Anne Frank and Me

Nicole stood outside Congregation Beth El and watched several conservatively well-dressed latecomers scurry inside. She glanced down at her jeans and flannel shirt—maybe they wouldn’t even let her in dressed like that. Maybe it didn’t even matter. Paulette’s body was in there, but Paulette wasn’t.

Unbidden, the lyrics to a retro song her mother always sang when she was doing the bills filled Nicole’s head, a song Nicole didn’t even like. Something like, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”

Funny. She had almost too many regrets to mention: not listening when Paulette spoke, missing the chance to tell Paulette that she finally understood about things the heart knows, about their connection. Paulette had helped Claire escape from the Vel. She’d tried to save Nicole’s life at Birkenau. But Nicole would never get to thank her. She’d have to carry her regrets around forever, because the only person who could ease her burden was now dead.

A man in a rumpled suit started to close the synagogue doors. Impulsively, Nicole hurried past his surprised face into the building. The main hallway was flanked by recessed windows and office doors. Beyond that was a circular foyer and the rear doors to the sanctuary.

She went in and stood in the back. The ceiling soared to a great height, inlaid with stained glass streaked by the sun. Near the front wall, above the raised stage, hung a burning orange light. Paulette’s closed casket was on a stand below the stage. It was unpainted pinewood—plain and stark.

The seats of the synagogue were filled by hundreds of people. Nicole recognized Ms. Zooms in the crowd, even from the back. Everyone listened intently as a man spoke at the podium. He looked to be about the age of Nicole’s parents.

“I can’t remember exactly how old I was when my mother first told me about what had happened to her,” he was saying. “She was a Jewish girl born and raised in Paris, a teenager during the Occupation. She lived a most extraordinary life. There is too much to tell, so the family has gathered some artifacts from her life for you to see and contemplate. They are displayed in a case in the social hall.

“Maman told me so many stories from the war years. Many of them were tragic, to be sure, but she would want you to remember her for so much more than that. She was very beautiful, and, by her own admission, quite a flirt. I remember her recounting how she had been madly in love with a Gentile boy named Charles. Because Jews were forbidden to attend movies, she used to cover her yellow star with her book bag so that she could sneak into the cinema with him. She was most afraid of getting caught not by the Nazis, but by her very strict mother.”

“She also used to tell me that when things got very bad, when she was the most scared and wanted to give up, some little thing would come along to give her hope again. Signs, she called them.”

“And now,” the man continued, “if you would permit me, I would like to share with you what my mother called her proof that she had defeated Hitler.”

He nodded to some people in the first row, who joined him on the stage. “This is my wife, Shira.” He put his arm around a woman with dark hair. “And these are our children, Paulette’s grandchildren and her legacy. Benjamin, who is fourteen, Jacob, who is twelve, and Sarah, who is nine.”

An ache welled up in Nicole’s throat. People were crying loudly, but she would not let her own tears come. She wanted to be strong, because a long, long time ago, Paulette had been so strong for her.

As the rabbi stood to hug each of Paulette’s grandchildren, Nicole slipped out of the sanctuary. She had the strongest urge to be alone with Paulette’s things before the crowd of mourners came to look at them. She had just found a sign that pointed to the social hall when a surprised voice called to her.

Nicole laughed. He was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. How could she possibly explain that, in fact, she’d finally found it?

“My family belongs to this synagogue. Seriously, you didn’t come for Mrs. Litzger-Gold’s funeral, did you? You had zero interest in her.”

“I liked her, too. See you around.” She waited for him to enter the sanctuary before she opened the doors of the social hall.

Nicole saw it immediately. Resting on an easel just inside the entrance was a blown-up photo of Paulette Litzger as a teenage girl in Paris. She had short, dark hair, and wore wire-rim glasses; an entirely different face from the girl with the golden hair at the Vel d‘Hiv and Birkenau.

Nicole sagged against the closed door, no bones to hold herself upright, no blood coursing through her veins. It had all been a fantasy. There was no such thing as “signs.” The heart was just a stupid muscle that pumped away until it quit forever; it didn’t know anything at all. She hated that Zooms was right. There had been no Nicole Bernhardt. She hadn’t met Anne Frank on a transport from Westerbork. And she had never known Paulette Litzger-Gold. Her only real connection to Paulette had been as a student who had only half-listened in Ms. Zooms’ English class. Which was really no connection at all.

Nicole heard a male voice chanting a somber melody from the sanctuary; the funeral service must be nearly over. But she felt numb, unable to contemplate the walk back to the bus stop. So she made her way to the long glass case in which Paulette’s things were displayed. A few handwritten words on a file card identified each object.

Another photo, older, in a brown leather frame. Caption: The Litzger family in their Paris apartment—Paulette, her older brother, and her parents.

Nicole saw that the mother was tall and slender, with the same eyes as Paulette. No resemblance at all to the mother in the Vel.

A set of United States citizenship papers. Caption: Paulette considered the day of her citizenship one of the proudest days of her life.

A letter signed by Steven Spielberg. Paulette was invited to videotape testimony for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

Nicole was about to leave when the room darkened slightly as the sun ducked behind a cloud. She saw there were a few more items in the case that had been hidden by the sun’s glare. She went to see what they were.

Next to the spoon Nicole saw a torn and much-folded scrap of paper, yellowed with age, with French handwriting too small and faded to make out until she pressed her nose against the glass.

NOTES DE JEUNE FILLE X

le 10 septembre 1943

Au peuple de Paris,

Cher lecteur, si vous parcourez ce document et n‘êtes pas un collabo-idiot, merci de le glisser sous la porte de quelqu’un qui le soit. Merci.

Salut Collabo Idiotl Je suis une jeune fille juive à qui les parents interdisent de sortir de la maison. Mais vous ne pourrez pas me réduire au sil—

Next to it, a translation:

NOTES FROM GIRL X

10 September 1943

To the people of Paris,

Dear reader, if you are reading this and are not a collabo idiot, please put this under the door of someone who is. Thank you.

Hello, Collabo Idiot! I am a Jewish girl forbidden now by my parents to leave our home, but still you cannot si(lence)—

Next to the translation, a file card: This is the fragment of a letter that Paulette found on a Paris park bench in 1943; it gave her such hope that she made many copies and left them on other benches for people to find while keeping the original on her person until the moment of her death.

Nicole felt herself lifted skyward by a shimmering golden light. For she knew without a doubt that she was reading her own handwriting. In French. She was Girl X. And somehow Paulette had found at least one of the notes that Mimi had smuggled out onto the streets of Paris.

No, Paulette Litzger-Gold had not been the Paulette who had tried to save her life at Birkenau. Instead, she was a different Paulette, one who had known Nicole by her writing alone, and Nicole had helped to save hers. It had all happened. She really had been there. And with that knowledge, she left behind the earthbound girl who had believed she would always revolve around someone else. She was free.