Anne Frank and Me (11 page)

“No. He's working on a musical composition.”

“But where? Jews cant—”

“That's why it's a secret,” Claire said impatiently. “He's rehearsing a famous string quartet in a flat near the Bastille. He stays in the crawl space up above the ceiling in case the Gestapo comes. My father lies on his stomach, listens, and speaks to them through a grate.”

Nicole tried to imagine it. “Your father is very brave.”

Claire shrugged. “He is an artist. He does what an artist must do.”

Claire's words reverberated in Nicole's head. At that moment she liked Claire better than she had in a long, long time.

Through her sleep's fog, Nicole heard her mother knocking on her door. She was sure her mother wanted her to do some awful chore, but Nicole just wanted to go back to the glorious dream she was having about Jacques. They were on vacation at the sea, eating fresh fruit and kissing on the sandy—

More knocking. Relentless! Her mother was just so demanding. There was no school today. What kind of chore was so important that she had to be awakened early?

“Let me sleep,” she groaned.

A hand shook her roughly. “Nicole. Wake up!”

Claire's voice instantly snapped Nicole to consciousness.

“Someone is at the front door. I don't think my mother can hear.” Her face was right next to Nicole‘s, her eyes huge. “What should we do?”

Bon-Bon started yapping at whoever was knocking. Nicole's heart thudded. “Go wake your mother, quickly.”

“Do I have to?”

The knocking stopped, and the two girls held their breath. Then it began again, even louder, and Nicole pushed Claire off the bed. “Yes. Now, go!”

Claire ran. Nicole waited, hardly daring to move. The incessant knocking continued. Finally, Claire returned. “My mother said we're not to come out unless she tells us to,” she reported breathlessly.

“Maybe it's nothing.” Nicole was able to make out the clock on Claire's nightstand. It was five o‘clock in the morning.

Shouting joined the pounding; Nicole and Claire could hear it through the closed door. “French police! Open the door, please.”

Nicole nearly fainted with relief. “It's all right, they're not Gestapo, they're French.” The girls peeked out from Claire's room as Mme. Einhorn opened the front door to the policemen.

“We must see the identity cards of everyone in the apartment, please,” the taller, darker-haired cop said.

“My daughter and mother-in-law are sleeping,” Mme. Einhorn said. “I don't want to wake them.”

“Please wake them immediately,” the shorter cop said. He had small eyes and a bulbous nose, as unattractive as the other was handsome. “They must present their identity cards.”

“It's the middle of the night,” Mme. Einhorn protested.

“Identity cards must be presented at once,” the short cop insisted.

Claire shut the door and stared mutely at Nicole. Through the wall, they could hear Claire's mother speaking to her mother-in-law in Yiddish. Soon, Mme. Einhorn came into Claire's room. “It's all right,” she assured the girls. “They are just doing an identity check.”

Moments later, all four of them were at the front door, identity cards in hand. Bubbe Einhorn, wrapped in a beautiful shawl, looked boldly at the handsome cop as she handed over her card. The shorter cop checked something off on a file card he was holding. “Where is M. Einhorn?”

“He stayed the night with friends,” Claire's mother explained smoothly. The policeman didn't react. He simply checked off something else, then pulled out a piece of paper and read from it.

“ ‘By order of the Prefecture of Police, you are being arrested.'” Claire gasped. The policeman continued. “ ‘All alien Jews of the following nationalities: German, Austrian, Polish—' ”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Mme. Einhorn roughly pushed Nicole forward. “This girl is not an alien Jew. Look again at her identity card, please. She is French, a neighbor, visiting s from the fourth floor.”

The policeman shrugged. “ ‘All children living with the person or persons arrested shall be taken away with them, no member of the family shall remain behind in the apartment.”'

“But this girl does not live—”

“You will take your ration cards,” the other cop interrupted. “You may each take no more than two suitcases. Inside, you may pack one pair of shoes, two pairs of socks, two blankets—”

“This girl lives upstairs,” Mme. Einhorn pleaded. “She is French.” She took Nicole by the shoulders and steered her toward the door. “Her father is a doctor at the—”

But the dark-haired cop stepped between Nicole and the door. “We have orders and a schedule to follow. We will sort out problems later. Quickly now, please. You may pack enough food for two days, one sweater, one drinking glass, one fork, one spoon—”

“You have ten minutes,” the other cop added.

“Go, Claire, quickly, and collect your things,” Mme. Einhorn told her petrified daughter. Then she explained everything to her mother-in-law in rapid Yiddish. The old woman gave the policemen a cold look before going to pack.

Nicole wanted to cry. Her own parents were so close, upstairs in their warm, safe beds. But crying would do no good. Instead, she gulped hard and addressed the taller of the two cops, because he was so handsome and had a kind voice.

“Excuse me, please,” she began, trembling. “My father is Dr. Jean Bernhardt of the Rothschild Hospital, and—”

“You now have eight minutes,” the tall cop said. His indifferent eyes met Nicole's. She had been mistaken. There was no kindness there at all.

Mme. Einhorn turned to Nicole. “Go to Claire's room. Pack some of her things for yourself. Hurry.”

Nicole ran to Claire's room. Claire gave her a small valise and Nicole filled it with clothes, not bothering to look at what she was packing. Claire sat on her bed, sobbing and rocking Bon-Bon in her arms, a half-filled valise next to her.

“Stop sniveling and pack,” Nicole ordered.

“Don't yell at me!”

Nicole took a deep breath to calm herself even as she filled the valise. “Pack as much as you can, Claire. You must do it now.” After Nicole had filled her own valise, she helped Claire. Then she glanced at her book bag with the journal in it on the floor. She stuffed it into the valise as well.

When they gathered again by the front door, Claire was still sobbing and clutching Bon-Bon. “I have to take my dog.”

“The dog must be left with your concierge,” the shorter cop said. “Follow quietly, please.” They had no choice but to lug their valises down to the main floor of the building. Mme. Genet, the concierge, stood in the hall, her chin held self-righteously high. The short cop handed Bon-Bon to her.

“I don't want this beast,” she protested.

“Just for a short while,” Mme. Einhorn pleaded quietly, “until we return. For my little girl.” Mme. Genet scowled, but ook the animal.

“And you will please make sure the utilities are cut off in the flat,” the shorter policeman instructed her.

“When will they be back?” Mme. Genet asked. Neither cop answered.

“Please, Madame Genet,” Nicole said quickly. “Go tell my father that I've been arrested. He must come for me—”

“We must go now,” the short cop said, opening the front door.

Nicole looked back at Mme. Genet. “Please. Tell him now!”

They dragged their suitcases outside. The cops led them toward the stone staircase. Nicole looked back again. Mme. Genet was still at the door, a small smile of satisfaction on her lips, Bon-Bon whimpering in her arms.

fourteen

July 16, 1942

 

 

 

 

They were held briefly at the local police precinct, where they learned their destination: the Vélodrome d‘Hiver, the indoor bicycle arena known to everyone as the Vel d'Hiv It was across the Seine, not more than twenty minutes on foot from Nicole's apartment.

Within a half-hour the cops were walking them and a group of other detainees to the Vel d‘Hiv Save for a bird chirping, Claire's snuffling, and the lonely footfalls of shoes against the pavement, Paris was silent. Nicole tried to assure herself that everything would be fine, that her father would rescue her. Over and over in her head, in time to her footfalls :
I am French and Papa has an Ausweis, I am French and Papa has an Ausweis.
She wasn't as confident about what would happen to the Einhorns, though. She heard that some arrested Jews had been resettled in Poland. Others were held hostage by the Germans, to be executed in reprisal for acts of resistance. Maybe there was some way her father could rescue them, too.

Nicole looked at Claire, who continued to snuffle. “Don't cry. Nothing bad will happen,” she assured her, even though she didn't believe it herself.

“Liar.” Claire blew her nose on her sleeve. “Will Mme. Genet take care of Bon-Bon, do you think?”

“I'm sure she will.”

The police led them all across the bridge over the Seine and along the boulevard de Grenelle. Nicole looked up at the Eiffel Tower, shrouded in early-morning fog, as if hiding in shame from what was occurring on the streets below When Nicole had been just a little girl, her father had explained that the tower was a symbol to the world of the splendor of Paris.

Funny, Nicole thought. No, peculiar. This was the first time since her accident that she'd remembered something from her French childhood without prompting from her parents or her journals.

She switched her valise from hand to hand as they walked past a few shopkeepers preparing to open. The shopkeepers glanced at them diffidently. The Vel d‘Hiv was coming into view Though used now mostly for fascist political rallies, she recalled going there with her father to watch bicycle races on a banked oval track. She could picture herself on her father's shoulders, both of them laughing, cheering for their favorite racer.

It was the strangest feeling-memories seemed to be rushing at her.

Outside the Vel, the rue Nelaton was a sea of hundreds of well-guarded Jews. The prisoners carried cloth-wrapped bundles or suitcases. Some women wheeled baby carriages piled with blankets and clothing. Green-and-gray municipal buses were pulling up, children's wide-eyed faces pressed up against the windows.

“They're going to kill us,” Claire said, her voice low.

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Nicole snapped. “This is France. No one is killing anyone.” She and the Einhorns joined a long queue that led to a police checkpoint. Across the street, a Catholic priest walked by on his way to early-morning mass. A woman broke from their queue, ran across the street, and threw herself at the priest's feet, begging him to save her children.

“Don't look,” Mme. Einhorn instructed. “That poor woman is mentally deranged. We are all going to be fine.”

Too late. Nicole and Claire were already looking. “Help us!” the woman pleaded, loud enough for the crowd to hear. “They took a hundred Jews from my building alone. You cannot look the other way, you are a man of Godl” The terror-stricken priest extricated himself from her arms and hurried away.

They waited and waited as the line slowly snaked forward. “This way please, madame,” a pock-faced cop told a young mother near them. She held a large valise in one arm and a baby in the other. Two more children clutched at her skirt. She shifted the weight of the baby and stumbled, dropping her valise. Wordlessly, the cop picked it up. Silent tears streaked his face. Nicole stared in awe. It was the first time she had ever seen a policeman cry.

Finally, after the crowd had grown to thousands, Nicole and the Einhorns reached the French officials who were checking identity cards against long lists of names.

Mme. Einhorn grabbed Nicole's arm. “This is your chance, tell them who you are.”

“But what about you?”

“We'll be fine, just do it,” she insisted.

Nicole addressed the official behind the table. “Excuse me, monsieur, but this is a mistake.” Her voice quavered as she handed him her identity card. “I'm French as you can see, my father is—”

“Into the Vel you go. Next.” He pushed Nicole's card back at her, his eyes already on the next person in line. If he had heard what she said, he didn't care.

After all, she was just another Jew.