sixteen
16 July 1942
lt is eight o‘clock at night. I never imagined anything on earth could be as bad as this. I saw a woman slash her wrists with broken glass. I watched a father, ranting about how he would not allow his young son to live in such a hell, attempt to strangle his own child. Thank God some people pulled the man off the boy.
Bubbe Einhorn is sick. I think it is the cabbage soup they fed us—one cupful per person. I didn’t eat it. Mme. Einhorn is different since Claire escaped. She sits and stares at nothing. She said, “I am no longer a mother. How can I be a mother without a child?”
I try not to betray how frightened I am. Why hasn’t Papa come? What if something terrible has happened to him? How do I know that the police have not arrested—
“Nicole!” Mme. Einhorn was shaking her. Nicole looked up from her journal. “Your name was just announced.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, they said—wait, it’s coming on again.”
“Attention, attention,” a tinny voice announced on the public address system. “Mlle. Nicole Bernhardt is to report to the control area at section one hundred at once. Mlle. Nicole Bernhardt to section one hundred at once.”
“My father!” Nicole’s heart swelled with hope, her fatigue instantly vanished. Mme. Einhorn tried to smile. Nicole embraced her, then hesitated. Claire’s mother had been wonderful to her. “I can’t just leave you and Bubbe Einhorn here. She is so sick.”
“Nicole, you must go,” Mme. Einhorn insisted.
“But—”
“Go.”
Nicole kissed Bubbe Einhorn’s wrinkled cheek. “I’ll tell them to come help. If it’s my father, we’ll be back. I promise.” She grabbed her book bag and her journal, took one last look at Mme. and Bubbe Einhorn, then dodged through the crowd toward section 100.
There, like some dream, stood her father. He looked strong and clean, but his face was a mask of sorrow. He held out his arms to her. She hesitated. “I’m so disgusting, Papa,” she whispered.
He enveloped her in his arms. “Oh, my beautiful child,” he crooned. “You could never be disgusting. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get in sooner. They wouldn’t let anyone in.” Nicole realized he was weeping.
“It’s all right, Papa. It’s not your fault.”
A French cop approached them. “Daughter of Dr. Jean Bernhardt, may I see your identity card, please?” Nicole handed it to him. “I apologize, mademoiselle, for your inconvenience. We are only detaining foreigners who do not belong in France and undermine our nation.” He bowed slightly to her father. “Docteur Bernhardt, I apologize again. Of course, you are both free to leave.”
Nicole turned to her father. “Papa, Bubbe Einhorn is very sick. I promised that you’d help her.”
“Of course. They have finally let in a few doctors, but not nearly enough. We must stay and help.”
“Not too long, Papa. Please, it’s so disgusting here. I can’t stand it.”
Her father took her by the shoulders. “Yes, you can.”
She said nothing. But all through the night, she helped her father tend to the sick, beginning with the Einhorns. Dr. Bernhardt gave Bubbe Einhorn medicine to stop her cramps. “I will do everything in my power to get you both released,” he promised.
“There is nothing you can do,” Mme. Einhorn replied. “There is nothing anyone can do.”
“If anyone can help, it is my father.” Nicole hugged Claire’s mother. “Do not lose hope. Please.”
From the Einhorns they moved on to a woman in labor. On the floor of the Vel, surrounded by a cordon of women, Nicole helped her father deliver the baby—a perfect little girl who gave a lusty cry. Even in that horrid place, it was an awesome moment.
But Nicole had no time to think about the baby, because the next patient was in the midst of a terrible asthma attack. As hard as Dr. Bernhardt tried, he could not save the man, who choked to death in his arms. Her father quickly said Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Nicole wept softly. They moved on to treat more of the living.
It felt to Nicole as if a lifetime had passed when she and her father finally stepped out onto the rue Nelaton. It was just before dawn. 17 July 1942. A new day.
Amazing. The streets were peaceful, empty. How could it be? People must have heard the news, or seen the buses heading to the Vel. In the past, Nicole knew, Parisians had risen up in armed fury over much less than this atrocity. But the city slept, as if the 8,000 Jews in the Vel did not exist.
In silence, they walked home, crossing the Seine, climbing the stone staircase that Nicole had descended twenty-four hours earlier. She felt like an animal who had shed one skin and donned another, tougher one. All doubt was gone. The man holding her hand was her father and had always been her father. She was and always had been Nicole Bernhardt, born in 1927, who lived in Paris, France. A Jew.
Once, she had imagined that she lived in the future, in America. But like a wisp of smoke that rises from dying embers and disappears on a spring wind, it was gone forever.