by Marika Somogyi

Something magical happened. I woke up to something I thought was an apparition. At the foot of my bed stood an angel in a gray cloak, her face partly hidden under a hood. She was tall, slim, and very soft spoken.

She said: “I am sister Natalia. I came for you, Marika. Tonight is your last night being Marika Harmat, daughter of a company executive in Budapest. From tomorrow morning on, you will be called Mária Gál, illegitimate daughter of a farmhand and, of course, Roman Catholic. Tomorrow, when your family moves to the Jewish house, you will not stay with them. You will remove the yellow star from your coat and take a streetcar to Thökölyi Street 69. This is the convent for the Gray Sisters. The mother superior, Slachta Margit, will welcome you and will protect you.”

She gave me a new birth certificate, kissed my forehead, and left. She was Palágyi Natalia, a name I will never forget.

The next morning, I still went with my parents to the Jewish house, closing the door of our beloved apartment behind us. I would never see that front door again until I went there with my granddaughter Rianna more than 70 years later.

There was some discussion about what to put in my little suitcase for my future life as Mária Gál. (My real given name is Marianne, and the nuns had been clever to give me a new name, Mária, that has the same nickname, Marika, as Marianne. I would not have to learn to respond to a new nickname.) Decisions had to be made. Should I pack the small gas mask? Should I take some warm clothes? In the end, I took only simple clothing, since from now on I would pretend to be an impoverished farm girl.

I Wonder What That Little Girl Is Doing

I wonder what that little girl is doing? Running frantically around the barn. Chasing the chickens. Now she sits down and cries. Almost all the chickens escaped.

This must be the little girl from Budapest. She is staying in the house of the village priest, Bela Kormendy. Very far from Budapest. Very far from her previous short little life. Her father was holding her in the palm of his hand. Sending her to a private German kindergarten. Then to an exclusive English elementary school. She had a live-in Austrian nanny. She would be able to speak three languages before the age of ten.

But now she must pretend to be a poor, illegitimate child of an impoverished farmhand. The poorest of the poor. And of course, she must convince the priest in whose house she was living now, that she is a good Roman Catholic. Knowing all the right prayers at the right time.

Everything was going well. Until this Sunday, when she was handed a large knife and sent out to the barn to slay a chicken for the festive dinner. The nuns who taught her all the right prayers didn’t prepare her for this.

She knew she couldn’t do it. She also knew she couldn’t go back to the house and tell them she couldn’t do it.

She must run away. But with her false papers, she would be soon caught. And that would be the end of her. She was helpless.

Then she cornered a poor lame chicken. Took her to the tree stump where they chopped the firewood. Tied the poor thing’s head down and stretched her body across the stump. Then took an ax and slashed the poor thing’s throat.

Then she went to the corner to throw up. I remember I was shaking for a very long time after that.

copyright©2019 Marika Somogyi

The post From a Charmed Life appeared first on Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay.

• Jeff Ilfield, President
• Sam Alcabes, Vice President
• Micah Trilling, Treasurer
• Rachel Leff-Kich, Secretary

And, please give an especially warm welcome to our newest board member, Micah Trilling, who has joined us to serve as Treasurer. Micah works as a Managing Director at the global firm FTI Consulting, where he specializes in forensic accounting. Micah brings significant finance knowledge and experiences that will enrich our decision-making processes and benefit our community.

As we embrace the responsibility of stewarding JFCS East Bay towards its vision, we are confident that our new volunteer leaders, working with our dedicated staff and many more passionate volunteers, will lead us to greater impact.

Click here for our entire leadership team.

The post Welcome to our New Board Officers appeared first on Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay.

By Herta Weinstein

Winter: Kindertransport Feb 22-24, 1939

The train was full of children, one adult woman per car. We traveled all day and part of the next night up the long Rhine Valley to the Dutch border. The shades were up during the day when we passed through the countryside. There were long stretches of fields and forests. But as we passed through towns, the shades were down. I wrote my pre-addressed postcard, which I still have, postmarked from Frankfurt, and ate my packed lunch. I was very bored. The other children were quiet and no one cried or made trouble. But no one played or laughed either. We had all lived under the Nazis for a year and were leaving our parents.

We got to the border late at night. Guards in Nazi uniforms and big boots came onto the train, asked us if we had any money (of course we didn’t), dumped out a couple of random children’s suitcases (not mine), found nothing, and went on. No one said a word. When the train went on, I remember feeling a great sudden relief, a sudden lightness. We were OUT!

We got to the next stop very soon. We were in Holland! A brightly lit station, the shades were up, the windows open, the platform full of smiling Dutch women in heavy shawls, handing up hot chocolate and pastries to the children. Incredible delight! We were shouting and laughing.

The next memory I have is being in a ship’s cabin, very seasick, crossing the channel. It was a rough crossing, as a channel crossing often is. I remember promising myself I would never, never cross the channel by ship again, and I never have.

But then we were in England. Harwich, on the east coast. After an inspection, we got on a train to London. British trains! Amazingly luxurious compared to what we knew on the continent, and we surely were not in a luxury class car. And then we got to London. By now, it was night time. Bright lights everywhere. Most of the children disappeared quite quickly.

I went to a hostel, but I did not know that at the time and feared I had been forgotten or had waited in the wrong place. But no, a nice young man appeared. He had a card with my name. He was the chauffeur of an elegant car who drove me through the brightly-lit London streets to an equally elegant lady’s house. It was like being in a fairy tale.

But there was an anxious confusion. I had a postcard which we were no doubt given on the train to send home. But it was from the Hebrew Shelter, London. This was no shelter. Although elegant, this was not the right fairy tale ending. I didn’t speak English well enough to clarify anything. On the other hand, this was London, not Nazi Germany. I was not afraid. I slept in the luxurious bed.

The next morning, I was taken back to the train station and put on the correct train to Glasgow. Another lovely train, this time in a compartment with another Transport child and two kind  English ladies with whom we could barely communicate. They bought us our first elaborate English tea. I knew enough to say “thank you” in English. Sometime that afternoon, the train arrived in the Glasgow station where, to my amazed delight, I was met by my two aunts whom I had known all my life.

Summer 1939

My parents had just arrived in Glasgow in June after their odyssey on the St Louis. For the first time since about August 1938, we were all together again. We were all safe, never mind the war. My aunt and uncle, and my parents, another aunt, and myself.

We were in a rather large flat, which was also shared with another couple, young socialists from Vienna. Seven adults and one child. We shared a bathroom and kitchen. It did not seem crowded to me–it seemed comfortable, almost luxurious. It had running hot water which none of us had had in Vienna. It also had mice, which apparently every building in Glasgow had, much to the distress of my two aunts. I thought it was rather funny. My job was to polish my uncle’s shoes. Six pairs a week. No doubt a pampered man. But he was the breadwinner for five people.

I was happy that summer, in spite of the gloomy Scotland weather. We were all safe. I had my father and my uncle, the two people in the world I loved the most. My mother was under control because of the other adults around. Besides, in all fairness, the year under the Nazis had changed her a good deal.

On Sundays, we took trips into the nearby countryside which included the Atlantic Coast. This was very interesting to people from landlocked Vienna, even if it was cold and damp in the summer.

In retrospect, it sounds rather idyllic, but it wasn’t! The shadow of war was there. My father was not allowed to work. My parents had been allowed into the country on an emergency basis from the SS St. Louis, not on a regular Visa, which would have been impossible to obtain at the time. We were all dependent on my uncle. On the other hand, we were waiting for the quota number so we could get us a visa to the US. A shining hope, but we didn’t know when that might happen.

The war started at the same time as I started school. On September 1, 1939, schoolchildren were allowed to be evacuated from the city to the countryside. Glasgow is the second largest city in Britain, an important seaport, and an obvious target for bombing. I don’t remember if I was asked; more likely, I was told that I would be leaving. I was going to be sent to the countryside for “safety”—to a much more unfamiliar world than Glasgow.

Turriff: October-November 1939

Turriff is a very small town north of Aberdeen, Scotland. I don’t remember how I got there, but it must have been by train with at least one transfer. The Baxters were prosperous farmers with cows, a barn with milking machines, in beautiful rolling land with many sheep and quite a few farmhands.

Mr Baxter was a tall, ruddy, pleasant Scotsman. His wife was a quiet woman about whom I remember almost nothing. They had a daughter, perhaps a bit younger than I was, whose name I don’t remember. We could hardly communicate–we were both too shy and culturally utterly unrelated, and there was no one to help us bridge the gap. We did not become friends. She and I slept in what I suppose was a double bed with her grandmother, who smelled bad. I had never shared a bed with anyone before. I was there for what must have been about six weeks. I have no memory of what, if anything, was done about bathing, but there certainly was indoor plumbing, probably with hot water; anything else would be more memorable. British plumbing in rural Scotland was far ahead of what existed in a middle class city building in cosmopolitan Vienna.

The family ate breakfast and dinner together. It was my introduction to porridge, but also to bacon and fried ham. The novel experience was that nobody paid much attention to what or how much I ate. The lack of family interest in the details of the food was as remarkable to me as the food itself.

I had never seen a cow up close before, certainly not a bull, and especially not a

bull mounting a cow. That was, indeed, one of the more memorable sights of my farm stay. Less dramatic but also astonishing was seeing sheep dipped, feet tied, into bright orange colored dip; I suppose against some infestation. Seeing all this was part of the tour to see the farm by Mr. Baxter, who was really very kind. But it was a world more foreign to me than anything I had experienced before.

One day I was sent around to the bunkhouse where the farm hands lived, to tell them their dinner was ready. I may have stood in the doorway a moment peering inside where it was rather dark. One of them lifted his blankets and invited me in. I turned and bolted from the door. They laughed behind me. I never told anyone, neither there nor to my family. Somehow I managed not to get sent to the bunkhouse again.

The family had a cat with kittens. I loved kittens, never having been allowed to have pets, though once we had a canary in Vienna. But you can’t hold and pet a canary. One day I picked up a kitten, not knowing about kittens that have not been used to people. It bit me in the thumbnail, hard. It didn’t grow out until long after we were settled in California. It was my souvenir of Scotland!

Soon I was sent to school in Turriff. I remember very little about it except that all the girls were taller than I and I understood almost not a word of what anybody said. Here again, everyone was kind but had not a clue how to help.

I don’t remember being particularly unhappy. Lonely yes, but not afraid. No one knew how long this would last, but I had better get used to it. I was safe and my parents were safe. We exchanged some letters. I don’t remember having a telephone.

But one day word did come. It must have been early October 1939, by phone or some other way. Come back to Glasgow right away. The American quota number had just come up and we were to leave soon. We crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York on November 1, 1939.

New York: November 1939

A sublet of three rooms in a rather poor apartment on West 110th Street in New York, complete with bed bugs and cockroaches. My mother was horrified. I mainly did not like being bitten by the bed bugs at night. I started in another new school. My father got a Christmas job wrapping packages at Saks Fifth Avenue at night. My mother and I waited anxiously each night as he made his way home through freezing New York.

After a very few weeks, early one Sunday morning, I developed a bad bellyache. My father, though he was no doctor, correctly figured out I had appendicitis. No buses across Central Park on a Sunday morning. Could I walk? I thought I could, and I did, to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where I was duly diagnosed and operated on for appendicitis.

After surgery, I had to stay in the children’s ward for ten days. That was my first real contact with American culture. One of the children had a much-envied radio which he played loudly every day and that’s where I met Superman and the Green Hornet.

Then followed a four-week stay in a Jewish children’s convalescent home, about an hour’s ride outside of New York. This turned out to be the last of the 1939 separations from my parents. While I was there, the children had to put on a Christmas program, for which I, bizarrely, sang Holy Night in German. Although it was my first experience of group living, it was far less estranging than Scotland had been.

In January 1940 we left, together, for San Francisco.

The post My Journey appeared first on Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay.

by Ilse Eden

Maternal Grandparents

My mother was from Schwedt an der Oder, a small tobacco-growing town in Germany. My grandmother lived there in what seemed like a big house. We took a train to Schwedt and were picked up at the station by a white horse and carriage, a treat for me and exciting. I did not see horses and carriages in Berlin.

My grandmother, Rosa, had a “salon,” where she received guests. My cousin Hans, who was a year older than me, and I decided we would choose what each of us would inherit from that room: a piano or a rocking chair. I think we agreed but I do not remember what each of us chose. (Grandmother later moved to Berlin and nothing was inherited).

My grandmother Rosa wrote perfect English letters and we have no idea where she learned English, since she probably left school at age 14. Unfortunately, we cannot ask her and wish we had!

Another enjoyable activity in Schwedt was walking to the old castle. It has now been demolished. Schwedt was in Eastern Germany and the government built an oil pipeline there. I visited and the residents were not happy after the wall fell–especially women, because they lost their child care and their jobs.

I visited the Jewish cemetery there which, together with an old mikvah, are still being maintained

Paternal Grandparents

My paternal grandparents lived in Berlin and were more formal than my maternal grandmother, Rosa. We had Sunday dinner with them once every two weeks, and what I enjoyed the most was going to the kitchen and asking the maid, Ella, what was for dessert.

My grandfather, Ernst, met me after I went swimming, and bought me a piece of cake if I had jumped into the water.  (I was scared of that). When he died, he left a bracelet for me in his desk! On his 70th birthday, my parents were out of town, but I was invited with our maid and he gave me a doll’s carriage. We took it home in a taxi and I slept with it in my bed!

After my grandfather died, my grandmother, Marianne, moved to a boarding house across the street from us. I remember visiting her and reading an English story, so she must have known English.

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by J.G.

This story is based on the life of Alec and his parents, Dyna and Jakob, who were living in Lodz when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Some names have been altered to protect the privacy of living individuals and some gaps in the story have been filled in; however, it otherwise corresponds to the facts as I know them. 

 1937. It’s still cold in the early spring when Dyna and Jakob take two-year old Oles for a walk in their Lodz, Poland neighborhood. They are all bundled up in thick clothes despite the sunshine, but the warm sun feels good and people on the street are cheerful in the bright light. Oles is holding his father’s hand. When he sees another small child holding her mother’s hand, he impulsively reaches out and takes hers and the four of them walk along for a few minutes while Dyna snaps a picture. Jakob will later send a copy to his sister “Lizo” fighting Franco in Spain, titling it as his little one’s “first flirt.” 

Late 1942 or early 1943. Ever since Oles and his mother avoided the Lodz Ghetto by heading for Warsaw, there has been no word from Jakob, who insisted on staying, confident his bank director job would keep him safe. They have stayed with Dyna’s family, first in the city and then in the ghetto. By now, it is clear that the Warsaw ghetto is being liquidated and that most deportees are going to their deaths. The adults in the family work in the Toebbens uniform factory, work that offers a bit of protection from deportation. Children who are too young to work are expendable to the Nazis, so they hide Oles and his cousin in a closet used to store wool fabric. Is the darkness comforting or frightening to the two seven-year-olds? Oles is hungry and numb, trying to shut out the fear and death around him, the prized little metal train he left behind in Lodz, and chess games from earlier days in the ghetto, distant memories. As the situation becomes more desperate, Dyna somehow secures a way out and a place to shelter briefly in Aryan Warsaw.  One morning, Dyna and Oles escape with a work party and remove their Jewish stars. Once out, they move often. The prying eyes and ears of people who could betray them seem to be everywhere — antisemitic Poles, frightened ones, Volksdeutsche. They live in houses, barns, and in the forest with partisans.

1943 or 1944. For a young Jewish boy in hiding, especially one with dark, wavy hair, light is threatening. They are living in a house somewhere in the Polish countryside. Dyna goes out during the day, explained as help hired for the house and farm. Her labor and occasional coins or jewelry that she has sown into her coat provide some compensation to their hosts, who are risking their lives to shelter them as part of their private war against the Nazis. Oles spends his days hidden in a closet, cellar, or attic. At night, he must still be careful. Even a small shadow cast on a window curtain from a candle could raise suspicion. When his mother has time, she teaches him math and Polish and tells him stories. When he is alone, Oles must rely on his imagination and the few toys that fit in the matchbox in his pocket – mainly dried beans with different spot patterns. He could use those to make any game.

Eventually, he is seen by a neighbor in the window – in this house where his presence is a great danger to everyone, and he should never be seen. The neighbor has already noted enviously that this family is doing a bit better than before. Perhaps they have a new chicken or pig. The family tells the neighbor what she saw was their grandfather’s ghost. Whether the lie is believed does not matter; the hideout is no longer safe and once again they must leave. Perhaps this time, Oles hides with his mother in a new place or maybe this is the time when in desperation, she hides him in a church where he will learn that Jews are bad. 

Mid-1944. Captured, Dyna and Oles are loaded into a boxcar. Like the other “passengers,” they assume they are doomed, headed to a death camp. The train rumbles slowly forward for hours and then stops. Hours pass. Eventually they realize their guards have left and they and the others manage to get out. Still frightened of betrayal, the escapees survive in the forest for a while by searching out potatoes missed in the harvest. When it becomes clear that the Nazis have left the area, they hesitantly move to a nearby village.

Late 1944. Russian cavalry liberate the small town where Dyna and Oles are hiding. Oles is pale, small, and dangerously thin, with a sunken chest. The soldiers are kind to him. One gives Oles his first chocolate in years. As the front advances westward, they begin the arduous search for surviving family members. They join long lines in Lodz and in Warsaw. Finding no one except Eugeniusz, a camp survivor who knew one of Dyna’s sisters, sometime in 1945 or early 1946, they join relatives living in Paris and wait for an immigration visa. Reluctantly, they conclude Jakob is dead, probably shot early in the war.

1946. Dyna sends Oles to Palestine to live with her sister-in-law and her family for a year in their two-room apartment. In the heat and bright sunlight, 11-year-old Oles will begin to recover and grow stronger. ‘Look forward, not back’ is the mantra. His grandfather, a Hebrew teacher, tells the family to speak to Oles only in Hebrew. For two hours a day, he patiently teaches him Hebrew letters and words using the Book of Genesis as their text. At night, Oles shares the only bedroom with his grandfather and 14-year-old cousin. In October, Oles leaves the family that has come to love him deeply and returns to France. Eugeniusz, the new stepfather he does not like, meets the boat in Marseille. Oles shouts to get his attention, struggling to be heard above the clamor of crew, passengers, and people greeting the ship. Eugeniusz finally spots him. He scowls at Alec, “What are you saying?” Only then does Oles realize that he is speaking Hebrew, not Polish. Soon he is sailing from Marseilles to Sydney with Dyna and Eugeniusz to begin the next chapter of his life as Alec. He seems to embrace this life: School. Friends, mostly other immigrants. Sports. Zionist youth group camps. University. 

1958. Alec marries Esther, and they leave Australia for the US to continue their education. That year, Alec laughs, really laughs, for the first time since war broke out in Poland.

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By R.A.

Denise ran noiselessly up the narrow path and through the olive grove, dodging the gnarled tree trunks twisted and bent by the fury of past mistrals. At the edge of the clearing, she paused, gasping for breath. The bench was empty. The lone cypress stood behind it, tall and motionless like a Nazi sentinel. A small lizard scurried across the seat and dove for cover as though it too, were seeking escape from some invisible enemy. The September sun was blazing in the cloudless sky, its evening rays beating down on the deserted park in the southern French town.

Denise wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She was very hot in spite of her light clothing: thread-bare boy’s shorts too large for her petite ten-year-old frame and a faded pink cotton shirt. Crude homemade sandals completed her outfit.

She sat on the ground and took off her right sandal. The nail had come out again, and blood trickled down the side of her foot. She wiped it off with the tail of her shirt and hunted for a heavy rock. With practiced ease, she pounded the nail into place. The black rubber soles barely oozed in the heat of the evening. The white grosgrain ribbons were still holding fast. Denise felt very proud of her handiwork: she had had a hard time cutting out the soles from a discarded tire. She rewound the straps carefully around her thin, deeply sun-burned ankles.

The sudden chirp of a cricket shattered the stillness, startling her. She was suddenly aware of the lengthening shadow of the cypress across the ground. Soon the evening battalion would march in the narrow paved street at the foot of her retreat.

Denise stared at the empty bench. . . . It was made of stone and its legs bore an elegant gargoyle design, such as was carved upon the many fountains of the old city. Her mother had remarked how picturesque it was: “How pretty,” she had said. “Thank you, Denise, for showing me to your special hiding place.” After that first time, the two of them had come every evening to escape the stifling heat of their small box-like home and maybe the sight of Denise’s father swinging back and forth on a kitchen chair, his face bitter and brooding.

It was here that she first caught sight of Madame Kaplan, her mother’s only friend. Was the meeting a coincidence, she wondered, or had it been arranged? She never asked. It was tacitly understood that the less said, the better, as in case of arrest, no one could betray what he did not know. Madame Kaplan was a soft-spoken middle-aged woman who reminded Denise of a small Parisian sparrow. She had a round face, baby blue eyes, and soft brown hair pulled back in a bun. She was always in black, as she was a war widow. Her husband had been killed during the invasion. Now she was alone. She came every day, and the women sat side by side on the stone seat, discussing recipes for rutabaga and tomato paste, and sometimes, their voices dropping to a whisper, the “situation.” They were really quite alike, Denise had observed, with ladylike ways and old rusty clothes. . . . They often giggled like schoolgirls, their eyes dancing in gle3, and at such moments Denise felt safe again.

One day, however, their friend was missing at the usual rendez-vous. Tired of waiting, Denise began to play behind the stone bench, making a carefully designed garden of pebbles, leaves, and pine needles in the manner of the Park of Versailles. Then an old woman appeared at the edge of the clearing. After a fearful glance, the stranger ran to Denise’s mother and whispered hurriedly into her ear …. Denise caught a few barely audible words: “They came in the night . . . took her away… who shall be next?” … After this, her mother never went back to the hiding place, but Denise always managed to steal away by herself before curfew, in spite of her parents’ warning. She came to mourn, to remember, to nourish the burning defiance inside her and the savage pride that would not let her cry.

The hard blue sky was paling now, and the concert of crickets, awakened from their afternoon nap, was almost deafening. They would go on all night while she lay in her bed in the oppressive darkness, their malevolent chirps mixed with the low, threatening notes of the bullfrogs by the nearby pond, screeching: “They are coming! They are coming!” until driven by a panic she could not control, her heart thumping wildly, her mouth dry, she would flee on the bare tile floor to the door of her parents’ room, to wait out the break of dawn. 

But every morning, she tiptoed back into bed. She felt for her parents a fierce protective love, and would not let them know of her terror-filled nights. And then, there was her pride.

Pride was a necessary sustenance. It made her strong. Pride steadied her trembling knees when, standing up in class, she repeated her false name, false address, and false religion to the watchful principal. Pride made her contemptuous of the battalion of soldiers in the street, shouting their marching songs, their black boots shining smartly in the sun. It helped her swallow down the daily fare of black bread, tomato paste, and water, which stilled the hunger pangs until the next identical meal. It sharpened her wits when she parried the questions of curious classmates: “Where are you from, where do you live? What does your father do? Can you play after school?” However, one had to be careful, and she had learned never to look a Nazi in the eye, not in the narrow streets of the old city, nor by the murmuring fountains where she fetched the drinking water. She was afraid to be betrayed by the very intensity of her feelings, and she had steeled herself to fix her gaze on the left shoulder of their uniform: she would rather die than bow her head.

Somewhere there had been, she knew, a plump little girl with soft brown hair and a sweet disposition. A little girl dressed in white lacy frocks and short white gloves, going up the Champs-Elyseeswith her mother, gazing at the elegant displays, or running through the Park of Versailles, her father following along the well-manicured walks,then sitting down to a Sunday dinner of roast chicken and chocolate mousse. That seemed like a thousand years ago. The crybaby Denise whoused to whimper at the slightest hurt, who laycurled on the soft bed in the dove gray bedroom with the French provincial furniture, watching the parade of pink clouds passing by her window while the big city traffic hummed seven stories below-that little girl was gone forever.

The new Denise had emerged two years ago, after their hurried exit from Paris, crawling on their bellies along railroad tracks on a moonless night, while high up on the banks, Nazi sentinels kept watch on each side, their machine guns slung across their shoulders. Her parents had warned her not to cry, cough, sneeze or make the slightest sound …. They did not need to repeat their instructions as they crouched in the secret compartment of a large locomotive rushing them to the comparative safety of a small town where they lived from day to day, with false papers provided by the local underground.

This was no time for weakness. Denise often thought of the Three Musketeers …. She had taken a secret vow to be like D’Artagnan, strong, gallant, unafraid. She had adopted his motto: “All for one and one for all,” and had promised herself to be a worthy companion to her father and mother.

The old Denise had cherished her books about Camille and Madeleine, two well-behaved, impeccably dressed young ladies of good family, who always emptied their plates, never told a lie, and went through life in a flurry of ruffled petticoats and pantalets edged in eyelet embroidery, with a smile on their ruby-rose lips.

It had been her ambition, she remembered, to reach such perfection, and indeed there were times when she had felt quite as virtuous and charitable as her beloved heroines. But Camille and Madeleine simply did not belong here, and it was best to forget them.

The sound of approaching steps brought her out of her reverie. She lay quite still, holding her breath….

A Nazi officer was coming out of the woods. He walked slowly toward the clearing, carrying a parcel under his arm. As Denise watched incredulously, he sat down on the bench, his gray-green uniform resplendent in the setting rays of the sun, his black boots polished to a high gloss. He opened the paper bag and took out a whole loaf of bread. He broke a piece of it and was lifting it to his mouth when he caught sight of Denise, crouching a few steps away. His hand stopped in mid-air.

The bread was pure white, smooth, and fine textured, crowned by a splendid crust of pale gold. She could not detach her eyes from it. Her mouth filled with water, her eyes wide with desire, and she stared in fascination at the perfect loaf. Long-repressed memories washed over her: hot chocolate on Sunday morning, strawberry jam on a damask cloth, her mother’s voice saying over and over: “Eat, Denise, eat, eat, EAT!”

She felt the officer’s eyes appraising her, his gaze noting the threadbare shorts, the blouse cut out of the bathroom curtain, the makeshift sandals. She hid her feet under her, still unable to glance away from the loaf lying on the bench. He picked up the bread and motioned for her to take it. She swallowed hard, struggling in the whirlpool of her emotions. She raised her eyes toward his face. He had handsome, sensitive features. He was looking, not at her, she saw, but rather past her beyond the realm of realities, with an odd tenderness, his brow wistful, his mouth soft, longing, remembering.

Somehow, she knew. He had a child back home,a little girl maybe, and he was lonely. What would his daughter be like, she wondered? She had a vision of a blue-eyed, fair-haired little girl running through the snow, all bundled up in a furry coat and a red woolen cap, her pigtails flying in the wind. Denise’s heart filled with compassion. She felt herself irresistibly drawn by the imploring eyes and the beseeching hand closer and closer to the golden loaf.

Then, she heard it: a marching song, the cadence of boots beating on the pavement below. The battalion returning to quarters. She closed her eyes in defense against the hateful sound but it came nearer and nearer, the refrain swelling through the evening, invading her private mourning spot. Now she remembered why she had come.

“They came in the night and they took her away.” Could he, she wondered, have been one of them? She felt the first stirrings of hatred rising in her throat, sweet as honey, heady as Passover wine. She got to her feet, carefully fixed her gaze on the left shoulder of his uniform, and said, intones of icy courtesy: “Non merci, I am not hungry.”

That night, she could not sleep at all. Throughout the malicious chorus of crickets and frogs, a kaleidoscope of faces kept revolving in front of her: the face of her father, dark and brooding as she balanced to and fro on the kitchen chair, swearing softly: “Ah, the swine, ah, the swine,” the face of Madame Kaplan, animated and smiling, as she waved her last good-bye by the edge of the olive grove, and above all the face of the officer, lonely, vulnerable, pleading for the gift of her acceptance. Dawn finally came. Quickly, moved by an impulse she could not fathom, Denise slipped on her clothes and ran through the back door to the hiding place.

The sun’s rays were already hot, beating hard on the small path as she hurried to the clearing.

The cypress tree was standing guard over the silent grove. The bench was empty. The loaf of bread was gone.

Denise reached over gently to touch the rough gray stone. Then, the tears came.

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