Ashes

by Christopher de Vinck

  All of France had been taken over, conquered, and occupied. It became known that if you were not Jewish, you could return safely to Belgium. I was going home. I had lost my chance to escape the Nazi occupation, but at least I was going home.

  I took a train from Biarritz back to Brussels. When I arrived home, I placed my pink shell on my nightstand, and my life in Brussels under Nazi rule began.

  So much of those four years is a blur as loneliness, confusion, and fear monopolized my thoughts about my father, my country, and about Hava.

  When I first returned home, I found the house unchanged, except for a thick layer of dust that took up residence in my absence. Somehow, my house had survived the chaos, the bombs, and the madness. I wished my father had been there too, but he was still far away. I was frantic to find him, but all the Belgian offices were filled with Nazi bureaucrats who were no help, and simply ordered me to go home.

  After one exhausting day of searching, I entered my house and found a note someone had slipped under my door. Your father is safe. He escaped over the Pyrenees and into Spain. I didn’t know where it came from, but I chose to believe it was true. I chose to believe he was safe, and I let myself feel relieved.

  During those first few months I made it my mission to find Hava. She was young; she was strong. I knew that she would be okay wherever she was. I just needed to find her. I thought my father’s medal and reputation might give me some clout with whoever was in charge of locating and releasing prisoners. If they knew Hava and her family were good friends of the general, surely they’d let them go.

  I spent weeks visiting offices, spent hours scrutinizing lists of names. There were so many people named Daniels, but they were never the right ones. No Hava. No Benjamin. No Yaakov. No Avital. I hoped that one clue, just one clue, might lead me to Hava, but the answers were always the same: the Polish and Jewish people who had been taken away by the Nazis couldn’t be found, couldn’t be brought home.

  When I went to Hava’s synagogue, there was only rubble. When I asked in the neighbourhood about Rabbi Menke, or about the Daniels family, all I received was silence. It was as if there had been no Jews in Brussels; as if the Nazi Pied Piper of Hamelin had swooped into Belgium and lured away not rats and children, but all the Jewish people.

  So many nights I cried myself to sleep. I prayed for my father, for Hava, and for her family. I prayed for the war to end. And that prayer became my mantra during those lonely days. I would tell myself, ‘When the war is over, I will find Hava. When the war is over, everything will go back to the way things used to be. When the war is over . . . When the war is over.’

  But the war dragged on month after month. I felt like a prisoner in my own home as the Nazis marched in our streets, attended our opera, ran our government and used most of our city’s resources for their soldiers.

  There was a nightly curfew, food was scarce because of rationing, and the neighbourhood tried to survive in as normal a manner as possible on the little that was available to us. It took so much energy just to endure, just to keep going, that living itself started to feel like a monotonous chore – a dreary cycle of waking and sleeping. I did find moments of solace in books, and I was grateful for my father’s library, but those moments never lasted long as I’d always find my mind wandering back to Hava.

  CHAPTER 49

  February 1945. Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta, on the Crimean Peninsula, to plan the final phase of the war. That month, Belgium was declared fully liberated.

  Many years later I learned that after my father had joined the Belgian Resistance, he had received word that the Nazis’ SS elite had discovered his activities, so he’d fled Belgium with two of his comrades. They walked through France under the cover of night, hiding in barns during the day, avoiding German trucks and troops, dodging Nazi soldiers on motorcycles and in planes. They walked and walked, until they reached the foot of the Pyrenees. There, they hired a guide who took them over the mountain and into Spain, where they were ultimately captured and imprisoned.

  Six months later, Spain, then an ally of Nazi Germany, was in desperate need of fuel, so the Government made a deal with England: oil for prisoners. And so my father was released and sent to England with over 7,000 other Belgian and French refugees.

  There had been no way for him to contact me, but one evening during the third year of the war, as I was listening to Radio Belgium, to a broadcast transmitted to Nazi-occupied Belgium from London, I was startled to hear my father’s voice: ‘The time for courage is upon you. It is known throughout the world of your struggles. Salvation is at hand. The Allies will not be thwarted. Roosevelt and Churchill will prevail. Vive la Belgique.’

  During his four years in London, my father was able to broadcast such encouraging words to his country as part of the Resistance campaign, and during his time there, he helped thousands of European refugees who had escaped across the English Channel. Towards the end of the war, he had become a significant player in the reconstruction of Europe, having received personal awards from American General Dwight Eisenhower and British General Bernard Montgomery.

  The war ended for me when, one day, there was a robust knock at my door. When I opened it, there standing before me was Major General Joseph Lyon, in full dress uniform and white gloves. My father.

  ‘Papa!’ I cried. I fell into his safe arms and wept.

  ‘Simone.’ I felt his strong arms around me. I felt tears on my cheek.

  I looked up into his face and said ‘Wait, Papa. Wait.’

  I reached into my pocket, fumbled for the Croix de Guerre, and pinned it onto my father’s chest. I stepped back, saluted and then once again fell into his open arms.

  CHAPTER 50

  In these three decades love and loyalty to my people have guided all my thoughts, actions and my life . . . It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked solely by international statesmen, either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests . . . Above all, I charge the leadership of the nation and their followers with strict observation of racial laws and with the merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all people, international Jewry.

  Adolf Hitler’s Last Will and Testament, 29 April 1945

  After my father and I were reunited, I was able to focus once again on my concerns for Hava. The war was nearly over. I didn’t know where to begin my search, but then I thought to start at the beginning: Hava’s home.

  I had walked past her house many times during the Nazi occupation and each time, I saw that it was empty: no lights, boarded-up windows, and someone had painted the word ‘Jew’ in bold black letters across the front door.

  When my father returned home, I was filled with new hope. ‘Papa, it’s such a beautiful day, I think I will go for a walk.’ He was sitting once again in his chair, with his newspaper on his lap, just where he belonged. He looked up at me and smiled. ‘Yes, Simone. The Brussels air is fresh once again.’

  When I opened the door, I almost expected to find Nicole with a carrot in her hand, but she was not there. I thought about Sergeant De Waden and the beautiful white horse. As I walked through the park I looked up into the sky and was happy to see pigeons instead of low-flying aeroplanes.

  I walked by the convent. It was closed. I walked aimlessly through the streets, happy to see fresh gingerbread and speculaas biscuits once again in the baker’s window.

  I bought a small bag of chestnuts from a vendor under a green and white striped umbrella and savoured the taste. As I was peeling the last one, I looked up and realized that I was standing in front of Hava’s house. There were lights inside and blinds on the windows. The door was freshly painted green. ‘They’re back!’ I laughed out loud and tossed the last chestnut shells up into the air like confetti.

  I ran to the green door and knocked, and knocked, and knocked. ‘Monsieur Daniels! Madame Daniels!’ I knocked again. ‘Benjamin!’

  Wh
en the door opened there stood a tall, young man. ‘May I help you?’

  I looked at the man’s face, and into his eyes, and then I knew.

  ‘May I help you?’ he asked again.

  My shoulders slumped; my voice subdued. ‘My name is Simone Lyon. Do you know the Daniels? They live here. They’re my friends. I haven’t seen them since the beginning of the war.’

  A young woman appeared at the door and asked, ‘Roger, is everything alright?’

  ‘Yes, yes. This is Mademoiselle Lyon. She is looking for the Daniels family.’

  The man turned to me and kindly said ‘Come in, mademoiselle. This is my wife Claudine. I am Roger Peeters. Come in, please.’

  I hesitated to step into the memories that had been carried away by the war. The rooms were a different colour, the furniture unrecognizable. We sat in the parlour where Benjamin had stepped out from behind the curtain and announced, Good evening, ladies and gentleman. At least the curtains were still there.

  When I clasped my hands together, Monsieur Peeters stood up. ‘I’ll be right back. Claudine, perhaps we can offer the mademoiselle some tea?’

  ‘No, no thank you. I don’t want to disturb you. I was just hoping to find my friends. I don’t know what happened to them.’

  Madame Peeters looked at me as her husband left the room. ‘Roger is an architect. He was a corporal in the war. When Belgium fell in those first eighteen days, Roger was taken prisoner with the other thousands of Belgian soldiers. He was lucky; he was not sent to the factories in Germany. The Nazis had too many prisoners and just let some go home.’

  I looked around the room.

  ‘We were fortunate,’ Madame Peeters continued as she placed her hand gently on her abdomen. ‘We’re expecting our first child. We were looking for a home to begin our new life. When we went to the bank for financial help, we were told that many abandoned homes were available, but in disrepair. We loved this house right away, and because of my husband’s profession, he was able to redesign and repair the damage. It’s a beautiful place.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said as I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Lyon, I have something to share with you,’ Monsieur Peeters said as he returned from the back room.

  ‘When we first moved here, a postal clerk came to the door, happy to see that his postal route was being re-established. After he introduced himself, he explained that at the beginning of the war, this packet had been sent to this address. He said that he had known the Daniels well, but that he couldn’t deliver this, for no one was ever home. And then the widows were boarded up, the building condemned, so he kept this at his home, thinking perhaps the Daniels would someday return.’

  ‘I remember how the house was closed during the war,’ I said, anxious to know what was in the packet.

  ‘These letters,’ Monsieur Peeters said, holding up a thin bundle of papers tied together with a red string, ‘they were written by the Daniels family. Your name is mentioned . . . When you said your name just now, I recognized it.’

  Monsieur Peeters handed me the small packet of letters.

  His wife looked at her husband, and turned to me. ‘We’d like you to have them. We hoped that perhaps someday you would come.’

  When I held the letters, I could almost feel Hava’s hand in mine. ‘Thank you, thank you, monsieur and madame.’

  At the door, before I left, I said, ‘I promised my friend that I would remember her and find her.’

  ‘I hope you do. Good luck, Mademoiselle Lyon,’ Monsieur Peeter said.

  ‘Bon chance,’ his wife said warmly.

  ‘Good luck with your baby,’ I replied.

  As I walked down the street, the warm sun caressed my cheeks. A man and a woman walked past me arm in arm and smiled. A child carrying a small wooden sailing boat said to the old man walking beside him, ‘The swans like to chase my boat on the pond.’

  When I saw an empty bench up ahead, I had to restrain myself not to run, so I walked up to it casually, sat down as if it was just an ordinary day at the park, and held the letters tenderly in my hands, then started reading.

  Hava, my daughter,

  Your mother, and I, and Benjamin are okay. We waited for you when you went off to get Simone, but at the synagogue we received word that Jews were going to be beaten and their families slaughtered. We met some friends – you remember the Bergmanns? They had a car. I believed that since you were with Simone, a gentile and daughter of General Lyon, that you were safe. Still, we asked the Bergmanns to drive us back home, in case you had returned. Before we got there, we were stopped and taken to Germany.

  Now, we are told that we will be going to some sort of camp. They tell us we will be going by train to the industrial town of Oswiecim in southern Poland. We will be asked to work. We can work. When we get home we will once again pray together. Be brave, my Hava. We love you.

  Papa

  I sat on the bench, closed my eyes and heard Yaakov Daniels telling Hava, ‘Remember what we say: God Blessed are You, O Lord, who consoles all men and women and builds every home, for we shall all be restored.’

  In the distance I heard children laughing and the music from the carousel playing once again. I took a deep breath and continued.

  My dear Hava,

  Your father is his usual grumpy self, and Benjamin can’t sit still. We miss you and hope the house is warm enough. As your father said, we had to leave. We were not given a choice, but Germany is beautiful, though we have been told we won’t be staying here very long. There was an issue about a transfer at a train station. We were told that we will be taken to a comfortable town in Poland where we will be safe during the war and fed and even given a shower. Plumbing! Can you imagine how nice it will be to take a warm shower?

  Take care of the house. Stick close to Simone. She is a lovely girl. We all need friends. I love you my darling. Don’t worry about us. Benjamin is pestering me for the pencil so I will let him write. We love you.

  Mama

  ‘Mademoiselle Lyon?’

  I looked up from Avital’s letter.

  ‘Mademoiselle Lyon, is it you?’

  ‘Nicole?’ I reached out, hugged the girl and wept softly into her shoulder.

  ‘Mademoiselle?’ Nicole whispered after a few moments. ‘I saw you from the carousel. Are you okay?’ She wriggled slightly loose from my embrace and looked into my eyes. ‘I am thirteen now. My mother and I, we moved to a new house. Does your father still have his beautiful horse?’

  I let go of the child, wiped away my tears, and slipped Avital’s letter under the first one. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m okay, Nicole. You are all grown up! No, the horse is gone. I think she must have fought very bravely for Sergeant De Waden.’

  Nicole stepped back and sat next to me. ‘I remember the carrots. I was so frightened at first to feed the horse. I was afraid Charlotte was going to bite my hand if I placed the carrot too close to her mouth.’

  ‘You were a brave little girl. It’s important to be brave.’

  ‘I like listening to American music. I heard a song called “My Dreams are getting better”. Doris Day sang it. I like Doris Day. Someday I’m going to be just like her.’

  ‘It’s good to have dreams, Nicole. Do you dream about clouds or mountains?’

  Nicole smiled and said, ‘That’s a funny question, mademoiselle. I dream about Hollywood.’

  I inhaled the fresh Belgian air. Once Hava and I had had the same dreams.

  ‘I have to go. My mother said that after the park, she’d take me to the Grand Place for lunch.’ She hugged me, stood up and said, ‘My mother will be happy that I found you. It’s good to be found, isn’t it, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Yes, Nicole. It’s a good to be found. Please say hello to your mother.’

  ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Goodbye, ma petite amie.’

  As I watched Nicole run down cobblestones, I tapped my hand against the last letter.


  Hi Hava,

  Mama said I should write a letter. She didn’t give me the pencil. I’m hot. Are you coming? I’m also thirsty, but Papa said not to tell you anything bad so I will tell you something else. We are going to take a train, in a cattle car! That should be fun. I hope the cows don’t smell too much. Okay. I wrote you a letter. Now you have to write me back.

  Benjamin

  ‘It’s good to be found,’ I said to myself as I walked home.

  CHAPTER 51

  With the backing of the approaching Allied armies commanded by Generals Eisenhower and Bradley, and with the French people and their triumphant fighting of the Nazis in Paris, Charles de Gaulle announced triumphantly, ‘Paris! Paris humiliated! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But now Paris liberated! Liberated by herself, by her own people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and aid of France as a whole, of fighting France, of the only France, of the true France, of eternal France.’

  A few weeks later, with the war nearly over, I found myself in the filthy attic with my father. For once, the loud explosions outside were not from bombs, but from a powerful thunderstorm. The storm split open the night; the most ferocious storm I had ever experienced.

  During the night, the rain leaked into the attic, saturated the floor, and poured into the bedrooms, causing great havoc for my father and me. The next morning, we climbed into the attic where we found a thick layer of sludge. The attic had accumulated layers of dust over the many years, and because the storm had been so powerful, the rain had washed away part of the roof and soaked into the dried dirt.

  My father and I had buckets, rags, and sponges, and we began wiping, scrubbing, and gathering the muck. At one point, my father looked up at me. His face was smeared with dirt. Because I felt sorry for him, I said that I would clean up the rest. But in response, his eyes wide and determined, my father spoke of how much he had suffered in the Spanish prison. ‘Cleaning this attic is a joy and great fun.’ He flicked muck into my face and we laughed. Then I threw muck into his face, and he didn’t laugh . . . at first.