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14
Gisela
FEBRUARY 1942
I parted the blackout curtain an inch and gazed out the window of my dormitory, my longing for Sam and for my family a raw ache in my heart. The weather had turned bitterly cold, and with fuel shortages across the city, the other student nurses and I studied in the common room after supper where there was a small coal-burning fireplace. I would wrap myself in layers of donated sweaters and socks and drape a blanket around my shoulders as I pored over my notes, worried that my family was freezing in our tiny apartment. Nearly three months had passed since I’d left home and I had last seen my loved ones. At times, I became so homesick that I wanted to quit school and walk home. Now I reminded myself there were only a few more months until graduation.
The hospital loomed in the darkness across the street, its windows also shaded by blackout curtains that obscured every window. Smoke curled from the chimneys, and my gaze was drawn to a star shining brightly above the rooftop. Vati would know which one it was. He used to take Ruthie and me outside on warm summer nights in Berlin and we would look up at the stars together. “Make a wish on the brightest one,” he’d say, “and then watch the sky. If you see a falling star, your wish will come true.” My wish was for the war to end and for the Nazis to be defeated so we could all resume our lives, but that wish was too big. So instead, I wished that I could see Sam, just for a few minutes, just to feel his arms around me and know he was safe. I wished that he would tell me my family was safe and Vati was feeling better. I waited and watched the dark skies, but I didn’t see any falling stars.
I closed the curtain again and turned away from the window to finish my schoolwork. We no longer had a radio and couldn’t listen to music in the evenings or hear the latest news of the war. Radios had been banned by the Nazis since January.
The following afternoon, I was leaving the hospital after class and was about to cross the street to my dormitory when I heard someone calling my name. “Gisela! Gisela, over here.” It was Sam, calling to me from behind the bushes. I ran to him. I didn’t know how long he’d been waiting for me, but his bare hands felt like two blocks of ice as he held my face and kissed me. “Is there someplace we can go and talk?” he asked. “It’s freezing out here.” I couldn’t bring him inside the all-girl nursing school, but one of the other student nurses had told me of a place where she secretly met with her boyfriend. It was where the garbage was collected, so the door was kept unlocked. Sam and I circled around to the rear of the building and slipped inside. He was shivering, and his hands and lips were blue with cold. I held him close to offer some of my warmth, then took his hands in mine and breathed on them to warm them.
“How long have you been waiting for me?”
“I don’t know. But it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, I just had to come.”
“Tell me all the news, Sam. How are our families? How is Vati?”
“About the same. It’s hard for him to walk to the synagogue when the weather is so cold, so we pray at home when I’m there.”
“Can you tell me about the work you’re doing? Is it dangerous?”
“I haven’t had time to be involved with the Resistance this winter. It takes every spare moment I have just to find work and earn extra money to survive. Between the cost of food and all the shortages, it’s been difficult to do. But we’re coping. Are you staying warm, Gisela? And eating well?”
“Yes. The food is simple but adequate. And I feel safe here.”
“I miss you so much,” he said before kissing me again. “But I’m happy to know that you’re safe and well cared for.”
“I wish you and my family had a safe place to hide.”
“I know. My brothers are growing into young men and I’m worried that the Nazis will grab them on their way to school one of these days and use them for forced labor to help build their Atlantic Wall.” I suddenly pictured Sam and his brothers standing on the deck of the St.Louis, young and lean and strong, their blond hair tousled by the wind and glowing in the sunshine. How long ago and far away that vision seemed.
“What about you, Sam? Is there a danger that the Nazis will take you?”
“There is, but I’m getting good at staying out of sight.” He sighed and I realized how weary he was. He would have a long walk home in the cold. “The last time I heard from my father, he was still trying to get temporary visas for us in South America. I haven’t received any letters since December, and now we just found out that it’s too late. The Nazis passed a law in January saying Jews are forbidden to leave the country. And of course, going to the United States is out of the question, even if our immigration numbers were called, now that the Nazis are at war with them.”
“I thought the Nazis wanted to be rid of us.”
“They do. But I think they’re worried that if we flee to other countries, we’ll tell the world what they’re doing to us here.”
“What about the war? Have you heard any news? Are the Allies winning?”
“I don’t know. We had to give up our radio. And you can’t believe anything that the Nazi-run newspapers say.”
“That’s been the hardest thing for me, Sam—to keep going day after day, never knowing when or how this war will end. Or if it ever will. It’s so hard to keep clinging to hope when there doesn’t seem to be any.”
“I know. But each day that passes means that we’re another day closer, Gisela. We have to keep believing that, or we’ll lose our minds.” Sam kissed me, then pulled away and wiped the steam off the little window in the back door. The sun sat on the western rooftops like a fiery-orange ball. “I need to get home before curfew,” he said, “but I had to see you, Gisela. I love you so much!”
* * *
I didn’t see Sam again for the rest of the winter, and the agony of not knowing where he was and if he was safe made it difficult for me to concentrate on my studies. In March, rumors raced through the hospital that, just as Sam had feared, the Nazis were rounding up able-bodied men for forced-labor gangs to build their Atlantic Wall. A group of Jewish men were snatched after leaving their synagogue on Purim. I worried that the Nazis had taken Sam and his brothers, or maybe even Vati, and I waited anxiously to hear that they were safe. Why wasn’t God helping us? Why didn’t He save us from the Nazis the way He’d saved us from Haman’s evil scheme in the time of Esther? I wondered if Vati still insisted that God had a reason for what was happening to us.
In early June, shortly before my graduation from nursing school, the Nazis announced that all Jews would be required to wear a yellow star on their clothing that said Jew. I asked Sister Veronica what I should do.
She fingered the large cross that she wore around her neck and I could tell she was giving my dilemma serious thought. “You probably won’t need to wear a star here at school or in the hospital. But if you leave the campus—and especially if you go home—I think it would be wise to wear one.” That evening, I sewed a yellow star onto one of my sweaters and carried it with me wherever I went, just in case. I had heard one or two of my fellow students and occasionally a patient at the hospital utter anti-Semitic remarks, but for the most part, no one seemed to know or care that I was Jewish.
On the morning of graduation, Sister Veronica sent me a message, asking me to come to her office. The little table was set for tea, and it struck me that this simple room was as serene and peaceful as Sister Veronica herself, as if untouched by the Nazi terror that flooded all of Europe. Emblems of her faith surrounded her—statues and crucifixes and paintings, images that were forbidden to us. I wondered if she drew faith and hope from them.
