Lily
The first transport left at night.
The previous day, there had been an unexpected midday roll call. They stood in the stifling heat as the guards selected people and took them out of line, seemingly at random. At first, Lily had assumed it had been for labor detail or interrogation. She exhaled silently when neither she nor Nik were called.
When those chosen were told to collect their belongings from the barracks and report to the administration building, Lily fleetingly wondered if they were being sent home. Perhaps she should make inquiries whether her family could go as well. But she had learned too much in her short time here to believe that or to ever volunteer for anything. And the looks on the faces of those selected told her they were not being released. Deportations, Sofia gravely confirmed later that day. The places in the barracks vacated by those who were taken remained empty for just a few days before new prisoners arrived to fill them.
Georgi noticed the development. “Ooh, a train!” he exclaimed one morning after breakfast, pointing. The rail line ran just behind the camp, the makeshift station several hundred meters from the fence. A large engine, pulling a dozen third-class rail cars, stood on the track in front of it. Georgi pointed to the queue of people who shuffled forward with their few possessions in small torn sacks. “Where are they taking the people, Mama?” he asked, puzzled.
Lily faltered, trying to explain to a child what she did not quite understand herself. “East to work in labor camps to make things for the war.” That was the best she could come up with. The explanation, Arbeitseinsatz, labor deployment, was what they had all been told.
“But, Mama, if they need workers, then why are they taking such old people?” Georgi’s face was childlike, but his logic was beyond his years. Among the people shuffling toward the trucks were many elderly and the infirm who could not possibly work. Lily saw in her son’s question the fullness of the lie. Why go to all of the trouble of shipping these poor souls across Europe for labor? It was not for work, she felt certain, but for something much worse.
“I’m hungry, Mama,” Georgi whined, changing topics abruptly. For Lily, the pain in her stomach had grown so omnipresent that she scarcely acknowledged it anymore. But for a child, the emptiness was unbearable, and Georgi spoke of it often.
Hearing Georgi’s complaint now, Lily’s heart ached. They had just finished their meager breakfast, and it would be nearly the whole day before there was anything to eat again. She looked around helplessly. Georgi was not as fussy an eater now as he had been when he first arrived. He took whatever he could get. She had seen him more than once trying to shove blades of grass in his mouth or forage around the rabbit hutch when he thought she was not looking.
“When we get out of here,” she whispered, “we are going to have those crepes you loved at Maison Reneau.”
“With extra whipped cream?” he asked, seeming to brighten a bit. She considered whether such promises were cruel, and if talking about the foods he could not have might somehow make it worse. But this was hope, and it was all she had to give him, to fill his heart because she could not fill his stomach. He did not complain or ask further but ran across the yard to play with Dorin under the unwatchful eye of Tante Sarah.
That afternoon, Lily returned from her job to collect Georgi. Tante Sarah looked cross, and Lily feared it was because she was late. “That gypsy woman,” Tante Sarah said, and Lily cringed at the derisive term. “She hasn’t come for her brat yet.” Sofia was even later than Lily was.
“I’ll mind him,” Lily said. Two boys were in some ways less work than one because they kept each other busy. Still, she fretted: it was not like Sofia to be late.
At last Sofia arrived, her face ashen. “We’ve been called,” she said.
“No!” Lily raised her hand to her mouth. “What will you do?”
“Go. There’s no other choice.” The question had been a foolish one. She could not simply disappear or evade detection. In Breendonk, there was nowhere to hide.
“What about your husband’s friend, François? Can he help?”
“I reached out to him. He’s devastated, of course. But he’s a prisoner, just like us. There’s nothing he can do.” Sofia paused. “Maybe now that we are being sent, we will find my husband.” There was no hope in Sofia’s voice.
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning before dawn.”
“So soon.” The Germans knew that catching people off guard gave them no time to plan or protest. Lily tried to think of the right words to comfort her friend but found nothing that would not be a lie.
“We’ll be fine,” Sofia replied, lifting her chin. “Our people have always moved about, adapted to new places. It’s what we do.” She could not hide the doubt in her voice. “And I am a strong worker. In the camps, those who are able to work are saved.”
“And those who are not?”
Sofia shrugged, unwilling to answer. Dorin would not be old enough to work, and although his mother would fight like a tiger to protect him, Lily could not help but be afraid. She swallowed down her dread. “Of course you will be fine. You’re one of the strongest people I’ve known.” Still, the trains and their ominous destination made her deeply afraid for them.
Sofia nodded gravely. “I only hope that will be enough.”
Lily wished that she had something to give Sofia, a gift or even just something to help with the trip. But she had nothing. Instead, she wrapped her arms around her tightly. “I’ll miss you. I’m glad that we met and that we became friends and our boys did too, even for so short a time.”
Sofia hugged her back. “As am I. I shall pray for you and your family and that we will meet again one day.” Then she gathered Dorin and started in the direction of their own barracks to prepare for the trip.
That night Lily lay awake in the barracks beside Georgi and Nik. As daylight neared, she imagined Sofia, just a few rooms away in the fortress, rousing a sleepy Dorin and preparing for their journey to points unknown. She was fearful for them and sad, too, at losing the only friend she had known since coming here.
The next morning after breakfast, Lily and Georgi walked out into the courtyard. Nik had been called to his job in the sick bay early. Georgi started expectantly for the field, looking for his friend to play. “Where’s Dorin?” he asked when the time for their usual playdate came and went and he did not appear.
Lily’s stomach twisted. How was she ever going to break the news to him? She had not told Georgi the previous day that he was seeing his friend for the last time. That had been a mistake, she realized now. She should have shared the truth and let him have his goodbye. Delaying the inevitable had only made things worse.
Lily put her arm around Georgi. “He’s gone, darling. Remember that train we saw? Dorin went on a train ride.”
“Where?”
“He went home,” she lied.
“Lucky! I want to go too,” Georgi pouted.
“We can’t, darling. We must stay here for now.”
Lily prayed her answers would be enough. But Georgi’s face crumbled with a mix of frustration and sadness. Suddenly it was all too much. The hunger and hardship he had endured for all of those weeks seemed to build up in that very minute. Georgi’s face reddened, and he let out a wail.
“Georgi, please,” Lily pled, desperate to stop him from attracting attention. But he sobbed inconsolably.
A horn blared, signaling the start of work. Lily hated leaving Georgi in such a state, but she didn’t dare arrive late to work. “Come.” She took Georgi to Tante Sarah. “He’s a little out of sorts today because of Dorin leaving,” she added in a voice too low for Georgi to hear. Then she went to Georgi and kissed his head. “Darling, stay here and out of trouble. I will be back as quickly as I can.” Before he could protest or ask to go with her, she turned and raced for the garment shop.
Lily entered the shop and started for the job she’d been working on the previous day, ripping apart the old uniforms. But the overseer, a Jewish woman named Helga who was reviled for wielding power over her own people, stopped her.
“You!” she snarled, and Lily worried that, despite her effort to get to the garment shop quickly, she was in trouble for being late. “You are to take the laundry.”
The officers’ uniforms were not washed in the camp, Lily knew, but taken to a laundress down the road. Taking the laundry was a privileged job, one that meant going beyond the camp gates for a few hours. It was usually reserved for the more senior workers, prisoners who had been there the longest. Lily had not expected to be chosen so soon.
But leaving the camp to take the laundry meant leaving Georgi, something Lily hated to do when he had been so distraught. She didn’t know how long the job would take or how soon she could get back. Lily looked in the direction of the barracks, wishing there was time to at least tell Tante Sarah that she was going. “Now!” Helga ordered, seeming to sense her hesitation.
A few minutes later, Lily found herself trudging down the dirt road outside the camp, pulling a large bin filled with dirty clothes. Helga followed. Lily was surprised: she knew she would not be sent outside of the camp alone, but she had not expected the overseer to go as the guard herself. It felt strange, almost pleasant, to be outside. The bin was heavy, however, and the task made harder by the ruts in the mud that caused the wheels to get stuck. Lily’s skin grew moist and her breathing labored. Helga watched her struggle, not offering to help.
As she walked and pulled the cumbersome bin, Lily thought of Sofia and Dorin. The journey east had to be at least three or four days, and she had no idea how one would keep a child calm and still on such a long ride. What fate had awaited them at the end?
At last, they reached the laundress’s house, a lone one-story cottage by the edge of the road. There was a small shed out back with steam that curled upward from a chimney. A woman appeared from the shed and gestured for Lily to bring the bin inside. Lily expected Helga to follow her into the house, but she did not. Taking in the house, anger rose in Lily. Surely the woman knew what was happening at the camp. How could she stand by day after day and do nothing?
“Come,” the laundress said. “You have to wait while I package last week’s laundry for you to take back.” Lily was surprised when the woman led her into the main house and offered her a seat in the parlor, a small room with high windows and just a sofa and two matching chairs for furnishing. The room was drab, with flowered curtains and faded maroon-and-blue upholstery that looked decades old and possibly secondhand. The rug on the floor was frayed and stained. Lily sank into a chair with gratitude. After weeks in the camp, though, she could not help but marvel at the civility of a chair with actual cushions. It simply felt like heaven.
The laundress set a cup of tea on the table. “I’m not allowed to give you anything,” she said apologetically. “But I’m not drinking this, and I would hate for it to go to waste.” Her voice was nervous and pinched. Lily understood then that while the woman was powerless to do anything to help those in the camp, she could only offer this gesture of defiance as a show of solidarity with them.
Lily looked at the cup uncertainly. “Won’t I get in trouble for taking it?” she asked, gesturing toward the window.
But Helga was nowhere to be found. “She always walks down the road to the next farm while the laundry is being prepared, to enjoy a bit of schnapps and some company with the old widow, Herr von Schurmer.” The laundress gave Lily a knowing look. “You have a good hour before she returns.”
The laundress left the room. Despite the laundress’s reassurances, Lily did not drink the tea straightaway. She felt guilty drinking the warm, delicious beverage while Nik and Georgi were back at the camp, doing without. But if she took nourishment here, she could save more of her rations for her family. She drank the tea in a single gulp and took a coarse sugar cube to give to Georgi later.
Lily wondered if there was a washroom she might be permitted to use. She stood and walked to the door to the kitchen through which the laundress had gone. She started to push it open, then stopped again. The laundress was folding the clothing that Lily was to take back with her into a neat stack. As she watched, she saw the woman slip a piece of paper into the collar of one of the shirts. Lily backed quietly from the doorway and returned to her seat, hoping that the woman had not seen her.
The laundress returned to the sitting room a few minutes later. It was clear from her calm expression that she had not noticed Lily come into the room. “You will make sure this laundry goes only to Anhel, the head tailor.” Lily wanted to ask what the paper was. Was the woman sending a message to someone in the camp, possibly helping?
When the folded and packaged laundry was ready, Lily stepped outside. Helga had returned, hair a bit askew and gait unsteady. Lily sped back to the barracks as quickly as she could with the cart, Helga following more slowly but still watching.
She delivered the laundry to the garment shop. “This will be your job from now on, once a week,” Helga pronounced. Lily’s uneasiness grew. Though she had not minded the break from the garment shop, the journey with Helga had been nerve-racking, and she hated being away from Georgi. Now it seemed she would have to do it again and again.
When the final whistle sounded, signaling the end of the work day, Lily hurried to the barracks. She was relieved to see that Nik had returned from work and was watching Georgi. Her son showed no sign of sadness from earlier that morning. He was trying to engage him in a game of tag, but Nik was leaning against the side of the barracks wearily waving him off.
Nik had never been a playful father. He was older and staid, the type of parent who read books and talked about ideas. The kind, she always thought, who would make a good father when Georgi was older. Often when Nik showed Georgi things in nature, he tried to listen and ask thoughtful questions. Georgi shared his father’s beautiful mind. But he was also a child, and sometimes, like now, he just wanted to play.
“Papa,” Georgi cajoled as Lily neared. He was longing for a playmate now that Dorin had gone.
“Enough!” Nik snapped at the child. Lily stopped, taken aback by the sudden outburst. Nik was normally quiet; this was not like him. But they were all growing frayed around the edges by the strain of the situation.
“Georgi, come,” Lily said softly, wanting to ease the tension. She reached in her pocket for the sugar cube she had taken for him, but it was gone, crumbled to dust like some magical object in a storybook that could not cross over into this awful realm. “Let’s go wash our hands before supper.”
“I’m sorry,” Nik said to her in a low voice when she and Georgi had returned from the sinks. His face was wracked with guilt. Even when he failed with Georgi, it was never from lack of trying.
“I know,” Lily said soothingly, caressing his cheek. She understood how hard it was to meet their son’s needs amid all of the stress and exhaustion of the camp. Their situation was so tenuous. Who knew how long they all might be permitted to remain intact as a family? She did not want Georgi’s last memory of their days together to be this. “You must do better. We both must. We may not have forever.” Nik nodded in acknowledgment and walked over to Georgi to try to play with him.
Leaving them, Lily went the barracks to collect their food bowls to bring to supper. As she entered the building, the odor of human filth washed over her. She would never get used to that smell, and her stomach roiled.
She stepped toward her bed, then stopped.
Lying on her mattress, crisp and out of place, was a slip of paper. Moving closer, she could see that it was a yellow deportation card.
She did not pick it up at first. She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to turn and run outside. If she stood perfectly in place and did not go forward, she would not read and know the awful news. If she did not see the notice, perhaps when she returned it might be gone. But pretending would not make time stand still or undo what had already happened. When she looked again, it remained there, undeniable and real.
Reluctantly, she walked over and picked it up. The notice bore all three of their names. They had been called together. Whatever fate awaited them they would not be torn apart as so many families had—at least not yet. The date was August 23, less than two weeks’ time.
Her mind reeled. Once she had believed that they would be allowed to go back to Brussels, to the life and freedom they had once known. Even after she knew that to be untrue, she still clung to the hope that their Belgian citizenship would somehow keep them from being deported. Now the realization slammed into her like a rock. The road out of here went one way only. The Germans meant to rid Belgium of all its Jews, including the native Jews, forever.
If they were sent to a labor camp in the east, she might be spared and kept for work. But a child as young as Georgi had no hope whatsoever. Her panic rose.
Nik appeared in the doorway then, holding Georgi’s hand. The two of them joked easily, Nik’s earlier terseness gone. Then his eyes fell on the yellow card she held, and his smile evaporated.
She gestured Nik over, away from their son. “What are we going to do?” she asked quietly so Georgi could not hear. “We have to do something.” Unlike when Sofia had been called and sent immediately, they had almost two weeks before they were to go.
Nik shook his head sadly. “There is nothing to be done.” His voice was resigned and certain. He put his arms around her and rested his chin on her head.
“But we can’t go. We are native Belgians.”
“That doesn’t protect us now. Nothing will. At least we will go together.”
“What about that British soldier,” she pressed, “the one who offered you help?” As she spoke, she knew it would do no good.
“Even if we could get a letter to him, by the time he received it, it would be too late.” The offer of sanctuary the officer had made a few months ago faded like a distant dream. “Still, I will send word,” he added. “You never know.”
“And I shall get a message to Hannah. She has so many contacts from the resistance and the network that helps transport people. Maybe she can do something.”
“But how will you reach her?”
“I will find a way. There has to be one.” Though Lily was still furious with Hannah for causing their arrest, her cousin seemed like the key to their survival.
After Nik left her to go to the washroom, Lily looked out the window and across the camp, thinking. She had to get word to Hannah or Matteo. Lily had told Matteo not to come again, and while she doubted he would give up on her, his next visit might be too late. There had to be a way to reach them, rather than simply waiting.
Lily remembered the laundress, whom she’d seen smuggling a paper into the collar of a shirt. It seemed as though she had been sending a message to someone in the camp. Was it possible that she might send a message from the camp as well? If only Lily had known about the call-up a few hours earlier, she might have tried to persuade the laundress to send word to Hannah. But the laundry was outside the camp, unreachable now.
But the man to whom the laundress had sent the message was not. Anhel, she recalled. Reputed to have been one of the finest men’s tailors in Brussels before the war, he was now relegated to a workbench in the corner of the shop where he reattached loose buttons and darned socks.
Nik returned from the washroom. “Can you take Georgi to dinner?” she asked. “I need to go back to the garment shop for a minute. There’s someone who might be able to help.”
Before Nik could ask any questions, Lily hurried from the barracks. The work day had ended, and she worried that Anhel might have gone for the day. But he sat hunched over, sewing, as she approached him. “Hello. I’m Lily. I work in the garment shop.”
He glanced up. “I know. I’ve seen you. What do you want?”
Lily was nonplussed by his gruff tone. She considered turning around and leaving. But the situation was desperate. “I need you to have a message delivered to someone on the outside.” She held out the small scrap of paper on which she had hurriedly scrawled a note to Hannah asking her to come quickly. She had written to her cousin instead of Matteo, thinking that a note addressed to the canteen might arouse too much suspicion.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” he replied evenly.
“Except that you do. I saw when I picked up the laundry earlier that someone sent a message to you. I know.” He stared at her evenly, not responding. But he blinked once, an acknowledgment. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. But you have to help me. Please, I must get word to my cousin.”
He scanned the message, and his eyes widened. “I can’t possibly. I have a daughter on the outside. There will be reprisals to her if I get caught.” It was not for his own safety he feared, but for his child’s.
“Of course I could not ask you to endanger your family.” Lily paused, thinking about what to say next. She could not walk away and give up their only hope either. “You see, I have a child also. A son.” She gestured across the field where Georgi and a few other children played quietly.
Anhel’s eyes followed her gesture, and seeing Georgi something seemed to shift. “I won’t deliver your paper,” he said. “It’s too direct, and it is going to get you and your cousin in trouble.”
“I’m being deported. What worse trouble is there?” Lily’s hopes fell; her plea had failed.
“I will deliver the message, but I will use a drawing instead of words, so that it cannot be understood if someone intercepts it.” He brought his finger to his lips. He would get word to Hannah. “Tell me something, a symbol known only to you and your cousin, that has meaning.”
Lily searched her memory. “A sparrow,” she said finally. “We rescued one when we were girls.” Just as Lily herself needed rescuing now.
“That is all I need to know.”
“But...” Doubts circled her mind. “If you aren’t sending a paper message through the laundress, then how?” Anhel was a prisoner like herself with no other access to the outside.
“I will deliver your message,” he said in a firm voice, warding off further argument. “Now, what is the address?”
As she gave Anhel her address, her doubts redoubled. Would the message reach her? What if she didn’t understand? It didn’t matter now. The tailor was her best and only hope, and she had no other choice but to trust him.