Among the Reeds

by Tammy Bottner

  Suddenly the drone of an approaching airplane made Genek jump. It was a fighter plane, flying low and fast. In a flash Genek lifted Bobby off his shoulders, tossed him onto the ground and threw his body over that of his little son. Folding his hands over his head he remained prone until the plane was gone. Bobby’s little body shook with fright.

  It’s alright, Bobby, it’s alright, he told him. I’m here. You’re safe. I will protect you. Come on, let’s get going. Genek lifted Bobby back onto his shoulders and continued walking.

  Eventually they came to a main road. Genek, tired from the long walk to Banneux and back, decided that walking a straight route on a real road was better than meandering along country paths, and the best way to get home quickly. The only trouble was, soldiers used these roads too. Genek hoped that they would get to Brussels without incident, and if they were passed by convoys he hoped the soldiers would be friendly ones.

  Sure enough, after a couple of hours a convoy of trucks approached from behind them, heading, it seemed, toward Brussels as they were. As they neared, Genek could see they were American soldiers. He waved. One of the trucks pulled to a stop and a group of smiling American G.I.s motioned for Genek and Bobby to hop up onto the back of the truck.

  Hey buddy, need a lift? one of them called. Give me your little boy, and climb on up!

  Genek passed Bobby up to the American soldiers, who hoisted him aboard. For a panicky moment Bobby thought his father was abandoning him again. He cried out. But Genek climbed in right behind him. Wearily he sat down and thanked the G.I.s for picking them up. The soldiers were young and fit and very friendly. They looked so different from the gaunt and gray Europeans Genek was used to seeing.

  Not a problem, buddy, one said. Where ya headed? Brussels? We are too! And with that the truck rumbled on with its two additional passengers, little Bobby staring in awe at the countryside now whizzing by at an astonishing speed. One of the American soldiers was Jewish. He and Genek excitedly struck up a conversation in Yiddish, Genek explaining what he was doing out on the road with his child. Bobby watched his father, watched the soldiers, wondered if he was dreaming.

  The Americans had chocolate. Seeing the skinny little child, they dug into their supply and gave Bobby as much candy as they could find. He had not had sweets in so long that Bobby crammed the chocolates into his mouth as fast as the G.I.s produced it. Bobby looked at the faces of these new men. They spoke some language he had never heard before; he couldn’t understand what they said. And one of them had a chocolate-colored face. He had never seen a man that color before. Maybe he had eaten too much chocolate? But they were nice. They smiled and laughed and looked kind and they gave him candy. Papa seemed relaxed with them. What an amazing day this was.

  And so Bobby arrived back home just in time for his fifth birthday. His father carried him up the stairs to their apartment at 32 Rue des Ménapiens. His arrival was marred by his getting violently sick from all the chocolate he had eaten on the American truck, a stomach-churning combination with the travel and excitement of the day. So it was not exactly the joyous celebration Melly had envisioned. But he soon recovered. His parents were ecstatic to have him home. Except for a couple of months in the spring of 1943, he had been separated from his family for two and a half years, half of his young life.

  Now it was time to get Irene back.

  Melly

  Irene

  It was the spring of 1945. The war was over. We had survived against all odds. My family reunited in Brussels. My mother returned to the city, having successfully hidden up north with her employers. Nathan was back as well; he had left Banneux and walked back to Brussels and showed up at Inge’s apartment one day. And Inge, while still sickly since her illness, had made it too. We had Bobby back. As soon as we got my beautiful baby girl back my joy would be complete, and our family could move on from the horrors of the past few years.

  Having Bobby home was wonderful. He was darling. His reserve slowly dissipated and he became chatty, inquisitive. I loved him as I had never loved anyone, fiercely and fully, and he reciprocated my affection. Despite the years of separation we were as close as could be. He did have nightmares sometimes, but when I went into his room he let me hold him and soothe him. I couldn’t wait to get Irene back too and make our family whole again. We had survived. We would be together again. It seemed like a dream.

  We asked Nathan to bring us to Namur to show us the house where Irene had been hidden. We decided to go on a Sunday, hoping to catch the people when they were likely to be home. It didn’t occur to me that there would be a problem. Sure, the family might have grown fond of the child, and maybe our arrival would be a surprise, but after all, we were the parents. I expected we would scoop up our child, thank the people who had guarded her, and return to Brussels as a united family at last. Getting Bobby back had been easy, I didn’t think getting Irene back would be any different.

  Bobby came with us, of course. He didn’t remember having met Irene when she was a newborn. He didn’t understand who she was or how she fit into the family. She’s our daughter, your sister, I told him. What’s a sister? he kept asking me. Mama, what’s a sister? I laughed. You’ll see, Bobby, she’s a little girl who will love you very much. I smoothed back his curls, noticing, as I always did, the scattering of white hairs on his little head.

  We took the train to Namur: Genek and I, Bobby, and Nathan. Nathan reminisced about the experience of following baby Irene two years earlier, how he had watched the priest accept the child, and then observed him bring her to a home and give her to a middle-aged couple. I found myself wondering who they were. A small niggle of worry rose in my throat, but I pushed it away. We had managed to get Bobby back, and we would now get Irene.

  Nathan led us through the streets of Namur until we arrived at a tidy little cottage. I saw a child’s toy, a baby doll stroller, in the front yard, a rag doll propped up within it. Genek rang the doorbell. A kindly-looking woman answered the door, smoothing her hands on her apron. She greeted us in French, explained they were just finishing Sunday dinner. Could she help us? Genek looked nervous, and I found my heart beating furiously in my chest. We are Genek and Melly Bottner, Madame, he told her. I believe our little daughter has been living here?

  The woman shook her head, looking puzzled. I think you may be at the wrong house, she said. Just then a younger man appeared behind her. He wore the white collar of a priest. What is it, Mama? he asked. When we explained who we were the priest looked aghast. He put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. Let them in, Mama, he said. He invited us all into the house. We sat on the sofa and made introductions.

  It was then that I caught a glimpse of my daughter. I hadn’t seen her since she was three months old. Now she was over two, a pudgy adorable little thing with wild brown curls. It was obvious she had not been deprived of food. She toddled over to Madame Bouchat – I had just found out her name – and the woman picked her up and set her on her hip. Irene hid her face in the woman’s shoulder. My heart beat even harder. I swallowed.

  Hello, darling Irene, I tried.

  The child would not take her face out of Madame’s neck.

  Nathan started talking then. He explained how he had trailed the baby when she was picked up and brought to Namur. He told the priest he had watched him receive the child and bring her here, to the house we had just learned was that of his parents. Nathan explained that we were Jewish, we had given up our child because we were in grave danger of arrest and deportation. But we had survived and now we were here to bring our child home.

  The Bouchats stared at us, shaking their heads. They had an animated conversation with the priest, who turned out to be their son. The priest hung his head and explained that, yes, the little one was a hidden Jewish child. She had not been abandoned on the church steps. He had in fact received her from contacts in the Resistance who were hiding Jewish children. He kept apologizing to them.

  Madame clung to Irene and started crying. No, no, this can’t be,
she kept saying. The older Monsieur too became very agitated. Perhaps you are mistaken, he said. Why do you think this particular child is yours? She has been with us since infancy.

  It was then that we mentioned the scar, the surgical mark we had made on Irene’s right thigh. I thanked God that we had had the foresight to mark our baby. Because otherwise there really would have been no proof that she was ours.

  Irene, reacting perhaps to the agitation in the house, started crying. She had a loud and piercing cry. I got up and walked over to Madame, hoping to take Irene into my own arms to soothe her. Irene went crazy, screaming, kicking, and yelling Mama, Mama! as she clung to Madame’s neck. She would have nothing to do with me. She didn’t know me. To her I was a stranger.

  I am your mama, I told her. But the child kept crying and pushing me away.

  Madame carried her into the other room, both of them weeping and clinging to each other. Monsieur and Father Bouchat looked stunned as Genek tried to thank them for everything they had done to care for our baby.

  But she is our child, Monsieur protested. We love her. We adopted her, we are raising her. Tears appeared in the older man’s eyes. Bobby clutched my hand and watched this scene with huge eyes. I felt his little body trembling as voices were raised and emotions ran higher and higher.

  Genek eventually had had enough. He was not a patient man. He had a temper.

  Listen, he said, this situation is getting worse by the minute. We are Irene’s parents. I am sorry you thought you could keep her. You can’t. We are taking her home with us now.

  He walked into the room where Madame was sitting with Irene nestled in her arms, and reached for the child. Both Madame and Irene started wailing. Irene kicked and clawed like a wild animal. Genek had to wrestle her out of Madame’s arms.

  For a moment I remembered when I had to give up little Bobby when he was just two years old, and my heart went out to the woman. But then I thought, no. This woman has her own children. She has no right to covet this child of mine. I am the victim here. I am the one whose child was taken from me. My heart hardened again.

  The Bouchats pleaded with us to wait, to give them time to get used to the idea, to let the child get to know us before we did anything rash. But Genek was adamant now. We would not be repeating this scene, he told them. While we were very grateful that they had cared for our girl, and sorry that they were hurt, it was time to go.

  Carrying the hysterical toddler, he marched out of the house, little Bobby and I following. The last image I had of Madame and Monsieur Bouchat was of the two of them standing with their arms around each other, crying. Nathan stayed back to try to make amends, but there was little he could say, and he soon caught up with us as we made our way back toward the train station.

  Irene did not stop crying and screaming the entire way back to Brussels. By the time we got home I half wished we hadn’t gone to get her. My head was killing me. She wouldn’t let me near her. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep on the sofa. But the minute she woke up it was back to wailing and calling for her mama. And she didn’t mean me.

  Genek tried to console me. Give it a little time, Melly, he told me. She’s a little child. She isn’t trying to be bad. She’s scared. But he too became impatient when Irene kept crying and carrying on day in and day out. When he couldn’t take the screaming any more Genek went out. I was left to deal with Irene. Eventually I tucked her into bed with Bobby. That seemed to quiet her down. She snuggled into her brother, put her thumb in her mouth, and fell asleep.

  And you know, that became a pattern. Irene rejected me, wouldn’t let me mother her. And I, young and foolish and distraught, allowed a terrible distance to form between us. I stopped trying to comfort her when she cried; I put her into bed with Bobby instead. I stopped trying to win her over. I lavished my maternal affection on the child who loved me back, and I kept away from the one who seemed to hate me.

  Genek was a little more understanding with Irene’s response to us. But he too was an emotional wreck after the war. The strain of hiding, of losing his family, of separating from our children, had damaged him as well. He was impatient, angry. Sure, he still had his sense of humor – Genek was always one for a laugh – but when Irene screamed and cried for hours he lost his temper with her. Poor child. The only one she bonded with was Bobby.

  Looking back, I know I made a terrible mistake. I rejected my own child, the only daughter I would ever have. She was a baby. She couldn’t help her reaction. She was traumatized, plucked from the only family she had ever known by strangers and brought to live in a house where she knew no-one, didn’t even speak the language. She was in terrible pain. But I could deal with only so much suffering. Irene’s mourning of her Namur family, her rejection of me and Genek, felt like she was spitting in the face of the sorrow we had gone through to keep her alive. I felt only anger toward her.

  I should have understood. But I’m ashamed to say I didn’t. I too was traumatized. I was twenty-three years old, but felt eighty-three. I had been through so much tsures in my own life that it had left me bitter. My emotional state was brittle and fragile, sadly lacking in the wisdom I needed to parent my estranged child. For two long and lonely years I had pined for my darling little girl, envisioning the moment she would be back in my arms. Instead I found myself with a sullen screaming brat who rejected me.

  Foolish, foolish woman that I was, I rejected her in turn. We never managed to bridge the yawning distance those terrible first years apart had created. Our emotional estrangement remained even as Irene grew older, stopped screaming for her other mama. I did not shower her with affection as I did Bobby. I kept her at arm’s length. My daughter never felt loved in my home. I failed her. For Irene too it was a schver bitter leiben.

  It wasn’t until I was on my deathbed that I apologized to her.

  After Liberation

  When he returned to Brussels, Nathan searched for and found his sister Inge. Melly and Genek and their children were now reunited and living together in Brussels too. But they all missed and worried about their mother. Gertrude had been out of the city for years, living in a small village up north by the Dutch border together with the couple who had employed her as a housekeeper during the war. The three siblings had not seen their mother in a long time. There had been little communication. Had anything happened to Gertrude? Was she alright? Until they knew for sure she was alive and well, they worried. By now they surmised their father was dead. Reports were trickling in of the evacuation of the inmates of Apeldoornse Bos to Auschwitz.

  Nathan decided to look for his mother. Trains were not running up to the north of Belgium yet; that part of the country was still occupied by the Germans. Nathan asked some English soldiers on the street about going up to the village where he believed his mother was living. Don’t do it, they replied, the area is still full of German soldiers, it’s too dangerous.

  But Nathan was undeterred. He got hold of an old bicycle and, smiling at his sisters’ pleas to be careful, started off on the bike to find the village. He was seventeen years old, and had been taking care of himself for years by then. A bike ride in the countryside would not scare him, German soldiers or no.

  Eventually Nathan did find the village and had a tearful reunion with his mother Gertrude. She had indeed survived the war by hiding with her employers and working as a housekeeper. Interestingly, the area seemed devoid of Germans. After spending a few days with Gertrude, Nathan cycled back to Brussels, happily relaying the news to his sisters that their mother was indeed fine. He also informed the English soldiers that the north of Belgium no longer seemed to be occupied.

  Nevertheless, it took seven additional weeks for the Allies to deem the north of the country liberated. At that time Gertrude returned from the village and was reunited with her children in Brussels. She, Inge, and Nathan lived together in one apartment, and Melly, Genek, and their small children, Bobby and Irene, lived in another. After years of occupation, terror, hiding, and deprivation, it wa
s time to start living again.

  Belgium, like the rest of Europe, was awakening after five years of despair. Shops were again open, cafes were full, people were strolling the streets and chatting in parks. Movie theaters thrived. Nathan saw his first Disney movie. He went to the opera.

  For a few months Nathan worked as an apprentice in the diamond industry in Antwerp. He traveled from Brussels to Antwerp daily by train, making the once danger-fraught journey in under half an hour. The country was once again navigable. His job was to learn the diamond-cutting business from his Uncle Shlomo, Gertrude’s youngest brother, who had somehow also survived the Holocaust.

  But the diamond business didn’t interest Nathan. He was looking for a purpose, for meaning in his life. In the wake of the war, Zionist groups, intent on creating a Jewish state in Palestine, were thriving among Jewish survivors. Nathan joined a youth movement called Hashomer Hatza’ir.

  This movement had originated in Eastern Europe after World War One. Its mission was the creation of a Socialist Jewish homeland. Between the world wars the group had already founded several kibbutzim in Palestine, established by members who had emigrated from Europe. By 1939 the organization had seventy thousand members worldwide. During the war Hashomer Hatza’ir was involved in resisting the Nazis, aiding in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and in rescue missions for Jews in Lithuania, Slovakia, and Hungary. Many of its members had been captured and executed during World War Two.

  Hashomer Hatza’ir was recruiting young Jewish survivors in Europe after the war, and in this organization Nathan found the purpose he was looking for. Horrified by the Holocaust, by watching friends and family shamed, humiliated, robbed, imprisoned, beaten, and killed, Nathan, like many Jews, vowed “never again.” The Brussels chapter of the Zionist group, consisting of about a dozen teenage boys and girls, ushered friendship and meaning into his life. He agreed wholeheartedly with the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland. He wanted to devote his life to this cause; he started thinking about emigrating.