The Time Between

by Bryna Hellmann-Gillson

  Dr Levie had his practice where most of his patients lived, around the corner from the synagogues and a few blocks from the Jewish Market on the Waterlooplein. People came from all over the city on Sunday to shop there. You could buy pickled herring, borscht, kosher chickens, almond cookies and bagels. Everybody came for the bread, because all the other bakeries were closed.

  Since the occupation, the market was even more crowded. Sometimes women leaned over the stalls and told the owners, ‘It’s not right!’ They would smile sympathetically, and you could see they meant it but were embarrassed too. And so were the Jewish stall owners. What good did pity do?

  Nobody answered the doctor’s bell, and Jo looked around for somebody who might know where he was. From across the street an old man was watching her, and he called out, ‘Somebody came for him, and they went over to the square.’

  ‘Meyerplein?’

  He nodded, and she mounted her bike and rode back to the corner. At the bridge just before the square, policemen were turning people away, and she turned back toward the river. She could go around the block, where the next street opened straight onto the square. But there were policemen there too and a small crowd on the sidewalks and in the street, mostly mothers with little children and some boys and girls coming from school. The women were standing close together, whispering.

  Jo stood on the stairs of a house and looked over their heads. At first she saw only an officer in a peaked cap and a line of soldiers with helmets and rifles. Then a man ran past them, there was a gunshot, and he fell on his face. Another man, not a soldier, rushed over and began to take pictures of the body.

  The crowd in front of her parted. Some people pressing against the walls of the houses and some turning to go away. Now she could see whom the soldiers were guarding, rows of men on their knees, their hands in the air. There were hundreds of them. When the soldiers shouted, they hunched their shoulders or hid their faces behind an upraised coat sleeve, as if they would disappear that way.

  Up on the stairs, Jo felt the wind scour her face, and she shrugged deeper into her jacket. It had been snowing on and off all day, wet flakes that melted as they hit the pavement. Some of the prisoners were wearing hats and coats, but many wore only jackets or woolen vests, whatever they had on when the police burst in and arrested them. Jo saw the wind lift a scarf from one man’s shoulders and blow it away, and that he didn’t try to stop it or to pull his jacket collar up.

  Open trucks roared into the square, their canvas roofs billowing up and slapping down with a sound like pistol shots. The soldiers waved their rifles and ordered the front row of prisoners to climb into them.

  Deep inside her she was trembling so hard that it hurt, not from the cold, she knew, but from fear. Though she didn’t want to, she went on watching and, when a hand touched her arm, she stiffened, afraid to look around.

  ‘It’s me, Elsie,’ a voice said. When she turned and saw who it was, Jo leaned against her and closed her eyes. ‘It’s all right. Come on now, I’ll take you home. We don’t want to see anymore.’

  Pushing her bike, Elsie helping on the other side, they started back to the Kerkstraat. ‘I was looking for our doctor. Somebody said he’d gone to the square.’

  ‘They only rounded-up young men, a few hundred, it looked like.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘An NSB-er was beaten so badly last week that he died, and the SS decided to make a martyr of him. They were picked up on the street or pulled out of their houses. The police know where everyone lives. I hope your parents didn’t register?'

  ‘I don’t know, but I think my father’s too old.’

  For what, she wondered.

  ‘That’s good,’ Elsie said. There was no point in saying they might want him too someday.

  * * *

  Jacoba and David were in the kitchen drinking coffee when Jo and Elsie came in. David had managed to tape some gauze over her the broken skin of her forehead. She’d taken off her stained blouse and torn stockings, and he had combed her hair, but she still looked bewildered.

  ‘I couldn’t find Dr Levie,’ Jo explained. ‘But I met Elsie. You remember her? From when we got the stamps?’

  David stood up and shook hands, and Elsie kneeled down, cupped her hands around Jacoba’s face and whispered, ‘Let me look at your eyes. Now look at my left hand, dear. Now the right. You should be in bed, and you must lie very quietly for a few days. And then you’ll be fine!’

  ‘You are a nurse?’ David asked.

  ‘No, but I know something about first-aid. When you fall down, it shakes up your brain a bit, and it’s best to be careful. Put her to bed and keep the room dark. And no coffee for a few days. If she still has a headache tomorrow, you should get the doctor.’ She turned to leave, then said, ‘Oh yes, one more thing. You ought to come and live with us as soon as you can.’

  David stared up at her. ‘Why should we do that?’

  ‘Because the Germans are going to move everyone into a ghetto. You don’t want to be there, believe me.’ She looked around the neat kitchen, the two sets of pots on a shelf over the stove, the two small ice boxes side by side, the glass-doored cupboard where four sets of dishes were kept, the everyday Dutch ones for milk and meat and the Passover dishes from Germany, one set decorated with tiny hand-painted flowers and the other white as pearls and rimmed with gold.

  ‘Please, sir, believe me. Now is the right time.’

  ‘How can you take us in? Is your house so big?’

  ‘Big enough.’

  ‘But why should you do this?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because we are strangers to you.’

  ‘Mr Hermans, I am a Christian, but I know what it says in your Bible too. Surely you also know it: “If you faint in the day of adversity, if you hold back from rescuing those taken away to die, those who go to the slaughter,”’

  "Staggering,”

  ‘Yes, “staggering to the slaughter.”’

  ‘"If you say, Lord, we did not know this,”’

  Elsie went on, matching her voice to his, ‘“Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it?”’

  ‘But also “The lamp of the wicked will go out.”’

  ‘It will, but not yet, not even soon, I think. So please don’t refuse, for Jo’s sake and for your wife’s.’ Without waiting for an answer, she left the room, motioning Jo to follow her, and they went down the stairs. At the door, Elsie said, ‘My son has a friend in the police, a very nice boy. He told us yesterday that the Germans are fed up with all the trouble they’re having with the Jewish gangs. They’re going to close off the bridges and put up fences, make a ghetto, he said. All the Jews will have to move there, even people they’re sending from other cities. You’ll be lucky to get one room to yourselves. You have to convince your father it’s time to disappear.’

  ‘But how can we come and live with you? All three of us?’

  ‘It’ll be cozy, won’t it?’ Elsie laughed. ‘The main thing is, we don’t live near where the ghetto will be, so the police won’t come around to see what we’re doing. You’ll be safe, Jo. Make your father understand. And start packing.’

  ‘Packing? What should we bring?’

  ‘Clothes, sheets, blankets, towels, things like that. You’ll want your books, of course. I don’t know what else, whatever your parents think they can’t do without. Your mother will want those beautiful dishes to be safe, won’t she? Anything else? We can store things someplace until you can go home again. Just do it, Jo!’

  Jo watched her walk away, then turn and come back. ‘I almost forgot. Hendrik and I will come Monday with the car and help you get it all downstairs and over to our house. I know it’s sudden, but it needs to be.’ She kissed Jo on each cheek and went off.

  They put Jacoba to bed and went into the living room to talk. David kept shaking his head while Jo tried to convince him that Elsie could be trusted. She told him what she’d seen at the Meyerplein and how Elsie had taken her home.
‘I’m so glad you didn’t walk home over the square, papa!’

  ‘I did, but I didn’t see anything strange. Well, there was a man collecting a lot of old hats and scarves that were lying on the ground.’

  ‘From the prisoners!’ They had gone without their scarves and hats, taking nothing with them but what they were wearing. Imagine if Papa had been caught there! ‘I called your office, and Mrs Kramer said you were gone.’

  ‘I went to see Mendel, he’s home with a little fever, and we needed to talk. We didn’t register the company last year, and he says if the Germans find out, we’ll go to prison. So today we signed the business over to Mrs Kramer’s husband.’

  ‘But what will you do now?’

  ‘For money, you mean? Kramer will make sure we are all right, he promised me that.’

  ‘Will he?’ Jo looked doubtful.

  Her father shook his finger at her. ‘How long have I known him? Twenty years, long before I even met your mother. From when Mendel and I were young and just starting out at Asscher’s polishing diamonds, and already Kramer was in the jewelry business. We have been dealing with him since the first day Mendel and I went into business for ourselves, and always he has been fair and honest. So why should I now not trust him? Are you telling me we can trust no-one?’ He had tears in his eyes, and Jo reached out and took his hands in hers.

  ‘No, Papa, of course not! But then please trust Elsie too,’ she urged him, and he nodded reluctantly. ‘Will you tell Mama about giving Mr Kramer the business?’

  ‘Not giving, entrusting! No, she doesn’t need to know. It’s bad enough she has been attacked and now we have to leave here. No, she would not understand. I don’t understand either. We are going to disappear? What does that mean?’

  ‘I think that’s what they call it when you have to live someplace where the police won’t look for you.’

  He shook his head. ‘But with your Elsie? Yes, I see she is a good woman, a Christian who knows the proverbs, incredible, wonderful! But she is not Jewish, not kosher. How will we eat? I can accommodate, but your mother will starve to death, before she eats from a Christian kitchen!’

  ‘I know, Papa, but Elsie knows what to do. I’ll tell her about the food, and it will be all right. We should start packing while Mama’s sleeping. Maybe she’ll sleep all day tomorrow, and we can get it done without upsetting her.’

  She packed her own clothes and her schoolbooks first, then her mother’s clothes, trying to choose the things Jacoba would want to have. Of underwear and nightgowns she took everything, a few changes of dresses and her mother’s winter and spring coats would be enough. Maybe she could come back after a while and get more. It was hard to choose, hard to leave something hanging in the closet, but being busy kept her from worrying about why they had to leave and what was going to happen to them.

  She went to bed with a headache, and it took hours to fall asleep. When she woke in the dark, she told herself not to worry, to go back to sleep, but the more she thought stop now, the more restless she felt. How can people just disappear and no-one notices? She had to go to school or they would miss her. Wouldn’t they send someone to find her, to make her come back? And Lysbet would think she’d gone away without saying goodbye and be angry and hurt.

  Behind the net curtain at her window, the night turned slowly toward dawn while she drifted in and out of her dreams.

  * * *

  Water running in the bathroom woke her, and then her father’s voice, ‘No, my darling, no, you are not getting up. Jo will bring you tea,’ and she jumped out of bed and went into the kitchen in pajamas and robe. There was breakfast to make, dishes to wash and dry so they could be put away clean, everything left as neat as if they were going on their one-week summer holiday to the beach at Zandvoort. No time to think why.

  While her mother slept, she helped her father pack his own suitcases. He needed two, because he couldn’t leave his favorite books behind. ‘Someone might break in and steal them,’ he insisted.

  In a prayer shawl she’d never seen him wear, he wrapped the framed photo of himself and Jacoba at their wedding and one of her as a little girl with a satin bow on top of her curls, and laid them between the books.

  Her mother woke up hungry, a good sign they agreed, and Jo brought sandwiches and tea for them all into the bedroom.

  When she was asleep again, they went into the kitchen and tried to decide what else they should take.

  ‘Elsie has her own dishes and things,’ Jo said. ‘I don’t think she needs ours. But she said to bring the Passover ones Mama loves and she’ll store them.’

  ‘And she can be trusted?’ Jo frowned, and he said, ‘Yes yes, all right. I am convinced.’ He went up to the attic and found a sturdy box for the precious Meissen porcelain and the silver they used only at Passover.

  In the evening Mama came into the kitchen and asked for supper. She sat down with her back to the half-empty cabinet and held her head in her hand while she ate some soup.

  Jo went to bed again with a headache, wanting it to be over, whatever happened next.

  When the bell rang late Monday morning, it was Elsie’s son, with the same high forehead and deep-set eyes under blond eyebrows. ‘You’re to get in the car with me,’ he said. ‘Ma is coming to get your parents and take them to our place. We’re going to drive around for a while, and then we’ll come back and get all your stuff. Get in.’

  ‘I should tell my father,’ she said, and she ran upstairs and explained.

  Jacoba, still looking pale and puzzled, was sitting in the living room with her coat and hat on, and David nodded and went to get his own coat.

  ‘Do you have a key?’ Hendrik asked as she scrambled into the car. ‘Okey dokey, let’s go!’

  Halfway down the street they saw Elsie, who lifted her arm slightly to show she’d seen them. The car turned the corner and Hendrik said, ‘Sit back and don’t look so nervous. We’re just out for a spin, you and I.’

  He drove along the river to the first bridge and said, ‘I’m going to show you what the soldiers have been doing all morning.’ At every bridge leading into the neighborhood around the synagogues, policemen were building wooden barriers or barbed wire fences. The Blauwbrug had been raised like a wall cutting off the street across the river, and a sign hanging from a barricade said JEWISH CANAL. What did that mean? How could a canal be Jewish?

  ‘Do you know what a ghetto is?’ Hendrik asked. ‘That’s it. When they’ve moved all the Christians out, they’ll move all the Jews from the rest of the city in. I heard this morning people were also being sent here from other cities.’

  ‘But why? If they know where everybody lives, why can’t they just stay where they are?’

  ‘You saw what they did Saturday. They got almost 500 men in a few hours, some off the streets, but most of them out of their houses. They’ll want to do it again, round people up and ship them off to work in Germany. So when there’s a whole street full of Jews, they can sweep them up in no time. It’s efficiency, Jo, and they’re proud of that.’

  He turned the car into a narrow street with rows of identical houses on both sides, pointed out where he lived and turned to drive back to her street. ’There are some German offices over on the avenue, but this is a safe neighborhood. You’ll be all right here.’

  When they parked in front of Jo’s house, the front door was open a crack. Hendrik motioned to her to stay in the car until he knew the apartment was empty, then they carried the suitcases downstairs and piled them on the back seat of the car. Locking the door, she looked around at the other houses. Nobody was watching them, and she wondered what they would think when they realized they hadn’t seen the Hermans in a long time.

  ‘Can I come back if we need something?’

  Hendrik pulled his door shut and turned to look at her. ‘Don’t do it alone. I’ll come with you or my brother Jan will.’

  On the way back to his house, looking out the window at the people going along on their business, she thought about it
being a school day. She hoped she could go tomorrow, that Elsie would say it was safe. Lysbet didn’t need to know what had happened, the school didn't. She would go to classes and do her homework and not listen when people said things.

  She didn’t want Hendrik to see her crying. Pressing her hands tightly on her knees, she kept her head turned away from him. He was whistling softly, not looking at her. What a nice man he was, as nice as Elsie. She wished, what? To be like everybody else? No, of course not. Never! To be treated like everybody else? Was that too much to ask? What was it, oh, the lamp of the wicked, yes, their lamp would go out, she believed that, and it helped.

  In February 1941, three ghettos were formed in Amsterdam. Their areas included the synagogues and Jewish markets. Barbed-wire, wooden barricades and raised bridges over the Amstel River marked their boundaries.

  7 Hannah, February 1941

  Passing the office with the last trays, Hannah caught a quick sideways glimpse of Martin talking earnestly on the telephone. She turned her head away and hurried past. He was avoiding her and she understood, but somehow that didn’t make it easier. He wouldn’t get her fired, she knew that. He wasn’t mean, just worried that people would find out they’d been, well, what was she going to call it? More than friends?

  The hospital corridor was empty and quiet. After lunch, everyone slept behind closed doors. She picked an uneaten boiled potato from the uppermost tray and chewed it gratefully. The patients on this floor, the ones who didn’t have family bringing them little treats, didn’t complain about what they got to eat or how it tasted. If they didn’t like something, they left it, and someone in the kitchen put it aside to eat later. You couldn’t catch anything from someone with a broken leg or a lost appendix, could you?