Luc pushed Alex against the wall. “Why do you speak French with a German accent? Are you a Nazi spy?”
“A spy?” Marc said and he came forward. Both men surrounded Alex.
“I am an American. I swear it.”
“With a German accent?” Marc said. Then, turning to Luc, “I don’t trust him.”
Chapter 97
It was easier to walk down the stairs and go to work right outside of her apartment than to take the subway downtown. Anna had once loved to work downtown, with the tall buildings that were being erected, the well-dressed business people, and the sophisticated women shoppers. But now, everything in the city brought back memories of Benny. For that reason she’d not even considered applying to Macy’s. Sarah’s Second-Hand Store proved to be a godsend. Sarah appreciated Anna’s ability to sell, and she also enjoyed the lunches Wera brought down to the store for them a few days a week. In turn, Sarah was kind to Anna, paying her well, and allowing her to sit down between customers. Gimbels had never allowed that. Sarah also offered sewing jobs to Wera when better-made clothing came in to the shop in need of repair.
“It will sell better if you fix the tear on the seam,” Sarah said. She paid Wera a fair wage, and Wera was happy to stay busy.
Anna quickly developed a clientele, a following of sorts who enjoyed her excellent taste and her expert help in their fashion choices. Working at Gimbels had taught Anna to apply cosmetics properly. She wore mascara, lipstick, rouge, and powder, all perfectly applied. The women customers often asked her to help them with makeup, which gave Sarah an idea.
“What if we offered make up for sale, with lessons on how to use it? You could teach the women. Maybe we could buy the stuff at the five-and-dime, then after that we’d add a percentage, which we could split half-and-half. What do you think, Anna?”
“Sure, I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“You’ll have to go downtown and get the makeup because I don’t know what to buy.”
“How much makeup do you think we should get?”
“Oy, I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to get stuck for all that money.”
“No, I can understand.”
“Should we take a poll and ask the customers how many of them would be interested?”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
Over the next several weeks, the women asked every customer if they would be interested in purchasing and learning to apply cosmetics. Almost all of them said yes! Anna and Sarah were ecstatic. For Anna the new business venture was a perfect distraction from her misery. She would go into town and buy products she felt would sell, and then Sarah would book appointments for her to teach women, sometimes in groups, other times individually. With the men overseas, many women had entered the workforce. They wanted to look nice, polished and professional.
Wera offered to come down and help to straighten up the store so that they could set up displays and make the cosmetics attractive. Sarah loved the idea and the three women redesigned the old second hand store into a resale boutique.
The new venture began slowly, with only one appointment the first week, and another the second. Sarah began to worry that their investment in the cosmetics had been a mistake, but by the end of the month Anna had between three and four appointments a day. They sold out of their stock in a week and Anna needed to buy more.
“I wonder how expensive it would be for us to develop our own line,” Anna asked.
“We should look into it,” Sarah agreed. “This could be even more profitable then the clothes.”
However, the clothing sold in conjunction with the cosmetics. Sarah’s little store had gone from a lower-income shop to a specialized boutique carrying better resalable items for the fashion-conscious woman. They even changed the name to “Sarah’s Gently-Used Fashions.”
Anna bought candles to cover the musty smell. And the business began to thrive.
Chapter 98
Wera received a telegram saying that her husband had been wounded and would be returning home in a month. Then Wera received a letter from her husband reassuring her that he was only slightly disabled. Wera prepared for his return, relieved and excited, but sorry to see Anna move out. Anna’s old apartment next door had already been rented, so she would have to find a new place to live. The whole purpose of working at the secondhand store had been to avoid commuting, so she did not want to move too far away. Anna searched the neighborhood, looking for an available flat. She found a room in the back of a house where another family lived, but it had a private entrance and a location right across the street from Wera’s apartment and the shop. She rented it.
Chapter 99
“I am not a spy. I promise you that,” Alex said, his voice cracking with desperation. “Look, look at my dog tags.”
“You could have stolen those off of a dead soldier,” Luc said.
“Put him in the cellar. When it gets dark I’ll take him over to the Americans; let them decide what to do with him,” Marc said, holding Alex’s gun.
Chantel led Alex downstairs. “Here,” she handed him the heel of stale bread. “I’ll get you some water, but don’t tell my brothers.”
He nodded. “Thank you. I won’t.”
They were going to take him to the Americans. As soon as they saw his dog tags they’d know he was one of them and he would be would be all right. Alex breathed a sigh of relief and waited for the nightfall.
For the first time in Alex’s life, it had been an advantage to be born a Jew. When Marc and Luc delivered him to a troop of American soldiers that night, the Americans were suspicious of his accent. However, four of the soldiers were Jewish and they’d heard about the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Alex told them how he’d come to America and how he’d earned his citizenship, and how he’d joined the army and landed at Omaha Beach. Then he proved his Jewish heritage the only way he could think of to prove it… by showing them his circumcision.
“We are headed toward Germany. You will come with us.”
“Yes,” Alex agreed. He had just joined with the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division.
Chapter 100
Over the next year Alex saw combat, even had the opportunity to shoot at some Nazis. However, he could never determine if his bullet was the one that caused death. Still, at night he sometimes thought about all of the men who died: the Americans and the Germans. Once they’d been children, had friends, maybe they’d even been friends with each other; then they had gone to school. Later perhaps they’d danced with a girl, kissed her, or even gotten married. Some of them probably left children behind. And…any one of them could have been him.
Never again did Alex experience anything as brutal as the landing at Normandy. It added another vision to his nightmares.
As soon as Alex was able, he posted a letter to Anna, telling her that he loved her and letting her know he was alive and unharmed. Her answer came within a week. As he read her letter he cried, and he could feel her relief.
In every town that Alex entered, he searched for Manny, asking strangers if they’d ever heard of him, But always, he got the same answer…no one had.
On the last Sunday in April, Alex and the rest of his platoon, walked through the gates of Dachau. Memories flashed in Alex’s mind.
Dachau.
His parents had died here.
His sister, too.
And he had suffered…and still suffered...
The U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division had arrived; they had come to liberate the prisoners.
The smell of death, of urine and of feces slapped them in the face as they marched into Hitler’s death camp. The soldiers found themselves surrounded by dead bodies, and bodies so close to death from torture and starvation that it was hard to tell the living from the dead.
All of the soldiers looked at each other in shock. “How could anyone do this? This is atrocious,” Alex heard them say, their faces horrified. And Alex knew that their sympathies were real. But for him it was different. Alex fe
lt it firsthand.
He walked into the barracks where he’d once slept on the dirty straw. Bending down he touched the pile of hay filled with mold and lice. Tears streamed down his face, and he began to cry out… ”Manny… Manny... Are you here?”
Alex ran from bunk to bunk, then through all of the barracks and to the ovens, screaming “Manny! Manny!” This was where they’d burned his mother, his father, his baby sister.
“God...where were you? Answer me... Answer me…”
He tripped on a rock and fell forward, tearing the knee out of his pants leg and breaking the skin. But Alex could not feel the pain. Hhe got up and started running again through the barracks, crying out, ”Manny! Are you here?”
“Alex… Come on… Grab hold of yourself.” His sergeant tried to hold his arm, but Alex shook himself away.
“MANNY! MANNY!”
Finally, exhausted, Alex fell to the ground, his face in the dirt. He wept and wept until the other soldiers carried him away.
Although Alex knew that the war had ended, and that Germany had lost, and Hitler was dead, he could not remember much. There had been a plane ride back to the states and admittance to the psychiatric ward at the V.A. hospital, but all of that was a blur. The first clear memory he had was of Anna.
He’d been awakened by the screaming of the man in the bed next to him, who was tied down to keep him from harming himself or anyone else. Alex turned his head to see the man, red-faced, veins standing straight out of his neck as he tried to hurl himself off the bed, fighting against the restraints.
How long had he been lying in this bed? Was he still in Germany? France?
And then he saw her…”Anna, my Anna.” His throat parched. He could barely speak above a whisper. Could it be a dream?
“Anna? Is it really you?” It took all the strength he had to reach his hand out to her. He wanted to feel her touch, to know that she stood there, before him, real, flesh and blood.
She bent beside him and he saw that she was crying. “Alex...” Taking his hand, she brought it to her lips. “Alex.”
“I love you,” he said. “I love you with all my heart.”
“I know. I love you too,” she said. “Do you want some water?”
He nodded. She held the glass to his lips. He sipped slowly.
“Anna...” he said, “Something happened while I was in England.” Alex said. “There was a girl, a nurse...”
Anna looked at him, shaken.
“One night we walked to her room. She invited me in…”
Anna began to feel sick. She knew she shouldn’t; after all, hadn’t she done the same thing? This knowledge should free her from guilt, but it didn’t. It hurt.
“Alex,” she said. “Oh Alex, please don’t be hard on yourself. I did something terrible too. I need to tell you. I must tell you.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe if we both confess, we can start all over again.” She couldn’t look directly at him, but she knew she must continue; he must know the truth. “When you were gone… I had a lover… I got pregnant. And I aborted the baby purposely.”
“Anna?” His face turned white. The grip he had on her hand loosened.
“Yes, I am sorry. I was so lonely… I never meant to hurt you.”
“I wanted to go with Nelly, Anna... I wanted to be with someone to feel warm and safe. But I couldn’t. I didn’t because I love you. I love you too much to ever take another woman as a lover. That’s what I wanted to tell you. How could you do this to me?”
She started to cry. “Oh, Alex, I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”
He took his hand out of hers. His face felt hot; then the heat spread over his entire body. “Go home, Anna. I need to be alone. I need time to think.”
“Please, Alex… Please don’t do this… I never stopped loving you...not even…”
“Anna…go. Please, just go.”
She stood up and walked out the door of his room, out of the hospital, and took the subway home.
That night Wera came by her apartment.
“You want to come for dinner?”
“No thanks, Wera. I’m tired, worn out.”
“You look terrible. How is Alex?” Wera asked. She knew that he was in the hospital. Anna had been waiting for several days for him to regain consciousness.
“I told him about Benny.”
“Oh my God, Anna, why did you tell him, especially now when he is so weak?”
Anna just shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t have told him, but I was afraid that a lie like that would keep us from ever being close again.”
Wera touched Anna’s cheek.
“Do you think he will divorce me?”
“I don’t know, but if he does you are a strong woman, Anna. You will survive.”
Chapter 101
Anna called the hospital every day to check on Alex’s condition, but he refused to speak to her and eventually placed her on a no-call, no-visitor list. Whatever they’d shared was over. Anna would have to go on without him. She had no choice. She continued to work at the thrift store and tried to find out information about her parents, sending letters to the Red Cross in search of their names on the survivor lists.
Three months passed before she received an answer. Both her parents had been killed by the Nazis. Even though Anna, had assumed they were gone, when she received the official papers she wept. Now she need not search anymore. They were not in hiding; they would never contact her. Her mama, and papa, who had loved and nurtured her, saving her life by sending her away on the St. Louis, never even thinking of their own lives, had been brutally murdered and their bodies burned in an oven. Anna folded the letter and put it into the desk. She wished she could talk to Alex; he would understand her pain. But Alex, too, was gone.
Sarah kept Anna busy. Even though the men had returned from the war and most women had left their jobs, the little boutique continued to thrive.
At night Anna returned to a dark apartment. She no longer ran to the mailbox. She knew that nothing would arrive, nothing of importance, only bills and sales notices.
When Anna had moved into this small room she’d had a phone installed. It almost never rang, but it gave Sarah and Wera the opportunity to call her if they needed her. That night she picked up the phone and called Wera to let her know that she’d gotten a good price on a dozen apples and Wera was welcome to come over and take some. “I can’t come tonight. Would tomorrow be all right for you?”
“Yes, but I have a late appointment tomorrow, a woman coming in for a cosmetic lesson, so it would have to be around eight.”
“I’ll bring you something for dinner. I have to cook anyway, so I’ll bring something by,” Wera said. “Then maybe I’ll make a pie with some of the apples and bring you half. Sounds good?”
“You don’t have to. I’m fine.”
“Of course you are. I know that but I like to bring food… It makes me feel good. So you’ll do it for me.”
“Well, thank you. See you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye.”
Anna hung up the phone. She missed living with Wera, missed the camaraderie of having a friend always there to talk with. And she missed Benny and his sweet smile. But most of all, she missed Alex.
As she ate a cheese sandwich after work on that Wednesday night Anna thought about moving out of the city. It would be nice to get away from everything. But her job was there. So maybe she would get a puppy or a kitten. Yes, that might be a good idea. Cats were a little easier to care for. They didn’t require that you be at home all the time. Yes, perhaps she would get a little kitten, a companion.
She placed the plate with the half-eaten sandwich on the table beside the bed and picked up the newspaper looking for animals for sale.
The telephone rang.
Anna picked it up on the first ring. Wera’s probably calling to change the time tomorrow, she thought.
“Hello.”
“Anna… It’s Alex.”
“Alex…” She
could barely speak. His voice touched a place deep inside of her. “How are you?”
“I’m feeling better, thank you.” He sighed, “Listen,” he said, hesitating for a moment. “I have been talking to someone here in the hospital, a doctor. He made a suggestion to me. He thinks that if I write a book about everything that happened in Dachau and on the MS St. Louis, it might help me to come to terms with all of the thoughts and feelings that constantly haunt me. I have decided that I am going to write it and dedicate it to Manny.”
“I think that is a wonderful idea.”
“But Anna…I can’t do it without you.”
She could hear in his voice that he was crying. She was crying too.
“Please, Alex, come home. I miss you. I need you. I know I was wrong, but please, Alex, forgive me. We’ll write it together. Only we know the story the way it really happened.”
“Yes, that’s very true. Only we know what really happened.” She heard him sigh, and then there were several minutes of silence. “Anna…I will come home.”
“I love you so much, Alex. I am so sorry for everything.”
“Anna, my Anna... We will write it together.”
Chapter 102
FEBRUARY 4, 2009
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
CAFÉ EUROPA, THE SURVIVORS’ LUNCHEON
The roar of the crowd finally died down as Anna Mittleman walked slowly up the stairs to the stage. Even though she was well past her prime, true to her nature, she still looked elegant.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Anna said. “It is truly an honor for me to be here, and I know if Alex were still alive he would feel the same way. I lost my dear husband a little over two years ago to cancer. Our lives were not always easy, but they were always filled with love. Alex was not only my husband, but also my best friend. He survived Dachau, D-day and combat, but I lost him to a small tumor that formed on his pancreas. A day does not go by that I do not think of him and as those of you who have lost a spouse will understand, I find myself talking to him as I go about my daily routine. As most of you know, my husband and I co-authored the book, “A Life with Purpose,” a memoir of our voyage on the ill-fated MS St. Louis. We dedicated this book to Manny. If you have read it you will understand. Without Manny’s sacrifice, there is a very good chance that neither Alex nor I would have survived. Until his death, my husband and I searched for Manny, but we never found him, nor were we able to find any information about what happened to him. However, for reasons of his own Alex kept procrastinating on publishing this book. It was on his deathbed that he finally said to me, “When I am gone, Anna, take the book to a publisher and release it to the world.” I can remember sitting at his bedside and crying because I knew that soon he would be leaving me, and the next time we would meet, it would be on the other side. On the day that I was notified that the book had become available at bookstores I remembered the last day of Alex’s live. He refused to die in a hospital room, so I brought him home. It was early on a winter morning and a cold front had just come through. Alex lay in bed. I lay beside him and we were watching the sunrise. “Are you cold? Should I get some more blankets or turn the heat higher?” I asked him. He shook his head, smiled, and squeezed my hand; then he said, “Well… I think it’s time for me to go.” I sat up and looked at him and he winked at me. “I’ll see you on other side. Don’t forget. Publish the book, for me, for yourself…and for Manny.” I was stunned. Even though I knew he was dying for a long time, when the time finally arrived it felt like a knife in my heart. “Alex…” was all I could say. Then he smiled at me and said, “Don’t be afraid, Anna. This book is our reason for living. It was our purpose for being on earth. We must be sure to let the world know what happened so that it never happens to our people again. Publish it.” He kissed my hand. “Anna, my Anna…” he said, and then he was gone.
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