Paris
July 18, 1942
Margot took a deep breath and opened the door just a crack.
“Madame, pardon the interruption, but the doorwoman called us. Some of the tenants have heard voices coming from the apartment upstairs,” said the gendarme, still breathing heavily from his trip up the stairs.
Margot waited a moment. She never lied, yet she could not let the children be taken.
“I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. Two of my cats got out. Sometimes they get into my neighbor’s apartment. I actually have keys, so I went up to get them. That must be what people heard.”
“Could you let us in upstairs so we can have a look? It will only take a moment,” the older gendarme said. The younger one gave him a look of annoyance.
“Why, yes, of course,” Margot responded, rustling through a drawer in the table beside the door, looking for the key to Judith’s apartment. She opened the door just wide enough to pass through and hand the key to the gendarmes.
The gendarme continued, “A lot of the Jews have tried to hide in their neighbors’ and friends’ houses, and we’ve got to round up the last of them. They’ll be shipped out of France soon.”
“Is that so? Away from France?”
“Yes, the Germans need them to work, it seems. They’ve got too many men on the Russian front, and they need manpower to make weapons in the factories,” the gendarme confirmed.
Margot nodded and crossed her arms. The agent’s answer had convinced her. As the gendarme walked upstairs, she shut the door again and sighed with relief. She went to the living room and held a finger to her lips. “Not a word! The gendarmes are upstairs.”
“My backpack!” Jacob whispered, horrified. “I left it up there. They’ll see it, and there were some really important things in it . . .”
“Let’s just hope they don’t take anything,” Margot said.
They heard footsteps above them, the sound of doors opening and closing. Moments later, the two men knocked again at Margot’s door.
“Thank you for the key, ma’am. Do you know if anyone’s been up there in the past couple of days?” the older officer asked, his face clouded with concern.
“It’s difficult to say. Like I said, there was a woman living up there, but I haven’t heard anything for a few days and, I’ll tell you one thing, though my hearing’s not what it once was, down here you can hear a pin fall from upstairs. You should have heard those children who used to live up there. The way they would tear from one end of the apartment to the other—never a moment’s peace!”
The gendarme nodded. “We saw a backpack on one of the beds. It had some food and a few maps. It seems suspicious.”
“Well, all I know is that the day of the raid, everyone had to get out fast. I imagine one of those boys left it, didn’t have time to grab it.”
The officer frowned. Perhaps the old woman was telling the truth, but the number of coincidences was mounting. “Would you mind if we came in? I’m rather thirsty,” he said as an excuse.
“Of course you can come in,” Margot answered loudly.
Jacob, Moses, and Joseph hid in the bathroom before the men entered the living room.
“Do you live alone?” the gendarme asked, seeing the three glasses of milk and crumbs on the table.
“Oh, no, I have my cats. Don’t you see the mess they’ve made?” she chuckled, tidying up the table.
“And you serve them milk in glasses?” It was more a statement than a question.
“They’re my babies. An old woman like me needs something to dote on.” She buried her nose into the neck of a tabby to hide her nerves. The gendarme grunted, and Margot looked up. “What can I bring you to drink?”
“No need, we should be getting along,” the younger gendarme insisted.
Margot followed them to the door with her short, arthritic steps.
“If you hear anything about the tenants upstairs, please call for us immediately,” the older officer said at the threshold.
“Anything for France, officer.” Margot nodded.
When the door finally clicked closed, Margot let out a long breath. Her body was sticky with sweat, and her head spun. She was sure her blood pressure was through the roof, but she was proud to have helped the poor young boys. She would not be one of the French who licked the boots of their occupiers, such as Jacques Doriot or Marcel Déat—one-time leftists who supported Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Charles Huntziger, the actual rulers of France, though Huntziger had not lasted long.
She called the boys to come out of the bathroom. Their faces were white as a sheet. “Did they suspect anything?” Jacob asked.
“They suspect something, but they won’t come back unless someone calls them. They’re tired, and they’ll be busy hunting down thousands of people who’ve gone into hiding.” Margot’s voice was weaker and more serious now. She went to the window. Through the lace curtain she could see the gendarmes stopping at the doorwoman’s lookout to talk for a moment. They looked back up at Margot’s apartment, but she was out of their range of vision. “They’ve said something to the doorwoman,” she continued. “You boys can’t stay here much longer, but you shouldn’t start out at night either. Sleep here, then head out first thing in the morning.”
The three boys went back to the couch. Each boy’s stomach was a ball of nerves, but they managed to eat the crackers she brought them.
“Where is my aunt?” Moses asked. His sad face belied his desperate need to see an adult he could trust.
Margot dropped into her chair. She was worn out. The circles around her eyes were darker than before the police officers’ visit, and her wavy gray hair was tousled. She had run her hands through it a number of times in an effort to calm down.
“She came back around noon. Apparently the family she worked for had been taken away. Since she herself wasn’t registered on any list, she had managed to escape, but . . .”
“Please, just tell us what happened,” Moses pleaded, his voice tremulous.
“Good old Judith, such a generous soul. This is destroying the best of us,” Margot said, her head bowed.
“What happened?” Jacob demanded.
Margot looked up with her bright eyes. She took a deep breath and sipped her cold tea. “She came back at noon. She looked for you all over the house, called for you, wept out loud. I went up to see her, but she wouldn’t let me in. I begged her to calm down, told her things would work out, that they weren’t going to hurt innocent children. She told me I had no idea what the Nazis were capable of. I reminded her we are in France, the gendarmes would take care of them . . . but she was desperate and was shouting . . .”
Moses started to cry. Jacob thought his brother should not hear any more. This terrible war would destroy all the good that was left in the world.
“That witch of a doorwoman called the gendarmes. Half a dozen of them came barreling up the stairs. I hid because I was a coward . . .” Margot trailed off into tears.
“There was nothing you could’ve done,” Jacob said, soothingly.
“She started screaming from the other side of the door, and I just hid down here in my apartment. I heard them banging at the door, heard Judith’s steps, heard the gendarmes ordering her to open up. Finally the gendarmes broke her door open, and I heard Judith running fast. More steps, and then in the courtyard . . .” Margot could barely continue. “There was a loud noise, like a sack of flour had dropped from the ceiling. I looked out the window, the same window I was just looking out. Your aunt was there, facedown, her foot still twitching when I saw her. The gendarmes ran down and called for a doctor, but she was already dead. The next day, the doorwoman cleaned up the blood, but you can still see the stain . . . as if some part of her isn’t ready to leave this place.”
Tears streamed down Moses’s face. He did not really understand what death was, but he knew it meant a separation that lasted forever. Judith had been a second mother to them. She may not have been overly tender or affectionate, but she looked after them, stayed up all night with them when they were sick, and gave them everything she had.
Jacob swiped at the tears that dripped down his nose. This loss made him more determined than ever to set off in search of their parents. Joseph stayed silent, wondering how his family was, hoping they were alive and well.
“Do you understand?” Margot asked. “A woman like her, dead, murdered by this despicable Vichy regime, murdered by all those who have surrendered their souls and looked the other way. The worst friend of the truth is silence. The worst lie in the world is that ordinary people are powerless against tyranny.”
Jacob stood and looked out the window. From that height, the dark stain could still be seen, proof of the power a person’s actions have over life. The stain was all they had left of their aunt.
“We’re heading south. There’s a city we’ve got to get to. I don’t want to tell you where, but it’s south of Lyon,” Jacob said calmly.
“But Lyon is so far. You’ll never make it. The Nazis are controlling all movement . . . the train stations, the roads, everything. And there’s a border between occupied and unoccupied France.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to find our parents.”
The old woman was quiet, thoughtful. Then she reached out for Jacob and said, “In Versailles, I have an old friend who restores art. He has a safe-conduct permit that lets him travel around France freely. I’ll ask him to at least get you out of Paris. He might be able to get you as far as the border with unoccupied France, near Bourges. There’s a famous cathedral there, the perfect excuse to justify a visit to the city during the holiday.”
“But first, tomorrow, we have to take Joseph to the camp at Drancy. We think his family is there,” Jacob said.
“If you go there, the Nazis will take you prisoner,” the old woman said, turning to him.
“I don’t care, ma’am. I just want to be with my family.”
“Judith told me what the Germans did in Dachau. Her father was taken there in 1937. I think that’s why she threw herself out the window. She knew what they would do to her.” Margot winced as she spoke but prayed her words would get through to the child.
But Joseph’s look was determined. He knew that life would be pointless without his family. What would he do all alone in the world? “I’d rather go through whatever they’re going through with them. I know you can’t understand, but it’s what I’ve decided. Most people value freedom and life, but for me, it’s all worthless without my family. Existing without them would be a kind of slavery. Suffering with them, I’ll be with them forever.”
The boy’s words touched them all deeply. Margot was surprised at how grown-up he sounded. Yet she knew that war changed people. It made the things that actually mattered shine like gold nuggets amid the dust of daily life.
Margot nodded to Jacob. “I’ll get your backpack. I doubt the police will be back up here. You boys will sleep, and I’ll keep watch tonight. First thing in the morning, I’ll telephone my friend, and he’ll be waiting for you.”
“Can we trust him?” Jacob asked. He was not convinced about the plan. Getting out of the occupied zone would increase their chances for survival, but anyone and everyone might be a collaborator.
“There are so few people in the world one can trust fully. But one of them is this friend. I’ll write a note for you to give him.” Margot walked slowly from the living room to the landing outside the door and up the stairs to get the backpack. For a few moments, the three boys were alone.
“Can we trust her?” Joseph asked.
Jacob shrugged. “She’s always been nice to us. Plus, she just put her neck on the line for us.”
“Margot is a good woman,” Moses said. “She always gives me candy.”
The two older boys snickered. Moses held limited criteria for evaluating people, but in this case they were all in agreement. Margot seemed trustworthy.
The old woman returned a few minutes later, carrying the backpack in one hand as if it were weighed down with bricks. She hoisted it onto the dining room table and, smiling for the first time, said, “Tomorrow will be a long day. We’d best have a light supper and get to bed.”
The meal was brief. They spoke little as they shared a loaf of rye bread and a can of sardines. Margot prepared the bedroom for them, and the boys laid down fully dressed. A clean bed, no matter how narrow it was for three boys crammed together, was a delicious luxury. Their eyes were closing before the light went out. But then Moses whispered to Jacob, “Do you think we’ll see Mother and Father again?”
Jacob looked at him through the darkness. Moses’s eyes were shining bright like a cat’s. He did not want to lie to his brother or give him false hope, but Jacob really believed their family would be reunited. Stroking the boy’s hair, he answered, “Nothing’s going to stop us from seeing them. I swear to you, we’ll cross heaven and earth to get to them. Father always told me that nothing was impossible—that if we had faith and worked hard, we could achieve anything we put our minds to.”
“It didn’t work out that way for Aunt Judith. She preferred to end her life . . .” Moses felt the tears pricking at his eyes again.
“But we’re going to make it. Margot is helping us, her friend is going to get us to the unoccupied zone . . . It’s like an angel is watching over us,” Jacob said, still stroking his brother’s head.
“I trust you, Jacob. I’m never going to leave your side. Thank you for not leaving me in the velodrome.”
The two boys hugged until sleep overcame them. Nightmarish monsters tried to trap them that restless night, but their innocent minds escaped and flew off to the world of dreams, where everything is possible and nothing lasts forever.