Shattered Crystals, Mia Amalia Kanner [cat reading book txt] 📗

“The Jews were sent to Buchenwald.

I sat on the sofa for the remainder of the night, staring into nothing. Light began to seep through the draperies, bringing with it the rhythm of the day. I rose and walked into the hallway. At once, I became very busy. I gathered the dirty laundry and returned it to the hamper. For the first time, I saw that my clean linens were also strewn about the floor. I folded sheets and table linens and piled them back into the closet. I straightened the furniture, picking up dining room chairs and pushing them under the table. I returned lamps that had been removed from their proper spots. I moved mechanically. I had always kept a neat and spotless home. Overlooking the cause of the disarray, I wanted order. I wanted things back as they had been, to erase what had happened.

The door to Markus’ room was ajar. Had they entered his room? I looked and saw the floor littered with books and papers and realized I was holding papers torn out of his Gemara and and his siddurim. The shelves that held his machzorim and tomes were empty. “Sacrilege,” I moaned. How was such desecration possible?

“Mama, Mama,” Ruth was calling. Markus’s old clock still hung on the wall. It was eight o’clock. I breathed deeply and went to my daughter.

“No school today. You will both stay home.” I bent down and put my arms around Ruth. I had been too distraught to give any thought to what to say to the children. What was there to do but tell her? “Papa was arrested during the night. But he will be back.”

Ruth nodded and said nothing.

“You’re a big girl. You have to help me.” As the words came out, I realized they were not merely words to comfort my daughter. I needed her now. “Get some breakfast for your sisters, sweetheart,” I said. “You can make cocoa.”

The doorbell rang. I stood still, my heart pounding painfully in my chest. Again, it buzzed. I heard a muffled female voice. A woman calling my name. I walked down the corridor, supporting myself against the wall. With shaking hands, I turned the knob and opened the door.

It was Ella, our saleswoman. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Frau Kanner, you have to come down to the store. Oh, it’s dreadful. I’m so afraid! The Gestapo said you were to come right away. Please, right away!”

I dressed in two minutes. It was best to obey. I could not have the Gestapo back in the apartment. In the street, things did not look right. I closed my eyes, feeling dizzy. A man’s voice shouted, “Clean up this mess, at once.”

“Mess?” I stared at the SS officer standing at the store entrance, arms folded across his chest.

Then I saw. I saw flat, jagged pieces of glass everywhere. The sidewalk was covered with broken glass. Our store’s three large plate glass windows had been shattered. Inside, the store was a shambles. The glass display counters had been smashed. Merchandise was strewn on the floor and over the broken counters. Cartons had been emptied of socks, dresses, towels. I was immobilized by the disorder.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the officer shouted. “Vandals broke into your store in the night. Clean up. I do not want to tell you again. And another thing. Get these windows repaired. Today.”

In the stockroom, I found a broom. I dragged an empty carton into the street and began to sweep up the broken panes. The butcher came out of his shop across the street, watched for a moment and went back inside. Shoppers crossed to the other side of the street. Trolleys rumbled by. The guard watched. I swept.

Vandals? The Nazis were the vandals. Bitterness and anger engulfed me as I swept. Gangsters, criminals, beasts, I raged silently and continued to sweep. I found more empty cartons and filled them with shards of glass from the sidewalk. The Gestapo guard watched every move I made.

When I finally finished sweeping up the glass on the sidewalk, I mumbled the word “Glazier.” The guard nodded, and I walked the short distance to the glass shop. The glass cutter’s wife was polishing a mirror when I entered.

“Our windows—” I stopped helplessly. I could not find the words to explain, but it wasn’t necessary. The woman knew.

“My husband will be there in the afternoon,” she said.

I nodded.

“Frau Kanner?” she said hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“Frau Kanner, I’m sorry.”

The Gestapo guard was still there when I returned. The children had been alone for more than two hours. I started for the apartment lobby, but the Nazi shook his head, pointing to the store premises. I collected the broken counter glass. I looked at the Gestapo. He shook his head, and for the rest of the morning, I sorted and folded merchandise, separating dry goods from clothes, separating larges sizes from small, making a mental inventory. Blankets, shirts and baby clothes were missing. Of course, they stole. Beasts, savages, thieves, I raged.

At one o’clock, the guard let me go upstairs. The children ran to me. My darling girls. They had looked after themselves and each other. “I made breakfast. Then I made lunch,” Ruth said.

“I helped,” Eva said.

The door rang constantly as Jewish women from all over the city sought news or delivered terrible reports. By mid-afternoon, we knew that every Jewish man between the age of sixteen and sixty had been taken. All the Jewish businesses had been looted.

Then a woman brought news of still worse destruction. “The shul is lost.”

“How, how?” Fanny asked.

“Burned to the ground. Nothing is left. All the sifrei Torah, all the books, everything is gone.”

For the first time since my father-in-law had been deported, I was glad the old man was gone. I hoped he would never hear of the desecration of the Sifrei Torah, the holy scrolls he had tended, read and revered.

The glazier came to inform me the store windows had been replaced, and I paid him.

Moritz’s wife Rosa came. She was at least fifteen years older than I was, and we shared few common interests. It was the first time I could ever remember Rosa traveling alone from her house to ours. She slumped in a chair and moaned, “They took my husband. They took my son. I don’t know what to do.”

What to do? What to do? The words echoed in my mind. All my life someone had been there to tell me what to do—first my parents, then my husband. Now I was alone, facing what had been unimaginable. I looked at my sister-in-law, a good woman who had never done anything but look after her husband and her son, and I knew that she would be helpless to act. It was up to me.

“Rosa, the children were alone the whole morning.” I said. “Please, will you stay and keep an eye on them? I’ll go across the street to the police. Maybe I can find out something there.”

In the police station, I walked up to the desk, trying not to show my apprehension. I faced the officer. “My husband was arrested last night. Salomon Kanner.”

The officer said nothing.

“Why did you arrest him? He broke no law.”

Still no answer came from him. I had wanted to stay calm, but now I demanded, “Where is he?”

Another policeman came to the desk. “The Jews were sent to Buchenwald,” he said. “If you want to get him out, get him a visa so that he can get out of our country. We don’t want Jews in the Fatherland. Germany is to be Judenrein.”

“I expect to receive a visa for Palestine shortly,” I said. “You