Alba-la-Romaine
August 26, 1942
The day before had been happy, which was not a common occurrence. Rachel was able to see and talk with her father for a brief time in the labor camp where he was being held. She missed him terribly. He had been locked up for months and forced to work, though his only crime was being a foreign Jew. Rachel’s mother, Chaja, who had managed to avoid being registered as a Jew, had returned to Belgium a few weeks after Zelman was taken. So for months Rachel had lived alone with Fani. Daily survival was increasingly difficult. Fani took every job she could get, but they were only eating one meager meal a day.
Before Fani and Rachel returned home yesterday, Zelman had warned, “Don’t go back into town. There’s going to be a raid, and this time it won’t be just for the men.” But Fani found it hard to believe that the French gendarmes would round up women and children. What good would they be to the war effort?
Just after five o’clock in the morning, Fani and Rachel were abruptly woken by loud, insistent knocking at the door. Fani looked toward Rachel and could see the child’s eyes shining in the darkness. They had shared a bed since Chaja left.
“Don’t worry, it’s probably just a mistake,” Fani said to calm Rachel. She wrapped herself in her robe and approached the door barefoot.
“Who is it?” she called in a voice still raspy with sleep.
“Police! Open immediately!”
Fani woke fully at the sound of that deep, booming voice.
“Just a moment, please.”
“Open up now, or we’ll break the door down!”
Fani’s heart was racing. She froze for a moment but then opened the door. Two gendarmes stared at her from the landing. One held a nightstick and the other a document that he waved in her face.
“You and all the members of this household must come with us right now.”
“But we haven’t done anything,” Fani protested.
The older of the gendarmes glanced down the dark, empty hallway of the apartment building and, in a moment of compassion, said, “Gather your things; we’ll wait for you, then explain what’s going on. It’s purely a bureaucratic matter.”
Those words calmed Fani enough for her to get her body moving again. She turned back to the bedroom where Rachel was sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes in confusion.
“Rachel, we have to go with the gendarmes.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure, but they’ll explain things when we get there.”
Rachel was trembling with fright, but Fani wrapped her in a strong embrace that calmed her momentarily. Then they packed a few belongings: some clothes, some food, and Rachel’s violin. They got to the door of their apartment looking disheveled, the buttons of their jackets misaligned and dark circles of worry under their eyes.
Down on the empty, dimly lit street, the morning felt cool to them despite it being the end of August. The gendarmes led them to a bus manned by a frowning driver.
“Sit wherever you’d like,” the older gendarme said as the policemen settled into a seat at the front.
There were already a few other occupants on the bus. As Fani and Rachel walked down the aisle, the others ducked their heads, ashamed to be part of the macabre convoy. Fani placed their suitcase in one of the last rows.
“I’m scared,” Rachel whispered as she took a seat.
“It’ll be all right,” Fani said automatically but unconvincingly. She feared being locked up in a labor camp like Zelman or being sent to Germany.
Rachel curled up in Fani’s lap and tried to rest. It still felt like nighttime. The only light to be seen came from the streetlamps.
The bus drove away from their town. The rumble of the motor managed to relax the occupants into deep sleep, but everyone woke when the bus stopped at the next town and the gendarmes got off.
A boy sitting close to the driver yanked the lever to open the door and shot out running. The gendarmes, only a few yards away from the bus, turned and immediately chased him. In anguish, Rachel watched the boy sprinting toward the forest, but the younger gendarme easily outpaced him. The policeman smacked the boy’s face the whole way back to the bus. The driver opened the door, and the gendarme pushed the boy in, growling, “Keep control of that door or you’ll end up in the same camp as the Jews!”
His words had their desired effect. The driver stood and guarded the door with his towering frame.
The boy limped back to his seat and tumbled into it. Rachel caught his eyes fleetingly. His face was reddened, and blood trickled down one eyebrow.
The gendarmes returned with five more people to add to the bus. The operation was repeated from town to town until the bus was full, yet there was still quite a ways to go until it reached Lyon.