“No, he was in the army. He’s a lawyer. He was on the legal commission of the Nuremberg war crimes trials. It kept him there for four years.”
“They did a good thing bringing the Nazi criminals to trial,” Claudia said with feeling.
“I thought so too,” Meredith agreed. “I was very proud of him, and he loved it. He didn’t talk about it much at home. And my brother was very young. He’s only eight now. He was born in Germany. But he’s forgotten all his German. Do you still have relatives there?” Meredith asked her conversationally. Claudia looked at her with eyes that told a thousand stories, and then finally she spoke in her soft voice.
“I was liberated from Auschwitz at the end of the war,” she said quietly. “My whole family died at the camp. Two sisters, a brother, and my parents. I don’t know how but I was the only one who survived. Perhaps because I was old enough to be strong, and not so young they sent me to the gas chamber. I was ten when the camp was liberated. I was placed with an organization that was sending Jewish orphans to America and finding families to adopt them. At first we were all so sick, they couldn’t send us to America for a while. I was adopted when I was better by a wonderful family in New York. My new mother gets upset when she thinks I’m too attached to my German roots. She wants me to forget all about them, but I can’t. It would be a dishonor to my family not to remember what happened to them.”
Meredith couldn’t help wondering how she had survived it, and was silent for a long moment, in awe of this girl.
“My father was among the American soldiers who liberated Dachau,” Meredith told her. “He said it was the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen.”
“It was,” Claudia confirmed. “But now it feels like it happened to someone else. I’ve been here for nine years. That’s a very long time. I’m nineteen, how old are you?”
Meredith was stunned into silence for a moment by what Claudia had told her, and then said she was eighteen. Claudia lifted up the sleeve of her sweater then, as they talked, and showed Meredith the number tattooed on the inside of her forearm. Merrie stared at it in respectful silence. Claudia said she had been out with her nanny when the whole family had been picked up. Neighbors had hidden her for nearly a year, but they had been afraid they would be discovered and had moved her to a different location, where she was found anyway and sent to the same camp as her parents. Her mother and two younger sisters and grandparents had been dead by then, gassed almost immediately after they arrived. Her older brother and father had been forced to do hard labor, and both had died of typhus shortly before the camp was liberated. She had lost them all and had no other family. Eventually, after the war, she had been sent to America, to be adopted by the Steinbergs. They had two daughters who were close to her age, slightly younger. Claudia said they had been nothing but kind to her, but she could never forget her own family and how they had died. She thought about them every day.
“I feel guilty in places like this,” she admitted to Meredith. “Everyone is so comfortable and so spoiled, and they don’t know how lucky they are. I want to write a book about the war, but not until I’m older. I want to be a journalist after I graduate. I will write the truth about what it was like one day.” Meredith nodded, bowled over by her. Claudia was so real and so honest, yet still so gentle and had suffered so much. But she didn’t seem angry or bitter, or even shattered by it. She was a testimony to the strength of the human spirit, and Meredith sensed something very powerful within her to have survived it. After what she’d been through, nothing could hurt her or stop her or destroy her. It was an inspiration to listen to her, and painful to imagine what had happened to her. And now this slight, quiet girl was here, a survivor of one of the worst camps. It made everything else seem insignificant, and a girl like Betty and her pin curls and movie magazines ridiculous, and yet Claudia had gone on to lead a normal life.
“I don’t usually tell people,” Claudia said, looking faintly embarrassed. “My American parents don’t like me to. But I can’t be silent about it. People need to remember what the Nazis did to the Jews, little children and old people and women. They took everything from them, their jobs, their homes, their families, their lives. That should never be forgotten.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Meredith agreed with her solemnly.
“One day, I will put it all in a book,” Claudia repeated, looking thoughtful, and Meredith nodded. It sounded important to her too.
“My grandfather always says you have to fight the good fight, for justice for everyone, especially people who can’t defend themselves. He says we have to make a difference in the world. I want to do that one day, but I’m never sure how. He’s a justice of the Supreme Court, so he can make a difference by interpreting the law and making important decisions, but so far, I don’t see what I can do to change anything.”
Meredith was still waiting for some kind of sign from the universe to show her what to do. She hadn’t found her own path or any of the answers yet. The only thing she did know was that the life her parents wanted for her, to get married and have children as her end goal, just wasn’t enough. She wanted to accomplish more than that, and Claudia did too. Meredith was glad that they had found each other, and on the first day. Now she had a friend at school. “I want to go to law school after we graduate,” she said. “I want to defend people who are disadvantaged in some way, and have no one to protect them.”
That sounded like a good idea to Claudia too. “I want to tell the truth with my words,” she said as they left the cafeteria.
“I have to go to the library to get some books for my English class. Do you want to come?” Meredith invited her. Neither of them had class that afternoon.
“Sure,” Claudia agreed, and they fell into step beside each other. They found the library, and Meredith got the books she needed, and they both checked out the first book they’d been assigned for their German class. And then they walked back to Lathrop House together. Claudia stopped at Meredith’s room and looked around, but Betty was out, so Meredith couldn’t introduce them. A few minutes later, Claudia went back to her own room upstairs. They agreed to meet at the dining hall for dinner that night. For the first time in years, Meredith felt as though she had made a friend. She hadn’t felt a bond with anyone she went to school with since she’d left Germany, and had felt like an outsider all through high school. And now, on her first day at Vassar, she had met this extraordinary girl who was a survivor and wanted to make a difference in the world too. It seemed like the hand of destiny that they had met.
They talked about their families in New York that night at dinner, and their parents’ expectations of them. Claudia said that the Steinbergs were very important at their temple, Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue. They wanted her to marry someone important in the Jewish community, preferably a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker, and they had warned her not to go out with any Christian boys while she was at Vassar, which seemed silly to her. She didn’t want to get married, and she was there to go to school. And they had warned her to stay away from Bohemians, presumably from other schools. They thought them unsavory and unwashed. She thought her parents’ outlook was limited and a little ridiculous, but she knew they meant well and wanted the best for her.
“My parents don’t want me to go to law school,” Meredith sympathized. “They think it will stop me from getting married, that I can’t do both, have a husband and family and be a lawyer. They think it’s a choice. My grandfather thinks law school is a great idea, but my parents don’t. They want me to play bridge every day like my mother,” she said in exasperation, and Claudia laughed.
“Mine plays bridge all the time too. And she shops a lot. My sisters do too. They think I’m weird because I’d rather read a book, or write one eventually. I tried to write poetry, but I’m not good at it. I went to a poetry reading in Greenwich Village, and my parents had a fit. And my father thinks jazz musicians are all on drugs. They don’
t like black people either. I think that’s why they want me here, because even if most of the girls are Christian, there’s no one for me to date.”
Meredith smiled at that. “Not according to Betty and her pals. They’re all expecting to meet the man of their dreams at the mixers with the boys from nearby schools, and maybe they will. But there’s a lot I want to do before I think about getting married.” And then she remembered the debutante ball where they wanted her presented at Christmas, and she told Claudia about it, who listened with interest.
“It might be fun,” she admitted. “You could wear a beautiful dress. It sounds very fairy princess.” Her eyes looked dreamy as she imagined it, from Meredith’s description.
“That’s not what I want to be when I grow up. And they all do it to find a husband. That’s the whole point of events like that. I’m surprised your parents don’t want you to come out too.”
Claudia looked startled as she said it. “They don’t allow Jews to be debutantes,” she said with certainty. “No matter how much money their parents have. My mother told me that, otherwise I’m sure they’d make me do it too.” But Claudia sounded as though she wouldn’t mind. The big white dress was the lure, almost like a wedding. And she liked to dance.
“Is that true?” Meredith was shocked. It had never occurred to her. “Jews can’t be debutantes?” She knew black girls couldn’t be presented. But Jews?
Claudia nodded.
“That’s disgusting. Why not?”
“It’s just the way it is. It’s always been that way, I think. They can’t join certain clubs, or buy apartments in some buildings. My parents wanted to buy an apartment on Fifth Avenue, and they were turned down. They bought one on West End Avenue instead, and we have a very nice place. My father was so angry about it, he bought the whole building. Negroes and show business people can’t buy in fancy buildings either. Harry Belafonte owns the building next to ours.”
“That’s like Germany during the Nazis,” Meredith said with a look of outrage, and Claudia shook her head seriously.
“No, it’s not. It’s a lot different not being able to join a Gentile club, or buy an apartment, than not being able to practice law or medicine, or having your home taken away from you and looted by the SS, and losing everything you own, and being herded into a cattle car to be killed in a death camp. We have our own clubs and buildings. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But no one is killing Jews here, or dragging them through the streets.” She said it sadly, remembering the terrors of her childhood and the family she had lost.
“It’s still discrimination, and it’s very wrong. If I can come out, and I don’t even want to, why can’t you?”
“I just can’t. It’s not a matter of life and death.” Claudia knew the difference, and it didn’t bother her not being a debutante. She had never expected to be.
“But it could be one day. Maybe that’s how it starts. Why should Jews be treated differently?”
“They have been throughout history. That’s what the state of Israel is all about, a safe haven for Jews.” It had been established six years before and recognized by President Truman, who was a hero in the Jewish community. “My parents give a lot of money to Israel,” Claudia commented, and it made Meredith wonder where her parents stood on the issue. They never talked about it, so she didn’t know. “My father says it’s very important to support Israel, and they need our help. They went there last year. I wanted to go, but they wouldn’t take me. I was in school, and they didn’t want me to miss any of senior year.”
Meredith was fascinated by what she was saying and the questions it aroused. Claudia had a much broader view of the world, on certain subjects anyway. Meredith felt as though she had led a very sheltered life, and in many ways she had. Her parents were ultra traditional in their lifestyle and ideas, although she assumed they were sympathetic to Jewish people, given how hard her father had worked at the Nuremberg trials, and having seen concentration camps firsthand. How could he not be sympathetic after that? Obviously, he was.
While Meredith and Claudia discussed more serious issues, the rest of the girls only seemed interested in the upcoming mixer that weekend and the boys they were going to meet. Betty and the clique she had formed as soon as she arrived spent days choosing what they would wear, borrowing clothes from each other and talking about their hair. Betty had found a new way to pin curl hers, and had discovered some curlers at the local drugstore that would give her more waves. The dresses they had picked out were sexy and showed off their figures, and Betty had the perfect high-heeled shoes for her outfit and a short swing coat the same peacock blue color as her silk dress. They were in a frenzy of excitement over the boys they were about to meet from West Point.
Meredith watched the comings and goings from her room with a combination of dismay and amusement. She was sure she hadn’t brought the right thing to wear, and didn’t even own it, and she didn’t want to go anyway. She said as much to Claudia. Claudia’s roommate was out a lot of the time, and to get away from “Betty’s girls,” Meredith preferred to go upstairs to visit Claudia instead of wading through the crowd of giggling girls in her own room. They used her record player all the time and she didn’t care.
Claudia stunned her the night before the event. They’d been at school for a week by then, and Meredith liked most of her classes, but Claudia was the only girl she wanted to hang out with, and Claudia felt the same about her. She was concerned that the other girls wouldn’t want to be friends with her because she was Jewish and most of them were Christian, which Meredith told her was paranoia but secretly wondered if it was true. She’d overheard one or two nasty comments about the Jew on the third floor, and was afraid it was Claudia, but she didn’t tell her, and didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
“I think we should go,” Claudia said, as she lay on her bed, and Meredith sprawled in the room’s only chair, with her long legs stretched out ahead of her.
“Go where?” Meredith looked distracted. She was thinking about a paper she had to write for their German class and wasn’t sure exactly how to approach it, and she wanted to impress the teacher.
“To the mixer,” Claudia said in a soft voice.
“Are you crazy? Why? I’m not looking for a husband, and neither are you.”
“No, but it might be nice to meet some boys. There are a lot of girls here.”
“That’s for sure,” Meredith commented and rolled her eyes. And most of them were like Betty, boy crazy, and more worried about their hair than their grades. Vassar was a serious school that offered a great education, but the freshman girls were notoriously more excited about the coed social events than their studies. Supposedly, they eventually settled down, especially once they were engaged. “Why would we go to the mixer?” Meredith looked baffled. She didn’t want to meet a bunch of snobby boys or would-be soldiers at West Point. If she met a boy, she wanted it to be someone interesting, intellectual, smart, and different. And Betty and their crowd had made it seem like a circus. Nothing about it appealed to her.
“I think we should. We might make some new friends, boys for a change,” Claudia said. Meredith thought about it for a minute and wasn’t convinced.
“You really want to go?”
Claudia nodded. “It’ll be fun to get dressed up. My mom made me pack a couple of nice dresses for social events.”
“My mom did too. I didn’t want to, and she insisted.” They exchanged a smile. Their mothers sounded similar, no matter their religion, it didn’t seem to make much difference in their concerns for their daughters. They both thought their mothers worried too much.
They debated for a while, and Claudia finally overcame Meredith’s objections. The following evening, they were dressed and ready to get on the bus to go to West Point. Claudia and Meredith sat at the rear. Claudia had worn a navy silk dress that showed off her slim figure, with a white silk coat over it, and she was
wearing a small hat and gloves and high heels. Her dress had long sleeves. Her mother had taken her shopping at Bergdorf Goodman for her school wardrobe. She had her long braid wound into a small bun at the nape of her neck. She looked very pretty. Meredith had worn one of three black dresses she’d brought, and her heels weren’t as high so she didn’t look too tall. She was also wearing a short fur jacket that had been her mother’s and made her look very grown up. Betty and her crowd had gone all out, and looked perfect with dresses in jewel colors, or white or black, high heels, dressy coats, evening hats and gloves and small evening bags. And their hair looked glamorous in a variety of styles it had taken them hours to achieve.
The cadets at West Point were about to receive the best that Vassar had to offer with three busloads of very attractive young women who had made every effort to impress them. The boys in dress uniform were waiting for them in long formal lines when they arrived, as the girls stared at them in delight and whispered to one another. The chaperones were right behind them, to keep an eye on them all night and see that everyone behaved like the ladies and gentlemen they were supposed to be, and looked like in their dress uniforms and pretty dresses, whether borrowed or owned by the girls wearing them.
“I feel stupid,” Meredith whispered to Claudia, as they got off the bus after the hour’s drive from Vassar. But she had to admit, the cadets looked very handsome, and were offering the girls an arm to escort them inside to the ballroom, where refreshments had been set out. The West Point band was going to play dance music for them until midnight. The uniformed West Point chaperones greeted the women from Vassar with amusement, knowing that their charges would keep them busy all night. And whether in uniform or not, they were a bunch of eighteen-year-olds out to have fun and get away with whatever they could.
The Good Fight Page 5