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18
Gisela
MAY 1943
A month after Mortsel was destroyed, I received a letter from the nursing school in Antwerp. I held my breath as I tore open the envelope. Inside was a handwritten note from Sister Veronica.
Dear Gisela,
I’m afraid I have difficult news. I contacted Father Damien, the priest from the parish near your parents’ apartment, and asked him to try to find the answers to your questions. He talked to your former landlord, who relayed some of the tragic news. I’m very sorry to tell you that your father was too ill to go into hiding or to survive deportation to a labor camp. Your mother wouldn’t leave his side. Before the Nazis raided the building to take everyone away, your parents chose to die together, rather than allow the Nazis to take their lives. I am so very sorry. You will be in my prayers.
Sister Veronica
I felt too stunned to cry. It didn’t seem real. How could I accept such terrible news? And how would I ever tell Ruthie? Why hadn’t Sam helped them or insisted that my mother escape? It wasn’t like Sam to allow this to happen—unless something had happened to him as well. I closed my eyes and finally let my tears fall, remembering how hopeful we had all felt as we’d stood on the deck of the St.Louis in the tropical heat, gazing at Havana in the distance. We’d ridden high on that wave of hope, but like a ship in a storm-tossed sea, our hope had sunk when the St.Louis had been forced to return to Europe. Hope had risen again when we’d landed in Belgium, then sunk when the Nazis invaded. Now I was drowning in a tidal wave of grief. I vowed never to allow my hopes to rise again.
Of course, I knew I had to go on living. Unless I wanted to give up like my parents or let despair send me overboard like Max Loewe, I had to continue getting out of bed every morning and putting one foot in front of the other. If Sister Veronica had told me that Sam had been taken away on the transports or had died with the Resistance fighters, I would have had no reason to continue living. But she hadn’t. She had said nothing at all about Sam. And I still had Ruthie.
* * *
Months passed, and then one day I was surprised to realize that nearly a year had slipped by since I’d last seen Ruthie. I had been mailing a letter to her every week, hoping Sister Marie was giving them to her, never knowing if she had. Then in the spring of 1944, I received a note from Sister Marie, asking me to come to the orphanage. I remembered how thin and fragile Ruthie had looked and I feared the worst. I went as soon as I could.
Mortsel was still in ruins. The horror of that day came rushing back to me as I walked through what remained of the town. There had been bombing raids near other Belgian cities and towns since then, and we’d treated many civilian casualties in our hospital. But nothing had been as disastrous as the bombing of that village last April.
“Your sister is fine, Miss Maes,” Sister Marie said before I could ask. “Please don’t concern yourself. I asked you here to let you know that she has moved out of the orphanage. She’s sixteen now and too old to remain in our care.”
“You... you kicked her out?” I imagined my fragile sister all alone in a world at war, and I couldn’t breathe.
“Not at all. When our wards come of age, we find jobs and safe lodging for them on the outside. That’s what we’ve done for Ruth Anne.”
“Where? What kind of job? Not in a factory—it could be bombed!”
“She has been placed with a family and lives in their home. Ruth Anne was always very gentle and caring toward the younger children when she lived here, and she was easy to place as an aupair. It’s a large family with seven children, so she will be a welcome help to the parents in return for her room and board.”
“They won’t work her like a slave, will they?”
“We screen all of our placements very carefully.”
“Do they know she’s Jewish?”
“No one knows, Miss Maes. Ruth Anne has learned to blend in as a devout Catholic girl.”
The image of Ruthie as a devout Catholic girl startled and upset me. We had both been forced to blend in for our own survival, but I wanted to picture Ruthie sitting at our family’s Passover seder, not sitting in a church. She had always been so proud, as the youngest child, to ask the traditional questions every year—“What makes this Passover night different from all other nights?” Her sweet voice should be singing “Dayenu,” not hymns.
“I need my sister’s address so I can write to her,” I said. Sister Marie sighed as she opened a drawer in her cabinet and pulled out a bundle of letters, tied with a ribbon. She set them on her desk. They were my letters, the ones I’d written to Ruthie. “You had no right!” I shouted.
Sister Marie held up her hand to silence me. “Ruth Anne read them every week, Miss Maes. I allowed her to come into my office and take as long as she liked with them. But it was too risky to let her keep them in her room. The war has produced a lot of hungry, desperate people who are willing to do anything to survive, including betraying an innocent soul.” She returned the bundle to her drawer and closed it. “And now I’m afraid your letters must stop altogether.”
“But I need to know where she is! How will I ever find her when the war ends?”
“We keep excellent records here. You can always come to us.”
I had to trust her. I had no choice. Just as I was trusting Sister Veronica to tell Sam where I was when he returned for me.
* * *
In June, the long-awaited Allied landing finally took place. Everyone in Belgium heard the good news in spite of the Nazis’ efforts to suppress it. Our rescue was closer than ever before, on the beaches and in the villages of France. We noticed an increase in air activity overhead, with convoys of planes flying bombing missions and the Luftwaffe fighting back with artillery and antiaircraft guns and rockets. The war was all around us, closing in on us, on land and in the air. Civilian casualties multiplied. We were all aware that any one of us could become a casualty at any time. We prayed that the Allies would liberate us with lightning speed, as swiftly as the Nazis had overrun us.
I concentrated on my work, letting it fill my days and occupy my mind. I was assigned to the women’s ward one morning when the supervisor called all of the nurses aside to introduce us to the newest member of our staff. It was Lina Renard from my nursing classes. I quickly ducked my head, remembering how she had held up my sweater with the yellow star on it, hoping Lina wouldn’t recognize me. Lina had always been different from the other girls, and there had been rumors that the reason she could still get silk stockings while the rest of us couldn’t was because her father was a Nazi sympathizer. No one knew if it was true. I felt very uneasy seeing her again, but we all welcomed her to Hospital Sint-Augustinus and continued with our work.
