Anne Frank and Me

by Cherie Bennett

  Moments later, sharp gunfire echoed in the streets. “It’s the Allies!” Liz-Bette cried.

  Nicole didn’t think so. She crawled to the building’s edge, Liz-Bette beside her, and looked to her left, where she thought the sound had originated. Yes! There, at the metro station entrance, a fire raged. Suddenly, she saw flashes of gunfire.

  “It’s the Resistance,” Nicole marveled.

  “Die, lousy Huns!” Liz-Bette uttered fiercely. The sisters watched, transfixed, as the fire in the metro entrance intensified.

  “I love you, whoever you are,” Liz-Bette whispered. Sirens sounded. They had to get off the roof. If their mother awoke, she’d have a heart attack. Nicole cocked her head toward the trapdoor. They didn’t speak again until they were safely in the hiding place. Thankfully, their mother was still snoring.

  “Oh, I am so happy!” Liz-Bette hugged Nicole as sirens wailed on the street. This time, though, the sirens meant something terrible for their tormentors instead of for them. “Nicole, what do you think they were attack—”

  She was interrupted by three hard raps on the half-door, silence, then two more raps. The code knock.

  Nicole hurried to the door as Mme. Bernhardt jerked awake. “Who’s there?” she demanded.

  Mimi fell into the room, breathless. “Quick, you have to leave!”

  A fist clutched Nicole’s heart. “What is it?”

  “They threw bottle bombs in the metro, at the Permilleux Service. It was an ambushl”

  “So why—”

  “André was on duty, that’s where we were meeting him. My brother is dead!”

  “No!” Nicole’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “It was your father!”

  “Oh, God.” Nicole reached for Mimi. “It wasn’t meant for your brother—”

  Mimi pushed her away, wild-eyed. “But it killed him anyway! I saw it all, they attacked from the back, they didn’t know André was there. Your father was shot, he couldn’t get away.”

  “No,” Nicole insisted, as if denying it could make it not be true.

  “Jacques saw, too! He was in shock, he didn’t mean to, he yelled at your father, ‘I loved you, I brought you food, and you killed my brother!”

  “Please God, no,” Nicole moaned. “Please don’t let it be—”

  “You have to leave!” Mimi grabbed Nicole. “They’ll torture Jacques until he tells where you are. Run!”

  “I am so sorry—”

  “Leave now!” Mimi whipped around to Mme. Bernhardt, who stood in mute shock. “Don’t you hear me, leave—”

  The pounding of a dozen jackboots on the stairs leading to the attic, and screams of guttural German, cut her off.

  “Raus! Juden! Raus! Raus!”

  The half-door to the hiding place was smashed open. Liz-Bette screamed and leaped into her mother’s arms. Mimi and Nicole clung to each other, heart to heart, and waited for the end.

  thirty-three

  NOTES FROM GIRL X

  17 August 1944

  To the finder of this paper,

  I am Girl X. Seventeen. Jewish. Parisian. Still alive. We continue to hear the rumble of the Allied artillery. Liberation is upon us. Yet my sister and I are not at the gates of Paris to greet the Americans. Instead, we are prisoners here at Drancy.

  More than three weeks here, now. We are alone. Maman was deported on the convoy of 31 July. We are part of a group of about 1,500 people still in the camp. We hear there will be no more deportations. What will this mean for us? Will Brunner order his men to shoot us before he runs from the Allies?

  I try not to think about my parents, or J, or M. My sister is very sick, coughing constantly, jaundiced. I made a vow to God that I will protect her, and I will. She is asleep in the barracks. I am sitting outside writing this very small, to save paper. I was unable to take my journal when the Gestapo came for us. But the miracle is, today I found a pencil stub, and there is paper blowing everywhere. Why do I keep writing Notes from Girl X? There is no M to smuggle them out to the streets of Paris. It is most likely pointless. But I will push my notes into the cracks of the walls here as if I were writing to Hashem at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Perhaps someone, someday, will find my notes. If you do find this at some future date, let it be recorded that Girl X was here. She lived. She loved to dance. She loved a boy.

  There was no more room on the scrap of brown paper. Nicole folded it four times, pressing the creases together. Then, she walked along the wall of the barracks, looking for a crack in the concrete. She found one, and worked her note into the crevice until it disappeared. She’d hidden another scrap of paper under a rock. She took it out, brushed the dirt from its surface, and began to write again.

  Drancy is a half finished apartment complex ringed by barbed wire. We sleep on lice-infested straw. We itch constantly. I pick lice from my sister and crush them with my fingers, but it does no good. They are like the enemy—for every one I kill, they send one hundred more.

  There are quite a few Resistance fighters among the remaining prisoners. They have managed to smuggle in some food. One of them is my old friend D. He was beaten and is barely recognizable. He tries to talk but his jaw is so swollen I cannot understand him.

  Sometimes I wander around. It is something to do. Over the past few years many people wrote graffiti on the buildings before they were deported. I think I have read them all, memorized many. Even if the Boche bulldoze everything, they cannot bulldoze my mind, so their messages will not be lost. I will speak their names and deliver their messages.

  BERNARD FRAJDENRAICH AND HIS BROTHER DIDIER, ARRESTED THE 16 JULY 1942, DEPORTED THE 25 SEPTEMBER 1942, IN VERY GOOD SPIRITS, AND WITH THE HOPES OF RETURNING VERY, VERY SOON.

  SERGE AND MONIQUE PREIGHER-NEUMANN, AND THEIR MOTHER HILDA, DEPORTED THE 7 DECEMBER 1943, IN VERY GOOD SPIRITS.

  To my surprise, I saw a message from someone I knew.

  TZIPPORA EINHORN, ARRIVED THE 21 JULY 1942, DEPORTED THE 14 AUGUST 1942, DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF GENIA EINHORN (DIED THE 7 AUGUST 1942).

  My friend’s mother had written this. I traced her writing with my fingers over it and prayed.

  Dear reader, for so long I have written anonymously, known only as Girl X, to protect me and my loved ones should my missive fall into enemy hands. It occurs to me in just this moment that I can record my name here at last. This paper, too, I will stuff into a crack in the wall. If that is where you have found it, dear reader, let it be recorded that one Jewish French girl, age seventeen, by the name of

  “Mademoiselle, what are you writing?”

  Nicole jumped to her feet and froze. Alois Brunner, who was in charge of the Drancy camp, stood over her, flanked by two SS aides. A small, mercurial man with sharp features, Brunner always wore leather gloves with his uniform. She’d heard it was because he feared touching Jewish skin with his naked hands.

  “Attention, Jew-Swine!” he bellowed. “I asked you a question!”

  “Just scribbling, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  Brunner joined his gloved hands together. “Your name, Jew-Swine?”

  “Bernhardt, Nicole.”

  “Any relation to the famous Dr. Jean Bernhardt of the Rothschild Hospital?”

  “I am his daughter, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  “I met your father once at his hospital.” Brunner’s voice became conversational. “Do you know where he is?”

  “No, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  “A pity he deserted you.” Brunner thought a moment. “Your father was of course acquainted with M. Armand Kohn, correct?”

  “Yes, Herr Hauptsturmführer.” M. Kohn had been in charge of the entire Rothschild Hospital. Her father had spoken of him many times.

  “Jew-Swine Kohn is here with the rest of his family. He is not so high and mighty anymore, I assure you.” Brunner’s lip curled in a half smile. He jutted his chin toward one of his aides. “Give him your paper.”

  Nicole hesitated.

  “Are you deaf? I said give it to him
!”

  Nicole handed the sheet to the SS man, who held it between forefinger and thumb as if it were diseased. “Burn it,” Brunner commanded. The aide took a mechanical lighter and held it to the paper. When flames began to lick his fingers, he dropped it and ground it to ash under his boot. Nicole stared ahead, her face betraying nothing.

  “Daughter of Jew-Swine Dr. Jean Bernhardt, you are here with your sister, correct?”

  “Yes, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  “Find your sister and present yourselves at my offices in fifteen minutes,” Brunner said, his tone pleasant once more. “You are going on a journey together.”

  I have neither paper nor pencil but I keep recording things in my mind. Brunner took fifty of us in a lorry to Paris-Bobigny station, even as Allied fighters flew overhead. They put us near the end of a Nazi troop train, in a car designed to carry military supplies. There are no seats. It is hot. We have a bucket of water to drink and another bucket to use as a commode. Liz-Bette and I have staked out one corner of the car, nearArmand Kohn and his family The train is heading east. Where, I have no idea.

  The brakes screeched and Nicole opened her eyes. What time was it? She could barely tell; so little light penetrated the two barred windows of the car. She thought it must be early evening.

  “Why do they stop and start so much, Nicole?” Liz-Bette asked hoarsely.

  “I don’t know” Nicole touched Liz-Bette’s feverish forehead. “Lean against me and try to sleep.”

  As the train sped up again, Nicole looked around. Most of the other prisoners were dozing. They ranged from well-groomed Armand Kohn and his family to a few disheveled Resistance fighters. One of them was David Ginsburg. He was sleeping.

  The whole transport was bizarre. They had been loaded quickly and there had been no body searches. So the resistants had been able to smuggle in bread, chocolate, and cigarettes, which they shared. Then, to Nicole’s shock, they extracted tools and a tiny saw from inside their bread loaves and began to plan an escape.

  This had caused a huge ruckus. They’d been repeatedly warned that in the event of an escape attempt, not only would the captured escapees be shot, so would anyone left behind on the train. M. Kohn had been irate—how dare they propose an escape that would put those who could not jump in danger? What about the little Bernhardt girl, for example? The sick one?

  The resistants had been undeterred, and decided to saw a hole in the car’s side wall, working only by night.

  It was brightening a bit inside the car, which meant that it must be morning. Nicole rubbed her stiff neck. Incredibly, M. Kohn began shaving himself with a straight razor as if it was a normal morning at home.

  “Make sure to get every whisker, Kohn,” a resistant named Claude sneered. “When the SS comes again, they will certainly appreciate a stinking, clean-shaven Jew like you more than a stinking, unshaven Jew like me.”

  “Now, now, Claude, Herr Kohn is not yet comfortable traveling with the proletariat,” a female comrade declared.

  “Pay no attention to their talk of escape,” M. Kohn instructed his four children. “It is an absurdity that will get us all killed.”

  “Stupid bourgeois Jew. Let them think for themselves. Kohn the Younger!” Claude called out to Philippe, M. Kohn’s eldest son. “Did you read what Brunner scrawled on our car? JEWISH TERRORISTS. You are one of us now, eh?”

  “Leave my son alone,” M. Kohn demanded, which only made Claude and his friends laugh.

  Nicole leaned toward Philippe. “Why do they dislike your father so much?”

  “To them, bourgeois Jews like my father, who stayed in Paris and worked under the UGIF, are not much better than the Gestapo.”

  “But that is not fair. What were sick Jews supposed to do? Where were they supposed to go? My father—” She stopped herself. It was the first time she had said the words my father since that horrible night in July.

  “Your father what?” Philippe asked.

  Nicole leaned back against the wall of the car. “Never mind,” she said.

  The train rumbled on. When Liz-Bette awoke, Nicole gave her a piece of bread she had saved. Liz-Bette ate half, then fell back asleep. It is night again, Nicole recorded in her mind, visualizing the words in fiery streaks against the insides of her eyelids. Sometimes we stop for hours. At least when we are moving there is a little air.

  She felt a touch on her arm. “Let me sleep, Liz-Bette,” she murmured.

  “Nicole?”

  The voice was not her sister’s. It was David. There was so little light in the car she could barely make out his face.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I think they broke my jaw” He winced. “But I plan to live.”

  “Good.”

  “How is Liz-Bette?”

  “Sick.” Nicole looked at her sister, curled up in the corner of the car. “But she plans to live, too.” Their bodies vibrated as the train rumbled over an uneven section of rail bed. “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “The night we were arrested—do you know what happened ? The night my fath—” Nicole faltered.

  “The Resistance staged an ambush. Three officers in the Permilleux Service. Every evening at eight-fifteen, they came out of that metro stop.”

  “Were they killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She took a ragged breath. “Do you know what happened to my father?”

  David hesitated. “I understand he was badly wounded. The Gestapo took him.”

  He didn’t need to tell her what that meant. Her father was dead.

  “How did you get caught?”

  David shrugged. “Completely unrelated. I was carrying a bundle of false identity papers. When I arrived at my destination, the militia answered the door. Someone tipped them off.”

  Liz-Bette coughed in her sleep, then rolled over and began to snore. Nicole lowered her voice. “Thank you for telling me about my father, David.”

  “He was a hero.”

  “Yes. Did they shoot Jacques, too?”

  “Yes. After he betrayed you.”

  “No. It was an accident, he didn’t mean to. His brother was dead—”

  “Sometimes in a war, innocent people die.” David’s tone was cold. “Jacques betrayed you.”

  “You don’t understand. He kept us alive—”

  “And then he betrayed you. I knew he would, eventually.”

  What could she say? What was the truth? She didn’t know anymore. From across the car, they could hear the sounds of sawing as the resistants proceeded with their plan.

  “Where do you think we are?” Nicole finally asked.

  “Someone boosted Claude up to the window before. He saw a sign for Bar-le-Duc.”

  Nicole was stunned. “That means we’re still in France.”

  “They do not seem to be in a big hurry to get us wherever it is we’re going.”

  “To a work camp, I hear,” she said.

  For a long moment, the only sound was the steady sawing on the wall.

  She could feel David’s eyes on her. “The hole is almost ready, Nicole.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. There must be SS on the roof with machine guns. As soon as you jump, they’ll kill you.”

  “They’ll kill us all anyway.”

  “That’s not true. We’re going to a work camp—”

  “It is not a work camp,” David hissed. “That’s just what they say to keep us from rioting. They are killing all the Jews.”

  “No. That is propaganda. A lie!” She felt like hitting him for saying such a terrible thing.

  “It’s true,” he insisted. “Listen to me, Nicole. Everyone is either shot or marched into a big room—for a shower, they’ll tell you—but it isn’t water that comes out of the spigots, it’s gas.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Everyone dies, Nicole. Men, women, children—”

  She put her hands over her ears. “Stop it, stop it, it’s not true�
��”

  “We’ve had reports from eyewitnesses—”

  “They’re lying.”

  “They’re telling the truth.” He pulled her hands from her ears. “It is just such a horrible truth that no one will believe it until it’s too late.”

  She couldn’t speak. What if—No. It was impossible.

  “Listen to me, Nicole. The hole is almost done. We will crawl out, straddle the side, then jump. It has been raining. The ground will be soft.”

  “You’ll die.”

  “Maybe. But at least they won’t have had the satisfaction of killing us. Jump with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “Even if I believed you, I can’t leave Liz-Bette. She’s too sick to—”

  “I want you to live, Nicole!”

  “God, don’t you think I want that, too? But I won’t leave my sister.”

  The sawing stopped. “We are almost ready,” Claude announced.

  David looked at Nicole with questioning eyes. She shook her head again, then put a hand on her sister’s forehead. It still blazed with fever. “I understand,” he said.

  “I’ll pray for you, David.”

  “To who? God? He must be on vacation. And He doesn’t seem to have appointed a deputy while He’s away.”

  There was a loud crash as Claude and his comrades pulled away a section of the wall and dropped it on the floor of the car. A cheer went up. Fresh air poured in, filling Nicole with longing. For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to think that perhaps she could jump, with Liz-Bette in her arms, and—

  No. It was impossible. Liz-Bette would die.

  “David, come. Everyone who is jumping, come!” Claude called. People headed for the escape hatch. Already the first person was climbing through the hole.

  “You’ll get away, David,” Nicole told him. “You will live.”