Deep and boundless hatred is an essential characteristic of Jewry. It is rooted in the Devil’s blood of the Jews and can only be distantly understood by the other peoples of the earth.
—Ernst Hiemer, Der Stürmer, 1943
Another day, another convent.
It wasn’t the most helpful thought Ida had as she walked down the street toward her third convent of the week, but as the Catholic sisters were so eager to help with the saving of Jewish children, the CDJ wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse them. It was a marvelous cover for them, as there were always children attending school there, most of whom no one paid any attention to.
It was the easiest place to hide children, all things considered.
But not all the convents had the same appeal as Little Sisters of the Poor did, and not all Mother Superiors were as warm as Sister Marie-Aurélie.
This particular convent was Ida’s least favorite.
Ida entered the church and looked for any sign of a nun, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. She had other locations to visit today for welfare checks, not to mention a few places she needed to go to for evaluation. And then there were the families that had requested help through their new system of the post box, which was proving a challenge to keep up with now that the Heibers had been arrested and taken away. Losing that position in the AJB had been painful for all of them, but at least Ghert Jospa still had his position with the Front de l’Indépendance.
The results weren’t as accurate as the AJB had been, as far as locations were concerned, but setting up the post box for messages and requests for help had allowed people to put their addresses down with as much detail as they were comfortable with. And besides, Ida and her operatives had a fairly good idea of location based on generic information at this point. They had a solid cover story as being social workers that worked for any situation, Jewish or not, so if mistakes were made in location, no one should be any the wiser.
But she couldn’t think about the stress of her position and the monumental number of tasks she had to complete, now that Esta and Maurice were imprisoned. At this moment, she had to be sympathetic and compassionate, listen to the concerns of the children, and ensure that all of them were not only safe but also comfortable.
One of the sisters she recognized walked by, sniffing in faint disgust at her. “Here to see them, are you?”
Them? Was that how they were referred to here?
Ida barely avoided spitting at the woman. “I am. Where should I go?”
“Rectory,” she said with a dismissive hand. “I’ll have them sent down.”
She left before Ida could thank her, criticize her, or offer an opposing opinion.
Did she know that Ida was a Jew? Or did she simply not care enough to be polite to those who worked with rehousing Jewish children?
Had she placed children in a toxic situation that was physically safer than their homes but mentally and spiritually just as abusive as the Gestapo?
Ida pressed her tongue to her teeth, lifting her brows at nobody in particular, and turned to walk toward the rectory alone. She had never felt more unwelcome in her work, and she was racing against the Gestapo.
What sort of allies were these people anyway?
Biting her tongue with a semi-painful pressure, Ida entered the rectory and sat at the nearest table, waiting for the students to arrive. How they were going to keep the Jewish students from being outed to their classmates by this isolation she couldn’t say, but she imagined the nuns had some process in place for the occasion.
Esta had taken care of several of these locations before now, and she would understand the details better. But until they figured out how they could get the Heibers out of Malines, if there was a way, she had to take on these tasks herself.
The younger children came in first, and they had little enough to say. They were impressionable, moldable to the nuns’ wills and generally well behaved. She did note marks on the skin, though it was hard to tell if they were the result of average childhood antics or something worth more concern. She made a note of it all the same.
Dr. Hendrickx in Rue aux Laines had offered her services for welfare checks where health concerns existed, as had Dr. Duchaine at the Depage clinic, but the CDJ hadn’t taken either up on that yet, more to protect them and their valuable positions than anything else, but Ida might call them in soon enough.
One of the older girls came into the rectory after the little ones, and Ida smiled at her. “Arlise, right?”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” Arlise murmured in a soft voice, barely above a whisper. She kept her eyes downcast, and her hands carefully folded in front of her, submissive in the extreme and trying not to be noticed.
Ida didn’t like that one bit. “Would you like to sit, Arlise?”
The girl shook her head faintly. “No, mademoiselle.”
Arlise offered nothing further, and Ida watched her for a long moment, eyes darting from feature to feature of the girl’s appearance. Clothing looked good enough, but she was covering the surface of her left hand with her right and seemed rather intent on keeping it so. Her skin was pale, which could simply be from a lack of being outdoors, but with all of that combined . . .
“Arlise,” Ida prodded gently. “Do you remember me? I talked to your family before you were brought here. I’m not associated with the convent or the order. You can tell me anything and it won’t get back to the Mother Superior or your instructors. It just goes into my notes, unless we need to intervene somehow.”
The girl shifted her weight, her hands moving ever so slightly against each other.
It was the most movement Ida had seen from Arlise yet, and it encouraged her.
“Would you like me to close the door?” Ida offered, gesturing toward it. “Would that help?”
Arlise froze, which seemed to be answer enough.
Ida rose and closed the door firmly, then returned to the table and smiled. “There. Just us. Better?”
The girl’s shoulders moved on a massive exhale, and she nodded. “Yes, mademoiselle.” She sat in a chair now and laid her hands upon the table surface.
Her left hand was covered in welts and bruises, unable to lay as flat as her right.
Ida swallowed and met Arlise’s eyes. “What happened?”
Arlise glanced at her hand as though it was barely a passing concern. “Several of the nuns use rulers on hands for wrong answers or talking out of turn. Not just on the Jews, but all of the students. But . . . a few seem to select the Jewish students more than the others.”
“They know who you are?” Ida asked, eyes widening.
“It’s never been a secret,” Arlise told her. “All of the nuns know. The little ones seem to do well enough, but those of us who are older . . .” She made a face. “The Mother Superior cornered me yesterday, and she said, ‘You are Jewish, but you do believe in Jesus Christ, don’t you, now that you are thirteen years old?’ And I didn’t know what to say.”
Ida held her breath, continuing to smile as gently as possible. “Why not?”
Arlise shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Because it’s impossible, and unbelievable, for the Mother Superior to love a girl who is an unbeliever.”
How the breaking of Ida’s heart was not audible to them both, let alone everyone in the building, Ida couldn’t say. But she felt it give way, almost directly down the middle of the organ, and could swear the pieces of her heart hit various ribs as they fell to the pit of her stomach.
The girl had been taken away from her home for her safety, taken from the arms of those who loved her, and placed here, where she now felt unable to be loved because she was a Jew.
Would the world ever be a safe and fair place for them and their people?
Arlise was thirteen. Such a pivotal age in a girl’s life as she tried to figure out who she was as a person, what she wanted to believe for herself, how she viewed the world. And she was being hidden in a convent, safe but unloved, confused about what she should or should not believe because the world wouldn’t allow her the freedom to decide for herself at the moment. She was old enough to take care of the younger Jewish children in this convent, and likely did so, but what hope or inspiration could she give them in this place? Their numbers were not great, compared with the other students, but there were enough of them to be able to band together for support if needed.
And what would happen if they did band together? Would they still be looked down on here for believing differently? Ida felt the need to go speak with one of their other religious allies, Father André, who ran a boarding school himself. He made a point to offer psalms to the Jewish students he housed, knowing they read them as much as his Catholic students, if not more, and that they might find comfort there. He never tried to convert any of them and refused to allow them to convert faiths, if they wished, until after the war was over and they were reunited with their families.
He was a man of faith, and a true man of God, she believed. That was the God she wanted to believe in. Not the one who divided them by harshness and cruelty.
“I am so sorry, Arlise,” Ida murmured, covering her hand across the table. “That must be so difficult.”
Arlise looked down, seeming to shrug again as though it was not such a terrible thing. “You get used to it. One of our teachers was talking about Jews and Judas the other day, and she said that she recognizes Jews right away. That they—we—are dark, have yellow skin, and large hooked noses. And she looked right at me as she said it. She went on with the lesson but made sure the entire class knew that the Jews killed Jesus and spit on him.”
Ida closed her eyes, exhaling roughly. There was no way to hide her distress at this, nor to ignore the situation. The Jewish children were being mistreated here, subjected to the rampant antisemitism that the Nazis played upon for their own ends. The only thing that could be said about the nuns here was that they did not want the Jewish children imprisoned or dead.
But that, it seemed, was all they were willing to allow.
What could she do about this? Where else could she place these children? How could they intervene when there were already so many other children to place and greater risks of death and danger out there? Could they take them away? Could they talk to the Mother Superior and ask for more gentleness in treatment and more understanding in behavior? Did her authority extend that far? Did anyone’s?
Sister Marie-Aurélie was of an entirely different order from the nuns in this convent, so she had no influence or authority on them. Ida could reach out to their friends at the Oeuvre Nationale de l’Enfance, Belgium’s national child service—or ONE—who had made most of the religious connections for them, but would they be able to do anything either?
Was having the children here that much better than leaving the children at home and in danger with their families?
Ida had trouble swallowing, let alone trying to think, but she somehow managed to smile. “I’ll try to make things better for you here, Arlise. Better for all of you.”
Arlise raised her eyes to Ida, doubt and resignation filling their depths. “It’s fine, mademoiselle. They’re not the Nazis, are they?”
There was no good way to answer that question. Of course, they weren’t. The Nazis were unmatched in their evil, and these nuns who had agreed to house Jewish children and keep them safe from such evil could not be grouped with them.
But that did not mean the children would be free from prejudice in these locations.
Ida had to keep smiling, though she did not have much else to say. “I will try to make things better,” she said again, not knowing how she could.
She could not promise things would get better, but she could promise to try.
Which was all they were doing with these children anyway.
Trying.
There were only three more students to see after Arlise left, and their stories were relatively unremarkable, though they echoed the tone of Arlise’s as far as the prejudice went. She had seen children in worse conditions, but there was something particularly heartbreaking here.
They had to do better in finding places to keep these children safe. That was the only way they could prevent the children from feeling the abuse that so polluted their homes and neighborhoods at this time. There had to be more homes and schools where the children would be well cared for, not just safe. Happy and safe. Healthy and safe.
Loved and safe.
Was that really too much to ask?
Ida decided to give up the rest of her morning schedule and go to the main offices. She needed to gather her thoughts and her strengths, needed to be reminded of the good things they were doing rather than the harsh things they were experiencing. She needed to hear from others that were engaged in the same work that it was, in fact, making a difference.
She was struggling to believe her own thoughts at the moment.
The screeching of tires brought Ida’s head up, though she couldn’t recall when she had begun looking down at her feet.
Fat Jacques was getting out of a car and moving to a nearby bench with another man in plain clothes, expressions determined. Other people moved out of their way, either moving deeper into the park behind the bench or avoiding the area entirely, as was common during Gestapo interventions. Ida hung back herself, tucking herself against a light pole, but did not leave the area. She needed to see this. Needed to know who was being arrested or interrogated. Needed to remind herself of the reality of life in Brussels at the moment.
She watched as Fat Jacques moved to one side and her eyes could fall upon the figures being questioned.
Her stomach plummeted and she gripped the light pole with tight fingers.
Ghert Jospa.
No. Anyone but him. They’d already lost Maurice to arrest; they could not afford to lose Ghert as well. And if they lost Ghert, would they also lose Yvonne?
Ida didn’t recognize the woman on the bench with Ghert, but he had several contacts from the various organizations helping the Jews in some way or another. She certainly could have been Jewish, based on her looks alone, but despite what the Nazis and Gestapo thought, not all Jews looked the same.
Her throat threatened to close entirely as she watched both Ghert and the woman hand over their IDs to Jacques and his associate. The false IDs had been used time and time again by all of the CDJ and had not yet come into question, as far as she knew. That alone spoke to their quality, though it would not have done them very much good to have poor false IDs that could be easily spotted.
All of their false documents of any kind could stand up to scrutiny. They’d made certain of it.
Which meant Ghert ought to be just fine, and this ought to end well.
But Ida knew better than to blindly hope.
Jacques seemed particularly fascinated by whichever ID he held, and then looked at the woman on the bench for a long moment.
“False card!” he shouted suddenly, pointing at her.
Two men sprang forth from some corner of the park and immediately took the woman to the car and shoved her inside.
Ida’s breath began to hitch against her lungs and throat, her fingers and toes going numb.
Please, she hissed in her mind. Please, no . . .
Fat Jacques pointed at Ghert’s briefcase, his words unintelligible to Ida from this distance. But Ghert seemed to be confused by the request and asked several questions.
Ghert was rarely confused by anything, so Ida could only assume that he was acting in this.
She prayed he was acting in this.
But Fat Jacques was insistent, and Ghert picked up his briefcase, opening it and turning the case for the other man to see.
Time seemed to stop, as did sound, as Ida saw Jacques moving things around in the briefcase. Then he picked up a paperless package bound with string, and even from this distance, Ida could see what they were.
ID cards.
She closed her eyes in horror just as Jacques shouted again, only opening them when she heard a car door close.
Ghert had been shoved in beside his companion, and Fat Jacques was climbing into the passenger seat of the car, the Gestapo officer moving around to the driver’s side.
Ida made no motion to get Ghert’s attention. Doing so would have only drawn the Gestapo’s attention to her, and they seemed to be in a rather short-tempered mood. Not only that, but the CDJ could not afford to lose anyone else.
There would be no defending the stack of IDs in Ghert’s possession. He would be officially arrested and interrogated, and Yvonne . . .
Yvonne.
Ida turned on her heel and began to walk briskly, taking several shortcuts to get to the Jospa home. She wouldn’t have known it as an operative, but Yvonne and Ghert had welcomed her to Brussels with a family dinner last year. She had since become far more acquainted with the city and orienting herself within it, so she needed no redirection to get there.
Yvonne might be at the office, but the Gestapo wouldn’t know where that was. The Jospa home, on the other hand, would be on their registration with the city. If Yvonne and Paul were there, Ida needed to get them out.
Now.
There were no cars parked in front of the house, Ida could see quickly, and she nodded in satisfaction at not being too late. She knocked on the door repeatedly, her heart thundering in her ears, but no one answered.
She could not have been too late; they would need to verify Ghert’s identity first, so Yvonne and Paul must not have been at home.
There was still time.
“Come to visit the Jospas, mademoiselle?” a neighbor asked with some concern, a washing basket on her hip. “They won’t be home until evening.”
Ida smiled at her, though her face seemed to object to such a motion under the circumstances. “I simply wanted Yvonne to know that Ghert has been arrested. I don’t know what for, but I would hate for her to find out from someone else.”
The neighbor’s eyes went wide, and she stepped closer. “They’re Jews, you know. I don’t know the details, but they do so much for so many. If I see Yvonne, I’ll warn her. If they’ve taken him, they’ll come for her.”
Ida did not trust easily, but something about the woman’s expression spoke truth, and Ida put a hand on hers. “Please do. I’ll try to find her and warn her, but they might come for her before I can.”
“Paul stays with his aunt,” the neighbor told her, looking up and down the street. “He’ll be safe for now. But your people need to find a solution for both him and Yvonne. Something safer. We won’t let them take her as well. I’ll keep an eye out.” She nodded at Ida, seeming as determined as any member of the CDJ that Ida had ever seen, and then turned back for her house.
There was nothing to do now but go to the offices, as she had planned, and hope that she might find Yvonne there, working on something or other. If she was not there, Ida would have to trust in the care of Yvonne’s neighbor.
In a world where friend turned to foe, she could not say that she felt perfectly at ease with the safety of her friend, but she had little alternative.
The Nazi vice was tightening around Brussels and the CDJ, and Ida had to keep going. Had to help others to keep going.
Had so many more children to save.
She could do no less.