Let Me Whisper You My Story

by Moya Simons

  Tears filled his eyes as he said this, and he put his arms around Mama and kissed her gently on her cheek. Then he embraced Miri and me. Miri cried and I cried too, because all that crying was making me sad. I couldn’t understand what war was about, that Europe was becoming one big Germany as countries were bombed and taken over.

  In Germany, restrictions on Jewish life became worse. Jewish businesses were taken over by non-Jews. Papa, as a doctor, still worked, and harder than ever. There were many sick people. Many had been beaten. Most of the time they were too sick to visit him so he would go out to see them. He could not drive because of the new regulations but, as we lived in an area where many Jews lived, there were more than enough patients to visit.

  When he’d come home later, he’d put his medical bag away and collapse into an armchair. ‘I cannot believe what I have seen,’ he would say to Mama, and she’d make him a warm drink. At such times my father’s eyebrows were knitted together in a deep frown. Then he’d see me and his face would light up into a perfect smile as I ran to him and sat on his lap.

  Jewish homes were taken over by the Nazis, and Jews were sent to Judenhäuser—apartments that had belonged to Jews and had been seized by the government to cram Jews together.

  I wondered how long it would be before the Nazis came for us. I spent a lot of time in Mama and Papa’s wardrobe, worrying about this.

  Once Mama and Papa talked together in the bedroom, unaware that I was sitting between the row of clothing.

  ‘They are rounding up Jews in occupied countries,’ my father told Mama. ‘Terrible things are being done. There is talk of concentration camps and murder.’

  ‘Concentration camps?’ Mama replied. ‘I heard they are moving Jews out of towns. That we are to be resettled. Isn’t that what these camps are for?’

  ‘Where do you think they are going to resettle us?’ Papa asked.

  I must have shifted position in the wardrobe, for the door was opened abruptly and Mama stood there. She pulled her dresses aside and there I was, curled up in a ball, trembling at my papa’s words.

  ‘It’s all right, Rachel,’ she said to me, and leaned down and stroked my hair. ‘As long as we are together, we shall be fine. We shall come through this.’

  ‘Miri says that even though horrible things have happened to Jews before, this is the worst it’s ever been.’ I clambered to my feet and shuffled out of the wardrobe. ‘I don’t understand why this is happening, or why it has happened before. What did the Jewish people do?’

  Papa looked at Mama. ‘That is the question our people have been asking forever, and we still don’t have an answer. Our customs are different, but that does not make us bad. Why do you hide in the wardrobe, Rachel?’

  ‘I’m not really hiding. I like the smell of your clothing. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Papa said, and he tweaked my cheek, straightened the bow in my hair, and smiled.

  Then, when it seemed as though each day we walked across a circus tightrope without the benefit of a net, something worse happened. There was heavy food rationing and all the complications that came with trying to buy food from shops where we weren’t welcome. Mama tried to think of ways to make simple meals tasty, and to make do with little. She cried a lot, but I say that because I heard her cry when I was in the wardrobe. She never cried in front of me.

  Each day Mama dressed nicely in a floral dress and a fitted belt. She pinned back her fair hair and sometimes I’d catch her staring at herself in the mirror. She’d look at her reflection for ages, as if there was something she had just noticed for the first time. Then she’d see me watching and turn around, and a smile would curl on her face. Her eyebrows would rise like small wings and she’d say to me, ‘Ah. I have a little spy in the house.’ She’d gather me in her arms. Oh, how special that was. The world is always safe when your mama holds you to her.

  My aunt gave Miri a bottle of scent. It wasn’t Miri’s birthday and I wondered why Aunty Gitta had suddenly given it to her. Miri was very happy. She dabbed the scent on her wrists and continually smelled herself.

  I turned seven in April 1940, just a few days before Pesach—a very important Jewish festival where we celebrate the exodus from slavery in Egypt led by Moses. Miri gave me a book for my birthday. I think it might have belonged to one of my cousins, but it was hard to buy books. Mama made me a dress in red and blue material with a white collar and Papa gave me four ribbons for my hair.

  At our Pesach service held around our long table with my aunt and uncle and cousins, we ate matzo instead of bread because the Jewish people had left Egypt in such a hurry they couldn’t wait for their bread to rise. The service was all about memories, Papa had explained to me, that went back far into our ancestors’ past. It was the duty of all Jews to keep that memory alive once a year for eight days, when we didn’t eat bread, just flat matzo. Papa read the service from his Haggadah, a special book in Hebrew just for Pesach. We drank a little wine, which we shared carefully, as we had no more left.

  We had been lucky. One of Papa’s patients had a little matzo in his cupboard and he gave some to us. There was no way it would last for eight days but Papa said, ‘God understands that these are difficult days. We cannot be observant Jews and we’ll make up for it when these times pass.’

  Mama hid a piece of matzo for the youngest to find. That was me. It was great fun to search for it, even though it was just under a couch, and very easy to spot.

  Meantime, word filtered through about the war. ‘Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Holland have gone,’ Mama said, after coming home from the shops. Next, France was taken. Horrible stories were told of not just Jews but Gypsies too being arrested, and even priests who had disagreed with Hitler’s policies. Disabled people were being murdered inside hospitals. Homosexuals were taken away. I did not know what this word meant but knew they, too, must be different in some way. I heard all this while hiding inside the wardrobe, daydreaming about peaceful times, while Mama and Papa talked in whispers in their bedroom.

  During the warm days I wore cotton dresses and sometimes went for walks with Mama up the street, but never far away. With a bright blue sky and dazzling sunlight it was hard to believe that Germany was at war and that awful things were happening.

  I could read and write but not well. Some of the children in the street were learning from two Jewish teachers who had turned part of a home into a Jewish day school, but Mama had not wanted me to go. ‘I don’t want you away from the house unless I am with you,’ she said. I missed the company of other children.

  She asked Miri to help me with my studies. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to write a book one day,’ I told Miri hopefully.

  ‘Maybe one day,’ replied Miri, ‘you’ll write an adventure book about castles and fairies, and I’ll write a true-life book about what’s happening in Germany. Everyone will want to read your book, but no-one will want to read mine because no-one wants to read the truth.’

  I sat patiently with Miri while she taught me. She was a hard teacher, going over and over my scribbly handwriting with a big red pencil correcting my mistakes.

  The leaves on the trees turned to gold in autumn, and still Germany was at war and it was getting worse, Papa said. We wore thick jumpers as winter arrived, and celebrated Hunukkah—the Festival of Lights—quietly without the lighting of candles, for we had just enough left to light for a number of Friday night Sabbaths.

  Then, one day in the early months of 1941, my papa came home from a Jewish hospital, one of the last few still open in Leipzig. It had been raided by the Nazis. He opened our door and went straight to his and Mama’s bedroom and closed the door after him. He refused to talk about what he’d seen.

  I felt as if a large spider with huge eyes and spindly legs was moving closer to us all the time and was about to consume us.

  Apart from the struggle to buy food, we stayed very much at home. As the days became warmer, I recalled blue skies and memories of walks in the park and lyi
ng near the lake there and the feeding of ducks. Even those memories were blurring under the constant strain I felt. My only outings were trips to the shops with my family. I spent a great deal of time in the wardrobe, where my imagination made anything possible.

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ Papa excitedly told Mama one day. ‘I have just found out that Germany has declared war on Russia.’ It was June 1941, and Papa had returned from the shops. He still had a few friends among the non-Jewish community, those who had been his former patients. One had given him some extra food, and told him the latest news.

  ‘This is a mistake. A very good mistake,’ Papa continued. ‘Hitler has taken on too much now. The Russians will not let Hitler just march in and take over. They will fight to the last man.’ He was pleased and smiled broadly. ‘This is the beginning of the end of Hitler.’

  Yet the war went on. Later in 1941, we were notified that we had to wear yellow stars sewn onto our clothing.

  ‘Why?’ I asked Miri as we made our beds one morning.

  ‘It’s to identify us,’ Miri replied as she plumped the pillows on her bed. ‘It’s crazy. I’ve seen posters showing what a typical Jew is supposed to look like—someone with an evil face and thick lips and a very big nose. Hardly any Jew I know looks like that.’

  ‘Then it is very stupid, Miri,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘If we are so easy to pick out then why do we need yellow stars?’

  We were given food rationing cards. When we went shopping I held Mama’s hand tightly. She would always mention she was the wife of Dr Schwarz. This surname was known in local shops, as most of the owners had been patients before the laws were changed. Sometimes it meant an extra vegetable, other times it meant nothing at all.

  On Friday nights we continued our Sabbath service. My aunt and uncle came over with my cousins, and Mama solemnly said prayers over our candles. Papa blessed the wine and the traditional coiled bread, though it had shrunk with the rationing. It seemed some sort of miracle that although the portions were tiny, the challah was always there, a reminder to us that at least something of our old life remained.

  Papa threw pieces of bread to us children and we tossed them to each other. We laughed and sang Hebrew songs and for a while there was no war, just Friday night Sabbath, a time of peace, a time outside the war zone, a lantern glowing in a dark night.

  One day Miri said, ‘I am crazy for something to do, Mama. Erich and I are going for a walk. I asked him yesterday and he’s also bored.’

  ‘You are not going anywhere, Miri. Don’t even think about it. If you talk this way I won’t let you see Erich.’

  Miri scowled at Mama. Papa came into the lounge room carrying his medical bag. ‘I am going to the Wilhelm home. The baby is due and there are complications.’

  ‘Ah, the poor woman.’ Mama put two fingers to her lips. She forgot about Miri.

  ‘I’m going over to Erich’s,’ Miri told her, and Mama nodded, her mind on the woman and the coming baby.

  Miri was now fifteen. Almost a lady, I thought, although she growled her way through my lessons and sighed a lot. I watched her through the window as she squeaked open our front gate. To my horror, she pulled the yellow star off her coat. As I looked, open-mouthed, she stood outside Erich’s house across the road and cupped her hands together. She called out to Erich, and I suppose his parents and sister must have been out shopping, because he came running into the street, also wearing his jacket without a yellow star.

  I watched, sucking in my lower lip. I should tell Mama, I thought, but she would worry herself sick and, anyway, she’d never catch up with them. They had already disappeared up the road. I pulled the curtain across and went to the wardrobe, where I prayed hard to God that Miri and Erich would come home safe and sound. I made God a promise. I would listen intently to prayers on Friday nights, and I would not poke my tongue out at my cousin Agnes across the table or kick her shoe. Also, one day, I’d tell everyone about what had happened to the Jews. That we were just like everyone else. That we loved Germany and we had done nothing to deserve this treatment. I would tell everyone that the Nazis were horribly cruel even if I was threatened with the most terrible torture.

  When Miri came home later, her face was flushed. She had the yellow star on her jacket and I couldn’t work out how she’d been able to put it back so easily. She must have sewn it on quickly before coming inside the house.

  ‘How’s Erich?’ Mama asked her.

  ‘He’s well,’ said Miri. ‘How is the lady and the baby?’

  ‘The baby came, but it is early and very small,’ said Mama.

  ‘I saw you without your yellow star,’ I told Miri quietly in the hallway.

  ‘Well, and so what if you did?’ she said sulkily. ‘Let me tell you, Rachel, we are just like everyone else. We went right into the city. Yes, don’t look so surprised, we did. Nobody looked twice at us. My hair is blonde, and Erich has fair hair and bright blue eyes. What is wrong with these Nazis?’

  Chapter Three

  IN NOVEMBER 1941, early one morning there was a sharp knock on the front door. Papa, who was up already, looked through the curtain that faced onto the street. I watched him from the staircase and saw how his face stiffened before he unlocked the front door.

  It was a policeman. He handed Papa a letter. Papa closed the front door. He muttered the word ‘Gestapo’, and quickly tore open the envelope and read the letter inside. I realised then that the policeman was an awful man because everyone knew that the Gestapo were the worst kind of policemen who took people away and did cruel things, though I wasn’t sure exactly what.

  Papa saw me standing on the staircase watching him and, without saying a word, passed me and went to his office. He shut the door.

  I trembled as I went downstairs. Miri was helping Mama make our small breakfast. After a while Papa came into the kitchen. His face was flushed and his eyes were cloudy. He passed the letter to Mama across the table as he sat down. Mama read it and her mouth twitched out random words: ‘you are ordered’, ‘three days’ notice’…

  She put the letter down, then leaned forward over the table and put her hands over her face as if shielding herself from some awful truth. ‘They can’t mean it,’ she finally said to Papa.

  Miri grabbed the letter, read it, and threw it on the floor. ‘This isn’t possible.’

  ‘We have to leave here,’ Papa said as he gently took Mama’s hands in his. ‘We have to report to this address. Miri, pick up that letter from the floor. See, it’s a Judenhaus. An apartment block for Jews only. We have just three days’ notice. I know the street. It is not far from here. There is nothing we can do.’

  Birds, on the outside kitchen windowsill, sang for breadcrumbs that we could no longer give them. My mother sank back onto her chair, trembling. Miri loudly sucked in her breath, stood up and stiffly left the room. I sat next to Mama, holding my one-eyed doll and nervously pulling at her glued-on hair.

  ‘We have to take as much as we can. I’ll need my medical equipment as well,’ Papa said.

  ‘Can we take great-grandmother’s painting?’ I asked, as I folded myself into my parents’ embrace.

  ‘No, Rachel. We are moving to a building where just Jews live. Maybe we’ll be safer there, all under one roof. There might be less violence.’ He tweaked my hair as he said this, but his eyes were heavy.

  ‘So we must pack?’ asked Mama.

  ‘Yes.’

  WE SPENT THE next few days sorting out our clothing. It was so horrible deciding what to take and what to leave. Mama carefully chose her frying pan and old saucepans to put in one suitcase together with bunched dresses, jumpers, underclothing and three pairs of shoes. She helped me pack my clothing. Papa packed blankets and sheets, pillows too, for we didn’t know what we were going to find in the Judenhaus. Miri put her clothing in a case, and made room for more blankets and coats and all our nightclothes, and packed in books.

  Three days after receiving the letter we left our family home. All of us wore sever
al layers of clothing and carried cases with our dearest possessions in them. Mama had sewn pockets inside her dresses and filled them with jewellery and family photos.

  I took one last look at our great-grandmother in her frame before we left, then the front door was opened by Papa and he closed it behind us. The house wasn’t ours anymore, I kept reminding myself, but it was so unfair. Everything in the house spoke of our lives together there, the ornaments in the dining-room cabinet, the bright wallpaper, the piano, our books. All of these told everyone that the Schwarz family lived here. How could our home just be taken away from us?

  Mama and Papa were very brave that morning. ‘We may have lost our home,’ Mama told us as we walked along the street, lugging our suitcases, ‘but we shall never lose our self-respect. We are good people. We have each other. While we are together we can make a home anywhere.’

  There were other Jews on the street. Everyone was on the move and seemed busy with their thoughts and, although we nodded at each other, no-one spoke. Suitcases, stuffed full, were held by young and old.

  We walked several streets, and I realised that this was the furthest I had been from the house in years. I don’t think I truly understood the plight we were in. My security was my family and while we were together I felt safe. Miri was silent. She scowled as we passed non-Jewish families. She whispered, ‘I want to kill the Nazis,’ as we went by boarded-up Jewish shops and the burnt-out remains of the synagogue.

  We arrived at the corner of a street and saw rows of Jews lined up in front of two buildings. Papa grimly checked the address we were to go to and we followed him until we stood outside one four-storey apartment building. There were soldiers around, busy checking names and directing people to this building or that.