Long Way Home Page 3

  2

  Gisela

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  NOVEMBER 1938

  On the day that the world came to an end for my family and me, it didn’t happen through a flood the way it had for our ancestors in Noah’s days. It ended with fire. That day was November 9, 1938, my sixteenth birthday. We’d had a quiet celebration in our apartment in the Jewish neighborhood in Berlin where Mutti’s and Vati’s families had lived for generations. But unlike past birthdays when our apartment overflowed with aunts and uncles and cousins, only Mutti and Vati and my ten-year-old sister, Ruthie, were there to celebrate with me.

  Our family had sensed disaster five years earlier, when Adolf Hitler came to power, and my uncles had immediately begun looking for ways to flee Berlin. My father refused to run. “This storm will blow over,” he insisted after the Reichstag burned in 1933. “Just like the tides at sea, the water may rise but it always recedes again. People will come to their senses. The Nazi Party won’t remain in power very long.”

  The tide didn’t recede. It continued to rise higher and higher until it became an overwhelming flood. Vati’s two brothers planned to flee to the United States but learned there were immigration quotas and only a limited number of Jews were allowed to enter each year. Uncle Hermann went to Ecuador and Uncle Aaron to Cuba while they waited to enter the United States. Mutti’s brother and his family moved to Paris, taking my beloved grandmother with them. My family was the only one left in Berlin.

  On the gray November afternoon of my birthday, the tension in Berlin’s streets resembled a beehive that had been poked with a stick, as Ruthie and I hurried home from our Jewish school. Vati arrived home early from work. He tried to make us believe it was for me, but I saw the worry and fear in his eyes. I rescued his newspaper from the rubbish bin and read the headlines. A German diplomat named Ernst vom Rath had been assassinated in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish man. It seemed like a distant spark, miles away from Berlin, but it ignited a conflagration, unleashing a firestorm of hatred known as Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass. A night of terror.

  Vati gave me a book of poems by the American poet Emily Dickinson for my birthday. It was a lovely volume with gold lettering on the leather cover. The poems were in English, a language I was studying. Mutti’s birthday present to me was a pearl necklace that had belonged to her grandmother. I had put the pearls on and was delighting in their cool, silky feel against my skin when we heard shouts and screams in the street below our apartment. We ran to the window and watched in horror as young men from the Hitler Youth poured onto our street, smashing into the ground-floor shops and looting the contents. When the Jewish owners tried to stop them, the youths dragged them into the street and beat them mercilessly. The angry shouts and bloodcurdling screams were like something from a nightmare. Then Vati noticed smoke and flames billowing from the synagogue down the block, and he ran to fetch his coat.

  “Daniel, no!” Mutti begged. “Please, don’t go out there! Please!”

  “I have to help rescue the holy books,” he replied. “Turn off the lights, Elise, and don’t answer the door.”

  The firemen arrived but used their hoses only to prevent the Gentile-owned buildings from burning, not to save our synagogue. My body trembled as terror overwhelmed me. Vati! My beloved Vati was out there! Mutti pulled me away from the window and made Ruthie and me hide in her bedroom. The stench of smoke filled the apartment as the night dragged on. The sound of shattering glass crashed continuously as if thousands of crystal chandeliers were plunging to the ground.

  When Kristallnacht finally ended after two days, we learned that hundreds of Jewish buildings and businesses had been set on fire all across Berlin. Jewish homes and schools and hospitals had been ransacked and demolished with axes and clubs and sledgehammers. Hundreds of Jews had been beaten and slaughtered. When the last of the flames died away and the smoke cleared, I was no longer a child.

  Vati never returned home. We waited in suspense for two months to find out what had happened to him. In January, we finally received a postcard from him and wept with relief to learn that he was still alive. He’d been arrested along with thousands of other Jewish men and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He was never given a reason why or told what his crime was. The Nazis didn’t need a reason. Take the girls and leave Berlin without delay, the postcard read. Go to my brother Aaron. I love you more than words can ever say. Mutti wept for three hours after reading it.

  “We need to go to Cuba like Vati said,” I told her when she finally calmed down. “Do you know if he was able to get our visas and landing permits?”

  Tears filled Mutti’s eyes again as she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about it. He didn’t want me to worry. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Mutti fell into such a pit of despair that I didn’t think she would ever climb out. She had depended on Vati for everything, and he’d indulged and spoiled her. She’d never had to make plans beyond tomorrow, and she was incapable of doing it now. If my mother, my sister, and I were going to find refuge in Cuba, I was going to have to save the three of us myself.

  I started by going to Vati’s former law office, trudging alone through the snowy streets since Jews weren’t allowed to take public transportation. One of Vati’s law partners, Herr Kesler, had been a lifelong friend and had remained one even after it became forbidden to socialize with us. He looked shaken when I told him that Vati was in Buchenwald. “I am truly sorry to hear that,” he said when he could speak.

  “He wants us to escape to Havana, Herr Kesler, but Mutti doesn’t know where our papers are.”

  He looked up, his expression brightening. “They’re here. The Cuban landing permits are here, in our office safe. Your father completed the affidavits and other paperwork your family needs for your US visas, and you’re on the waiting list.”

  My relief was so profound that I sank to the floor. Herr Kesler hurried around his desk and helped me to a chair, calling for his secretary to fetch me a cup of coffee.

  “He also put money in the safe for your steamship tickets, but there wasn’t quite enough yet. He had to pay an exorbitant amount for the landing permits. He’d planned to sell a few more things.”

  “We can sell these pearls,” I said, fingering the necklace Mutti had given me for my birthday. I seldom took it off.

  “No, my dear child,” he said, his voice gentle. “Those are precious to you and your family. Keep them. I’ll come to your apartment this evening after dark and talk to your mother. I’ll do whatever I can to get your father released from Buchenwald, but the three of you need to escape to Cuba as soon as possible.”

  In the weeks that followed, Herr Kesler helped us sell our remaining possessions to raise money. He had to do it on the sly by claiming that Vati owed him money and he was confiscating our possessions in payment. We sent a package with food and warm socks to Vati in Buchenwald and lived like vagrants in our nearly empty apartment while we waited.

  And then in May, a miracle! God parted the Red Sea for Vati, thanks, I suspected, to the behind-the-scenes efforts of Herr Kesler. My father sent a postcard saying that he and a handful of other Jewish prisoners would be released from Buchenwald provided they left Germany for good within two weeks. They would not, however, be allowed to take their families.

  I raced across Berlin to Herr Kesler’s office on a sunny spring day with Vati’s postcard in hand. He was overjoyed for us. “I’ll have my secretary check all the steamship lines,” he said. “We’ll book you on the first voyage to Cuba that we can find.”

  “But Vati isn’t supposed to travel with us.”

  “I know. But perhaps if I book his ticket in tourist class, and your mother books yours in first class, we can get away with it. You can reunite on board.”

  I gave him a fervent hug. “How will we ever thank you for everything you’ve done?”

  “There’s no need. Your father is a good man. Your family doesn’t deserve any of this.”

  Herr Kesler learned that the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie’s luxury passenger ship St. Louis would be making a special voyage to Havana, Cuba, departing from Hamburg on May 13. It would be carrying more than 900 passengers, nearly all of us Jewish. The cost was 800 Reichsmarks for each first-class ticket and 600 Reichsmarks for tourist-class. The Nazis required us to pay an additional 230 Reichsmarks each for the return voyage, in spite of the fact that none of us planned to return. After purchasing the tickets and our train fare to Hamburg, our money was nearly depleted. It didn’t matter. The government would allow us to leave with only ten Reichsmarks each in our pockets. Six months after Kristallnacht, our ordeal was almost over. Our family would be safe in Cuba while we waited for our turn to immigrate to the United States.

  My stomach ached with apprehension on the train journey from Berlin to Hamburg. Would Vati really be waiting there for us? Would the Nazis really allow us to leave? I worried and fretted about a thousand things that might go wrong, but most of all, I feared that this would turn out to be a cruel, sadistic trick, and we would be left with nothing—no father, no money, no belongings, no home to return to in Berlin. But I prodded Mutti and Ruthie forward in spite of my fears. That was my job now.

  When we arrived at the port in Hamburg that evening, the line of passengers waiting to board stretched down the wharf to the gangway. I halted in amazement to view the immense ship. It was impossible to see all of it from where I stood, but the sight of its great black hull, its pristine white upper structure with dangling lifeboats, and its two steaming smokestacks painted red, white, and black renewed my courage. A brass band from the steamship company played lively music to see us off on our journey. It felt to me like the Nazis were celebrating our departure, saying “good riddance,” especially when I saw flags with swastikas flying on board the St. Louis. For a moment, I had the terrifying thought that we were boarding a floating prison.

  “Where’s Daniel?” Mutti whispered, glancing around as we took our place in line. “Do you see him anywhere?” I didn’t. We inched forward, closer and closer to the gangway. Water heaved and slapped against the pier and the ship’s hull. The ropes tying the ship to the dock were thicker than my legs.

  “We shouldn’t be departing on the Sabbath,” I heard a woman behind me say. “And today is also the thirteenth. Those are very bad omens.”

  “Superstitious nonsense,” a man replied.

  “Even if it is nonsense,” she said, “we shouldn’t be breaking the Sabbath.”

  When it was finally our turn to board, my mother halted as if she had decided to go no farther. She still hadn’t seen Vati and she’d been insisting for months that she wouldn’t go to Cuba without him. “Maybe he’s already on board,” I whispered to her. “Come on, and don’t make a fuss. He isn’t supposed to travel with us, remember?”

  A steward escorted us to our wood-paneled stateroom. I’d never been on a ship before, and I was the last person to go inside, unable to stop gawking at the splendid interior. It resembled one of the grand hotels where we used to stay on holidays. After the steward left, I was about to close the door when I noticed a sudden movement in the shadows outside our stateroom. It was Vati! I let out a cry and ran into his arms. Mutti and Ruthie heard me and ran out to hug him, too.

  “Daniel! Oh, Daniel! I thought I’d never see you again,” Mutti wept. She clung to him as if she’d never let go. I heard voices approaching in the corridor and quickly pushed everyone into our room, closing the door.

  “I’m not supposed to be on this deck,” Vati said, “but I had to see you, Elise. I had to know that you and our girls were here. That you were safe.”

  “Stay with us, Daniel. Who’s to know?”

  “The stewards down below know who all of the former prisoners from Buchenwald are. They’ll know if one of us goes missing. We have nice living quarters down there, a deck, common rooms, and our own dining room, separate from first class. I’ll be fine, Elise. Once we’re out at sea, we’ll find a place to meet every day. The voyage only takes two weeks.”

  I wiped my tears of joy and relief. Vati was with us again. I didn’t have to hold our family together anymore. Ever since Kristallnacht, I’d felt as though I was lugging a huge steamer trunk on my back as I carried the weight of responsibility for my mother and sister. Now I could finally set it down again. I could relax and enjoy the voyage, and I wanted to savor every moment of our journey to freedom, including our departure. “It must be almost time to set sail,” I said. “I’m going up on deck to watch us shove off, if that’s all right. Come with me, Ruthie.” I grabbed her hand and opened the door, not waiting for my parents to reply. They needed a few minutes alone after all these months apart.

  The crowd of somber passengers that had already gathered at the rail seemed strangely subdued to me. I wondered if they had the same mixed feelings that I did—relief at finally escaping the fires of persecution, yet sorrow at leaving our homeland, our ancestors’ homeland. Would we ever see Germany again? Some of the passengers were waving to people on the wharf below, but we didn’t have anyone to wave to. The band continued to play, oblivious to the shouted commands of the sailors and dockworkers as they raised the gangway and untied ropes. The sudden blast of the ship’s whistle made me jump and cover my ears. Ruthie let out a startled yelp too, then we looked at each other and laughed. The band stopped playing below. The ship trembled beneath me. We were moving. The gap of water separating us from shore grew wider. I wanted to watch the city of Hamburg grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared from sight. My old life was ending and a new one beginning.

  “Right on time,” a voice behind me said. I turned to see a young man about my age studying his pocket watch. “Germans are always on time.” He closed the lid and returned the watch to his pant pocket. He was as handsome as a film star, with hair the color of honey and eyes the same greenish-blue color as the water. I wondered if he was a Gentile and if he would dare to speak to me if he knew I was Jewish. He smiled and held out his hand. “Guten Abend. I’m Sam Shapiro.” A Jewish name. I smiled in return and released Ruthie’s hand to shake his. That was the very first time I held Sam’s strong, warm hand in mine.

  “I’m Gisela,” I told him. “Gisela Wolff.”

  “You can take that off now,” he said, pointing to the yellow star we were required to wear on our clothing. “We’re no longer in Germany. We’re free.”

  3

  Peggy

  JUNE 1946

  I rode into Newburgh with Mr. and Mrs. Barnett the following morning, and we took the car ferry across the Hudson River to the veterans’ hospital in Wappingers Falls. We were a little early and more than a little nervous, so we spent a few minutes walking around outside the hospital. The peaceful grounds offered a sweeping view of the river and of the distant mountains that had surrounded me and grounded me since childhood. I hoped Jimmy could see the mountains from his hospital room and that they would remind him of home and the people who loved him.

  I had remembered Jimmy’s Bible and I pulled it from my pocket to show his parents. “I brought this along to give to Jimmy, if that’s okay with you.”

  His mother caressed my shoulder. “Of course, Peggy. That’s a wonderful idea.”

  “And look—I found the name Gisela, the woman in the photograph, written in the margin beside this psalm.”

  I showed Mr. Barnett the marked page and he shook his head in bewilderment. “Martha showed me the photograph but neither of us can recall Jim ever mentioning her.”

  “There’s an address in Brooklyn written on the back page. See? Does Jimmy know someone who lives there?”

  Mr. B. studied it for a moment. “Not that I know of. Maybe it’s one of his Army buddies.”

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him today.” I put the Bible back in my pocket as we walked up the stairs to go inside. The hospital was a square brick building three stories tall, with an odd white-pillared replica of a Greek temple pasted onto the second floor like an afterthought. It was as if someone had decided that the institution’s dull facade needed to be taken more seriously, so they added a completely useless miniature version of the Parthenon. It did nothing to inspire my confidence in the VA. The waiting room was stark and institutional, with drab linoleum floors, a row of uncomfortable metal chairs, and an antiseptic odor that made my nose tingle. A soldier at the information desk led us up a flight of stairs to Dr. Morgan’s office for our appointment.

  I disliked the doctor almost immediately, even before he began speaking to us as if we were barely worth his time. He ordered us to sit, then lit a cigarette.

  “Corporal Barnett is suffering from combat exhaustion,” he said, exhaling smoke with his words. “It’s my considered opinion that he could benefit from a course of insulin therapy.”

  “What’s that?” Mrs. Barnett asked.

  The doctor ignored her question, tapping ash into his ashtray as he consulted the papers in his file folder. “It says here that he served as a combat medic.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Barnett replied. He reached to take his wife’s hand.

  “Because of the nature of their work, medics often suffer from compassion fatigue as well as combat stress. Their condition can sometimes be relieved by therapeutic rest. With insulin therapy, patients are administered large doses of insulin each day over a period of weeks in order to induce a coma. The goal is to shock the system out of psychoneurosis.”

  I nearly cried out in protest. I hated the way he talked about Jimmy as if he were a case to be solved instead of the living, breathing man we loved. But Mr. Barnett interrupted first. “An insulin coma? Is that even safe?”

  “Of course.” Dr. Morgan drew on his cigarette again, then waved his hand dismissively as he exhaled. “Why else would I prescribe it?” I had seen Mr. Barnett approach his four-legged patients with more concern and compassion than Dr. Morgan showed us. “Insulin therapy has been in use for some time. The deep, induced coma gives patients’ brains relief from anxiety and the nightmares which often plague them.”