Long Way Home(42)

I started nursing school in September as planned, riding the streetcar to my classes near the hospital. The school was run by Catholic nuns, and two girls from my synagogue named Esther and Rachel also studied there. We rode together to school and back every day. I loved nursing school from the very first day and found my studies exciting and challenging, a welcome diversion from our impossible situation. Sometimes, when I shared what I’d learned with Sam at the end of the day, we could almost forget that we were hated Jews with no place to call home.

Then, just as everyone feared, the dreaded Nazi persecution began all over again. In October, the Nazi-run newspapers announced the first of their anti-Jewish laws, declaring us “undesirable” and restricting our freedom. We knew our lives would get increasingly worse. I turned eighteen in November, and although two years had passed since Kristallnacht, the only thing that had changed for my family and me was that we were living in Antwerp instead of Berlin.

By December, it was too cold for Sam and me to sit outside on the front steps, so he asked me to sit with him on the drafty second-floor landing instead, saying he had news. Cooking odors wafted from behind apartment doors, along with the occasional sounds of pots rattling and babies crying. We had to move aside from time to time as our neighbors came and went. My school was on a break because the Christians were celebrating Christmas, and tonight was the first night of Hanukkah. We should have been lighting candles, but even if we could have afforded them, no one wanted to advertise the fact that we were Jewish.

“I got a letter from my father today,” Sam told me as we nestled against each other on the hard wooden steps. His honey-brown hair was tousled from being outside in the wind, and I reached up to smooth it into place. Sam had grown a beard since we’d arrived in Antwerp a year and a half ago, and it was darker than his hair, the same dark color that his eyebrows were. I loved the soft feel of his beard against my cheek. “My father has been to every foreign consulate in Havana, begging the officials from every country in South America to take us. But the doors keep slamming shut.”

“Doesn’t the world know what’s happening to us?”

“If they did, wouldn’t they be trying harder to help us?”

“I would hope so.” I wanted to believe that the nations’ silence and seeming lack of concern for us was from ignorance, not indifference. But hadn’t the world known of our plight aboard the St. Louis and refused to help? “So we really are trapped now,” I murmured as the truth sank in. “We can’t escape from the Nazis.”

“Well, there are still some underground organizations that will help Jews escape to Switzerland, or even Spain, for a hefty fee. And Aaron Goldberg and I are still meeting with a Zionist organization that is trying to help us. The British closed Palestine to immigration, but I looked into getting my brothers there on student visas. In the end, my mother thought Palestine was too dangerous—as if it’s any safer here in Belgium with the Nazis!” He gave a bitter laugh.

“Would you have gone to Palestine with them? Your brothers are only—how old now? Twelve and fourteen? I can see why she might be hesitant.”

“She didn’t want our family to be separated any more than we already are. She wouldn’t have been allowed to go with them, and she would be left here all alone if I went with them.” The creases in Sam’s forehead told me how frustrated and worried he was. He spent much of his time while I was in school trying to take care of his family and looking for a way to help us all escape from Belgium. As grim as his father’s news from Cuba was, I suspected there was something more that he was hesitant to tell me.

“What else is going on, Sam? What aren’t you telling me?”

He gave a crooked smile that didn’t reach his gray-green eyes. “You know me too well,” he said. “We just learned the Nazis rounded up a group of Jews here in Antwerp and shipped them out by train to forced-labor camps.”

“Are they people we know?”

“None of them were families from the St. Louis. They all came to Belgium as refugees before we did. But some of the men went to our synagogue.” He paused for a long moment, then said, “I have to fight back, Gisela. I’m going to start working with the Belgian Resistance.”

“Sam, no!” His words sent a chill through me that was colder than the December night.

“I may be out of touch with everyone at times, so I’ll need you to look after my mother and brothers for me while I’m gone.”

I gripped him tighter than ever. “Please don’t do it, Sam. Please don’t put your life in danger.”

“Our lives already are in danger. They could conscript me for forced labor anytime.”

“Your family needs you! I need you!”

He pulled me close and rested his cheek on my hair. “That’s who I’m doing this for, Gisela. For you and for my family. If we don’t start fighting back, none of us will survive. The Nazis are singling us out to destroy us. The sooner we start pushing them out of Belgium, the sooner we’ll all be safe again.”

“How long will you be away? Where will you stay? What will you be doing?”

“I can’t tell you any details because I don’t know them yet. The Resistance is still loosely organized right now. But I suppose we’ll be doing the usual things—collecting information about enemy movements and equipment and fortifications, then radioing it to the Allies in Britain. I speak some English, so I can help with that. Antwerp is an important seaport, and the Allies need to know about the defenses that the Nazis are constructing. The Resistance also rescues downed British pilots whenever they can, and I can help as an interpreter.” I could see his excitement at being able to do something to fight back. I would go crazy, too, if I didn’t have my nursing studies. But I didn’t want the man I loved to go underground and risk his life.