The Night Crossing

by Karen Ackerman

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  Marta held Clara’s hand so tightly that Clara nearly cried as the two sisters ran across the rough cobblestones of the street that led to their home.

  They flew past the Duessel bakery, boarded up and painted with Nazi swastikas, and they jumped over the trash on the sidewalks. This had once been an orderly street of houses. Now the homes all had broken windows and looked empty even if they weren’t.

  Marta pulled Clara up the front steps into the doorway of the building where they lived, and the other children scattered. The girls were safely inside, at least until school the next day.

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  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE IN THE WORLD

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  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Text copyright © 1994 by Karen Ackerman

  Illustrations copyright © 1994 by Elizabeth Sayles

  Cover art copyright © 1994 by Elizabeth Sayles

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-77019-6

  v3.1

  For CLARA, with remembrance,

  for MIMI, with love, and

  for the one and a half million children

  who perished in the Holocaust

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Epilogue

  1

  One night, just after Clara and her older sister, Marta, were put to bed, Clara overheard her parents talking in the sitting room.

  “We must leave Austria now, before it is too late,” her father murmured.

  Softly her mother replied, “But Innsbruck is our home, Albert.”

  It was 1938, and not too many months earlier, there had been laughter, conversation, joking, and singing in their home. But the family piano had been sold to buy firewood, and now the only sounds Clara heard at night were the whispers of fearful voices.

  “I won’t let us be rounded up and sent to some prison that the Nazis call a camp,” her father continued. “Jews get branded like animals, the rumors say. I will not allow it to happen!”

  “But what will we do?”

  “I’ll make arrangements tomorrow,” Clara’s father said. “Austrian money can still buy a way for us to escape Hitler and his Nazis.”

  Though Clara didn’t know quite what her father meant, she knew that since Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had invaded Austria from Germany, terrible things had been happening to the Austrian people, especially Jewish Austrians.

  As she lay in bed, Clara held Gittel and Lotte, her two favorite dolls, tightly. At last she fell asleep.

  “JUDEN! JUDEN!” a young voice screamed, joined by another voice, and then another, until the voices all came together in one thunderous roar behind them. Marta held Clara’s hand so tightly that Clara nearly cried as the two sisters ran across the rough cobblestones of the street that led to their home.

  They flew past the Duessel bakery, boarded up and painted with Nazi swastikas, and they jumped over the trash that lay on the sidewalks of what had once been an orderly street of houses. Now the homes all had broken windows and looked empty even if they weren’t. The Jewish families inside often lived in back rooms and basements, hoping to make a quick escape if the Nazi police appeared at their front doors.

  Clara didn’t have to turn around and look to know that among the group that was chasing them was her best friend, Hilde.

  Marta pulled Clara up the front steps into the doorway of the building where they lived, and the other children scattered. The girls were safely inside, at least until school the next day.

  CLARA WOKE SUDDENLY to Marta’s grumbling.

  “You kicked me again,” Marta complained, turning on her side to go back to sleep. “You were dreaming.”

  The real chase had happened more than a week earlier, but Clara still dreamed of it. She got up from the bed with her two dolls in her arms.

  “Mama?” Clara whispered as she entered the shadows of the sitting-room doorway.

  Her mother looked up, startled, from where she sat in the candlelight because there was no money to pay for electricity. Lately, any little noise in the house alarmed Mama.

  “Another nightmare?” she asked softly. Clara nodded. “Come, maydel,” she said, and opened her arms to her younger daughter. Clara climbed onto her lap, and Mama pulled the edges of her shawl around them both.

  “Will they take us away?” Clara asked.

  Mama held her tightly. “I won’t let anyone take you away—ever—so you mustn’t worry.”

  “But they chased us, and the Nazis took Mr. Duessel. I saw them, Mama. They broke the windows of the bakery and went in and dragged him out to the street,” Clara whispered. “They laughed when Mrs. Duessel begged them not to take him away, and one of them spit on her as they drove off.”

  Her mother did not answer. There was nothing to say, because it was all true. The Duessel kosher bakery had been raided, and Mr. Duessel arrested for continuing to bake and sell kosher goods to Jews. The bakery had been boarded up, and Mrs. Duessel had gone to live with her daughter and son-in-law. No one knew where Mr. Duessel was now.

  “If we’re very careful, we’ll all be fine,” Mama finally replied. “Now go back to bed, Clara.”

  But as she slipped from her mother’s lap and moved toward the room she shared with Marta, Clara could see the worry on her mother’s face as she began to remove the yellow stars that were stitched to the tattered coats of her two daughters.

  Climbing into bed, Clara arranged Gittel and Lotte next to her beneath the covers. The dolls had once belonged to Clara’s grandmother. They were very old and filled with straw. Each doll was dressed in the bright-colored apron and kerchief of a Russian peasant.

  Clara’s grandmother had told her that when she was a young girl, she had carried the dolls in her arms as her family made a night crossing. They had crossed over the Carpathian Mountains from their home in Russia to escape the Cossack armies that had burned Jewish houses and shops.

  Her grand
mother’s family had to flee their Russian village because Jews were being beaten. In Russia this was called a pogrom.

  “We had to leave everything behind and run for our lives,” Grandma had said. “But Gittel and Lotte were very brave, and they wanted to go along. So my mother let me carry them over the mountains and all the way to Austria.”

  “On your night crossing,” added Clara.

  “Yes, maydel, on my night crossing to freedom,” Grandma replied as she put the two dolls in Clara’s arms.

  Now, as Clara drifted back to sleep in the dark, she hoped Papa would let her take Gittel and Lotte with her to wherever he planned to take the family to escape the Nazis.

  2

  A few days later Clara’s father began collecting all the family’s valuables. He took a large pillowcase from Mama’s linen drawer and led the family through each room to look for things that could be sold. To Clara it seemed almost like a game.

  From the parlor he took the beautiful silver tea service he’d given Mama on their first wedding anniversary. From their bedroom Papa took his own pocket watch with its hand-engraved fob and all of Mama’s jewelry, even her wedding ring. Clara and Marta followed him, looking for things to put into the pillowcase.

  “Soon we’ll begin our night crossing to Switzerland,” Papa told them as he made his way to his daughters’ room. “There, Jewish people are still free from the Nazi police. We’re going to pretend that we have visited cousins here in Innsbruck and that we are Swiss citizens returning home,” he explained.

  Into the pillowcase went the Star of David on a gold chain that Marta had been given upon her graduation from the eighth grade. Marta frowned. She didn’t want to leave the few friends she still had, and she didn’t want to leave Innsbruck.

  “But some people say that the Nazis won’t stay for long, Papa,” Marta softly protested.

  “In Switzerland we can live a normal life while ‘some people’ wait to find out if the Nazis stay or not,” Papa murmured, moving toward the dining room.

  He picked up a small cut-glass dish and four brass napkin rings and dropped them into the pillowcase. But when he reached for the pair of old silver candlesticks, Mama stopped him.

  “No, Albert! Please—anything, everything but these!” she said.

  The candlesticks had been in Mama’s family for generations. They were nearly ten inches high, and candles were lighted in them before every Sabbath and on holidays. Clara and Marta had helped Mama polish them once a week for as long as they could remember.

  “But Helen, these are worth a fortune,” Papa gently argued. “And we’ll never be able to hide them so that they won’t be found.”

  Still Mama would not part with them. “That monster Hitler may take away everything else, but he won’t have my entire family history!” Mama said.

  So Papa left with the pillowcase of valuables under his worn coat to buy the arrangements for their escape to freedom. Some of the money would be given to the people who would risk their lives just by helping the family along the way.

  Watching Mama defend the candlesticks reminded Clara of the many Friday evenings they had spent together, gathered around the dining room table to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath. Mama always began the Sabbath by lighting the candles. She moved her hands in a small circle above the flame of each candle. Then she raised her hands and covered her eyes, as she recited the bracha, the Sabbath blessing.

  Clara liked to say the blessing along with her mother. It began “Baruch atah Adonai,” and her mother’s voice was always full of gentleness and love. But now there was a law that forbade Jews from celebrating the Sabbath or going to the synagogue.

  By the time Papa returned home, the silver candlesticks had been sewn into the folds of Marta’s heavy muslin petticoat. Papa shook his head but said nothing.

  He pulled a handful of money from his coat pocket and laid the bills on the table. “From this moment, all of you must remember that we are no longer Austrians. We are citizens of Switzerland,” he declared.

  “Will we cross the mountains like Grandma did?” Clara asked excitedly. A night crossing seemed like a great adventure to her, and she was curious to see the high, snowy Alps that marked the border between Austria and Switzerland.

  “Yes, like Grandma,” Papa answered. “But we’re pretending to have been visiting for just a few days, so Mama can pack just one satchel. We mustn’t look like we are escaping, so you and Marta can take only what you can wear or put in your pockets. And remember that we’ll be walking a very long way.”

  Marta frowned. She knew she would have to leave her new schoolbooks behind. Still, she was determined to find room for at least a few of them.

  Clara looked through her wardrobe and tried to pick out the dress with the biggest pockets. At last she chose one that Grandma had made for her. It had two giant pockets on the top and a matching pinafore with pockets all across the bottom. She looked sadly at the small vanity table that Papa had bought used and refinished for her on her last birthday. Now it would never be covered with perfume bottles and tins of bath powder like Marta’s table in the opposite corner. Silently Clara said good-bye to the vanity and to all of the things she would be leaving behind.

  That evening the family sat down to a final supper in their Austrian home. Mama seemed nervous as she served the meal, but Papa looked happy for the first time in months.

  He lifted a glass of water, which was all they had to drink.

  “To our freedom,” he toasted. “And to a safe night crossing.”

  Then, as Marta put her glass back down, they all heard the pair of silver candlesticks clink inside the folds of her petticoat.

  3

  Marta and Clara went to bed fully dressed in the clothes they would wear on their journey hours later. Slight shadows remained on each of their coats in the places where Mama had removed the yellow stars.

  Clara’s pockets took up a lot of room in the bed because she had tucked some hair ribbons and a tiny silver-edged mirror—as well as Gittel and Lotte—inside them. And Marta had a terrible time trying to fall asleep. The pockets and folds of her clanking petticoat were stuffed with Mama’s candlesticks and a few very heavy hardbound schoolbooks.

  It was still pitch dark outside when Papa woke them. Sleepily Marta and Clara rolled out of bed and followed him to where Mama waited near the cellar door, holding the family’s only satchel.

  “Absolute silence,” Papa whispered as the four of them slipped out to the street.

  The family walked and walked, past all the familiar houses and buildings in their neighborhood, being careful to hide in whatever shadows the creeping sunrise left undisturbed. Quietly each of them said a silent, special good-bye to the city they loved, which was once beautiful but now looked so broken and beaten.

  At last they reached a small farmhouse with a barn a few miles outside the city of Innsbruck. Papa led them silently into the barn, where they settled behind the protective cover of two large hay bales. Then Papa peered through the barn door carefully, stepped outside, and quickly made his way toward the house.

  Both Clara and Marta were surprised that unlike the city, the Austrian countryside seemed untouched by the war. The fields and woods were still as lush as when their parents had brought Clara and Marta to the country for a picnic long ago. Each house had a small, steady stream of smoke rising from its chimney. It was as if the Austrian farmlands had not gone to war with the German army at all.

  When Papa returned, he had a small cloth filled with goat cheese and hard brown bread. The two girls ate as much as they wanted, and then their parents finished what was left.

  For an entire day they stayed hidden in the barn. When the two girls weren’t sleeping, Marta read from the books she’d stuffed into her pockets, and Clara played with Gittel and Lotte. The night crossing wasn’t so bad after all, Clara thought.

  For hours Papa sat watching the farm road through the barn slats and studying the small map that the Resistance had drawn for him to show
where it was safe—or nearly safe—for the family to walk.

  Meanwhile, Mama gazed at the Swiss Alps in the distance. The Swiss border was still far away, and to reach it the family would have to climb over the steep, rocky foothills of one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world.

  When the sun finally set, Papa led them from the barn to the thick woods beyond the farmhouse.

  Every now and then the silver candlesticks clinked in their hiding place inside Marta’s petticoat.

  Again the family walked and walked in the dark, past crop fields and cow pastures and hedgerows that barely provided them with cover from either the light of the moon or the bitter cold.

  Clara’s feet began to hurt, and then to swell, so Papa had to pick her up and carry her on his back. Marta and Mama looked more exhausted with every mile. All of them felt grumpy and tired, even Papa, who answered their questions about how much longer and how much farther they would have to walk with unusually sharp replies.

  “Just walk,” he told them. “Keep walking.”

  Once during the night the family had to hide quickly from Nazi armored tanks that roared past them on the road near the woods. Then they began to walk again.

  When a small patrol suddenly appeared, Papa motioned to be quiet, and they all crouched behind some weeds at the side of the road.

  A soldier came close and poked around with the bayonet at the end of his rifle. Peeking out from beneath her father’s arms, Clara saw the moonlight reflecting off the bayonet’s sharp blade.

  The buttons on the soldier’s uniform were polished brightly. As Clara caught a glimpse of his features, she was surprised that he was so young—not much older than the boys in their early teens who had just begun to court her sister Marta. He was just a boy, with fine blond hairs on his upper lip. A Nazi boy, with a gun.