Within the first days after their invasion of Belgium, the Nazi Party created laws that confiscated Jewish property and businesses. Jewish men and women were banned from many professions. Jewish families were frightened, threatened, and eventually taken to Auschwitz.
Now, the synagogue was like that dark cellar. As we stood before the great doors of the building, Hava turned and looked back to the empty streets. I will never forget her eyes at that moment: beautiful, brown, and filled with hope. She pushed the doors open with the full force of her body, sure she would find her father, mother, and Benjamin sitting in their favourite pew.
The doors opened like a blessing, two hands parting. We stepped into the sanctuary. There were no lights, no candles. From floor to ceiling, from wall to wall, a subdued light from the rose window created shadows. A grey-black gleam filled the synagogue with a quiet darkness. It was difficult to see, like an empty cave. Hava looked at me as if to ask, ‘Where is everyone?’ I took her hand and we walked down the main aisle. The synagogue was Hava’s Tara; her house of salvation.
‘Where is everyone?’ she finally asked aloud. I squeezed her hand and said nothing. In the far corner of the synagogue there was a little chair, and sitting in the little chair was an old man with a beard and a small book in his hand.
‘That’s Rabbi Menke,’ Hava whispered.
As we approached the old man, I saw that he was stroking the book with his open palm and whispering a prayer: ‘O Lord, grant that this night we may sleep in peace.’
The rabbi looked up at us through the dim light of the morning sunrise and said in a stronger voice, ‘May your paths be free from all obstacles, from when you go out until you return home.’ Then he lifted one hand, curled his fingers, and pointed first at Hava, and then at me. ‘We need to protect each other and inspire each other to think and act only out of love.’
‘Rabbi Menke . . . Do you know me, Rabbi Menke?’ As Hava knelt before the old man, he placed his hand on her head.
‘I do not remember,’ he said.
‘Rabbi Menke. Where is my mother?’
The man looked into her eyes, he looked up at me, and then returned his gaze to the face of my friend. ‘I do not remember.’
‘Where is my mother, and Benjamin, and my father?’
‘Benjamin?’ Rabbi Menke asked.
‘Yes, and my father Yaakov. Yaakov Yosef Daniels, my father. I need to find my father.’
The rabbi looked up at and said, ‘There’s no one here. They are gone.’
I knelt before the old man and asked, ‘But where, Rabbi? Where have they gone?’
‘They are all gone. There’s no one here. Not even their shadows. There are no more shadows. Look, no shadows, not even ashes.’ He waved his hand. ‘You won’t find anyone here. No praying. No singing. I am told a synagogue is burning in Przemysl, Poland, so people here are afraid. There are rumours the Nazis are coming.’
‘But Rabbi Menke, where is my family?’ Hava asked. ‘They said they’d be here.’ Then she broke down and wept into the rabbi’s lap.
Rabbi Menke placed one of his wrinkled hands on her head as she cried. ‘Many Jews in Antwerp have already fled to Cuba. Many in Brussels have already left.’
‘But my mother and father wouldn’t leave without me,’ Hava said between tears.
Rabbi Menke placed his hand gently under Hava’s chin, lifted her face up to the light, and returned to his prayers: ‘Let us pray. Oh God, keep far from us all evil; may our paths be free from all obstacles from when we go out until we return home.’
Hava looked up as she heard the words ‘until we return home’.
‘Return home? Yes, of course. I’ll go home. My mother will surely be there by now. The sun is out. She will have to prepare eggs for Papa. Benjamin has to be roused from his sleep. The day is beginning. He’ll be going to school.’ Hava looked at me and said, ‘We must wake Benjamin. He needs to get ready for school.’
She stood up, leaned over, and kissed Rabbi Menke on his forehead. Then she turned and ran down the aisle, through the subdued light. When she reached the open doors she stopped, turned, and motioned for me to follow. I looked at Rabbi Menke.
He said, ‘Be in peace.’ Then I stood up slowly and walked through the synagogue, past the empty seats: one, two . . . ten . . . thirty . . . a thousand . . . a million . . . six million empty seats.
When I reached Hava she took my hand and said, ‘We must hurry or there will be no eggs left. You know how Benjamin will eat six eggs if he’s given the chance.’
She pulled my hand and we ran down the steps of the Great Synagogue and out into the twilight street. Black buildings stood at attention. The trees didn’t move. An empty bicycle rack had been tipped on its side.
We stopped running for a moment when we both heard the loud engines of planes once again. Six large shadows flew overhead as we stood in the empty road.
As the planes disappeared, and silence returned for a moment, Hava let go of my hand and said, ‘Do you hear that?’ I stood beside her and together we just listened. Yes, there was a sound we thought we recognized. ‘Birds?’ Hava asked.
It sounded like pages flipping in a book, and then, thousands of leaves began falling from the sky: leaves; thousands and thousands of yellow leaves.
Hava walked into the middle of the street and looked up at the early morning sky. She spread out her arms and turned slowly, round and round and round, under the falling leaves. I held my arms close to my chest. It was a cold morning.
‘Simone,’ Hava called out, ‘look at the leaves. Aren’t they beautiful?’
They were beautiful, light-yellow leaves: maple leaves? As they floated to the ground, I realized that they weren’t ordinary maple leaves, but leaves made from thin paper. I looked up into the sky and watched the leaves twist and swirl through the air, and land on the buildings, the streets, and the bushes. Hava stopped suddenly, leaned over, and picked up a single leaf.
‘Look, Simone,’ she said as she offered me the leaf. ‘Look.’
Printed on the paper leaf, above the skull of a soldier wearing a helmet, were these words:
In autumn the leaves fall.
We fall with them. In the spring
nobody will remember the dead leaves
any more than the dead soldiers.
Life will pass over your graves.
Below these words I saw the crooked cross of a black swastika. I looked at this symbol, at the skull of the soldier. I reread the words. I thought about my father and my mother’s grave. I thought about dead soldiers and the black planes. I held the leaf in my hand and ran my finger over the black cross, the mark of death.
It was one of the most effective leaflets that Hitler dropped on the people of Europe during the war. A simple message: no one cared if we died.
The Nazi leaves soon covered the roads and pavements as they continued to fall from the distant planes.
We sat in the middle of the street as the last leaves fluttered down and then all was silent once again until Hava whispered, ‘My family. We have to hurry.’ She stood up and began to run.
The propaganda pamphlets rustled around her feet as she ran over them. They seemed to chase her as she ran down the street towards the square. I stood and called her name again and again, ‘Hava! Hava!’ but she did not stop.
More planes roared overhead. In the distance more bombs exploded and seconds later plumes of black smoke rose from behind the distant buildings. I could smell burning and imagined the heat of the flames against my cheeks.