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“I’ll be right back,” I told Ruthie. I took Sam’s hand and we stepped outside to say goodbye. As my tears fell, I prayed that I wasn’t kissing him for the last time.
Later, I said goodbye to my roommate. She didn’t seem surprised to hear that I was leaving so suddenly. “I know the secret you’re keeping, Gisela,” she told me, “and I’ll be praying for you and your people.” She pulled out the envelope of photographs her father had taken on graduation day and said, “Here, take one of these pictures so you’ll always remember us.”
“May I have a copy of this one, too? To give to my boyfriend?” It was the photo her father had snapped when he’d caught me laughing. I couldn’t imagine ever laughing that way again.
“Of course! I’m just sorry I never got to meet your mystery man.”
Two days later, Ruthie and I boarded a train to our new home in a town south of Antwerp. Sister Veronica advised me to wear my nurse’s uniform as we traveled as if I was escorting a sick child. Ruthie did indeed look ill. I hoped she hadn’t contracted tuberculosis from our father. She was told to memorize her new name, Ruth Anne Mertens. Sister Mary Margaret also came with us, presumably to make introductions and help us get settled in our new hiding places. But she opened her satchel when we were alone in the train compartment and explained another reason why she had come.
“I hope you won’t feel that we’re insulting your faith or your religion, but to safeguard your new identities, Sister Veronica believes it would be best if you attended Mass with the other nurses and pretended to be Catholic. And, Ruthie, the orphanage and girls’ school where you’ll be hiding is run by Catholic sisters, like me.”
Ruthie looked up at me and I saw her alarm. “She’s right, Ruthie,” I said. “We have to do whatever we can to blend in.”
Sister Mary Margaret gave me a prayer book and a set of rosary beads and spent a few minutes teaching us how to make the sign of the cross and other things we would need to know. “I’m sorry to say that your survival depends on your ability to look and act like Christians. You won’t need to go to confession or partake of the sacraments,” she said. “Just kneel quietly and pray. You should probably memorize our Lord’s Prayer, too. It’s here in the prayer book.”
She showed me where to find it and I read the words silently: “Our Father which art in heaven... Thy will be done... Give us this day our daily bread... Deliver us from evil...” They were words that a Jew could pray—and perhaps I would have, if I hadn’t been so upset and confused by what God was doing. And not doing.
“It may also help you to know,” Sister Mary Margaret said as we neared our destination, “that Jesus, the man you see dying on the crucifix, is Jewish like you. He was also persecuted, even though He was innocent.”
The orphanage seemed like a lively place, with girls in clean uniforms laughing and skipping in the hallways. The head nun showed Ruthie her bed in the dormitory and the matron found a uniform that would fit her.
When it was time for me to go, Ruthie clung to me, sobbing her heart out. “Don’t leave me here all alone! Please, Gisela!”
I thought my own heart would break. “You know I would never leave you if there was any other way to keep you safe,” I told her. “I’ll figure out a way to visit you whenever I can. In the meantime, I need you to keep this for me. It belonged to Mutti’s grandmother.” I took off the string of pearls that Mutti had given me for my sixteenth birthday—the day our world began unraveling—and gave them to her. “They’ll remind you of Oma and Mutti and me. We owe it to them to stay alive.”
Ruthie looked so forlorn as she stood on the orphanage’s steps, weeping and waving goodbye, that I nearly changed my mind about leaving her. We were both alone now.
* * *
On a November day soon after I had turned twenty years old, I happened to notice the newspaper headlines on my way to the hospital. The Nazis had captured and executed eight members of the Resistance movement in Antwerp.
I stumbled into the hospital chapel and knelt to pray for these eight men. And for Sam. I couldn’t pray, “Thy will be done.” But my unending prayer for all of us was “Deliver us from evil...”
