Rachel
Winter brought heavy snow that lay thick on the streets and unseasonably low temperatures that strained the city’s resources. Electricity failures and enforced blackouts were common, sending even the heartiest creatures scurrying for shelter. As January turned to February and February crept into March, the air remained frigid, and ice formed on the inside of the Bermans’ apartment windows. The mood in Paris was as miserable as the weather. The occupiers were ruthless with their rules. The French police were worse.
Men in blue tunics positioned themselves alongside the gray-green-uniformed Germans. They were everywhere, questioning people in the streets, conducting random searches of people’s homes. The curfew was tightened to 8:00 p.m. again, for all Parisians, not just Jews, and yet vandalism of Jewish businesses remained frequent and unchecked.
The Wozniaks’ bakery had been only the first. Ezra Berman came home every night with tales of another business falling prey to vandals and ruffians looking to loot as much as spew their hate. Thus far, his tailor shop had been spared. How long would that continue?
The mood at the hotel had changed, at least toward Rachel, and in the worst possible way. Her hours had been cut to almost nothing, her wages so low they amounted to poverty level. She was forbidden to venture out of the laundry. She rarely saw Camille anymore, and when she did, it was only to collect whatever soiled linens she was there to deliver. Her friend was always quick with a kind word, but the war posed challenges for her as well. The girl was working too hard, working extra shifts Rachel would have taken had she been offered the opportunity.
Rachel was tired of being cold and afraid, always worrying. And the waiting, so much waiting, knowing the vandals were always looking to vent their disgust at a Jewish man earning a living that had catapulted him to the middle class. Even after all the violence, Ezra Berman believed obedience was their best route, their only route to survival. He displayed the sign that designated his shop as a Jewish-owned business. Rachel had begged him not to, she’d begged and begged. His response was always the same. “Our neighbors know we are Jewish. This is not something we can hide.”
“Must you advertise to the vandals?”
“It is the law. We will obey this decree, as we have all the others.”
“But, Papa. You might as well have put a target in the window.”
Smiling fondly, he patted her on the head. “You worry too much, córka.”
And he worried not enough.
A week later, Rachel’s worst fears were realized. Vandals unleashed their anti-Semitism on her father’s shop. They broke glass, sprayed ugly slurs on the walls, and ripped spools upon spools of valuable fabric into shreds.
Fortunately, no one was injured—that was what her father said and her mother echoed. Rachel knew they were right, but that only seemed to add to the abuse. The cowards’ destructive violence had happened overnight while the family slept in their beds two blocks away. Scheduled for a later shift at the hotel, Rachel would spend the morning washing the paint off the walls with Basia’s help. Her brother was assigned to cleaning up the glass, while their parents inventoried what was lost. They tried desperately to salvage what could be saved or repaired, which Rachel feared was very little.
Circling her gaze over the destruction, she felt a rage so deep that she nearly howled from the pain. But it was her mother’s face that brought true alarm. Her expression, as she sorted through the ruined bolts of cloth, was empty, as blank as a new piece of paper. Her eyes were open and seeing, but they contained nothing at all. Nothing.
Rachel’s father showed similar signs of shock. His skin had gone gray and his lips slack. He sagged to the ground and kept plucking at the loose threads, plucking, plucking. Then, suddenly, his jaw clamped shut, his mind working frantically behind his dazed expression. He was probably thinking of their neighbors, the ones he’d sworn would protect them, or perhaps the French police, the government’s decrees. Did any of it matter? Rachel looked around at the destruction. This was their reality now as Jews living in Paris.
No one would stand up for them. There would be no more talk of escape. The fight was over. Their very existence came down to one goal. Survival.
Basia, her face tight with anguish, brought a fresh bucket of water to where Rachel stood facing the wall of insults and slurs. “We should get started.”
Rachel stared at the foul words slashed across the wall, her eyes landing on one of the slurs she often heard at work, barely whispered, constantly within earshot, spoken in French, not German. Sale Juif. Dirty Jew. Seeing the insult in plain sight, so bold and vicious, sent a queasy feeling through her stomach, and she broke out in a cold sweat. Terror and desperation were her constant companions. It was as if some huge curtain had been pulled back and she saw the situation in a new, more frightening light.
Sale Juif.
Another wave of nausea threatened. Struggling to bring the sensation under control, she placed her hand over mouth.
Slowly, the sickness retreated.
If only restoring the shreds of her dignity were so easy.
She didn’t know what was worse. The shame or the fury. One brought humiliation, the other dark thoughts that made her question the nature of her character. The two emotions tangled, building into one hard knot of inevitability. Persecution was coming. And death.
Anger bled through her shame, the former all but wiping out the latter, and now Rachel knew which of the two emotions held dominance in her life. Rage, dark and red as the slashes of paint across the wall. The slurs weren’t original. Sale Juif. But also, Le Porc. Swine. Cafard. Cockroach. Rat.
No, not original. But offensive. Reading the ugly words, knowing they were directed at her father, it was too much to bear. Her thoughts were as tangled as the gnarled roots of an ancient oak.
“Rachel.”
Basia’s soft voice, so devastated and hurt, but also worried. It was the worry that pushed Rachel into action. “I’m ready.”
She wrung out the rag, flicked the last few drops into the bucket, and scrubbed. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her hands were chafed and her mind was as blank as her mother’s face. As if hearing her thoughts, her mother came to stand beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. They shared a tight smile. Then, together they faced the wall and stared at Rachel’s handiwork. The words were gone, the bloodred now a smeared, sickly pink.
“You did a fine job.”
It was a lie. Well-meaning, but still a lie. For her benefit or her mother’s?
Rachel leaned her head on the older woman’s shoulder. So thin, so bony, from worry as much as scarcity forced on them by the occupiers. Always the last in line for rationing coupons. The same was true at the baker’s shop, the grocer, and often—too often—they were forced to go without. She pushed the thought away and reminded herself that she was alive and with her entire family. No one gone or disappeared or carted away. But as that thought arrived, it faded, and the wall became all she could see. They were being targeted because they were considered different, and for what? They’d done nothing wrong. “Why do they hate us so?”
“It’s not personal, malen´ka. It’s their fear that makes them hate, and their lack of—”
“No, Mama, you’re wrong. It is personal. All of it. This...this,” she hissed, waving her hand in an arc that included the entire shop. “It’s absolutely, undeniably personal. This attack, the destruction and slurs, it was directed at Papa and his shop because he followed the rules and put up the sign.”
Her mother said nothing, her silence giving Rachel no comfort, only more confusion. More fear. The awful, weighty feeling stuck in her chest. Stepping back, until she was alone and isolated even from her mother, Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and hunched forward as if she could make herself smaller. She glared at the wall, the words unreadable now but there in the smeared paint, branded eternally on her mind.
Parisians had aligned themselves with the Nazis. They hated as strongly as their counterparts in Germany. They’d taken sides and had begun avoiding Jews on the streets. No eye contact, no use of given names, turning them into mere figures with faces. Not real people, but nameless creatures that breathed. Animal rather than human. Rachel couldn’t see the end in her mind. But she knew nothing good was coming.
No, nothing good at all.