Long Way Home(94)
“What about her oldest son, Sam?”
“Yes, Sam.”
My heart pounded wildly as Mr. Wouters paused.
“Sam was very active with the underground, which is how we met. He arranged for his family and for countless other Jews to go into hiding, providing false IDs and so forth. He and the others also rescued downed Allied airmen and helped them escape back to England, mostly through Spain. In the winter of 1943, Sam came to me and said that he’d decided to go to England with one of the rescued RAF crews and join the British Army. I thought it was much too dangerous. I told him the Resistance needed him here, but he was determined to fight.”
“And have you heard from him?” My heart was pounding so hard that my chest hurt.
“Well, we learned through coded radio signals that he and the crew made it back to England. But after that—nothing.”
My hope plummeted. Nothing? For a year and a half? “Is . . . is Mrs. Shapiro still with you?”
Mr. Wouters shook his head. “As soon as Belgium was liberated and communication became possible again, she sent a telegram to her husband in Cuba. He had acquired valid landing permits, and he’d arranged for her and their sons to join him by steamship as soon as the war ended.”
“So they’re gone?”
“They sailed more than a month ago. I promised to send them a cable if I heard from Sam.”
“May I have their address in Cuba?”
“Certainly. I’ll have my assistant get it for you. And where can I reach you, Miss Wolff, if I hear news of Sam?”
“I’ll give you my APO address,” Jim said. “You can reach Gisela through me for now.”
“If you ever need anything, Miss Wolff—anything at all—please don’t hesitate to ask.”
I was so demoralized as we left the hotel that I wanted to sit down on the curb and cry. I had no idea where to go or what to do next.
“Listen,” Jim said as we walked, “we know that Sam made it to England, right? And if he did join the British Army, they’ll have a record of it. We’ll contact them and ask for his service record.”
“Do you know how to do that?” I asked.
“I’ll figure it out.”
There was only one place left for me to visit in Antwerp—our old apartment building. Maybe the landlord had stored some of Mutti and Vati’s belongings. As we approached the building, so many memories came flooding back—not only good memories of Sam and me and our families, but also heart-pounding memories of the Antwerp pogrom. Even if I did stay in Belgium, and Sister Mary Margaret found a nursing job for me at the hospital, I would never feel truly safe or at home here. I would always see Nazi sympathizers roaming the streets, burning and looting. I would see SS officers waiting for me outside every building. And I would always wonder if the nurse working alongside me was like Lina Renard, hating me because I’m Jewish. The Nazis might have been defeated, but the hatred and cowardice that allowed them to come to power would merely go underground for now.
But if I didn’t live in Belgium or in Germany, where would I live?
I was still pondering these thoughts when the landlord came to the door and welcomed us inside. He seemed impressed, as everyone had been, by Jim in his uniform. My spirits revived when he showed us a box of personal items that Vati had asked him to store for Ruthie and me. My parents’ wedding rings were in there. And Mutti’s photo album. We hadn’t brought very much with us on the St. Louis, but Mutti had refused to leave the photographs behind. I would always have pictures of my family to remember them by.
“What now?” Jim asked as we left with the precious keepsakes. Once again, he had given his own address in case Sam returned or the landlord wanted to contact me.
I halted in the middle of the sidewalk. “I have no place to go,” I said. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I thought it was artillery at first, forgetting that the war was over.
Jim gazed up at the threatening sky, dark with rain clouds. “Return to Germany with me, Gisela, if you can bear it. You’ve been such an enormous help. There’s still a lot of work you can do in the hospital and the displaced persons camps while we wait to hear back from the British authorities about Sam.”
I considered it for a moment, then nodded. What else could I do? Jim was the only friend I had. He had promised not to give up until we found out what had happened to Sam. And I didn’t know how I would ever face the news alone if it turned out to be bad.
23
Peggy
AUGUST 1946
Buster trotted along beside me as I walked to the corner store after work to buy a newspaper. We both preferred to walk along the river on the other side of town, but this had become our new routine. I would carry the paper to the nearby park and sit on a bench, circling all the available apartments for rent while Buster sniffed in the bushes and barked at the squirrels. Squealing children climbed on the monkey bars and swung on the creaking swings nearby. If I found any prospects, Buster and I would walk to the pay phone with a roll of coins from the bank and I’d call all the promising ones. Today, there were no new listings.
“It’s beginning to look like you’ll be in a kennel and I’ll be living in Mrs. Jenkins’s guesthouse indefinitely,” I told Buster when he returned to my side. He was bored with the park and eager to be on our way. But I took another moment to scan the news headlines first. I had taken an interest in the plight of the displaced persons in Europe after reading Jimmy’s letters and talking with Art Davis about the camp survivors. Some survivors had begun crowding onto decrepit ships in an attempt to reach Palestine, but the British government refused to allow them sanctuary there. In today’s news, a ship named Mataroa had sailed from Marseille, France, to the port of Haifa with more than 1,200 homeless men, women, and children on board. The British Navy had intercepted it, and the refugees, many of whom had survived Nazi concentration camps, were now being detained in British internment camps on the island of Cyprus. It seemed so cruel and heartless. I hoped Jimmy would never read this news. After working so hard to save the concentration camp survivors, it would break his heart.