Grenoble
August 26, 1942
Justus Rosenberg struggled to accurately recall the faces of his family members in Danzig. He had managed to escape the city just before the Nazis took it over in 1939. His father was a famous watchmaker who served an elite clientele throughout Europe. Before the Nazis arrived, he had prepared an escape route for his wife, Sara, and their daughter, Ruth, but in the end everything unraveled. He got Justus on a ship to Calais the day before the Germans arrived; the rest of the family would sail a week later when all their papers were in order, but by that time it was too late. The Nazis forced all the Jews into ghettoes, and Justus heard no more from them.
Justus had spent his time in Paris studying at the Janson de Sailly School, but when the Nazis occupied Paris, he went to Toulouse, where refugees were being housed in the former Pax cinema. There he met two young women, one of them from the United States. The American took him with her to Marseille where a rescue committee was being organized. The committee was tasked with getting French intellectuals and those of other nationalities out of the country. The US government had sent the journalist Varian Fry to oversee the operation, and Justus soon began working for Fry. When the Vichy government expelled Fry from the country in August 1941, Fry was not able to take Justus with him. The young man then tried to escape over the border to Spain, but he was arrested. The judge over his case was merciful and only fined him a small fee.
After all of that, he settled in Grenoble and rented a room for a modest sum. Yet his money began to run out, and he grew desperate. His father had told him that, if things ever got bad enough in France, he should try to get to Spain, and Justus was ready to try again. He had one uncle in Germany and had seen him before escaping to Paris, but another uncle lived in the Spanish protectorate of Morocco.
But that morning the gendarmes surprised him at the home where he was boarding.
“You can’t take the boy! He’s done nothing wrong!” Madame Damour, his landlady, protested, though she knew all about Justus’s work with the students in the Resistance movement at the University of Grenoble.
“Ma’am, your lodger is a Jew. He’s got to be taken to an internment camp.”
The gray-haired woman clung to her boarder in defiance. “Since when is it a crime in France to be a Jew?”
“We’re just following orders.” The gendarme yanked Justus away. Madame Damour lost her balance and fell to the floor.
“Madame Damour!” Justus called.
“Don’t worry about me, son. Take care of yourself. You’ll be in my prayers.”
The gendarmes carried him suspended above the ground between them and shoved him into a truck with other prisoners. Justus picked himself up off the floor of the truck and looked around. Some twenty men were seated in two rows. A teenage boy nearby made room for him.
“You can sit here. Where ten men fit, eleven will too. I’m Lazarus.”
The rest of the prisoners on the bench scooted reluctantly.
“Thank you,” Justus said.
“We’ve got to lend each other a hand.”
“I’m Justus Rosenberg.”
“Are you Polish?” the young man asked.
“Yes; are you?”
The boy shook his head. “Nope, Czech. This truck is a miniature Babel. Juan is Lithuanian, and Abraham is Russian.” Lazarus nodded at two boys who raised their eyebrows to return the greeting.
“Do you know where they’re taking us?” Justus asked.
“Somewhere near Lyon, and from there to Germany, or to your country, Poland.”
Justus shivered.
“What is it?” Lazarus asked.
“I saw my uncle in Berlin just before the war started. He was a professor, but he wasn’t allowed to teach anymore. The Jews were treated terribly there, like animals.”
Lazarus glanced at his other two companions. “Well, we’ve been thinking up a way to escape. Don’t you think that’s our only option?”
Justus did agree. He would rather die shot in the back than fall into the hands of the Nazis. He leaned forward. The canvas cover blocked their view, but from the potholes he could tell they were not on a main road. He wondered for the millionth time what had become of his family. The worst feeling of his life was the sensation of being an orphan and knowing that not one soul cared what happened to him. If he disappeared from the face of the earth, he would be utterly and entirely forgotten. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the prayers he had been taught at the synagogue when he was younger, but his mind was blank. It seemed that his entire life in Poland had been erased. His brain expertly blocked whatever had once been happy to protect him from the melancholy that would otherwise become unbearable.