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12
Gisela
APRIL 1941
Spring arrived, bringing milder weather, longer days, and Passover. The nursing school closed for a few days in April for the Christian holiday of Easter, so I was home from my classes and able to help Mutti clean every corner of our apartment to prepare for the Passover seder. Food shortages and sky-high prices meant that our meal would be a simple one, but we scrounged enough ingredients to make a pot of chicken soup. Our apartment smelled heavenly. Mutti and Sam’s mother had moved our two kitchen tables into our living room, and we set them with plates and utensils for the meal that began at sundown.
I was putting on the last-minute touches when I heard the front door open and close and voices and footsteps coming up the stairs. “I think Vati and the others are back,” I called into the kitchen. He had gone to the synagogue to pray with Sam and his brothers before the seder. Suddenly I heard a cry and then a rumbling boom as if someone had tumbled down the stairs. I set down the plate of bitter herbs I was holding and ran to the landing. Vati lay crumpled with Sam bending over him, trying to help him up.
“Just a minute, give me a minute,” Vati breathed. “I’m okay. Just a little dizzy.” Sam slung his arm around Vati and helped him the rest of the way into the apartment and onto a chair. My father’s appearance shocked me. He was out of breath and his skin looked deathly white. I had been studying nursing long enough to recognize that he was seriously ill.
“Are you all right, Vati?” I asked, crouching in front of him. I tried not to let on how frightened I was.
He pulled me close and I could feel all of his bones as I hugged him. “I’m fine, Gisela. Just a little tumble. Nothing’s broken. Not to worry.” But I was worried. How had I lived in the same apartment with him these past months and not noticed how sick he was? I had been too preoccupied with my studies and my precious minutes alone with Sam to take a really good look at my father or to notice that he coughed incessantly.
“Come,” Vati said, pulling himself up from the chair. “Let’s all sit down at the table and celebrate our freedom this night with the people we love.”
I decided not to say anything about his health for now, but I noticed that he sat as if his ribs were hurting him, and he barely ate any food. My sister, Ruthie, hovered close to Vati, not leaving his side. I might not have taken note of our father’s condition, but I could tell by Ruthie’s worried expression that she had. I took a good look at her, too, and my sister seemed as thin and pale as a ghost, more like a young child than a growing thirteen-year-old. She chewed her nails while Vati read the Passover Haggadah and seemed to jump and flinch at every little noise outside the apartment. We had all lost weight because of the food shortages, but fear seemed to be nibbling away at Ruthie from the inside. I chided myself for not paying closer attention to my own family. We were all suffering from the suspense of waiting, just as we had on board the St.Louis, never knowing what tomorrow would bring and always fearing the worst.
As the evening wore on and we relived our miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt, I remembered our seder tables in Berlin, set with a white tablecloth, Oma’s silver candlesticks and serving pieces, and Mutti’s special china with the gold trim. Tonight’s improvised celebration, with only a taste of wine for each of us and a few pieces of matzah, seemed sad and shabby in comparison. Once again, we were slaves, held in bondage by Pharaoh Hitler, who wouldn’t allow us to go free. I wondered if God still heard our groaning. How much longer would we have to suffer before He came to our rescue?
I cornered Mutti alone in the kitchen the next morning while Vati was at prayers and demanded she tell me what was wrong with him. “Has he seen a doctor? It’s obvious he’s very sick.” She could see I wasn’t going to let it drop, so she told me.
“The doctor says it’s tuberculosis. He has prescribed rest. There’s not much they can do for him outside of a sanitarium, and we’re not allowed to use any of them.”
“Do you want me to speak with one of the doctors at the hospital where I’m training? Maybe I can get someone there to help him.”
Mutti’s gentle face looked careworn and weary. Her hands felt chapped as she smoothed my hair from my forehead. “It won’t do any good, Gisela. He insists he’s fine.”
The school remained closed for Easter Monday, but I was in my bedroom reviewing my notes that afternoon, preparing to return to school the next day, when I heard shouting and the sound of a commotion outside in the street.
“What’s that noise? What’s going on?” Ruthie asked. She liked to sit beside me on the bed we shared and read while I studied.
“Let’s go see.” I took her hand and we went into the living room, which faced the main street. What I saw made me draw in my breath in horror. The scene below looked exactly as it had two years ago on Kristallnacht. An angry mob, armed with clubs and iron bars, was rampaging through our Jewish neighborhood, attacking and beating anyone unfortunate enough to be in the street. The rioters were pillaging all the neighborhood businesses, looting and ransacking the Jewish-owned shops. They were easy targets because the Nazis had required them to display special markings designating them as Jewish. Our apartment door flew open. Sam stood in the doorway.
“Is everyone home? Are you all inside?” He looked wild-eyed. I did a quick tally and nodded.
“What’s all that noise?” Mutti asked, coming out of her bedroom. She and Vati had been resting.
“It’s a pogrom,” Sam replied. The sound of shattering glass carried up from below, the sound that had haunted my nightmares. Now the nightmare had returned. Before I could blink, Sam turned and ran down the stairs.
“Sam! No!” I screamed, racing behind him. “Don’t go out there! Please! Please!” But he was only making sure the outside door to our building was locked. He hurried upstairs again, taking them two at a time. He herded his family into our apartment and locked our apartment door behind them. We all knew that our enemies could easily smash through both of those doors if they decided to.
Vati stumbled into the living room, holding on to the furniture and doorframes to steady himself. “Not again,” he murmured.
Outside in the streets, the mob grew by the hundreds. They seemed to be mostly Belgian citizens, with Nazi soldiers and policemen standing on the sidelines, doing nothing to halt the rioting. As the chaos grew, thick black smoke began to rise above the treetops, coming from the direction of our synagogue down the block. Bright flames leaped into the air, lighting up the sky. The fire brigade arrived with clanging bells, but the mob refused to move, preventing them from dousing the fire. A dark column of smoke billowed a few blocks away where another synagogue stood. The acrid smell of smoke drifted up to us, even with our windows closed.
Mutti and Ruthie clung to Vati as if afraid he would try to rush outside to save the Torah scrolls again as he had on Kristallnacht, even though he was much too weak to do it. “I never imagined we would have to live through this a second time,” he said. “Is there no place on earth where we’re safe?”
I closed my eyes against my tears, and for a brief moment I remembered standing on the deck of the St.Louis with the port of Havana in the distance. We had been within reach of safety and refuge once. Only a narrow ribbon of water had separated us from it. We had seen it, smelled it, tasted it, before it had vanished like a mirage along with our hope.
My hand ached from gripping Sam’s hand so tightly. My stomach had knotted into a ball of fear and anger. I wanted to scream and rage at our helplessness. I glanced at the others and knew by their tears and mute sorrow that they felt the same. During the Passover seder, we had dipped bitter herbs into salt water to remember our sorrow and tears in Egypt. We had sipped wine and sung songs like the people God had once freed from slavery. But it had been a lie. We weren’t free.
The looting and vandalism continued throughout the night. The entire Jewish community remained locked inside as sporadic attacks continued for a second day. Another long night of rioting came three days later. I stayed home from school for the remainder of the week, hoping the officials at my school would hear about what was happening and excuse my absence. By the time the terror finally ended, two nearby synagogues had been badly damaged, and hundreds of prayer books and priceless Torah scrolls were torched in what people were calling the Antwerp Pogrom. The home of Antwerp’s chief rabbi had been destroyed, the rabbi himself attacked. Encouraged by the occupying forces, Belgian pro-Nazi groups had initiated the attacks after movie theaters had screened a fiercely anti-Semitic propaganda film called The Eternal Jew.
I felt so trapped I wanted to scream. I had felt the same way aboard the St.Louis, floating on the endless sea with no place to land. “We have nowhere to hide, no one to turn to for help,” I told Sam as he tried to console me. “We’re at the mercy of our enemies who are becoming more brutal and hate-filled every day.” I didn’t want to return to school, afraid of being attacked in the streets. I wanted to stay close to my loved ones.
“You have to finish your nursing course,” Sam insisted. He sat on the bed I shared with my sister, watching as I reluctantly packed my satchel. “It’s what your parents want and what I also want for you, Gisela. You’re halfway there. Only another year until you graduate.”
