Kasztner asked for testimony of the grand rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim, but the latter refused.
“Kasztner did not save me, God did,” said the Rebbe of Satmar.
The Rebbe of Satmar was on Kasztner’s train! Again, Atara wanted to run to Mila, but Mila would get angry if Atara suggested the Rebbe was linked to a Zionist venture. She needed more information. She read on.
The paper retold the judge’s verdict: Kasztner sold his soul to the devil when he sacrificed the mass of Hungarian Jews for a chosen few.
One editorial noted that Kasztner’s negotiations mirrored the stance of many Jewish leaders who agreed to the Nazi distinction between elite Jews and the masses—an agreement especially problematic in Hungary, where Jewish leaders knew where the cattle cars were headed; in April ’44, two escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, had informed Hungarian leaders, in detail, about the crematoria.
Atara stopped reading. Had the Rebbe of Szatmár been informed? Had he warned his community before fleeing? She scanned the tight print for Joel Teitelbaum, Szatmár, Satmar, Satmarer Rebbe.…
A first contingent, 388 elect Jews out of 18,000 in the ghetto of Cluj (Kolozvár), in Transylvania.…
Kolozvár, Mila’s hometown.
If the Rebbe was part of the Kolozvár contingent, then Mila’s mother could have seen him.
Boarding the ferry to Calais, Atara spent her last coins on a magazine.
The contingent from Cluj arrived in Budapest on June 10, 1944, and was placed in a guarded, privileged camp in the courtyard of the Wechselmann Institute for the Deaf, on Columbus Street.
June 10, 1944, was a Sabbath day. The Rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim, Joel Teitelbaum, would not carry his prayer shawl and phylacteries from the train station to Columbus Street.…
The Rebbe was on the contingent that left Kolozvár.
Atara rose. She wanted to apologize for doubting the story Mila had needed her so much to believe, about Mila’s mother running to the Rebbe.…
On a bench in the ferry’s passenger cabin, Mila was reading Lives of Our Holy Rebbes. She looked up when Atara called her name, and frowned when she saw the stack of newspapers in Atara’s hands. Just then, the loudspeaker sputtered that passengers should gather their belongings and prepare for customs. Out the large cabin windows, Atara saw the deckhands already mooring the ferry to the dock. She would have to wait until they had gone through customs before speaking to Mila.
Holding their stateless papers instead of passports, the girls walked up to the customs officer. Atara’s heart fluttered as it had at previous border crossings, but other thoughts distracted her, thoughts of how much it would mean to Mila, that the circumstances of a special train, the circumstances of her mother’s death, could be validated. She also thought of how this new information might affect her relationship with Mila. Perhaps, once Mila learned that the Rebbe owed his life to a Zionist venture, to the very Zionist who negotiated with Eichmann, Mila might understand some of Atara’s doubts, might begin to question the Rebbe’s infallibility.
On the journey from Calais to Paris, in the intimacy of a compartment they had to themselves, Atara sat next to Mila and took her hand. She showed Mila the photograph of the open boxcars. She apologized for not believing Mila’s version of her mother’s death.
Mila stared at the photograph.
“It was a special train,” Atara explained, “that’s why the doors were open. It was a train of prominenten and the Rebbe was on it and the first contingent left from Kolozvár—”
“Kolozvár?” Mila’s voice trembled when she uttered the name of her hometown. “But the Rebbe lived in Szatmár, not Kolozvár.”
Atara told Mila what she had read about the Rebbe’s escape: the Rebbe had fled Szatmár in secret, in the middle of the night, but was caught before reaching Romania and was placed in the Kolozvár ghetto, where he heard of the Zionist train for prominenten.
“The Rebbe would never deal with a Zionist,” Mila said flatly. “And the Rebbe was deported.”
“He was not deported.”
“To Bergen-Belsen.”
“Have you heard of regular Jewish deportees traveling from Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland during the war? The Rebbe spent five months in Bergen-Belsen because Kasztner’s negotiations were complicated, but all the people on Kasztner’s train were Exchange Jews. It meant that they had enough food. They didn’t work. Families weren’t separated. Even newborn babies survived, and old people, too. The Rebbe was not deported.”
“To Bergen-Belsen …” Mila said barely audibly. Then: “And this special train stopped where my parents were hiding?”
“I don’t know why it stopped but it’s as you always said: You saw the Rebbe.”
“What if I didn’t? What if I thought I recognized him but it wasn’t him?”
“Your mother saw him. You said she yelled ‘Rebbe!’ when she ran out.”
Mila sank under the weight of the tragedy returning to her. Her eyes closed. As if articulating an unspeakable doubt, she whispered, “But if the Rebbe could stop the train in front of our hiding place, why couldn’t he save us?”
Atara did not have the heart to tell Mila that when the Rebbe boarded Kasztner’s train, he had already decided to leave her family behind. “You said the other trains, too, slowed around the bend. It wasn’t the Rebbe who stopped the train.”
“But when my mother ran out, was she trying to save him or was she hoping he would save us?”
“She must have hoped—your parents must have known about the Kasztner train, everyone in the ghetto knew, everyone tried—” Atara stopped. She feared that if Mila learned from her the specifics of the Rebbe’s escape, then Mila might dismiss the information as more of Atara’s questioning. She thought she must create a direct encounter between Mila and this new information. She held back the facts and feelings rushing through her, and rolled them all into one bold request: “Mila, there are maps, train schedules. There are witness accounts. We can find out every detail about Kasztner’s train and about the Rebbe’s escape. We can find out the exact date the train left Kolozvár and map its itinerary, we can find out what the people on Kasztner’s train knew about where the rest of the community was going. Mila, will you come with me to the library? ”
“The library?”
“To find out what happened, what happened in your life.”
Mila was silent, but she did not refuse.
The night of their arrival in Paris, the idea that they might go together to the library hovered between the girls. Atara, emboldened, took out the transistor radio she kept hidden on the armoire’s top shelf, a tiny radio she had traded with a former classmate during her last year at the lycée. Ears glued to the crackling speaker, hair interwoven on the same pillow, the girls listened for news of Kasztner and the Kasztner affair. Kasztner’s condition had worsened. The girls thought of the dying man. Had a Jew really collaborated with Nazis? Had the Rebbe boarded a special train negotiated by a Zionist? To the girls, the two questions seemed equally inconceivable.
They did not turn off the radio after the news. French songs followed one after the other and soon the girls floated on rhythms where non-Jew and Jew throbbed to the same longings, boy and girl walking hand in hand and never letting go.…
The next day, when they woke, Atara reminded Mila of the research they needed to do. Mila nodded solemnly. In the morning the two girls cleaned the apartment. After lunch, Hannah encouraged them to go to the Luxembourg Gardens for a last carefree walk before the children—who had been distributed among orthodox families when Hannah was assigned to bed rest—came home.
Atara mentioned the library as soon as the two girls were outside. Again, Mila nodded, but when they reached the rue Soufflot that led to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Mila threaded her arm in Atara’s elbow and steered her toward the Luxembourg.
For the first time in years, the girls entered the gardens without pram or tow of siblings. They
felt giddy, and slightly guilty, strolling down the chestnut-lined alley, just the two of them. The end of winter was in the air. They leaned against the balustrade overlooking the pond. Pigeons basked in the warmer rays, feathers puffed around their tiny heads. The Sénat clock struck the hour and the girls wished that it would always be so, the two of them, together, watching the seasons change.
After the last chime had faded, Atara said, “There’s no one in Paris, no one in all of France whose pedigree is good enough for Zalman Stern. We’ll be married far from Paris—”
“No one will marry us off without our consent.”
“But our only choice is to consent. Mila … if I were courageous enough … if I prepared the baccalauréat and went to college, would you—”
“Courageous to go to college? What’s courageous is to remain a Jew.”
“But if I did go to college and my father disowned me, would I lose you, too?”
Mila stepped toward the large planters that gardeners in blue shifts were wheeling out of the orangerie. She read out the labels: “Palmier-dattier, Laurier-rose, Grenadier—” She turned to Atara. “When my parents live again, I want them to recognize me as a Jew. I want them to recognize my children. I want them to recognize your children.”
“And if your parents don’t—if the messiah doesn’t come in your lifetime?”
“Aneini! Answer me!” Mila called to the sky and her arms flew up as she spun on her tiptoes in front of a parterre of tulips; blue, white, red tulips, the colors of France casting long shadows on the freshly seeded lawn. “The messiah will come and we’ll fly to Jerusalem …”
Nurserymen pushing wheelbarrows of potted plants turned their heads and whistled. Mila’s hem covered her knees, her long-sleeved blouse was buttoned to the neck, but she looked graceful spinning with her narrow waist and her tall updo. Mila and Atara hooked elbows. They skipped under the chestnut trees, out of the Luxembourg; they skipped above the paving seams of the rue Servandoni, across the boulevard Saint-Germain, along the rue de Seine. On the crest of the Pont des Arts, they leaned over the bridge’s railing and turned up their palms for the first drops of rain. The sky unleashed itself and they whirled as they had as children, arms stretched wide as their tongues searched their lips for the taste of clouds. Streetlamps were twinkling stars.… Atara flew above river and roofs, above all the boundaries the world drew around her. Mila whirled faster still, until she let herself drop to the ground, too dizzy to answer Atara’s calls. When Mila’s eyes opened, they were filled, not with Atara’s inebriation but with apology—for surviving, for being alive. Atara combed her fingers through Mila’s disheveled hair, combed them toward what she hoped might still be the direction of an escape.
On the quai de la Mégisserie, shop owners carried twittering birdcages indoors; roller shutters rattled shut. It was late. They would go to the library tomorrow. The girls started to run.
• • •
They arrived home, cheeks flushed as in childhood. Tiptoeing into the entry, they found Hannah and Zalman sitting in the living room, waiting for them, but rather than question where the girls had been and why they looked so exhilarated, Hannah and Zalman smiled, warmly taking them in.
“Go, quick, dry yourselves or you’ll catch cold,” Hannah said. “Come back when you’re done.” Again, she smiled. “We have something to tell you.”
When the girls returned with towels wrapped around their hair, Zalman spoke first. “We are far from the Rebbe’s court, but your lineage, Blimela, and the good reputation of our home make you a commendable match. The phone has been ringing, calls from America.…”
Hannah’s smile widened. “Word of your beauty seems to have spread as well. We keep saying that you are young, but we received a call today that had the two of us talking all afternoon.”
“A Torah scholar, a favorite at the Rebbe’s court.”
“Handsome, we hear.”
“Surely you remember Josef Lichtenstein?”
Mila caught her breath.
“For years, our Josef was too deep in study to consider any match,” Zalman continued, “but someone mentioned you, that you were coming of age.… It appears Josef now has time enough.” Zalman hesitated a moment and then said, “Josef Lichtenstein spent seven years on a non-Jewish farm, he called a non-Jew mother.” Zalman breathed in deeply. “Blimela, I speak to you as to a daughter: If this young man’s upbringing—for which he bears no responsibility, if you have the slightest misgiving about Josef Lichtenstein, you need not agree to meet him, but all the informatzieh is good. His teachers laud him, so do his study partners and every family with whom he spends the Sabbath. Yes, the merit of fathers visits upon their sons, the soul of the holy Rebbe Elimelech Lichtenstein has been watching over our Josef. I must add, Blimela, your parents, may they rest in peace, your parents would have felt honored to strike a match with the grandnephew of the holy Rebbe Elimelech Lichtenstein.”
That evening, Mila was too restless to lie down. Pacing between the twin brass beds, she talked about Josef, implausible, mystifying Josef—Josef the brave farm boy who was also a Hasidic Jew. Laughingly, then with growing earnestness, her words wove her life and Josef’s; marriage with Josef would signify the culmination of their torn and reconstructed childhoods; children with Josef would be the triumph of their parents’ world over those who set out to destroy it.
Atara wanted to share Mila’s excitement. She remembered liking the boy, and Josef would be different from Zalman, but was it now inevitable that she would lose Mila?
The neighboring bells of Saint-Paul struck, each gong heavy, solitary. Mila sighed. “If I no longer heard those bells.…”
“We’ve always known that a marriage our parents approved meant giving up Paris and its bells.”
“It isn’t a coincidence that I learn of this the day I was so close to going to the library. It’s as if Josef were saving me all over again.”
“From the library? Josef is saving you from the library?”
“I don’t need to research it. I know: the Rebbe had to save himself so he could save Judaism.”
“Yes, there must be a holy text, somewhere, that says it’s okay to abandon your community if you believe you’re saving Judaism,” Atara said with growing hopelessness.
“The Rebbe had to live. Who knows what worse suffering his prayers averted.”
“If the Rebbe boarded that train thinking he was saving Judaism, then he did exactly what so angers him about Zionists selecting young pioneers to salvage their vision of Jewry. In the end, Zionists did save their archenemy, the Rebbe of Szatmár, whereas he saved himself, his wife—”
“I’m not listening. The Rebbe did what HaShem told him to do.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he advised your grandparents to tear up their Palestine Certificates? That he fled with the help of a Zionist?”
They both thought of the Palestine Certificates that Mila’s grandparents had obtained before the war and tore up after seeking the Rebbe’s advice, a story Zalman had told many times so that Mila would be proud of her lineage, of her grandparents gassed in Auschwitz.
“That was before the war,” Mila said, trembling. “He gave that advice before the war.”
“Terrible advice. He also expelled from the congregation anyone who had any dealings with Zionists and then, when it was too late for everyone else—”
“Atara, you’re really becoming an apikores. I’m not listening.”
“—he saved himself. It didn’t occur to him to ask why the Germans might let out this one train of elect Jews? And if it didn’t occur to him, should he still decide for us—”
“It was God’s will that the Rebbe should live.”
Atara threw her little transistor radio to the floor.
Mila stared, openmouthed, at the cracked plastic shell, at the knob rolling under the bed.
“And will it be God’s will and the Rebbe’s will for you to leave me behind?” Atara asked.
“The Rebbe is n
ot responsible for what the Nazis did,” Mila whispered.
Tears welled in Atara’s eyes. “Of course the Rebbe is not responsible for what the Nazis did. And neither are the Zionists. The Rebbe behaved like other people who wanted desperately to live, and we can live, too. We don’t need to ask the Rebbe or anyone. Mila, if I went to college and my father declared me dead, would you not see me again?”
“You won’t. You can’t do it to your parents. You can’t do it to me.” Mila started her night prayers after which it was not permitted to speak: “Michael is to my right, Gabriel to my left.…”
MILA and Josef had not seen each other for ten years. Occasionally visitors from Williamsburg had brought news: the rescued orphan had chanted his bar mitzvah like a true Hasid; the orphan boy lived at the yeshiva in a room with seven other boys and spent Sabbaths with families in Williamsburg. The teller of one story was unsure of whether it was a sign of good or ill, but a menacing dog once strayed into the yeshiva yard and Josef, to the wonderment of all who watched, knew how to appease the unclean animal.
Except for such episodic news, Mila had been left to her fading memories.
Had Josef stayed with the Sterns, had Mila and Josef been raised as brother and sister, had Josef done what other yeshiva boys do—trust that a marriage with a girl he had never met would be arranged for him.… Instead, Josef waited for the little girl he had rescued when he was a child, for the beautiful Mila Heller who loved Paris but would consider joining the Rebbe’s court in Williamsburg, in America.
*
MILA and Josef sat across from each other—she, seventeen, modest but fashionable in her blue taffeta suit and tall updo; he, twenty-two, face no longer honey-colored but indoor yeshiva pale under the wide-brimmed black hat.
The door of the dining room was ajar, unmarried men and women must not meet alone.
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