Long Way Home(121)

“So are you coming back here to live now?” Uncle Aaron asked.

“No, I want to return upstate with Jim.”

“You don’t have to do that—” Jim began.

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. I feel hope again for the first time in a very long time. I’m not leaving you until you see the light of hope, too.”

“But only to visit,” Jim said. “Your uncle is right. You belong with your family and your people. And soon with Sam.”

“Captain Cohen believes that someday we will be allowed to return to our homeland in Palestine,” I told my uncle.

“Never,” he said, shaking his head. “That is never going to happen. It’s impossible.”

His words sounded loud and harsh and very final in the tiny kitchen. But then Jim spoke, his voice strong and sure. “Isn’t the God of the Torah a God who can do the impossible?” he asked.

I looked at him in surprise. He had once told me that he no longer believed in God. At the time, neither had I. But I had learned of a miracle today, and it made me dare to believe again. Perhaps it had made Jim believe, too.

*

September was a beautiful month to be living in the countryside in upstate New York. The leaves on the trees changed to an artist’s palette of glorious colors—red, orange, yellow, rust, amber. I wrote a letter to Sam as soon as Jim and I returned from New York City and sent it to him by airmail through the relief agency on Cyprus. A month later I received Sam’s reply:

Dear Gisela,

The war is over and we are both alive, and no one can ever tear us apart again! Now I know there is a God of mercy and grace and love because I have been praying that you are still alive, praying we would find each other again—and He has answered my prayers. What joy I felt when I received your letter! I’m surprised you didn’t hear my shout of happiness all the way across the ocean in New York! We will have to be patient and wait a little longer, but now that I’m able to contact my parents in America, they can sponsor my immigration. The paperwork may take several months, but then I will be allowed to leave this detention camp for good and come to be with you.

But listen, my love. I am convinced more than ever that our real home, our children’s home, will be in the land of our ancestors. God is breathing new life into the precious souls of those who died in the camps in order to bring about the rebirth of our Promised Land. None of our fellow Jews will ever have to wander the world without a home, being rejected by the nations the way we were on the St. Louis. The prophet Zechariah gave us this glimpse of what God is doing:

“This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: You can be sure that I will rescue my people from the east and from the west. I will bring them home again to live safely in Jerusalem. They will be my people, and I will be faithful and just toward them as their God.”

Those words are our hope. I believe they will come true in our lifetime and that you and I will be part of it. For now, we must place our trust in God, who has kept us this far and who will bring us together once again.

We’re another day closer!

All my love, all my life,

Sam





EPILOGUE


Gisela





MAY 1947

I stood with Uncle Aaron at the Port Authority Passenger Ship Terminal in Manhattan, clinging to his arm as I waited for Sam’s ship to dock. The sea air tasted salty on my lips and smelled strongly of fish. Seagulls whirled above my head, calling to each other. I had been dressed and ready to leave our apartment since dawn. “We don’t need to go so early,” my uncle had said when I’d coaxed him to hurry. “It will take time for the ship to be towed into port and dock at the pier. Then the gangway will have to be secured before the passengers are finally allowed off.”

“Please, Uncle Aaron. I want to be there from the moment Sam’s ship comes into view. I need to see it land! The St. Louis wandered the Atlantic for more than a month, waiting to be allowed to dock. And Sam’s refugee ship wasn’t allowed to land in Palestine, either. I need to see his voyage completed at last, in America.”

The dock was already crowded with people when we arrived. I spotted Sam’s ship off in the distance being slowly guided into the port. My heart began beating so fast I feared it would wear itself out.

I had returned to New York City to live with Ruthie and my uncle at the end of September last year, in time to celebrate Yom Kippur and Sukkot with my family. Sam and I wrote to each other throughout his long immigration process, declaring our love and planning our future. With Sam’s father settled and working in Miami, his parents were able to sponsor Sam’s application to reunify their family. Jim’s and my marriage in name only had been annulled, so Sam and I would be able to marry right away at my uncle’s synagogue in Brooklyn. Then we would travel by train to Miami to see Sam’s parents. After that, we weren’t sure what the next step would be, but we would be making it together. Sam talked about Palestine a lot in his letters. He was convinced that God would make it possible for us to return to our Promised Land. Sam believed it would be soon.

I watched his ship move up the Hudson River toward us at a snail’s pace. The long, slow wait seemed endless. At last, the ship was close enough for me to see people lining its rails, waving enthusiastically at the waiting crowd on the pier. One of them might be Sam. But there were too many of them and they were still too far away to be recognizable. The sudden blast of the ship’s horn made me jump and yelp and grip my uncle’s arm. We both laughed.