by Pam Jenoff
“You raised your sisters Jewish?” I nod. In the new world, there had been no need to be afraid. People treated us as Holocaust survivors and I felt guilty at that because we had escaped so much of what the known Jews had suffered. But Mama was Jewish, and Sam, too, and suddenly it was who we were and as natural as slipping into an old sweater.
“Ruth died in the camps. But not because she was a Jew.” That was the irony. The records for Biekowice and the hospital had not been reconciled when they found Ruth. They arrested her as a political prisoner, accused of helping the resistance.
“And they shot her when she wouldn’t talk, presumably.”
“Because she couldn’t talk—she didn’t know anything. I did.”
Suddenly it is as if the past sixty-plus years have been erased and I am a young woman once more. “Tell me,” I say, now hungry for news. “What of my family’s home? Was it destroyed, too?”
The woman shook her head. “It’s still there. A Polish family named Slomir owns it now.”
I stifle a laugh. Pan Slomir had gotten the property, just like he had always wanted. “You know, if you want to get it back, there are ways. A property restitution law has been passed.”
I shake my head slightly. I have no interest in such things. I now have the only belongings I want: the memories in my mind—and the truth about what happened to my brother.
“So are you okay with the development proceeding? We can have Michal’s bones brought here and reburied in a Jewish cemetery.”
“Yes.” It will be good to have him close again.
“You know you should be recognized for what you did for Sam. Your name should be in Yad V’Shem and the Holocaust Museum, not mistakenly listed among the victims at Auschwitz.”
But I shake my head. “I had more than sixty years with Sam and a family to love, and that’s more reward than any plaque or ceremony. I’m proud to have my name among the victims. They’re my people, my sister. A part of me did die there.”
“And you’ve never told anyone?” I shake my head. “Mrs. Rosen, I mean, Helena, if you’ll forgive my saying, you have to do it. People should know.”
I smile faintly. “Everyone who needs to know already does.” Of course, they are almost all gone. I raise my hands. “I just don’t have the words.”
She reaches in her bag and produces a small recorder. “You don’t have to write, you can just push this button and talk. Or we could have coffee and you could tell me. Even if you never do anything with it. Someone should know.” She stands and brushes the lint from her pants, then passes me her card. “I don’t want to bother you further. I’ll be in touch about the bones. And thank you for your time.” I stand motionless as she closes the door behind her.
Someone should know. Her words linger in the now-empty apartment. Once again I am that girl in the chapel, swaying with a solider in the semidarkness to a tune hummed low.
I think of Sam, of my siblings. Dorie and Karolina are too young to remember. But someone should know. I press the button. “My name is Helena Rosen...” And then I begin to speak.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE AMBASSADOR’S DAUGHTER by Pam Jenoff.
Acknowledgments
Many years ago when I was working at the Pentagon, I had the good fortune to accompany a delegation of senior U.S. officials to Europe and Asia for fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the Second World War. Our first trip was to a tiny cabin in the mountainous woods near Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, where several American intelligence officers had been captured and later executed during an attempt to assist the Slovak uprising. The Americans had been aided in their mission by a young Slovak woman. I was immediately taken by the tale and have long sought to create a story inspired by theirs in one of my books.
A few years later, when I was posted to Poland for the State Department and working on Holocaust issues, I became acquainted with the issue of the bones. Because the Nazis destroyed so many Jewish cemeteries and killed and buried so many people in unmarked graves, human remains are sometimes found in unexpected locations. This can present problems regarding identification of the bones, making sure that they are buried properly and ensuring that sites which were cemeteries are not disturbed.
After two decades, I am still processing my time in Central and Eastern Europe. My experiences with the commemoration in Slovakia and the bones in Poland came together to create a tale of a downed American airman, rescued by a young Polish woman, and their possible connection to remains found more than a half century later. I placed the setting to a fictitious village in Poland for reasons of story and (as a mom of twin girls myself) gave the heroine a twin to explore the dynamic between sisters. Thus, The Winter Guest was born.
As always, I’m so grateful to Susan Swinwood and her entire team at MIRA, who make the publishing experience sheer joy. Deepest thanks also to Scott Hoffman for his wonderful time and talent. Finally, my greatest love and appreciation are reserved for my “village”: my husband, Phillip, and our three little muses, my mom, Marsha, brother, Jay, in-laws Ann and Wayne, and friends and colleagues too many to name. Without you, none of this would be possible—or worthwhile.
Questions for Discussion
Which sister did you identify with more closely, Helena or Ruth? If you have a sibling, were you able to relate to their rivalry, camaraderie and the distinct role each of them played in the family?
Under what circumstances would you make a decision like Helena’s—one that put yourself and potentially the ones you love at risk? Would you have helped Sam, or looked the other way to protect your family?
Despite the horrors of war, a romantic view of WWI and WWII abounds in historical novels. What is it about wartime that drew men and women together so powerfully, like Helena and Sam? Do you believe it is possible for people to fall in love so quickly and for such a love to last?
How did each of the sisters’ strengths and weaknesses come to light in the story—and what role did Sam play in how they were revealed?
Discuss the sisters’ relationship as it evolved throughout the book. In what ways had it improved or deteriorated by the end?
The Nowak sisters were living in an environment and coping with situations that were completely overwhelming, especially for such young women. What do you think each really wanted out of life, and in your view were those dreams achievable?
Did you identify with any symbolic items or places throughout the book? What did they represent to you?
Helena’s feelings toward the Jews—and the Poles’ views of the Jews—were multifaceted. What was your reaction to these varying perspectives?
Were you surprised to learn what had happened to the Nowak siblings in the epilogue? Did you feel it was the appropriate ending for each of the characters?
“Stirring...Historical romance fans will be well rewarded.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Diplomat’s Wife
If you loved The Winter Guest by acclaimed author Pam Jenoff, be sure to catch her other emotional and compelling titles, available in ebook format:
The Ambassador’s Daughter
The Diplomat’s Wife
The Kommandant’s Girl
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1
I cycle through the Jardin des Tuileries, navigating carefully around the slippery spots on the damp gravel path. The December air is crisp with the promise of snow and the bare branches of the chestnut trees bow over me like a procession of sabers. I pedal faster past the park benches, savoring the wind against my face and opening my mouth to gulp the air. A startled squirrel darts behind the base of a marble statute. My hair loosens, a sail billowing behind me, pushing me
farther and faster, and for a moment it is almost possible to forget that I am in Paris.
The decision to come had not been mine. “I’ve been asked to go to the peace conference,” Papa informed me unexpectedly less than a month ago. He had previously professed no interest in taking part in “the dog and pony show at Versailles,” and had harrumphed frequently as he read the details of the preparations in the Times. “Uncle Walter thinks...” he added, as he so often did. I did not need to listen to the rest. My mother’s older brother, an industrialist who had taken over the electronics firm their father founded, could not attend the peace conference himself after contributing so much to the war machine. He considered it important, though, to somehow have a voice at the table, a presence before the Germans were formally summoned. So he had secured an invitation for Papa, an academic who had spent the war visiting at Oxford, to advise the conference. It was important to be there before Wilson’s ship arrived, Papa explained. We packed up our leased town house hurriedly and boarded a ferry at Dover.
Papa had not been happy to come, either, I reflect, as I reach the end of the park and slow. The street is choked thick with motorcars and lorries and autobuses, and a few terrified horses trying to pull carriages amid the traffic. He had pulled forlornly on his beard as we boarded the train in Calais, bound for Paris. It was not just his reluctance to be torn from his studies at the university, immersed in the research and teaching he loved so, and thrust into the glaring spotlight of the world’s political stage. We are the defeated, a vanquished people, and in the French capital we loved before the war, we are now regarded as the enemy. In England, it had been bad enough. Though Papa’s academic status prevented him from being interned like so many German men, we were outsiders, eyed suspiciously at the university. I could not wear the war ribbon as the smug British girls did when their fiancés were off fighting, because mine was for the wrong side. But outside of our immediate Oxford circle it had been relatively easy to fade into the crowd with my accentless English. Here, people know who we are, or will, once the conference formally begins. The recriminations will surely be everywhere.
My skirts swish airily as I climb from the bike, thankfully free of the crinolines that used to make riding so cumbersome. The buildings on the rue Cambon sparkle, their shrapnel-pocked facades washed fresh by the snow. I stare up at the endless apartments, stacked on top of one another, marveling at the closeness of it all, unrivaled by the most crowded quarters in London. How do they live in such spaces? Sometimes I feel as though I am suffocating just looking at them. Growing up in Berlin, I’m no stranger to cities. But everything here is exponentially bigger—the wide, traffic-clogged boulevards, square after square grander than the next. The pavement is packed, too, with lines of would-be customers beneath the low striped awning of the cheese shop, and outside the chocolatier where the sign says a limited quantity will be available at three o’clock. A warm, delicious aroma portends the sweets’ arrival.
A moment later, I turn onto a side street and pull the bike up against the wall, which is covered in faded posters exhorting passersby to buy war bonds. A bell tinkles as I enter the tiny bookshop. “Bonjour.” The owner, Monsieur Batteau, accustomed to my frequent visits, nods but does not look up from the till.
I squeeze down one of the narrow aisles and scan the packed shelves hungrily. When we first arrived in Paris weeks earlier, it was books that I missed the most: the dusty stacks of the college library at Magdalen, the bounty of the stalls at the Portobello Road market. Then one day I happened upon this shop. Books had become a luxury few Parisians could afford during the war and there were horrible stories of people burning them for kindling, or using their pages for toilet paper. But some had instead brought them to places like this, selling them for a few francs in order to buy bread. The result is a shop bursting at the seams with books, piled haphazardly in floor-to-ceiling stacks ready to topple over at any moment. I run my hand over a dry, cracked binding with affection. The titles are odd—old storybooks mix with volumes about politics and poetry in a half-dozen languages and an abundance of war novels, for which it seems no one has the stomach anymore.
I hold up a volume of Goethe. It has to be at least a hundred years old, but other than its yellowed pages it is in good condition, its spine still largely intact. Before the war, it would have been worth money. Here, it sits discarded and unrecognized, a gem among the rubble.
“Pardon,” Monsieur Batteau says a short while later, “but if you’d like to buy anything...” I glance up from the travelogue of Africa I’d been browsing. I’ve been in the shop scarcely thirty minutes and the light outside has not yet begun to fade. “I’m closing early today, on account of the parade.”
“Of course.” How could I have forgotten? President Wilson arrives today. I stand and pass Monsieur Batteau a few coins, then tuck the Goethe tome and the book on botany I’d selected into my satchel. Outside the street is transformed—the queues have dissipated, replaced with soldiers and men in tall hats and women with parasols, all moving in a singular direction. Leaving the bike, I allow myself to be carried by the stream as it feeds into the rue de Rivoli. The wide boulevard, now closed to motorcars, is filled with pedestrians.
The movement of the crowd stops abruptly. A moment later we surge forward again, reaching the massive octagon of the Place de la Concorde, the mottled gray buildings stately and resplendent in the late-afternoon sun. The storied square where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were executed is an endless mass of bodies, punctuated by the captured German cannons brought here after the armistice. The statues in the corners, each symbolizing a French town, have been covered in laurels.
The crowd pushes in behind me, onlookers from every side street attempting to pack the already choked space. I am surrounded by a sea of tall men, the damp wool from their coats pressing against my face, making it impossible to breathe. Close spaces have never suited me. Trying not to panic, I squeeze through to one of the cannons. I hitch my skirt and climb onto the wheel, the steel icy against my legs through my stockings. “Pardon,” I say to the startled young man already on top of the gun.
There are flags everywhere, I can see from my new vantage point, banners unfurled from the balconies of the columned Hôtel de Crillon, American flags in the hands of the children. “Wilson the Just!” placards declare. A lane has been formed through the square, roped off with great swaths of sky-blue cloth to keep the crowd back. Airplanes, lower and louder than I’ve ever heard, roar overhead.
A few feet to the right of the cannon, a woman in a blue cape catches my eye. N
early forty by the looks of her, she stands still in the feverish crowd. She is tall, her posture perfectly erect, with chestnut-brown hair piled upon her head. She is somehow familiar, though from where I cannot say. Abruptly, she turns and begins walking, swimming against the tide, slipping away from the gathering. Who would leave before Wilson’s arrival? Surely there is nowhere else to be in the city now. I wonder fleetingly if she is ill, but her movements are calm and fluid as she disappears into the crowd.
The din grows to a roar. I turn my attention back to the square as a row of mounted soldiers canters into view, wearing the bright helmets of the Garde Republicaine. The horses raise their heads high, snorting great clouds of frost from their flared nostrils. The crowd pushes in, twisting the once-straight lane into a serpentine. I shudder as unseen guns erupt jarringly in the distance. Surely that is not a sound any of us needs to hear anymore.
Behind the horses, a procession of open carriages appears. The first bears a man in a long coat and top hat with a woman beside him. Though it is too far away for me to see, I can tell by the whoops that he is President Wilson. As the carriage draws closer and stops in front of the hotel, I recognize Wilson from the photos. He waves to the crowd as he climbs down. But his bespectacled face is solemn, as if seeing for the first time the hopes of so many that hang on his promises.
