The Sweetness of Forgetting (101)

I can feel myself beginning to tremble, for in Jacob’s words, in the French lilt of his voice, and in the emotion of the story, I can almost see it playing out before me like a movie. “At the Grand Mosque of Paris?”

Jacob looks surprised. “You have done your research.” He pauses. “It was the idea of my friend Jean Michel, who worked alongside me in the resistance. He had already helped several orphaned children escape through the mosque, after their parents had been deported. He knew that the Muslims were saving Jews, although it was mostly children they were taking in. But Rose was pregnant, and she was still very young herself. So when Jean Michel approached the leaders there and asked them to help her, they agreed.

“The plan was to deliver her to the mosque, where they would conceal her as a Muslim for a time, maybe a few weeks, or a month, until it was safe to move her out of Paris. Then, she would be smuggled, with money I had given to Jean Michel, to Lyon, where l’Amitié Chrétienne, the Christian Fellowship, would provide false papers and send her farther south, possibly to a group called the ?uvre de Secours aux Enfants, the Children’s Relief Effort. They mainly helped Jewish children get to neutral countries, but we knew it was likely they would accept Rose and assist her, because she was only seventeen, and she was with child. But beyond that, I do not know what happened, or how she escaped, exactly. Do you know how she got out?”

“No,” I tell him. “But I believe she met my grandfather when he was in the army, in Europe. I believe he brought her back to the United States.”

Jacob looks wounded. “She married someone else,” he says softly. He clears his throat. “Well, she would have believed me dead by then. I told her that no matter what, she needed to survive and protect the baby.” He pauses and asks, “He is a nice man? The man she married?”

“He was a very nice man,” I say softly. “He died a long time ago.”

Jacob nods and looks down. “I’m very sorry.”

“And what happened to you?” I ask after a long pause.

Jacob looks out the window for a long time. “I went back for Rose’s family. She had asked me to do it, but in truth, I would have gone anyhow. I dreamed of a day when we could all be together, without the shadow of the Nazis. I believed that I could save them, Hope. I was young and naive.

“When I arrived, it was the middle of the night. The children were all asleep. I knocked softly on the door, and Rose’s father answered. He took one look at me, and he knew. ‘She is gone already, isn’t she?’ he asked me. I said yes, that I had taken her somewhere safe. He looked so disappointed in me. I can still remember his face as he said, ‘Jacob, you are a fool. If you have led her to her death, I will never forgive you.’

“I tried in vain, for the next hour, to tell him what I knew. I told him that the roundup was to begin in just a few hours. I told him that the l’Université Libre newspaper had reported that records of some thirty thousand Jewish residents of Paris had been handed over to the Germans a few weeks earlier. I told him about the warnings issued by the Jewish Communists, who spoke of the exterminations, and how we needed to avoid capture at all costs.

“He shook his head and told me again that I was foolish. Even if the rumors were true, he said, it was only men who would be taken away. And likely only immigrant men. Thus, his family was not really in danger, he said. I told him that I had heard it was not just men this time, and not just immigrants. And besides, because Rose’s mother had been born in Poland, some authorities would consider her children non-French too. We could not take that chance. But he would not listen.”

Jacob sighs and pauses in his story. I look at Gavin, and as he glances over at me, his face is pale and sad. I can see tears in his eyes too. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I reach over and take his right hand, which is resting on his thigh. He looks surprised for an instant, but then he smiles, threads his fingers through mine, and squeezes gently. I blink a few times and turn back to Jacob in the backseat.

“You couldn’t have done anything more,” I tell him. “I’m sure my grandmother knew you’d try. And you did.”

“I did,” Jacob agrees. “But I did not do enough. I believed that the roundups would happen, but I was not so confident that I was able to convince Rose’s father. I was only eighteen, you see. I was a boy. And in those times, a boy could not make an older man see his point of view. I often think that if I had tried harder, I could have saved them all. But the truth was, I knew there was a chance that the rumors were wrong, and so I did not speak with the conviction I should have. I will never forgive myself for not trying harder.”

“It’s not your fault,” I murmur.

Jacob shakes his head and looks down. “But it is, dear Hope. I told her I would keep them safe. And I did not.”

He makes a choked sound then, and turns to look out the window again.

“The times were different,” Jacob continues after a long pause. “But I had the responsibility to do more.” He sighs, long and heavy, and continues with his story. “After I left Rose’s home, I went to my own home. My parents were there, and my baby sister, who was just twelve years old. My father knew, as I did, what was coming, and so he was ready. We went to a friend’s restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where the owner agreed to hide us in his basement. I could have taken Rose there too, but the risks were too great; she would begin showing her pregnancy soon, and I knew that if she was ever captured, she would be sent straight to her death. So I had to get her out of France, get her somewhere safe where the Germans could never find her.