Tell No One Who You Are Page 13

  “If we hear anything,” the official said, taking the sheet from her, “we’ll get in touch.” He nodded and tried to look sympathetic, but he must have said it so many times before to so many others that his voice sounded mechanical.

  On their way out Régine turned desperately to Fela. “Somebody must know something,” she cried.

  “We’ll find out whatever we can,” Fela said.

  The next few days, Fela became a whirlwind of activity. As they went on the search around Brussels, Régine thought: this is how Fela must have been during the war, when she was Nicole. Picking up children. Convincing parents to give them up. Finding places for them. Taking them there. Checking on them. And all the time, being so kind and understanding. No wonder parents trusted her with their children.

  The first stop was 73 rue Van Lint. Régine felt a mixture of pain and excitement as she rode the tram along the cobblestone street with Fela. She gazed out the window as they passed familiar shops and homes. Little had changed on the surface of the neighborhood since she had left the apartment three years before. Soon the old building came into view, and it looked just as she remembered it. Even the café downstairs was open for business.

  They got off and stood in front of the building. Régine looked up at the windows of the apartment. The same old curtains were still there, and the place looked lived in.

  “Why don’t I go in first?” Fela suggested. “You wait here.”

  Régine nodded. She was afraid to move. She stood looking up at the windows until Fela returned.

  “There is no one left who knows anything,” she reported. “Even the old neighbors are gone.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  THEN FELA TOOK Régine to Solidarité. The group now met in a small hall, not in the homes of members.

  If anyone knew what had happened to her parents, it would be there. They gathered — those who had survived the war in hiding and the few who had returned from the concentration camps — to find comfort in each other.

  Régine looked forward to seeing her father’s friends from the old days, friends like Edgar Herman. But when she entered, they were all strangers. She tried to connect these faces with any she remembered. The few who had come back* had been released from Auschwitz in January, six months before, when the Russians entered the concentration camp. But they still stood out from the others in the meeting hall. Régine did not need to see the numbers tattooed on their arms to spot them: the large eyes in the hollow faces marked them apart. If her father, when her father, came back, would he look like this? Would she recognize him?

  She walked slowly through the group. Fela introduced her: “C’est la fille de Miller.” That was what they had called her — Miller’s daughter — when she had gone with her father to the gatherings before the war. She asked her question: “Avezvous vu mon père?” Have you seen my father?

  One by one, they shook their heads. Afterwards, it seemed to Régine it was as if she had been asking the same person the same question over and over. All had looked at her the same way. All the eyes had shown the same pain. All had shaken their heads without speaking, as if no words existed that would help.

  That evening Régine told Fela why she was so sure her father would come back, about Monsieur Gaspar’s visit to Madame André. “He said my mother and brother were no more. But he never mentioned my father …”

  Fela interrupted her, puzzled. “But he could not have known what happened to them. Nobody knew then.”

  “But would he have said such a thing if he did not know?” Régine asked. “And in Flemish, which he didn’t think I understood?”

  Fela was angry. “Well he’s dead now, so we can’t ask him. How would he have known then what happened to your brother after he was sent to France?”

  Régine nodded, excited: “Yes, he could have escaped, couldn’t he? He was young and strong. He could have jumped off a train. He could still come back.”

  Fela lowered her head and said nothing.

  “My mother was so sick,” Régine went on, “I didn’t think she could live through it. That time she went to the hospital, when I saw my father cry, that’s when I felt she might not …”

  Fela put her hand on Régine’s: “Tomorrow, we will see if we can find out more,” she said and lit a cigarette.

  “Why do you smoke?” Régine asked.

  Fela shrugged. “I started after my husband was arrested.”

  “Oh,” Régine said. “I didn’t realize …”

  “Right on the street, in front of my eyes. Two Gestapo men in black suits came up to him with a gun.”

  “Did he — did you ever … ?” Régine did not know how to put the question.

  Fela understood. “No,” she said. “Taking care of the children helped. So did smoking.”

  Régine suddenly realized how little she knew about Fela, except that she had come from Poland and been a member of Solidarité like Régine’s father. It had never occurred to her that Fela might have been married and that her husband might have been arrested and sent away to a concentration camp. She was glad that Fela had found someone else in Edgar Herman.

  “Do you still have relatives in Poland?” she asked.

  “Had,” Fela said, holding the cigarette tightly to stop the trembling in her hand. “All my family.”

  “Have you heard from any of them?” Régine was afraid as she asked the question.

  Fela shook her head, then shook it again as if to shake off the thoughts. Régine felt a moment of shame that all the time she had been so taken up with her own family it had never occured to her to ask Fela about hers.

  But Fela stood up abruptly and put out her cigarette in an ashtray. “Time for bed,” she said firmly. “We have a big day ahead tomorrow.”

  Feeling sorry for herself is not in her nature, Régine decided.

  They returned to Solidarité and this time Régine saw someone she recognized: Madame Sadowski, the family friend who had mixed up her mother’s separate dishes for dairy and meat so many years before. She and her husband had survived the war, hid by neighbors. Régine was so happy to see them.

  But the information Madame Sadowski gave her about her parents was almost worse than not knowing. “The Gestapo raided the building. They took your mother from her bed,” Madame Sadowski told her. “The next day they came back and found your father hiding in the coal closet.”

  Régine listened in disbelief. She was too stunned to answer. It wasn’t possible.

  Régine cried all that night. What Madame Sadowski had told her could not be true. She could not imagine her father hiding while her mother was taken away. It did not make sense. He had refused so often to leave her mother when she begged him to try to escape to England. What had really happened?

  * Of the 25,475 Jews from Belgium deported to the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, only 1,335 returned.

  Chapter Forty-five

  THE NEXT VISIT was to Jeanne Demers, who had shared the floor above the Millers at 73 rue Van Lint with another family. She had moved out of the building before the Gestapo raid, but her father had gone on living there until his death. Monsieur Gaspar, again. The man who had arranged with her father for her to stay at Madame André’s, who had come instead of her father that awful Sunday and spoken the terrible words in Flemish. Régine connected him with bad news and even though he was dead she wondered if more bad news was to come.

  But Jeanne Demers greeted her at the door with a reassuring embrace. “I am so glad to see you,” she said, excited. “I have something for you.”

  She brought out a shoebox and handed it to Régine. “I thought that when your family came back after the war, you would want these things.”

  Régine’s hands trembled as she took the box. What was inside?

  “As you know,” Madame Demers turned to Fela for confirmation, “the Gestapo put seals on the doors after they took people away. But vandals broke into your apartment and took anything of value. My father picked up these few t
hings from the floor and gave them to me to keep for …” She paused as if she was not sure how to end the sentence, then added, “For whoever came back.”

  Régine removed the lid of the box slowly and placed it beside the box. Fela and Madame Demers watched as she lifted out the first items — the mortar and pestle her mother had brought from Poland. As Régine held them in her hands, she could see her mother standing near the stove grinding almonds just before the apartment filled with the smell of baking cookies.

  Régine took a deep breath to control the trembling of her hands as she put the mortar and pestle on the table and went back to slowly removing the contents of the box.

  What remained were family photographs and each brought a painful memory. There was a small copy of her parents’ wedding picture that had hung on the bedroom wall. Régine had looked at it so often when her mother lay ill on the bed beneath it and during the days she spent at home when Jewish children were no longer allowed to go to school. Now as then, she thought how beautiful her parents looked in it.

  Then there were snapshots. Was she five or six when she walked hand in hand with her father? She was even younger in another photograph that included her mother and Léon as well. How strong and healthy her mother looked then! And Léon? A photo of him just a year or two before his sixteenth birthday and his terrible disappearance into la Gare du Midi.

  Fela and Madame Demers watched in silence, not moving, as if the emotion that Régine was controlling, controlled them. Régine looked at each picture a long moment, in a kind of rhythm of remembrance, before placing it with the others neatly and carefully beside the box.

  But one picture suddenly broke the rhythm, for the memory it aroused was too powerful. It was the portrait of herself, smiling at the camera, wearing a flowered dress with the Star of David sewn onto it. She remembered walking with her father to the photo studio of Pierre Dietens. Again she heard her father promise that someday they would go back to have another picture taken, this time with the red side of the star showing.

  Remembering her father’s promise, she wanted to cry out, to beg him to come back to keep his promise. Instead, she put the picture back into the box, then the others along with the mortar and pestle and replaced the cover. Then she stood up, and in a quiet voice, thanked Madame Demers and moved to the door with Fela following.

  When they arrived at Fela’s apartment, she calmly emptied the box once more and transferred the contents to the duffel bag she would be bringing to Les Hirondelles.

  During the two days left before Régine was due at the hostel Fela continued to help in the search for people who had known her parents. Régine remembered her father had given a non-Jewish acquaintance his radio and sewing machine for safekeeping after the Germans prohibited Jewish people from owning these items. The understanding had been that the man would return them after the war. Fela took her to the man’s house but he refused to let her in.

  “I don’t know you,” he said. “Or your father. Nobody gave me anything.”

  “But I remember,” Régine protested.

  “Then go to the police,” the man said and closed the door on her.

  A happier discovery was the Saktregers, the family of Léon’s friend who had the same name as her brother and had been his best friend. All four of them had survived the occupation.

  Madame Saktreger was happy to see Régine. She kissed and hugged her like a daughter. But she did not talk about how they had escaped the Nazi raids.

  “We hid out all over the place,” she said, then changed the subject quickly. “But tell me about yourself.”

  She does not want to hurt me, Régine realized, and it would hurt me to hear how they all escaped while my family was taken. She particularly envied Maurice because he was her age, and he had his father, his mother and his brother. But she was grateful for the genuine warmth Madame Saktreger showed her, for the invitation to stay for dinner and to come back often, and for the parting embrace and assurance: “You are always welcome in our home.” Régine did not mention her parents and Madame Saktreger asked no questions.

  Régine did not realize then that she was behaving like most of the Jews in Europe who had survived the war. They did not talk about their experiences and they did not ask questions. Whether they had passed through the horror of the death camps or the terror of being caught while hiding, to talk about it was to relive it or cause others to relive it, and release emotions too intense to be dealt with.

  Chapter Forty-six

  FELA TOOK RÉGINE to the hostel of Les Hirondelles the next day. The building at 6 boulevard Jules Graindor with its large double front doors was severe and uninviting. Régine was looking forward to being with other girls her own age, but as soon as she entered, she felt uncomfortable.

  Fela introduced her and left her “in the good hands of la directrice,” but la directrice seemed more interested in Régine knowing the rules than in making her feel welcome, and she had an odd habit of ending every sentence with “n’est-ce pas?” as she gave them out. She also reminded Régine of Madame André in her inability to smile.

  “You will sleep here, n’est-ce pas?” she said, as they entered an upstairs dormitory. It was crowded with bunkbeds placed so close together, there was barely room to move between them. Régine wondered where she would keep her clothes.

  “Here,” la directrice said, “all possessions are shared, clothing, books, everything.” She pointed to a communal dresser: “Socks with socks, sweaters with sweaters, skirts with skirts. You will keep it organized, n’est-ce pas?” She motioned to Régine to unpack and left.

  As Régine unpacked her duffel bag and put her clothes in the dresser, she felt resentment rising. She had few clothes, but they were hers. Why should she go through a pile each day to find something that fit? When she took out her copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with Fela’s note of Je ne t’oublie pas, she felt outright revolt. The book and message had meant so much to her during the days when she felt completely alone and she was not about to give it up. She stuffed it back into her duffel bag along with the shoebox of precious photographs and her mother’s mortar and pestle, and pushed the bag under her bed.

  Downstairs she learned more of the rules from la directrice. “You are only thirteen, n’est-ce pas? An older girl, une grande, will be assigned to look after you. You are allowed out twice a week: on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays if you have friends to visit. You must be back by eight o’clock, n’est-ce pas?”

  She was relieved later in the afternoon as the girls returned from school or work to find that la grande assigned to her was a good-natured girl named Edwige who was not interested in bossing her around.

  About fifty girls lived in the hostel. A few of the older ones had come back from the concentration camps, but most, like Régine herself, had passed the war in hiding. Nearly all had been orphaned.

  Rosa was an exception. Her father had come back from a death camp and he came to visit her at the hostel. The first time Régine saw him, he looked as haggard and miserable as the survivors she had met at Solidarité. But how lucky Rosa is to have him, Régine thought.

  She still hung onto every possibility that her own father and brother would return — even though the concentration camps were empty and it was months since lists of survivors were broadcast. She heard there were still prisoners in Russia. Maybe that’s where they were and couldn’t let anybody know.

  School, the other reason Régine had come back to Brussels, turned out to be a disappointment, too. When asked her favorite activities, she mentioned that she enjoyed creating things with her hands. As a result she was put into an école professionnelle, a technical school where the emphasis was on cooking and sewing, not on academic studies. This was not what her father would have wanted for her, she was sure.

  Even though she liked the girls and made friends, she noticed from the first day the same silence she had found outside concerning how each had passed the war. Beyond a few words, “She was in a camp” or “I hid out,”
no experiences were shared and no questions were asked. No one asked Rosa what camp her father had been in and what it had been like. No one asked anyone about their families. The word “parents” was never used.

  It was as if each had decided privately she must not talk about the past, as if that was the only way to survive it and not go mad with grief or anger. The girls even seemed to Régine to overdo the act of seeming carefree, laughing and singing too much. They kept it up very well, supporting each other with jokes and stories.

  Only during the night did the bravura break down. Memories and terrors kept under control during the day could erupt, frighteningly, as nightmares. One girl woke up so hysterical she had to be taken away by ambulance.

  Slowly during the months she was at the hostel, Régine faced the monstrous possibility that no one in her family might return. She had come to Brussels hoping to get news of their survival and to get the kind of education her father would have wanted for her. Neither was working out.

  She also resented the silly regulations of la directrice who, Régine discovered, was secretly called Mademoiselle N’est-ce pas by the girls. She hated the curfews on Saturdays when she was supposed to be back earlier than Edwige when they went out together. Each time she broke curfew she was called into the office of la directrice.

  On Sundays she visited Fela and Edgar, the Saktregers, or Madame Sadowski, but it was not like living with a family. After a particularly nasty confrontation with la directrice, she made a decision and went to inform Fela.

  “I want to go back to live with Pierre and Sylvie.”

  They loved her and she needed that love. When her father or brother came back — she still refused to say “if” — Fela would know where to find her.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  IN THE LONG WINTER OF 1945-46, everything at the farm was familiar yet different.

  The war in Europe had been over for half a year and Régine no longer had to pretend to be someone else. This time she did not travel with a stranger but made her own way by train and bus as far as Limont where the Wathieus came to meet her, like proud parents meeting a returning daughter.