“What’s so funny?” Eli squished his face up to hers as he rolled toward her body.
“I’m just happy, in this moment with you, despite all of it, all of the chaos around us.”
Eli traced his fingers across her brow, down her jaw line to her lips. “Me too.” He only needed to say two words to delineate the feelings between them, to make them real and alive. Though Eli and Rebecca were in the habit of skipping many Synagogue services for sleeping in and spending the day together, Eli wanted to take Rebecca to service today. They slipped out of bed and bathed. Rebecca lifted the water drenched sponge and squeezed it over Eli, watching the water trickle down his back. She dabbed soap on his body and Eli rubbed the scented cleanser into his skin and then squeezed the saturated sponge over Rebecca’s back and chest, washing her.
Rebecca twirled her hair up and pinned it on top of her head and dried off before slipping on a cotton lavender skirt draping over her knees and a white silk blouse with the lace enveloping her neck. Eli pulled on beige slacks and a caramel brown shirt with well ironed sleeves and collar. Rebecca tended to his clothes when she could despite her busy schedule at the hospital and despite the insistence from Eli to forget the ironing and allow him to do it. But Rebecca enjoyed tending to Eli and aiding him in his comforts.
They sauntered over the street in the cool April breeze. With the Synagogue just blocks away from their apartment, they preferred walking to driving. Many shops along the street were closed because of the Shabbos. Eli pulled Rebecca close to him with a tug on her hand. Rebecca’s heels clicked against the pavement and Eli’s loafers softly patted the cement.
From behind, the sound of jackboots disturbed the rhythm Rebecca and Eli had between them. As the sounds approached, they pushed past the two of them. The SA soldiers stopped in front of the closed shops and businesses, their hands filled with pamphlets. A few couples walked ahead of Eli and Rebecca and, as they passed one of the shops, two members of the SA pushed pamphlets into their hands. The soldiers declared, “Protect German blood and German honor! Don’t buy from Jews!” Across the street, several SA members no older than Jacob painted a sign in red ink across the window, Don’t buy from Jews!
The streets flooded with picket signs and demonstrations boycotting Jewish businesses and Jewish products. Some who held the signs were teenagers and young boys with smiles on their faces like they had achieved something great — the acceptance of their country and government.
Eli kept Rebecca close with an upheld confidence, a forceful will pushing him forward into morning Synagogue. Rebecca’s hand clenched Eli’s. Her smile dropped and tightened. They briskly ambled past a few shops decorated with newly posted derogatory Jewish remarks. Two SA guards handed out pamphlets, the taller one fixing his grey blue eyes on Eli and shouting, “Jew boy!”
Ignoring him, Eli reassured Rebecca’s safety with a touch of his hand to her lower back. They hastened around the corner to the Synagogue before a fight broke out. The synagogue service provided both Rebecca and Eli with a comforting peace not accessible on the streets of Munich anymore.
Rebecca had grown accustomed to the long service, and today felt most grateful for that fact. She didn’t want to return to the streets where discord waited on every corner, where at any moment she or Eli would have to fear for their safety.
Sometimes she awoke in the middle of the night in terror with images of Eli being dragged away in one of those Nazi vehicles taking him to the Dachau Concentration Camp. For Rebecca there were only two places she could entirely feel like herself anymore, two places that offered sanctuary, synagogue and her apartment. The streets held an uncertain future.
On April seventh, a new Nazi law forbade employment to all non-Aryan civil servants. Silent frustration and anger lingered in the minds of many non Aryan workers now out of a job, but the German citizens complied. Opinions divided. Some Germans held sympathies for the non Aryans, yet many remained adamant in the Nazi’s convictions.
The decline of civil liberties affected everyone. Life would only get worse for non Aryans. This theft could be tasted in the air. It could be heard in the whispers. It could be felt in the stares. No longer a place for business and strolling Sunday mornings, the streets became a maze for many, with roads leading to fear, some to retreat, and some to Nazi beatings.
On April twenty-second, Nazi law prohibited Jewish lawyers from practice throughout the country and, without tears, Ezekiel boarded up his firm and locked it for the last time. He had a few boxes filled with important papers and his black briefcase. Eli, along with Aaron and a friend Kevin, helped his father lift the boxes into the car. Not many supporters remained for Ezekiel by the time he locked the doors. Employees he had worked with, some for many years, departed month after month until he had very few employees left to pay.
When the firm closed, so did Eli’s ability to earn his living, and the weight of the country fell like a heavy stone upon his already wavering shoulders. Eli arrived at the apartment with a forlorn look of desperation and defeat. Already hearing the news at the hospital, Rebecca rushed to his side as he plodded through the door. Rebecca was used to comforting and aiding patients so, when Eli’s face lost its color and he slipped in a faint, she caught him before he hit the floor.
“My papa had to close his firm today, a firm he managed and owned most of his life.” The words flowed heavily out of Eli’s lips. “There was such sadness in his face.”
Rebecca walked him to the sofa, pulled off his coat and laid it across the sofa’s back. Then she hugged him, drawing his tired face to her chest. A few minutes later, she boiled a pot of tea and Eli sat in a worrying daze. When Rebecca handed the cup to him, he drank slowly and began to warm up. The gold brown hint of color replenished the earlier paleness and he refocused on Rebecca.
“We have to get out of here. Things are only getting worse. Papa might listen to me now and take the family to America.” Eli’s reasoned tone returned and Rebecca could see the lawyer in him pondering his next moves. “I’ll look for forged visas for my family. We don’t have time to wait for all of us to be approved.”
“Is it safe?”
“What else can I do? Papa hasn’t turned in the family paperwork for a visa and the chance of immigration approving all five of us is unlikely.” Eli’s voice scratched, “Roosevelt is tightening the quotas. The immigration rate is rising. If we had a famous scientist or athlete in the family, we could rely on being approved, but we have no one influential.” His words flowed like he argued a case before the courthouse.
“You must be extremely careful, Eli.” Rebecca squeezed his arm. “It would be very dangerous if you were caught. Jews opposing the Nazis are already disappearing. If anyone found you out, you…you… ” She couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t think the words. Her eyes teared at the unbearable thought.
“No one will find out. Aaron knows what to do. He has a Jewish friend who’s good with documents. He’ll be able to find something for my family.”
“And you?” Her eyes watered and wrinkles stretched over her forehead. “What if your application is denied?”
“If it is, Aaron will find the paperwork I need.” Eli whispered the sentence as if someone might hear and Rebecca rested her head on his shoulder. The evening drew upon the country and Rebecca closed the curtains over the kitchen window. They rested in the bedroom that held their secrets and that had become their sanctuary.
Saturday morning, many shops and restaurants refused service to Jews. Placards placed around businesses stated, Jews not admitted and Jews enter this place at their own risk. Because of Nazi insistence of public school overcrowding, they limited Jews in the number that could attend. Many knew this meant Jews would eventually be banned altogether.
They [the Jews] have no business being among us true Germans, explained one Nazi teacher to his students. A dark cloud situated itself over the country and the country succumbed to its darkness. Those not especially adverse to Jews still followed the Nazis out of f
ear for their own livelihood.
Some parts of the country banned Jews from public parks, swimming-pools and public transport. Laws prevented universities from keeping Jewish educators, and campuses across Germany removed Jewish teachers from the buildings. Teachers who had spent most of their adult life educating were no longer welcome, and the sting like a wasp did not end with the simple request from the Nazis.
The sting stabbed much deeper as feelings wavered among non-Jewish students. Some felt the discriminations in the new laws were unjust, unfair and yet many felt them necessary to ensure Germany returned to the hands of German blood. The very students who many Jewish educators dedicated their lives to teach turned against them.
A secret police began watching the citizens. Gestapo. If they found anyone not abiding Nazi decorum, the Gestapo assaulted them or they disappeared, assumed to have been tortured and left at a concentration camp. The Protestant and Catholic press described the papers’ ambivalent feelings towards Hitler’s anti-Semitism. They denounced banishment of Jews, violence and persecution and yet, argued Germany’s Jews had brought these consequences upon themselves because of their dominating presence in the press, as well as in the economic and financial world.
* * *
While Rebecca was at work, Eli met with Aaron at an archaic building owned by an older Jewish family, long time friends with Aaron. They had operated a legal advice office, but the business closed and chains lay across the doors. Eli followed Aaron into the back alley and saw a man with a cigarette standing beside a door. The man nodded at Aaron in recognition and squeaked the door open. He dropped the cigarette and twisted it under his foot while Eli and Aaron slipped into the building.
Eli followed Aaron through the corridor and into an office toward the front. The room, musty from a lack of operation in the past weeks, carried the sounds of distraught and frustrated voices. Two men with short dark hair and heavy mustaches sat on a short sofa against the left wall. An elderly woman holding a cup of tea stood in the right corner where a kettle sat on small table. Three younger men sat on a long sofa against the right wall. An elderly man with a grey mustache and grey hair directed the meeting from the middle of the room. As Aaron and Eli entered, the loud discourse softened and eyes focused on them.
“Aaron, come in, come in,” the older man said and gestured for Aaron and Eli to sit on the middle sofa. The man stood next to a small coffee table with papers spread over it. His long black trench coat dangled below the table. “This must be your friend, Eli.” He reached to shake Eli’s hand. “I’m Mr. Reiner.” He then returned to the papers. “I guess we are all here for the same reasons.”
One of the men on the right sofa spoke, “Our visas were denied and we were told the quota has been met for this year. But we have to get our wives out of Germany.”
“This is not a guarantee,” the director said. “You have to realize this is dangerous.”
“We know, but there is no other way for us,” one of the two men implored while the other cleaned one of his fingernails with his other nail.
“And Aaron, you two are here for the same reason?”
“Yes.”
Eli cleared his throat and declared his predicament. “There are five in my family and they won’t have the time they need to get the documents required to exit Germany this year.”
The older man nodded and his heavy brows quirked. “And this family, does it include yourself?” he asked.
Eli shook his head. “I’m waiting on my paperwork from immigration. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
“And if you’re denied?” The older man said these words as if they were a certainty.
“I’ll have to come back to you.”
Mr. Reiner spoke to the room. “I’ll need pictures of everyone requiring visa documentation. I will also need birth certificates and passports and three hundred marks for each manufactured approval.” Eli’s brows arched at the request of money.
Aaron patted Eli’s shoulder. “It’s alright. The money isn’t for him. It’s for the officer in immigration who’ll help with the documents. He’ll stamp the passports with the needed visas and approvals and provide a forged letter from the American Embassy.”
“I’ll get everything you need. Just help my family get out of here,” Eli declared. Mr. Reiner adjusted his mustache and then handed Eli a paper from his coffee table.
“Drop off what I need at this mailbox address. Come back to this building in June and the paperwork will be ready for you.”
“In two months?” Eli’s voice stressed.
“It is as soon as I can get it done.” He laid his wrinkled hand on Eli’s shoulder. “These things take time.”
* * *
The Passover fell on April eleventh and, though the synagogues closed and Jewish services were refused acknowledgement, the Levin family made a feast to celebrate much like they had the previous year at their own home. Rebecca clung to the invitation with delight. She missed her own papa, Mildred, and Rueben and, despite her mother’s faults she missed her as well. She had hoped in time they would come to accept her decision to stay with Eli. Then she would be able to confess their marriage.
But no call since last Christmas arrived for her from her mother or her father and this disappointment weighed on her spirits. The Jewish holiday of Passover came for her as a needed interruption, providing the warmth of family again, though not her own.
The distance she felt sometimes between herself and the Levin family vanished at their wedding. Any resistance she felt in Deborah and Ezekiel had melted into affection and acceptance. Sarah, Leah, and Miriam became like her own sisters and Eli’s Jewish friends like her own brothers.
Rebecca clung to Eli’s warm hand as they walked into the Levin home for the second Passover together. More familiar to her than the last time, she knew what to expect and how to behave. She knew how long everything would take and what culinary elegance would be present. Though this year was laden with financial burden, political unrest and social uneasiness, the Levin family managed to provide a lush course for the dining enjoyment they called the Seder. All the expected food was present, cooked by Ada and Deborah with some help from Sarah.
The rituals had become like second nature to Rebecca and she even remembered many of the colloquial expressions and Hebrew words used during the feast. Many of Eli’s other relatives arrived for this feast, contributing to the food and drink. Outside the house, the country crumbled under a façade of righteous persecution. But inside the Levin home, familial tenderness shrouded each child and each adult, making this country still feel like home.
Wednesday, May 10, 1933
“All the authors that we had treasured — and of course still do treasure — were suddenly supposed to be valueless.” Elfrieda Bruenning, aged 93.
Rosalyn and Robert stood on the outskirts of a fire blazing into the once quiet evening German sky. Oxcarts crammed with forbidden books traversed throughout the German streets to various bonfires for destruction. University students, considered some of the finest in the world and once well studied in a variety of intellectual persuasions, plundered unwanted books and threw them into bonfires to the ominous sounds of Nazi music.
They poured gasoline over the books, torched them and watched them go up into smoke. Bands and parades marched and their sounds permeated cities across Germany. The music surrounded the crackling fires. Students took oaths and sang Nazi songs, declaring their disregard of unGerman ideas. Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells, and many others went up in flames to Nazi anthems and salutes.
Fires burned January evening on torches of Germans parading at the announcement of Hitler’s chancellorship. Fire burned the Reichstag down in February. Now fire destroyed ideas and words in May.
Towards the end of the book burning, Rosalyn and Robert heard Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Public enlightenment and Propaganda, speak at the bonfire in Berlin. “German men and women! The age of arrogant Jewish intellectualism is no
w at an end! You are doing the right thing at this midnight hour — to consign to the flames the unclean spirit of the past. This is a great, powerful, and symbolic act. Out of these ashes the phoenix of a new age will arise…Oh Century! Oh Science! It is a joy to be alive!”
Rosalyn grabbed Robert’s hand and pulled him back when he attempted to make his way to the bonfire.
Robert turned his head to her and tilted left in a weakness he had for her desires. “I have to try to save some books,” he whispered.
She held his gaze for a moment and then let him go. Robert tunneled through the crowds until he pushed his way to the fire. He pulled the book of poems by Heine Henrich out of one student’s hands and brushed off the ash. The blond, young student stood firm in his perverted ideals and, with a strained grimace, lunged forward at Robert and knocked into his shoulder.
“Give back the book!” the student said.
“No!” Robert pulled the book of poetry to his chest like he was protecting a wounded bird. The student lunged forward again, grasping for the book but, in Robert’s retreat backward, only grabbed air. A few other students noticed the scuffle and joined their peer’s efforts to retrieve the book for burning.
Robert surveyed the area and saw four students stare at him with eager intent to harm. Seconds stood still and then Robert twisted around in Rosalyn’s direction, pushing and clawing his way out of the maddening crowd.
The four students followed Robert and shouted, “Get him! Get him!” Their jaws clenched and they hissed their words like an animal about to kill its prey.
The Day the Flowers Died Page 20