Vénissieux Camp
August 27, 1942
The bad part about waking up was discovering that it had not been a nightmare. Fani looked at the child beside her. Rachel was not her daughter, but she loved her as if she were. She and Zelman never had children, and now Fani was glad. Bringing an innocent life into a world like theirs would have been madness.
They were allowed to go to the bathrooms for a few minutes, though it was hardly enough time to empty their bladders, wash their faces, and freshen up. Fani would have liked a shower, but the showerheads did not work. Fani made do with splashing water on her armpits, washing Rachel’s face, and taking their place once again in the interminable line, this time waiting for breakfast.
From the start of the war, they had been constantly waiting for something, stuck in one unending, dignity-eroding line after another.
One of the women in front of Fani was pregnant. She looked exhausted but had to keep standing.
“Why don’t we let the pregnant women go ahead of us?” Fani said to the women farther up the line.
A thick redheaded woman retorted, “I’ve got three little ones to feed.”
“I’m barely standing upright,” an older woman said as she leaned heavily on a cane.
Complaints of problems, aches, and pains came from all sides.
Fani crossed her arms and resigned herself to waiting.
The pregnant woman leaned toward her and said, “Thanks for trying. I’m Esther Abeles. My sister, Martha, is here too.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. This is my daughter, Rachel. How far along are you?”
“Eight and a half months, though with the malnutrition and all this upheaval, I’m likely to go into labor at any moment,” she said, stroking her belly.
“And the father?”
Esther shrugged. “The fact is that we shouldn’t be here. We arrived in France in 1933, but since we fled to the free zone, they said that was suspicious criminal activity. It’s suspicious, you see, to get as far away from the Nazis as possible.”
Finally they arrived inside the mess hall. Breakfast was a very hard piece of black bread, a sliver of rancid butter, and a piece of fruit. Rachel scarfed her portion down so quickly that Fani, knowing she could wait till the noon meal, gave her half of her own.
* * *
After the meager breakfast, they were not allowed back into the barracks, so they all went out to the yard. There was nothing to do. The heat grew more intense by the minute. Most people idled in the shade of the barracks and spoke of their woes to any who would listen.
Fani went to the infirmary, hoping to be able to offer a hand and keep busy with something. Élisabeth and the other nurses were exhausted after a long night.
“Can I help in any way?” Fani asked. “I know how to give injections, bandage wounds, and that sort of thing.”
“Thank you,” Élisabeth said, smiling brightly. “For now, if you could bring water around to all the patients, we would be so grateful.”
With the heat, the men, women, and children were eager for the water that Fani brought to their cots. On one cot she saw Jacob, the older gentleman who had been on their bus to Vénissieux. He seemed to be asleep.
“Jacob, would you like any water?” Fani asked.
The man did not respond. Fani touched his shoulder gingerly and confirmed that he was cold. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Did you know him?” Madeleine Dreyfus asked as she tended to a patient in the next cot.
“Not much. We just met in the bus on the way here. The poor man was all alone in the world.”
“We all are, in a way,” Madeleine said, giving Fani a hug, “which is why we need to keep each other company on our short journey.”
* * *
As Fani helped at the infirmary, Rachel found a spot outside the barracks. She pulled her violin out of the case and started playing. A crowd gathered around her, eager for a break in the monotony and drawn by the beauty and peace of Rachel’s playing. As the notes stretched out across the camp, tears descended from many eyes. The sun continued to rise and to bear down unflinchingly. But they were alive. They were breathing and at least had this day, an opportunity to show the world that they were much more than poor vagabonds with no country; more than outcasts who had been longing for some two thousand years to return to their lost Jerusalem where they could once more be a people, a nation, no longer persecuted the world over. At least that was the dream of many of those in Vénissieux, those who were forever treated as strangers and newcomers wherever they tried to put down roots.