Turned Away

by Carol Matas

  Did I mention that I’ve been promoted?

  That’s all from here. Your package arrived and was enjoyed by all.

  Love,

  Adam

  As soon as we got to the part about Leah’s sister, Daddy thought a moment and then exclaimed, “Rachel — Leah’s sister in the Bible! Rachel is obviously in the Resistance, and thanks to her and others like her, Adam was saved. That must be what Sarah meant when she said she wished she could help her sister in her work, but was too young.”

  So there it is. Adam had given me the advice I was looking for. I must do something. It’s no longer a question. But what? That is the question.

  April 1942

  April 2

  We had the first Seder tonight. Baba Tema still insists on skipping nothing in the service before we eat and we are always so hungry, but this time I snuck little bits of matzah when she wasn’t looking. Daddy did the service as usual, reading it all in Hebrew. And I was allowed a little more wine in my water, compared to last year, so by the time we ate I was feeling a little giddy and kept giggling. Baba Tema kept glaring at me. I hid the afikomen from Daddy so well that he couldn’t find it even though he looked everywhere and so he paid me an entire 50¢ for it! And since I’m still the youngest, I had to ask the four questions, AGAIN, but I did them without too many mistakes. And then after we ate she insisted we do the entire service after the meal too, when I was drooping in my chair and practically asleep, head on the table!

  The headlines in the paper today — a big bombing raid on France and Germany by the RAF; 15 bombers are missing. But as far as we know Adam isn’t flying cover for bombers. Still, he could have been flying in some other area, who knows? He says not to worry, but how can we help it?

  No school tomorrow as it’s Good Friday. I’m staying in the north end and am writing this at Marcie’s house. I’ve told her my thoughts about wanting to do something for Sarah. We’re going to meet with a bunch of my old classmates tomorrow to plan strategy. Elizabeth has organized a movie day for the south-end gang for Saturday, but I’ve said no. She wasn’t too happy with me. She told me that I could bring my other friends, but I told her we had other plans. I’m going to stay here until Sunday.

  April 5

  I’m back home, and I had a good weekend. It’s funny, because it was so different from last weekend which was so much fun. We spent this one talking endlessly and fighting about what to do and yet tonight I feel better inside than I did at the end of last weekend. It wasn’t that I had fun, but I just feel we accomplished something, or at least we tried to do something to make things better and somehow that feels better than just trying to have fun and not worrying about anyone outside of yourself. Maybe there’s a difference between being happy because you are doing something good, and being happy because you are doing things that make you happy for the moment, like movies and parties and such.

  Anyway, Marcie asked over Joe (who I think might like me), Mollie, Ruthie and David. We spent all of Friday afternoon talking over what we could do. David, the brains of the class — my old class, that is — says that we need to look at what has happened in Germany. He said that Hitler started off by comparing Jews to rats and vermin. He made Jews less than human and played on the old idea that Jews were ruling the world with their money and power. He turned them out of jobs and made them even more outsiders by making them wear yellow stars. So David thinks we need to do something right here, in Winnipeg, to educate students about prejudice, and to help them see that all people are equal.

  And Ruthie thinks we need to raise money for the Red Cross and for Palestine. We can do that by having fashion shows and teas.

  And finally, I think we need to do something about getting Jews here and not pay attention to the adults when they tell us to be quiet and not to rock the boat. I’m in charge of the refugees, David the education, Marcie the fundraising.

  We needed a name so we came up with the Tikkun Olams, or TO’s, because that means “to heal the world” and that’s what we are all supposed to do, according to Marcie’s religious school teacher, and that seems to fit our goals.

  Elizabeth is sure to be angry with me for ignoring her all weekend. I’m not looking forward to school tomorrow.

  I might have gotten a little overtired over the weekend. I’m feeling a bit off.

  April 6

  Disaster! Just when I have so much to do, I get sick! Dr. Borditsky just left. I have the chicken pox! And he says there’s a good chance everyone I was with over the weekend will get it too, if they haven’t already had it. I’m already starting to break out and I’m itching like crazy and I have a fever. I was so upset I cried and of course that made me feel worse. And Mommy has so much to do with the Red Cross, she goes every afternoon, and with Hadassah, she goes to meetings there in the morning, and now she is stuck home with me. She chided me, naturally, as she always does when we get sick. If I’d slept more … if perhaps I wasn’t wearing my hat — as if that would have made a difference! — and I probably didn’t eat properly when I was away (only Mrs. Grosman stuffed us with food all weekend, matzah French toast for breakfast, matzah ball soup for lunch, brisket for supper, and apples and stewed fruit all day long). At any rate, Martha offered to stay with me today; she was going to be here to clean anyway today and she offered to come in Wednesday and Friday, so Mommy will only have to be here Tuesday and Thursday.

  I told Daddy about all the work I needed to do and he said that was perfect and that I could use the time at home to write letters.

  Later

  I spent most of the day listening to the radio. I felt pretty sick all day and couldn’t eat. I drank Coke and ate a little matzah, that’s about it. Mommy says I don’t have to keep Passover now that I’m sick but I want to. Daddy came home early with a big surprise. He’d stopped at the library and managed to get hold of four more Agatha Christie books. He also brought me the newspaper and read me the important stories. The good news is that 159 Axis planes have been shot down over the weekend. That’s very good news. 300 bombers hit Paris and Cologne with 1000 tons of explosives. I hope that Sarah is safe! It must be terrifying for her.

  I asked him if he thought Adam was back up in the skies and he said he thought the chances were good, but he knows that Adam wasn’t on these flights because the names of the pilots were in the paper. Then he read me the rest of the article and after that he read me all the gossip from Hedda Hopper.

  April 7

  Daddy came home for lunch to check on me and he read me from my Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library. I think you must have to be a particular kind of person to write mysteries. You have to be willing to kill off all these nice people, for instance. I don’t think I’d be able to do it. I asked Daddy if he could.

  “Have a Girl Scout murdered in cold blood?” he asked. “No, not even if it was fiction. But you like to read about it, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I agreed. “I love to try to figure out who did it. I don’t like the murder part so much but I like it when the murderer is caught.”

  Then Daddy said something that made me think. “There’s a sense of justice that is satisfied when the bad guy is caught. That’s the real appeal, I think.” He looked right at me. “It’s why you want to do something to help your cousin Sarah. You want justice. You want fairness. You want your country to act the way things happen in books — where it all gets solved in the end.”

  He’s right. I do. “But why doesn’t everyone feel the same way?” I asked.

  “Maybe they have a different idea of what justice means.”

  “Like Jews are bad people so it’s a good thing to keep them out of the country?” I asked him.

  He looked sad. “I’m afraid that’s the case.”

  That made me wonder if our government will ever agree to let Jews into Canada, no matter what we do.

  I must have looked sad too, because Daddy added, “But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We can keep trying and putting the pressure on and doing wha
tever we can — what choice do we have?”

  “I’ll write my letters tomorrow,” I vowed, “as soon as I feel better.”

  “Never give up, Devvy,” Daddy said.

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  Daddy showed me an article in the paper about the Jewish community raising $8000 for medical aid to Russia. “It was your mother’s committee who did that,” he said proudly. “And you know that the Canadian Jewish Congress executive is lobbying the officials in Ottawa all the time. We just have to keep trying,” he said, almost to himself, as if he’d forgotten for a moment I was there.

  Martha put me in an oatmeal bath twice today and that’s helped the itching; it’s hard not to scratch, but I won’t because I’ll get scars. Mommy bought calamine lotion and I put that on often but the itching is almost unbearable. I can’t even think about my letters yet.

  April 9

  There were big demonstrations by the World Jewish Congress, Daddy told me, all over the U.S. and Canada and here in Winnipeg. Mommy and Daddy went to a meeting and there was a press release, but no one seems to pay attention. Why?

  Later

  There is going to be a limit put on lipstick colours! Elizabeth called me after seeing it in the paper today. She was very upset! I laughed. She didn’t think it was funny. I asked her if there wasn’t something more serious to get worried over and she, in all seriousness, said no! And she said it wasn’t only lipstick! It’s face powder, and fingernail polish and they are even cutting off production of some face creams. Five colours, she says. What if one of those colours doesn’t fit your face? We’re too young for lipstick anyway, I told her. But she’s mad on principle!

  Meanwhile, Daddy read me the other important story from the paper — 36,000 men on our side might have been captured by the Japanese. But compared to lipstick, what does that matter? Honestly, I’m not sure how much longer I can be friends with Elizabeth. She’s just silly.

  Allan has just come down with chicken pox and it looks like Hester got it first, so she must have given it to the rest of us. Turns out she had a fever and sore throat when she was at Elizabeth’s during the snowstorm, but she was so keen to play that she refused to stay home. Thanks, Hester! For nothing!

  April 10

  I’m feeling much better today. I had a letter from the prime minister’s office saying “my concerns are being looked at.” But what does that mean? Probably that the letter will be put in a pile with other mail they don’t care about.

  I finished The Body in the Library tonight. What a surprise ending! As usual I was completely fooled! It made me think, though. Miss Marple is always talking about the little village she lives in and how there is evil there and that’s how she knows so much about evil. Where does evil come from, I wonder? And if it’s everywhere, like a village, or even a school, it must just grow so big sometimes that it takes over, the way it has now. But in crime novels, evil is always stopped. And we’re trying to stop it in the world, with Hitler. But what if we can’t? What if we lose? What if Hitler takes over and comes here and kills me and my family and my friends and even Jews I don’t like, like Hester? And how did it get to this point, how did he get so powerful? I asked Daddy this when he came up to tuck me in. “When people don’t stand up to evil it grows,” Daddy said.

  “But couldn’t the German people tell the difference between good and bad?” I asked him. “Why didn’t they know Hitler was — well, is — bad? Why did they hate Jews so much?”

  “Well, Devvy,” Daddy answered, “that might be two different questions. Sometimes bad looks good to people, especially if it seems like they are being offered a simple answer to their problems. In Germany, Hitler promised to get the economy working, to get people jobs, to get the trains running on time. And the Jews weren’t really hated. They were judges and doctors and went about in society — they’d been there for a thousand years, after all. But Hitler needed a scapegoat and he chose the Jews. He started a campaign — first they were depicted as troublemakers and the reason for all the financial troubles; then they were depicted as less than human. And then Hitler made them wear stars so they were looked at as different than everyone else. And then he started to round them up and no one cared by then — or if they cared, they were too scared to say — and if they spoke out they were rounded up. They waited too long, and even the Jews didn’t take it seriously.”

  “It’s like Miss Marple says,” I told him. “People don’t see evil clearly. They’re fooled. Maybe they don’t have good enough imaginations.”

  “It’s sad, isn’t it,” he said, “that we need to be able to imagine such bad things? But you are quite right, Devvy. Because refusing to see things only gets us in more trouble.”

  “When Martin stole Richard’s pens last year,” I said, “no one believed it even though Sandy had seen it happen, because they didn’t think anyone in class would do that. And it was only when Mrs. Karlinsky actually saw Martin steal Marsha’s scarf that they realized Sandy was right. And Martin is rich, he didn’t need the pens — he was just doing it to have fun and to cause trouble because he wanted Sandy to get in trouble, because he liked her and she hated him.”

  “People like that must live very sad lives,” Daddy said. “Imagine how they must feel inside all the time.”

  “But they make other people even more miserable,” I said, “so I don’t care how they feel. They never care about how other people feel. Hitler doesn’t care, does he?”

  “No,” Daddy said, “he doesn’t. But aren’t you glad you aren’t him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should read something a little more cheerful,” Daddy suggested.

  But I still have more Agatha Christies to read and I can’t stop.

  April 12

  Sandy dropped over today to see me. She’s had chicken pox already. Anyway, my scabs are almost healed now and I may be able to go back to school by Tuesday. She talked all happily about the news at school but I thought she seemed worried about something. Finally she blurted out, “My brother got a white feather at university last week!”

  I was shocked. It’s such an ugly way to accuse someone of being a coward — afraid to enlist.

  “He really wants to sign up,” she rushed on, “but the government won’t let him leave medical school because they need more doctors overseas.”

  “People can be awful,” I said, thinking of the talk Daddy and I had.

  “He’s so upset and ashamed,” she whispered, and then she started to cry.

  I gave her some tissues and then Mommy somehow popped up right at the perfect moment, and asked if we’d like to help her bake for the Hadassah tea. We jumped at the chance. We spent the whole afternoon with flour all over ourselves and we were able to lick the spoons after and Mommy told us stories about Palestine that she had heard from Auntie Adele who had been there before the war — she had actually snuck guns past the British. Mommy also told us funny stories about her Hadassah group, for instance how Mrs. Myers led the protest at City Hall when the men decided to blame the women of the city for clogging up the streetcars at rush hour with unimportant shopping, and how Mrs. Myers pointed out that the work at the Red Cross doesn’t finish until 5 p.m. and would they rather the boys overseas didn’t get their packages? And also that the women had to carry their own packages because deliveries are discouraged now, and how she got so mad that she had the women lay out their “unimportant packages” filled with food for their families’ dinners and then she shamed the men at City Hall to carry them home.

  It was a fun afternoon and I could tell Sandy felt better when she left. And it was fun to spend some time with Mommy.

  April 13

  Another letter from Sarah, again put into a letter Mommy got from Uncle Nathaniel.

  Ma chère Devorah,

  I will try to write a more cheerful letter this time. After all, what is the point of complaining? And what is there that either you or I can do? I wish I were Rachel’s age.

  What a wonderf
ul time we had seeing our dear cousin a short time ago. He is so grown up, such a fine young man, and we were so proud to have him with us. That is, Rachel and I were. I’m afraid that my parents were a little worried. Silly. They worry about all the wrong things!

  I hope you are well. I had a bad cough last week, but that is to be expected. We don’t eat too well these days and we often feel weak. But I said I wouldn’t complain! Please give my love to your dear parents,

  Your loving cousin,

  Sarah

  I can see that she is trying to be more cheerful but has nothing to be cheerful about. We have so much space here in Canada. I simply can’t understand why she can’t come here. We would give them a home. We would take care of them. The government wouldn’t be bothered by them at all! So why not? Only because they are Jewish? How are we any better than the Nazis who want to get rid of them? How? I just don’t understand, dear diary, I just don’t.

  Daddy came home with a peach pie and two lemon sponge rolls from the Grill Room for a dinner treat. I had a roll and a piece of pie. And Mommy made lamb chops for our dinner. Quite a feast!

  Back to school tomorrow.

  April 14

  On my first day back I decided to try to do something useful for the war. So I marched into Mr. Joseph’s office, and asked him if we couldn’t copy what they are doing at Robert H. Smith, putting up flags from different countries in the morning instead of only the Union Jack. They’ve already put up the Czech flag and the Polish flag and next week they are going to raise Denmark’s flag. He said he thought it was a good idea but that all the students should decide, and that if I wanted to change things there should be a referendum, which I should organize if I wanted the change. I said I would.

  I told Mrs. Davis and she decided that the whole class should be involved. So I’m the chairman and I have to select a committee to oversee the referendum. Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with it and was really angry with me at recess. “What about our skipping competition?” she demanded. I assured her that it could wait. She sniffed and then said that she’d go ahead without me.