Prologue
Paris
May 23, 1941
“Every generation nurses the hope that the world will begin anew.” Those were the last words his father had said in the train station. The man had crouched down on his haunches in his ironed gray suit to be on Moses’s level. The child looked out with his big black eyes and sighed, not understanding what his father meant. The station filled with strangely sugary-smelling white smoke. His mother watched with tear-swollen eyes, and her cheeks were so red she looked as if she had just scaled a mountain. Moses could still remember her delicate white gloves, the damp, cold feel of that spring, and the sensation that his little world was ripping apart. His father attempted a smile beneath his thin brown mustache, but it ended up a tortured grimace. Moses clung to his mother’s legs. Jana smoothed the boy’s blond hair and bent down. She took her son’s chubby, rosy cheeks in her hands and kissed him with her dark lips, her tears mixing with the child’s.
Jacob pulled at his brother. A light steam emanated from the engine’s wheels, and the train gave a final whistle as if the huge frame of metal and wood were sighing in grief over the souls it had to separate. Aunt Judith hugged Jacob’s chest, both protective and worried. All around, German soldiers moved like moths attracted by the light. They had neglected to pin the yellow stars to their chest that morning. Judith feared the Nazis could detect them with a single stony blue glance.
Eleazar and Jana turned away. Their coats swirled among the crowd of people with hands waving goodbye to other loved ones. In the midst of that boundless ocean of raised arms, Jacob and Moses saw their parents melt away until they disappeared completely. Moses clung to his aunt’s hand with a ferocity intent on keeping her beside him. Judith turned her head and looked at her nephew’s short bowl cut, the blond hair gleaming in the sun that filtered through the station’s skylights. Then she looked at the other child, Jacob, with his dark brown curly hair. His big black eyes were set in a serious, angry expression, nearly rageful. The night before he had begged their parents to take them away from Paris, vowing that they would be good and behave, but Eleazar and Jana could not bring the children with them until they had a safe place to hide. Nothing bad would happen to the children in Paris, and Aunt Judith was too old to flee. She had taken them in six years before when the family could no longer endure the pressure in Berlin. Aunt Judith was more French than German; nobody would bother her.
They left the station as the sky began to turn leaden blue and the first cold drops spilled over the stone pavement. Judith opened her green umbrella and the three huddled together silently in the futile effort to avoid the downpour. They arrived soaked at Judith’s tiny apartment on the other side of Paris, just where the city’s beauty faded into a scabby, gray scene that made the glamour of cafés and fine restaurants seem like a distant mirage. They had taken the metro and then the noisy, rusty tram. The two boys had sat in the wooden seat at the front while their aunt sat just behind and allowed her eyes to relax their efforts against tears.
Moses studied his brother, whose brow was still furrowed. Jacob’s freckles blurred together with raindrops and his frowning red lips were tensed to bursting. Moses did not understand the world. Jacob always called him “clueless,” but the younger boy did understand that whatever had happened was bad enough to make their parents leave them. They had never been alone before. Moses still believed his mother was an extension of himself. At night, despite his father’s grumbling, he slept pressed up against her, as the mere proximity of her skin calmed him. Her smell was the only perfume Moses could stand, and he knew he would always be safe as long as her lovely green eyes watched him.
As the boy had looked out through the dirty windows of the tram, the ghostly figures of the pedestrians jumbled together with the delivery trucks and old wagons that left the streets littered and rank with the droppings of their workhorses. This was his world. He had been born in Germany, but he recalled nothing of his home country. His mother still spoke to him in their native tongue, though he always answered in French, thus somehow making a statement against the place they had been forced to flee. Where would they go now? He felt like the world was closing at his feet, like when schoolmates avoided him at recess, apparently struck with fear or nausea at the sight of the yellow star on his chest. “Children of the yellow star” is what people called them. To Moses, stars were the lights God had created so that night would not swallow everything up. Yet the world now seemed orphaned of stars, dark and cold like the wardrobe where he would hide to trick his parents and from which he always jumped out as soon as possible so the immense blackness did not devour him completely.
Part 1
Chapter 1
Paris
July 16, 1942
Jacob helped his brother get ready. He had been doing it for so long he went through the motions mechanically. They hardly talked as Jacob pulled off Moses’s pajamas and helped him into his pants, shirt, and shoes. Moses was quiet with a lost, indifferent expression that sometimes broke Jacob’s heart. Jacob knew Moses was old enough to get dressed on his own, but this was one way he could show his younger brother he was not alone, that they would stay together until the end and would be back with their parents as soon as possible.
Spring had gone by quickly enough, but the hot summer promised to drag on. Today was the first day of summer vacation. Aunt Judith left very early in the morning for work, and they were to fix breakfast, straighten up the apartment, buy food at the market, and go to the synagogue for bar mitzvah preparation. Their aunt insisted on it since Jacob was almost old enough to assume the bar mitzvah responsibilities of Jewish laws. He, however, thought it was all nonsense. Their parents had never taken them to the synagogue, and Eleazar and Jana themselves had known practically nothing about Judaism until they got to Paris. But Aunt Judith had always been devout and became even more so after her husband died in the Great War.
Jacob got his brother dressed and helped him wash his face. Then they both went to the kitchen, whose blue tiles were now dull from decades of scrubbing. The table, painted sky blue, had seen better days, but it held a basket with a few slices of black bread and cheese. Jacob poured some milk, heated it over the sputtering gas stove, and served it in two steaming bowls.
Moses ate as if safeguarding his breakfast from bread robbers all around. At eight years old, hardly a moment went by when he did not feel rapaciously hungry. Jacob was just as capable of eating everything in sight, which forced Judith to keep the pantry locked. Each day she set out their humble rations for breakfast and lunch and at night prepared a frugal supper of soup light on noodles or vegetables in a cream sauce. It was scant fare for two boys in their prime growing years, but the German occupation was exhausting the country’s reserves.
In the summer of 1940, the French, especially Parisians, had fled en masse to the southern parts of the country, but most had returned home months later as they saw that the German occupation was not as barbaric as they had imagined. Jacob’s family had not left the city then, despite being German exiles, but his father had taken the precaution of seeking refuge in his sister’s house, hoping they would not easily raise Nazi suspicion.