by Karla M Jay
She let them paint any way they wanted and never criticized their artwork. Mama explained why Mevr. Dicker-Brandeis was so special. When she and her husband were told to leave their home, instead of filling her suitcase with clothes and jewelry, she reached her luggage weight limit with art supplies.
Her only rule, and this one made Izaak the happiest of all, was they could not draw anything from the camp. Their drawing needed to “move their minds to a different world.”
Dipping into a brilliant green, Izaak dotted the background of his paper. A blue-green mixture came next. He disappeared into his work, smelling the fresh aroma from the field and the warmth of the summer sun on his back. The orange poppies brushed up against his legs, soft and fuzzy. Bees buzzed, a sound he used to be afraid of, but now it meant fresh air and freedom. He painted a house in the distance which was surrounded by apple trees, with a window and a door, barely showing through the branches and leaves. Then he walked to the house, and the fragrance of his mama’s meat pie was strong on the breeze. He could almost taste the pastry filled with meat, cabbage, and sharp goat cheese. There would be lemonade. Then Papa would pat his full tummy, laughing about moving in with the hippos at the zoo.
Izaak painted layer after layer, each leading to something new.
At last, the sounds in the room brought him back to the class. He studied his painting and smiled. Someday, he and Mama and Papa would walk through a field just like this.
Mevr. Dicker-Brandeis leaned over him, placing her hands on the table, and rested her chin on top of his head. She sighed. “So beautiful, Izaak. You will be famous one day if”—her voice broke apart, as if she might be crying—“as you continue painting.”
He turned and studied her face. It was squeezed tight, but she had no tears. She produced a smile and then took his painting to hang on a clothesline to dry. With hundreds of drawings and paintings stored inside this space, the room held an earthy odor of paint and wet paper. A wonderful scent so thick he tasted it in the back of his mouth, long after he returned to his barracks.
When everyone finished, Mevr. Dicker-Brandeis walked them to the room at the end of the building, where he and the other students washed their hands and arms. The mixture of colors from his hands ran together to make a beautiful river along the inside of the white sink and then down the drain—his escapist dream washed away for another day.
Izaak and six other children walked home together after art class. A man, leading the horse-drawn hearse filled with bread for the evening meal, stopped near him and his friends to watch the workers put up a new building in the town square. Izaak loved bread, but knew this same hearse took dead people to the Columbarium where the bodies got burned each morning. He tried not to think about the dead when he ate. He asked Mama why the dead were burned. She explained there was no room to bury all the deceased in their own graves, which was Jewish law, so the camp bosses suggested cremation.
“What’s that going to be?” Izaak asked the hearse driver.
“A bandstand.” The man raised his chin to the new construction as he picked his teeth with a small stick. “We’ll have outside concerts now.”
Music would make his mama happy. When she and Papa went to musical performances, they’d always come home cheerful and chatty about the wonderful evening.
“This really is turning into the best town,” Izaak said.
The man bunched his face together and looked so sharply at Izaak that he quickly took a step away so angry germs wouldn’t get on him. “We are all in a play, son. We just don’t know how it ends yet.”
The man slapped the horse on the rear and continued down the street.
A younger boy took Izaak’s hand, tears running down his face.
“What’s wrong?”
The boy’s voice quivered. “That man.”
Izaak understood what the child meant. The man’s words sounded scary. He didn’t really understand them, but the way the man spoke made Izaak suddenly afraid of their new life.
He squeezed the small hand in his. “Some people are never happy.” Then he rubbed the boy’s fuzzy head like his mama always rubbed his. Under the new town rules, they didn’t need to have bald heads any longer. His mama and he were in a contest to see who could grow out their hair the fastest. He pulled the boy along and the other children followed.
“Do you like music?”
All the children nodded.
“Good. Because soon we will have music under the pretty moon instead of in the stinky attics.”
He pictured nighttime concerts. The crickets. Stars sprinkled across the dark sky. Music floating all the way up to heaven for angels to enjoy.
The man with the hearse just had a bad attitude, probably because he didn’t get to paint or do happy things. Instead, he just hauled around the dead and the bread. Mama said having a positive attitude would give Izaak great powers to overcome hard times.
And today was a positive day. He might get a part in the children’s opera and that made him happy. In his thoughts, he ran away inside a sunlit Klimt poppy field like on the postcard. His arms outstretched. Twirling.
With all this good luck, he expected the war to end any day.
Herbert Müller
Ellis Island - June 1944
Within two weeks, Herbert’s family relocated to Ellis Island, proving the government could move quickly when they so desired. Jutta and the children disembarked dressed in their Sunday best. His heart swelled as he held each of them, but with his elation came doubt—his family was officially in prison. All too soon they were escorted to the admissions office to be fingerprinted and photographed while he paced the hallway. Otto waited in the large dorm room, resting. He heeded the doctor’s warning to avoid quick bouts of excitement for fear it could trigger another heart attack. His father wore out faster these days and was less alert. Although he notified the family of Otto’s health issue and his recovery, they would surely notice the changes in him.
Jutta and Frieda exited the office first, escorted by a female Coast Guard officer. The woman was fresh-faced, young, with large oval eyes. “I’ll show your wife and daughter to the other side of the island.”
They were separating them? This wasn’t right.
Frieda crossed her arms and hugged her sides as Jutta clasped her fists below her chin as if to keep her head propped up. “Herbert? I thought we were housed together.”
“I was told as much.” He turned to the officer. “We expected to be living in the family area. Where is that?”
“We don’t have those accommodations here, but you can meet for an hour each day in the Great Hall.”
Alfred joined them in the hallway, missing most of the conversation. “Who can we meet each day?” He carried a folded set of army clothes that matched Herbert’s.
He arrived on Ellis contrite and ashamed of his behavior in their hometown, and blamed himself for the family’s move to the internment camp. Herbert assured him the transfer was to protect them from the growing dangers at home and wasn’t based on his arrest. Alfred didn’t need to bear any guilt when forces much greater, and at higher levels of the law, were the ones that conspired to run his family out of town.
“Us,” Frieda said, twirling a pigtail. “Mother and I have to live in a different part of the camp.”
“I had hoped to spend a lot of time with my father-in-law,” Jutta said. “He’s not well.”
The female officer reached for Jutta’s arm. “I have my orders. Right now, I am to show you to your separate room.”
Had he been duped? Heat rose in his face. His family was here, yet they still couldn’t be together. Let’s bait the German-Americans into convincing their relatives the internment camp was the answer. He took Jutta by the arms and kissed her on the cheek. “Go. I’ll get this straightened out.” He hugged Frieda. “Get some rest, and we’ll see you soon.”
Mome
nts later, Herbert stalked into the camp administrative offices and approached the director who organized this transfer.
“You told me that my entire family would be housed together if they joined me as volunteer internees.”
“Separate quarters are all we have here. It’s temporary,” the director said. “Your family is slated for the Crystal City camp in Texas, but it’s full right now.” The man shrugged.
“This is unacceptable.” His voice was tight and controlled, but he was close to shouting. “How long before they’ll have room for us?”
“We have no way of knowing how many of your people we will be arresting.”
The director turned and walked out of the meeting room, but Herbert remained standing. Your people? It was as if a veil fell over the eyes of everyone in the United States. He and other German-Americans somehow changed into something new, something their neighbors and government no longer recognized as belonging in America’s melting pot. Granted, there was a slow burn toward these sentiments, but then a switch flipped, and all of a sudden, a class of Americans was considered outsiders, or untrustworthy. Former friends now viewed them through the wrong end of the telescope, diminishing them, making them look like small foreign objects.
He returned to his bed next to Alfred’s and Otto’s in the Grand Hall and relayed the director’s message.
Alfred kicked at his bed springs. “You know what the Statue of Liberty is? A mocking lump of green metal!”
Herbert laid his arm around his son’s shoulders. “We’ll have a story to tell someday, won’t we? It’s unfair, it’s unbelievable, but it’s what we have at this moment, son. We can get through it if we stay calm.”
Surprisingly, Alfred leaned into Herbert’s embrace. Something his son had not done in years.
“Do you think Jutta, und meine granddaughter, will be okay?” Otto rubbed his eyes, waking up.
He nodded. “Sounds like they have a room to themselves. Better than our deal.”
“Yeah. It is.” Alfred dropped onto his army bed and scanned the big dormitory room. “You said we can take classes here?”
“You can. Even in the summer.”
“Good,” Alfred said. “Forget about accounting . . . I’m going to learn about the law.”
Herbert’s favorite part of the day was when he, Otto, and Alfred joined Jutta and Frieda each morning for one hour. For three weeks, they’d visited in the downstairs portion of the hall, huddled on wooden benches built for two. Otto was stronger now, energized by the family’s attention and concern.
Most nights, Herbert had insomnia and silently paced the open room where more than three hundred men slept. Meal times were no better. The food barely went down his throat before it formed into a knot somewhere in his chest.
He hated the frown lines that appeared on Jutta’s forehead. And still, their opportunity to transfer to the family camp in Texas hadn’t come about. The children were resilient, thankfully naïve, but looked limp, tired. But they happily attended classes, which gave them time together. Alfred complained that his American History class was no more than a continuous lecture about how to be a good American citizen, and the evils of conspiring with the enemy.
Herbert protected them from the rumors that internees were being offered repatriation to Germany to help alleviate the overcrowding at the camp. What if it changed from an offer to a demand? They had only distant relatives in Germany, and he didn’t believe a move would make his family better off. All of Europe was under rationing orders, and not just gas and sugar, as in the United States. The families who chose to go to Germany were in touch with extended families, willing to take them in even though most were forewarned about having to sleep on the floor, or in an attic, upon arrival. He and his family could find themselves in a woodshed, or on the street, without knowing what his relatives could provide.
And he tried to protect his family from the newest update about their home. The FBI had not only frozen their assets but also seized their property. His family had nothing left. There would be a county auction in two weeks. Once he broke the news to Otto, Jutta, and the children, he vowed he’d get the mill and house back one day. And insisted that the seizure and sale had to be unlawful. Herbert learned to hate the empty-handed mailman. Every day disappointed him more and more as no appeal date had been scheduled for him or Otto. He doubted the government actually moved cases through, especially if they had taken everything away from the internees. With the Japanese and German “enemies” locked away behind barbed wire, why do anything until the war was over?
“Time to go.” Herbert had watched the clock for the last ten minutes until the last stroke before the visitation hour started. He helped his father stand.
Alfred was already on his feet. “What film do you think they got to watch last night?” The women’s side had fewer guests, so Jutta and Frieda often were shown movies in the evening. It beat the male side of camp where cards, dice, and cussing were their only entertainment.
“Tarzan, The Ape Man is a good one,” Herbert said. “But haven’t they seen that one twice already?”
“I think so,” Alfred said. “Mother said she was hoping for a Shirley Temple film.”
Herbert spotted Jutta first and smiled. He raised his hand to wave and rose to his toes to try to spot Frieda. A man knows his wife’s expressions, and in that moment, he knew something was terribly wrong. Her lips were pinched together as she stumbled to him, tears staining her face, struggling to hold back sobs.
He ran to her and hugged her tightly. “What’s happened?”
“Frieda,” she choked out.
Alfred darted to her side, and shortly after, Otto arrived out of breath. Alfred was wired, his nostrils flaring as he opened and closed his fists. “Where’s Frieda?”
Herbert’s heart leapt into his throat and he forgot how to breathe when he saw the fear in Jutta’s eyes. Was his daughter ill? Or, God forbid, was it worse than that?
“Infirmary.” She shook her head before she could speak again. “A maintenance volunteer . . . outside the showers . . . attacked her.”
“Where is he?” Alfred turned his head to scan the room, his eyes boring into all the men.
He grabbed his son’s arm to stop him from punching someone. He felt his breakfast rise. My God. Frieda was thirteen. “How is she injured?”
Jutta swallowed hard and gathered herself, and took a deep breath. “He stripped off her towel and was on top of her but didn’t have time to . . . you know.”
Otto dropped his head into his hands and let out a moan.
Herbert reached for Otto who appeared fine, just shocked. This type of startling news could kill his father!
“Can we see her?” he asked.
“The doctor said thirty minutes.” Jutta brushed tears off her face.
Frieda. Herbert swallowed a sob and swore. His sweet, trusting little girl. Rescuer of baby birds. Always holding a soft spot for the underdog. Now this atrocious act, an incident he wouldn’t be able to erase from her once-innocent mind. He pulled Jutta into a long embrace while she openly cried. Tears burned down his face, and he saw the same traces on Alfred’s and Otto’s. He regretted convincing Jutta they would be safe here. What was he thinking?
“Can you get us out of here, Herbert?” Jutta asked. “We didn’t want to tell you, but it’s not safe on our side. There are so many men around, supposedly workers, but . . .”
“I’ll meet with the immigration commander.” He looked deep into her eyes, as he thought of their only other option, since their transfer to Crystal City didn’t seem to be on anyone’s priority list. “I know for a fact the government will pay our way to Germany. Other families have already left.” His mind spun around his indecision. He wasn’t thinking straight. Arriving in Germany while the war raged? This might be just another terrible decision to follow the one that brought his family here.
“Will they send, us to family?” Otto asked.
“Yes.” Herbert rubbed Jutta’s arms to try to ease their trembling. “We would need someone to take us in.”
“Your cousin, Elke, near Frankfurt,” Otto said.
Herbert had no idea if Elke still lived there, or in what shape their lives were. He’d heard the saying, War does not determine who is right—only who is left. What if his cousin and her family were dead? “Let’s talk about this.”
“Fact Time,” Alfred said, his voice deeper than Herbert had ever heard. “Frieda or Mother could be attacked again. We have to leave.”
“The war could be over . . . when we reach Europe,” Otto said.
“I like your hopefulness, Pops, but we don’t know that for sure. Tell me what you think about going to Germany?”
“We have people, they will welcome us.”
Herbert hoped that was a fact. He had to trust Otto’s instinct there.
“We can’t go home, but the family internment camp in Texas they promised might never have an opening.”
Jutta raised her chin. “If we are all together again, I don’t care where we go, but I want to leave here.”
His family had spoken and surely Frieda would agree. With this dreadful turn of events, an idea he refuted just hours earlier seemed to be his family’s future. He would volunteer them to repatriate to a country his children had never seen, and one he hadn’t been to in over twenty years. In the end, he prayed this was the right decision.
Herbert moved through the crowded halls, trying to set his face to show an emotion other than anger, although he boiled inside. He wanted the last six months of his life back. He wanted to erase all that happened to his family, to erase Frieda’s frightening experience. When he’d been allowed to briefly see her, he was at a loss for reassuring words as his daughter sobbed in his arms. She agreed with the choice to leave, to be anywhere but here. Jutta was now by her side in a separate room near the commander’s office where they could stay until their ship sailed.
