From Sand and Ash(90)

“Bergen-Belsen. We’re going to Bergen-Belsen!” a woman cried, a thankful smile on her lips. She even closed her eyes and raised her hands to heaven, offering a prayer of gratitude at the development. They weren’t going to Auschwitz, and many of the woman felt that was cause for celebration.

It was strange how rumors started, trickling down from one mouth to another, crossing great distances to comfort or console, taunt or terrify. Bergen-Belsen wasn’t as bad as Auschwitz. Survival was possible. Families could even live together. Sometimes the prisoners were given a little milk and cheese to eat. That’s what the rumors were; those were the tales some of the women had heard. But Bergen-Belsen was in Germany. Northern Germany, someone else said fearfully, as if Poland were preferable to Germany. Germany meant Hitler.

“They sent the Libyan Jews that were hiding in Italy to Bergen-Belsen last fall,” someone else offered. “Everyone else in Italy has gone to Auschwitz. We are so lucky.”

So lucky. They might die more slowly, suffer longer. She just wanted it to be done. Bergen-Belsen sounded like death by a slow drip, Auschwitz was the six a.m. Rapido to the great beyond. She thought she might prefer that. Eva was distantly alarmed by her readiness to die. But only distantly.



When Angelo woke again, Mario Sonnino sat by his bed reading, the lamp casting odd shadows around the humble space. He’d given Angelo something. Morphine, he guessed. Angelo had been in and out of consciousness, waking only to beg for news of Eva and then falling back into oblivion before he could get any answers. But he knew she was gone. Mario said no one knew for sure, but Monsignor O’Flaherty said a train filled with Jewish women and children had left Tiburtina Station on Saturday.

He wished for oblivion again, but knew those hours were behind him. He was wide awake, and Mario helped him sit up so he could swing his legs—his prosthetic had been removed—over the side and use the chamber pot. Hopping down the hallway was out of the question, and he was too sore for crutches. He finished and managed to eat some cold polenta and brown bread and drink a glass of water before easing himself back down on the pillow. Mario hovered for a moment, clearly wanting to be of assistance.

“I set your finger and bound your ribs. They’re cracked but not broken. You’re black and blue, but the swelling’s gone down. I put your nose back where it belongs. How are your eyes? I worried a little about your sight in the right one.”

“I can see,” Angelo said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yes. You will. The ribs will take the longest. But no long-term damage done. Your fingernails might not grow back.”

“I’m not worried about my fingernails,” Angelo said, his eyes bleak.

“No,” Mario murmured. “I don’t suppose you are.” He sat down heavily in his chair.

“I have to find her, Mario.”

Mario swallowed, his throat working against the heavy emotion in the room. “How?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” Angelo’s voice broke, and he put his hands over his face the way he did when he prayed, but there was no solace in his hands. No solace in prayer. Not anymore. “The Americans are coming. We just needed to hold on a little longer. I just needed to keep her safe a little longer. I’ve been such a fool. I should have married her in 1939. I could have taken her away, back to America, like her father suggested.”

“We all had opportunities to escape. We all had those inner voices that said, ‘Flee. Leave.’ Those things have haunted me too, Angelo,” Mario said, rubbing hard at the back of his neck, fighting the old regrets, the guilt that had kept him up many nights.

“Eva told me once that the roots of the Jewish people are in their traditions, in their children, and in their families. She asked me why the Catholic Church wants to take a man and deprive him of his posterity. She told me there would be no more Angelo Biancos. My roots would die with me.” Angelo was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he was desperate to get the words out.

“I am a man who was so impressed by the thought of immortality, of being a martyr or a saint, that I didn’t realize that by becoming a priest I was depriving myself of the very thing I sought. Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and our branches. The family is immortality. And Hitler has destroyed not just branches and roots, but entire family trees, forests! All of them, gone. Eva was the only Rosselli left, the only Adler left.”

The terrible reality of his words silenced them momentarily, and they bowed their heads, shoulders hunched against the weight of such heavy truth, such staggering loss, and it took a concerted effort for Mario to respond.

“You have saved and preserved so many branches, Angelo,” he said in a choked whisper. “You saved my family, Eva saved my family, and we will never forget her. We will never forget you. I will tell my children, and they will tell their children. You might not have children who will carry your names, but you will have branches and roots who will honor your names.”

Mario wept, and Angelo reached out a hand, thanking him, even as his heart rejected his sentiments. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t want honor. He didn’t want to be a hero. He just wanted Eva, and she had been taken from him. The thing he had feared most had come to pass.

“She loved you,” Mario said. It was not a question, and Angelo wondered if everyone around them could see all along what he’d refused to admit.