Long Way Home(49)
I closed my eyes against my tears, and for a brief moment I remembered standing on the deck of the St. Louis with the port of Havana in the distance. We had been within reach of safety and refuge once. Only a narrow ribbon of water had separated us from it. We had seen it, smelled it, tasted it, before it had vanished like a mirage along with our hope.
My hand ached from gripping Sam’s hand so tightly. My stomach had knotted into a ball of fear and anger. I wanted to scream and rage at our helplessness. I glanced at the others and knew by their tears and mute sorrow that they felt the same. During the Passover seder, we had dipped bitter herbs into salt water to remember our sorrow and tears in Egypt. We had sipped wine and sung songs like the people God had once freed from slavery. But it had been a lie. We weren’t free.
The looting and vandalism continued throughout the night. The entire Jewish community remained locked inside as sporadic attacks continued for a second day. Another long night of rioting came three days later. I stayed home from school for the remainder of the week, hoping the officials at my school would hear about what was happening and excuse my absence. By the time the terror finally ended, two nearby synagogues had been badly damaged, and hundreds of prayer books and priceless Torah scrolls were torched in what people were calling the Antwerp Pogrom. The home of Antwerp’s chief rabbi had been destroyed, the rabbi himself attacked. Encouraged by the occupying forces, Belgian pro-Nazi groups had initiated the attacks after movie theaters had screened a fiercely anti-Semitic propaganda film called The Eternal Jew.
I felt so trapped I wanted to scream. I had felt the same way aboard the St. Louis, floating on the endless sea with no place to land. “We have nowhere to hide, no one to turn to for help,” I told Sam as he tried to console me. “We’re at the mercy of our enemies who are becoming more brutal and hate-filled every day.” I didn’t want to return to school, afraid of being attacked in the streets. I wanted to stay close to my loved ones.
“You have to finish your nursing course,” Sam insisted. He sat on the bed I shared with my sister, watching as I reluctantly packed my satchel. “It’s what your parents want and what I also want for you, Gisela. You’re halfway there. Only another year until you graduate.”
“And then what? You know that we’re never going to have a normal life again. The Nazis won’t let us.”
“It seems that way for now, but you have no idea how God might want to use your nursing skills in the future.”
I wasn’t listening. “You’re going off to work with the Resistance again, aren’t you? This could be the last time I ever see you or hold you or tell you how much I love you.”
He took my face in his hands. His breath warmed my skin as our foreheads touched. “Gisela, listen. You know that I have to fight back. I’m doing it for you so you can have a future someday.”
“I don’t want a future without you in it! And you can’t promise me that you won’t be killed in this fight, can you?” I hated saying the words, as if talking about Sam’s death might cause it to happen.
“Life has no guarantees, Gisela.” He silenced me with a kiss before I could say more.
In the end, I conceded to everyone’s wishes and returned to finish the school year. I poured myself into my studies and my hospital rounds to help take my mind off the hopeless situation my loved ones and I faced. I concentrated on making beds with perfect hospital corners, taking accurate temperature and blood pressure readings, and recording the results on patients’ charts with precision.
At the end of May, the Nazis announced a new set of anti-Jewish laws. Among them was a law that forbade Jews to own property. Our Jewish landlord was forced to sell our apartment building, and of course higher rental rates soon followed. In June we were stunned to learn that the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union. The war would now be fought on two fronts. Members of the Communist Party in Belgium immediately stirred up unrest with protests and riots. Sam was away from the apartment often throughout those months and he warned us to stay as close to home as possible.
More laws were issued in July. Jews were required to carry identity cards stamped with the word Jew. We were prohibited from riding on public transportation. When my classes started again in September, Esther, Rachel, and I were forced to walk across the city to school and back, taking care to avoid the main streets. I wondered how we would manage once winter came and the daylight hours grew shorter. Antwerp was under a curfew from dusk until dawn.
But when winter came, my worries no longer mattered. In December, I learned that I was no longer allowed to attend school at all. A new Nazi declaration made it illegal for Jews to attend public schools, universities, and trade schools in Belgium. And even if I did become a nurse, I would be forbidden to work in a Gentile hospital. Our community began arranging our own Jewish schools, just as we’d been forced to do in Germany. Ruthie and Sam’s two brothers now attended classes in a synagogue a few blocks away. Our old synagogue down the street had been too badly damaged during the pogrom to use.
After the school restriction was announced and Sam returned from wherever he had been, we sat at the kitchen table with Vati and Mutti one evening, bundled in coats to save fuel. Sam had turned twenty this year, but he seemed a decade older, forced into maturity by the weight of responsibility he carried. “I have more upsetting news,” he said. “The underground has learned that the Nazis have started deporting German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian Jews from their homelands and taking them to concentration camps in Poland. You know what those people will face, Mr. Wolff.”