While We're Far Apart (33 page)

“Nazi occupation forces marched into Hungary earlier today, invading that nation. As the Nazi troops stormed into Budapest and the surrounding countryside . . .”

“Hungary!” Esther shouted. “That’s where Mr. Mendel’s son is! That’s what he was trying to tell us.”

“That must have been what upset him,” Penny said.

“Hitler is just like Haman. He hates the Jewish people. But who will be Queen Esther? Who will stop him this time?”

She saw Peter writing something. He held it up for her to see:
Daddy will
.

Esther covered her face. She couldn’t stop her tears. For the first time she understood why her father needed to go to war and what was at stake. She felt Penny’s arms around her, pulling her close, rubbing her back, letting her cry.

“Come on,” Penny said when Esther finished crying. “Let’s go upstairs and wait so we can hear the telephone.”

They all got ready for bed, then settled on the couch to wait, wrapped up in one of Grandma Shaffer’s crocheted afghans. Esther couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose Mr. Mendel. He had become like a grandfather to her. She felt a little of the fear he must face every day at the thought of losing his family to the Nazis.

Peter began to doze after a while, but Esther couldn’t sleep. When the telephone finally rang, she leaped up to answer it. “Mr. Mendel is doing much better,” the rabbi told her. “The doctors don’t believe he had a heart attack, but his heart did get out of rhythm. He has suffered a terrible shock and – ”

“We heard the news on the radio. The Nazis invaded Hungary.”

“Yes. He was able to tell us. His doctor would like to keep him in the hospital overnight, and if all goes well, he will be allowed to come home tomorrow or the next day.”

Esther felt very tired the next morning. She didn’t want to go to school, but Penny said that she had to. “I have to go to work, and I don’t think you should stay here all alone all day.”

“Can we visit Mr. Mendel in the hospital if he doesn’t come home?”

“Yes. We’ll all go together, I promise.”

Esther knocked on Mr. Mendel’s door the moment she arrived home from school and was relieved when he answered it. She wanted to hug him, but he looked so frail she feared he might fall over if she did. “I need rest, that is all,” he said. “I am so sorry for frightening you last night.” He held the door open only a small crack, not inviting her and Peter to come inside.

“Would you like me to cook for you or something?”

“Thank you, but the women from my congregation have been showering me with food once again. I will eat like a prince.”

“We heard the news about the Nazis in Hungary,” she said softly. “The announcers keep talking about it on the radio and it’s in all the newspapers.”

Mr. Mendel reached for Esther’s hand. She saw tears in his eyes. “I cannot talk about it just now. I am sorry.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

He thought for a moment. She wondered if he would tell her to pray, but instead he said, “Will you play the piano for me, upstairs? I would like to hear it. Then I am going to rest again. We will talk tomorrow.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Mr. Mendel.”

“Thank you.”

Esther took the stairs two at a time and went straight to the piano bench to get out her practice books. She would play every piece she knew for him. She sat down on the bench, propped the music on the stand, and played through her entire repertoire, hoping Mr. Mendel would enjoy it and that it would make him well.

When she was too tired to play another note, she closed the lid and sat on the bench for a long, long time, thinking about her mother. Mama would be proud of her, she thought. Mama’s music had made everyone happy, too, whenever she’d played.

Thinking about her mother made Esther happy and sad at the same time. She wished she knew more about her and why she had decided to get married instead of studying music. And why Mama’s parents had gotten angry with her for that.

“I will search the world to find the people I love,”
Mr. Mendel had told them last night.
“I will never give up.”
But with the Nazis in Hungary, she wondered if he ever would find them again.

Now more than ever, Esther longed to find her mother’s family.

C
HAPTER 29

Budapest, Hungary
March 1944

Dear Mother and Father Mendel,

I am standing at the very edge of despair. The Nazis have invaded Budapest. All hope is gone, and my heart is as empty as our cupboards. The Hungarian government is no more. Our leaders have been ousted. The Nazis control us now – the very thing we feared the most. Their troops have seized all of the railroads and taken over the government buildings. We no longer know what is happening in the rest of the world, because the Nazis control the radio broadcasts, the post office, the telegraph.

Before the invasion, it seemed from all the news we heard that Hungary might stop fighting in this war and make peace with the Allies. We learned that American troops were in Italy and that the German army had surrendered to the Soviets in Stalingrad. With so many other battles to fight, why would Hitler bother to invade Hungary now and deport the Jews?

But that is exactly what he has begun to do. As soon as the Nazis arrived they began to persecute us the way that they persecuted Jews in Germany and Poland. A man named Adolph Eichmann is in charge of us. He has ordered all Jewish businesses to close and all Jews must register and wear a yellow star. Here in Budapest, we have been rounded up and forced to move to a ghetto. A Jewish council has been set up to assign living quarters to everyone and to ration our food and water. The council members are Jewish but they must take their instructions from the Nazis. Anyone who disobeys is arrested.

We still live in Uncle Baruch’s apartment in the ghetto, but nearly two dozen people now crowd into it along with us. Aunt Hannah, her two cousins, and other relatives have been separated from us and forced to live in another apartment, but I am still with my mother and Fredeleh. Aunt Hannah is very sick with coughing and a fever, but there is no medicine or doctors, and we are banned from the hospitals.

We all know what is coming next. The Jews who escaped into Hungary from Poland told us what the Nazis did to them there. The Nazis have condemned us to death, like our enemy Haman of old. What we don’t understand is why they hate us so much. And why the world stands by and allows it. Why doesn’t someone come to our rescue? And the biggest question of all is why does Hashem allow it?

A few people who have fled to Budapest from the countryside have told us that the Nazis have rounded up all the Jews in the provinces and small villages like the one we came from. Long trains of boxcars are arriving in Hungary every day, but they aren’t bringing the food and supplies we so desperately need. They are arriving empty. They have come to deport us all to labor camps in Poland.

If the reports are true, our families back home in the village may already be gone. My sister and three brothers and their families, my aunts and uncles, Avi’s relatives, your relatives, all of them gone. I cannot stop weeping for them. If only they had come to Budapest with us when Avi begged them to. We have heard terrible rumors from those who have escaped, saying that these are not labor camps at all but extermination camps. I don’t want to believe that it’s true. And so I worry and pray and wonder what has become of my family and my Avraham and if I will ever see them again. If help doesn’t arrive soon, we fear that when the Nazis finish deporting everyone from the provinces, they will come for us here in the city. The horror and fear are too much for me, as they are for everyone. No one knows what will happen tomorrow.

If only I had hidden little Fredeleh in the Christian orphanage months ago. I should have brought her there right after Avraham was taken from us. Now it has become too dangerous to go out into the streets with so many Nazi soldiers. We are not supposed to leave the ghetto. The Nazis can stop us and ask where we are going and demand to see our identification papers. And so I am begging Hashem to forgive me for not hiding her there sooner and pleading with Him for a way to take her there now. I can’t bear the thought of the Nazis coming for her.

I know you are praying for us back home in America, and that Avraham is praying, too, wherever he is. I find it harder and harder to pray when my prayers seem to go unanswered. Once again, the book of Tehillim is my only comfort:

“Hear my prayer, O Hashem; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress . . .”

May He deliver us from our enemies and bring all of us together soon.

With love,
Sarah Rivkah and Fredeleh

C
HAPTER 30

E
STHER’S OVERNIGHT VISIT
to her grandmother’s house had seemed to last forever. She had tried to learn more information about her mother from Grandma Shaffer, but she hadn’t been helpful, insisting that she didn’t know anything else. Esther wished her father had never arranged for her and Peter to stay there on the weekends. She told him so in her letters, but Daddy said Penny deserved to have some time off. Now, as she boarded the bus to return home, Esther decided to sit beside Penny instead of riding in the back where she and Peter usually rode.

“Penny, do you remember my mother?” she asked.

“I remember when your parents got married,” Penny said. “Your grandmother gave a little party for them out in her backyard. She invited me and my parents.”

“So you knew Mama?”

“Not really. Just as a neighbor, watching from a distance.” It seemed like an odd reply to Esther. And Penny’s voice sounded sad. “I remember how pretty your mother looked the day they got married,” Penny said. “And how happy she was. Your mother couldn’t stop smiling – and neither could your dad.” Esther wondered why Penny seemed so sad about Mama if she never knew her.

Esther gazed out the bus window, watching the storefronts and office buildings and tenements go slowly by. The city looked dreary in these weeks of waiting before spring arrived. The snow had melted but the trees were still bare, the grass brown. Everything reminded her of death, and she didn’t want to be reminded. First Mama had been killed. Now Daddy was in danger. Mr. Mendel had collapsed and nearly died. And Esther worried that if Grandma Shaffer got sick and died, there would be no one left to take care of her and Peter. Esther had thought about it a lot lately, which was why she was determined to find Mama’s family. Finding her grandparents would be a way to hang on to a little piece of her mother’s memory, too.

She turned to Penny again. “Mama was pretty, wasn’t she?”

Penny nodded. “I remember what a tiny little waist she had. Your father could have wrapped his hands right around it with his fingers touching.”

“Remember you said you would help me find out more about her family? Can we start today? When we get home?”

“We can try.”

Esther had wondered if she would feel like a traitor asking Penny for help. She had resented Penny’s interference in her life at first and had fought against Penny’s efforts to get close to her. But something had begun to change at Christmastime when they went to Times Square together and later when they decorated the tree. Esther’s attitude had changed even more on the night that Mr. Mendel had gone to the hospital and Penny had comforted Esther and wept with her. Or maybe it had happened earlier that same evening as they had celebrated Purim. Ever since Daddy left, Esther had been angry with God for leaving her all alone – but she wasn’t alone. He had sent Penny.

“Mr. Mendel said we could start by looking for your mother’s birth certificate and marriage license, remember?” Penny said. “That way, we can find out what your mother’s maiden name was and maybe the names of her parents. Do you know where your daddy keeps important papers like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in the storage closet upstairs where the Christmas decorations were?”

When they arrived at the apartment, Esther and Penny spent more than an hour dragging everything out of the upstairs closet, searching through boxes of baby clothes and old toys and outgrown clothing. They didn’t find any papers. Esther surveyed the mess they had made in disappointment. “The only other place I can think of is in Daddy’s closet,” Esther said.