back stiffened. How dare he call us that—Jew pigs! Father, who was walking on my left, must have noticed my reaction. “Stay calm,” he whispered. “It’s only words. Remember what’s important—”

  “That we stay together,” I said, finishing Father’s sentence.

  “I’m getting blisters on my heels and on one sole,” Theo whimpered after we’d been walking in the dark for a quarter of an hour.

  Father sighed. He had a suitcase in either arm; he couldn’t carry Theo too. “You’ll just have to keep walking,” Father told Theo.

  “We’re nearly there,” Mother said. She had my suitcase and Theo’s. Each of us was responsible for our own rucksack. Mine chafed again my back. I could feel the skin breaking underneath.

  Someone behind me made a crying sound. “I can’t go on. I’m too tired.” It was the woman who wore her hair in a gray bun.

  “You must go on,” her husband told her. “Don’t you want to see our new property?”

  “Bah!” she said. “All lies. Nothing but lies.”

  I sucked in my breath. If this woman had given up hope, what did it mean for the rest of us?

  The light from a lantern shone ahead, landing on a spot at the side of the road. When a Nazi soldier laughed, the sound was hard, almost metallic. There seemed to be a pile of abandoned rucksacks by the curb. But when we got closer, I saw two crumpled lifeless figures, huddled together.

  I covered my mouth with one hand. These people were dead, their lives snuffed out like candles. They had been walking on the road like we were now, and then they’d died. Collapsed, perhaps, or shot by the Nazis. I shivered with terror. What would happen to us? Might we also end up dead by the side of the road?

  “Keep moving!” the soldier shouted. He shone his lantern on the pair of corpses. “Unless you’d like to join their party.” This time, when he laughed his metallic laugh, the other soldiers laughed too.

  We finally stopped at a building called the Schleuse. It had long narrow windows that looked like gaping eyes. Schleuse was the German word for floodgate, but at that point, we didn’t yet understand why this ugly building had been given that name. All we knew was that this was where the Nazis had directed us, prodding us with wooden sticks as if we were cattle. We were learning quickly that it was best to do whatever they wanted.

  One woman I recognized from the Hollandsche Schouwburg had dared complain. “Don’t push me!” she said in Dutch to one of the Nazis. Her reward for speaking up had been a sharp slap in the face. Hours later, her cheek still bore traces of the Nazi’s handprint. When I thought about the rifle he was carrying, I bit my lip. No, it was best to follow orders.

  There were fewer Nazis inside the Schleuse. Here, other prisoners—Jews like us—were in charge, though they in turn were supervised by Czech men in uniform. These were the gendarmes.

  The four of us went to stand at the end of a long line. When Theo leaned against my leg and began to doze off, I didn’t push him away. Up ahead, a tired-looking man with sunken cheeks sat at a desk, taking notes as he interviewed each new arrival. Once people finished with him, there was another line. Would we ever get to sleep?

  “Spiegel,” I heard the man in front of us say when he reached the desk. “Israel Spiegel and my wife Mathilde.”

  The man at the desk nodded as he recorded the information. “Dates of birth, place of residence and occupation,” he said, without looking up.

  “Van Raalte,” Father said when it was finally our turn. “Joseph, Tineke, Anneke and Theodoor.” His voice shook when he listed our birthdates and place of residence. “I’m an artist in Amsterdam. I work for the newspaper.” Father’s voice got a little stronger. Describing his work seemed to give him courage.

  “It’s full of artists here, and musicians and architects,” the man behind the desk said.

  “And men without legs,” added Theo, who was awake again.

  “Yes,” the man said with a sigh, “and men without legs.” Then he lowered his voice so the gendarme behind him wouldn’t hear. “And men without hearts. Like Commandant Rahm.”

  Mother gasped. Father leaned in toward the man. “Tell me,” he whispered, “is it possible to survive here?”

  I edged in a little closer. I had to hear the man’s answer.

  He wrote something on his sheet, but I knew from the lines on his forehead that he was considering Father’s question. “It’s possible,” he said at last, “but not likely.”

  I felt like I might topple over. Not likely? But I was too young to die! I hadn’t yet begun to live. Would I never fall in love or have children of my own?

  Mother squeezed my hand. Her palm felt damp.

  The man behind the desk raised his eyes to Father’s. “To survive,” he said under his breath, “you’ll need to be very smart.”

  And for the first time in many weeks, I felt a tiny ray of hope. After all, there was no one smarter than Father.

  The real floodgate came once we joined the second line. Up ahead—it was too dark to see much—we heard the sounds of suitcases being unbuckled and of crying. “Those were my grandmother’s Sabbath candlesticks,” a woman whimpered.

  “You won’t be needing them here,” a voice answered, and then there was a crashing sound as the woman’s candlesticks were thrown to the floor. For a moment, I remembered the tea set I hurled down the stairs and the shards of porcelain Mother swept up afterward.

  Mother didn’t say a word when our turn came, and they took her gold wedding ring. They took Father’s wedding
band and his watch too. But he only went pale when they confiscated his sketchpad and three tiny jars of paint. One was red, one yellow and one blue. They were the primary colors and with them, Father could make any color.

  Even before the gendarme opened my suitcase, I knew I’d lose my brooch. So I watched in silence as he tore it loose from my blue sweater and threw the tiny golden mirror into the pile. It landed without a sound. I turned away.

  With rough hands, the gendarme fumbled through the rest of my belongings. I’d hidden my old silk dress inside a cotton coat so Mother wouldn’t know I’d packed it. The fact that the gendarme didn’t find the dress made up a little—but just a little—for my brooch.

  Four

  You’re not the least bit mousy,” I blurt out when Hannelore climbs out of her cauldron.

  Her face is shiny with sweat, and her hands are raw from scrubbing, but Hannelore is no mouse, despite the way she whimpered before. Hannelore grins. “You expected a mouse?” she asks.

  Hannelore has long dark braids, the color of my favorite semi-sweet Droste chocolate, and though her eyes are dark, they aren’t mousy. “I’ve discovered something new about myself today,” she announces, dropping her scrub brush and putting her hands on her hips.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve discovered I have a talent for scrubbing. Come have a look!”

  I follow Hannelore up the narrow wooden ladder that leads up to her cauldron and peer down into it. She is right. She has done a fine job. Especially for her first day. I whistle. “You’re quite the scrubber, you are,” I tell her. “A gold medal scrubber. Too bad scrubbing isn’t an Olympic sport!”

  “Just don’t tell my mother,” Hannelore says, turning her head both ways to indicate that what she is about to say is top secret. “Or else she’ll have me scrub at home too.” Then Hannelore’s dark eyes seem to turn a shade darker. “That is, if we ever go home.”

  “Of course we’ll go home,” I say, a little too quickly. Though I’ve only just met her, something about Hannelore makes me feel like I have to protect her. “Haven’t you heard,” I ask her, “that the war is almost over?”