Tell No One Who You Are

T
HE WAR IN EUROPE
had been going on for months, but for Régine Miller it started just after breakfast on a Friday in the spring of 1940. She was eight years old.

Régine already knew a little about war. Every evening since Germany invaded Poland the previous September, she sat with her parents near the radio and listened to the news. Her parents had left Poland and come to Belgium when her older brother Léon was a baby. They lived in a district of Brussels among other Jewish immigrants, and everyone seemed to have relatives back in Poland. Whenever neighbors met on the street, they asked if anyone had news from those left behind. Régine’s grandparents on her mother’s side lived near Warsaw. She had learned the Hebrew alphabet from her father so she could write a few words in Yiddish to them, but since the war began she had not received a letter back.

The war caused other problems. Her mother spoke of how little food there was in the market when they went shopping. “The war is doing it,” she said. Fathers of school friends were out of work “because of the war.” Her own father brought home less work than before.

The war was blamed on Adolf Hitler and the Germans. She saw his picture on the front page of newspapers. She heard his name spoken with anger and fear on the streets and among the teachers at school. Only her father seemed not to be afraid. He was sure it would all end soon. “Hitler wants to take over
the world, but he’ll be stopped. England and France will stop him.”

In spite of all the talk, war to Régine was something bad that went on in other places. This war was in Poland. There had been a previous war in Spain.
^*
She knew about the war there when she was five years old. She had watched her father pack boxes of food and clothes donated by Jewish families “to help the people of Spain.” This was part of his volunteer work with a group called Solidarité.

Régine did not understand much of what went on at the Solidarité gatherings. They took place in the homes of the members and there was a lot of talking. Régine’s mother did not like Régine going there. “She’s too young to go to political meetings,” she complained. But her father said it was never too early to learn about politics and how to make the world a better place.

Sitting beside her father, pleased to be with him, Régine could feel how serious this new, bigger war was to the members of Solidarité as they talked about what was being done to “stop Hitler and the Germans.” While reports were given on the fighting, on people killed and people rescued, she liked to watch one of the women in particular. Her name was Fela; she was pretty and sure of herself and had a nice way of speaking. Régine wanted to be like that when she grew up.

This new war was killing people, even children. But like that other war in Spain, it went on far away. Until that Friday morning. When war started for Régine, it did not start with the sound of guns, bombs or planes. It started with the noise of her brother’s feet running up the stairs.

I
T WAS NOT YET
7 a.m. but Régine’s day had already begun. She had helped her mother clear the breakfast dishes and was getting ready for school. She set down her schoolbag on the kitchen table and filled it with exercise books. She collected her pencils, dropped them into her wooden pencil box and slid the lid closed, then placed the box in her schoolbag and fastened the leather straps.

“Haven’t you left yet?” her father called from the other room. She could see him through the open door, bent over the black sewing machine with which he earned his living.

“Almost ready, Papa.” She went to where he was working, leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks.

The sewing machine and a large table took up most of the workroom in the apartment at 73 rue Van Lint. Handbags were piled on the table ready to be taken to the company that provided the leather and paid her father for each bag he cut and sewed. In the neighborhood, Maurice Miller was known as a
maroquinier
, a leather worker.

Régine stood, watching him sew a small piece of leather.

“You still here?” he asked, looking up at her.

“I’m leaving. I’m leaving.”

She returned to the kitchen where her mother was wiping the table. “Why is Papa always worrying? I’m never late.” She kissed her mother, grabbed her schoolbag and was about to go out the door.

The
école primaire
— elementary school — Régine attended was just a few minutes’ walk along rue Van Lint. Not like her brother’s school. Léon Miller was fourteen and had to take the tram to get to his
école moyenne
— secondary school. He left the apartment early and traveled with his best friend, a boy who was also called Léon. His family, the Saktregers, lived on rue Van Lint only six doors away from the Millers. They also had a son Régine’s age named Maurice who sometimes came to the Millers’ with his brother.

On school days, by the time Régine got out of bed, her brother had already left and she would not see him until suppertime. That’s why on this particular morning she was surprised to hear his footsteps running up the hallway stairs. The apartment door flew open and she jumped out of the way to avoid being hit as he rushed in. The noise brought her mother from the kitchen and her father from his workroom.

“Léon, what’s wrong?” her father asked.

“No school today,” her brother said, out of breath.

“Why? What happened?”

“School is canceled,” he said. “All the schools are closed. And all the shops. Nothing is open.”

Régine’s mother let out a cry and covered her mouth to stifle it. Régine looked at her father, expecting him to explain. But he stood silent with his head bowed as he had done the night before while listening to the news on the radio. His whole body seemed to tighten and he closed his eyes as if to clear his head. Régine kept looking at him. Before that day, if you had asked her about the war, she would have tossed her red hair and said it would soon be over. Her father had told her so. Now hearing her mother cry out and seeing the look on her father’s face, for the first time she felt frightened.

It was May 10, 1940, the date history would record as the day the Germans invaded Belgium.

T
HAT FRIDAY not only marked the beginning of war for Régine, it also divided the “before” and “after” of her life. It was only later when she thought back to “before the war” that she realized her family had been poor. She had never felt poor.

Sana Moszek Miller and his wife, Zlata Miller, had left Poland and come to Belgium because they dreamed of a better life, if not for themselves, at least for their children. They believed the way to that better life was through education. They wanted their children to be good Belgians and even though Yiddish was the language of their mother, Mr. Miller always spoke French to the children. He even took the French version of his name, Maurice.

Léon and Régine were never allowed to stay home from school unless they were very ill. Sometimes they had to help their father late into the night because there was more work than he could finish, but they had to do their lessons first and were not allowed to skip school the next day.

Her father worked long days, starting before Régine left for school in the morning and continuing long after she returned in the afternoon. When the others helped, they stood at the long cutting table in the workroom. Léon and Mrs. Miller cut out the leather patterns with huge scissors while Régine scooped glue out of a jar and applied it to the pieces. Her father did all the sewing, bent over his machine and
working the treadle, his face inches away from the needle.

There were only two other rooms in their second-floor flat. The windows looked onto the cobblestone street. In summer it was stuffy and, when the windows were open, noisy from the trams passing. Downstairs was a café and the sounds of comings and goings also drifted upstairs.