Shattered Crystals, Mia Amalia Kanner [cat reading book txt] 📗
- Author: Mia Amalia Kanner
- Performer: -
Book online «Shattered Crystals, Mia Amalia Kanner [cat reading book txt] 📗». Author Mia Amalia Kanner
Politics intruded into the village classroom. Under the Armistice signed between Germany and France, the Nazis occupied and had direct control of the northern half of the country and the strip of land that ran all along the Atlantic coast. The rest of the country was designated the Unoccupied Zone and was administered by French officials who were expected to cooperate with the Nazis. Marshal Petain, the hero of First World War campaigns, became head of the French government in the Unoccupied Zone when Paris fell and the Armistice was signed with Hitler. I was not surprised when Ruth reported that the children stood up every morning and afternoon to say “Vive, Marshal Petain.” She shrugged and said, “I stand up with the French children. It doesn’t mean anything. I just go along.”
What she did not want to go along with was the edict that she could not see me except for the brief time in the evening. She complained about how unfair it was. It was hard for me to pacify her when I was equally angry. I was convinced that Madame Krakowski was being unreasonable. To show partiality to my own children would be wrong, and I would never do it. Anyone who knew me would have told the new directress this. Thus I might break the rules and find a bite of carrot or a piece of wormy apple for another child who came begging in the kitchen, but never for Ruth or Eva.
In this dispute I knew I was right, but I was powerless to change the rule. In the end, all I could say to Ruth was, “I can’t help it. You have to accept this. It’s the war.”
A year of war had resulted in a shortage of almost everything. To deal with the scarcity of clothing, OSE hired Madame Weissman. She arrived at La Chevrette with her husband and five-year-old daughter, Monique, who became Lea’s playmate. Madame Weissman had been a seamstress in Warsaw before the war and her job was to teach the girls to make their own clothes. OSE officials, skilled by now at begging for everything, somehow secured donations of fabric. Madame Weissman was an adept organizer and so sympathetic a teacher that the girls told me they did not mind the extra task.
I was worried that I did not have clothes for myself for the winter ahead. All I owned was what I had been able to carry in my musette when I fled Montmorency. And after the many long days out walking to reach the Chateau Montintin, my shoes were worn out.
One summer day, I managed some time off from the kitchen and arranged for a ride with Mandel. He was the person on our staff who had the important responsibility of procuring food, be it buying, bargaining, or begging. We drove to the local village market, which was open once a week. I had a little money. As cook in the OSE home I was entitled to a small salary. Often, the OSE needed all its funds to buy food, so the staff was not paid. But I had been able to save a little money from the pay I did receive.
I was lucky to be able to go to market with Mandel when I did because a strict system of rationing went into force soon after our outing. That day, I managed to find a warm dress and underwear, but finding “good” shoes was not so easy.
Because my mother’s shoe store in Leipzig offered the finest shoes, I had always worn top quality footwear. The good leather shoes I was used to did not exist in the village market. Only wooden-soled shoes were available, and this is what I bought. Once I became used to them, I found these clogs surprisingly comfortable.
So we became settled in Chateau Montintin. The boys and staff had completed building tables and benches for the dining room and the school rooms. The OSE had succeeded in establishing good relations with the police and other local authorities. Chateau Montintin and the other homes run by the OSE around Limoges were accepted by the French populace.
Madame Krakowski’s husband, the melamed, led our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. The boys in the carpentry class put their training to use building a large Succah.
It was October of 1940. I was alone in the kitchen after the midday meal, worrying about the winter ahead, when I heard the door bang open and saw Eva shouting, “Mama, Mama, look!”
What was the child doing here? Why was she breaking Madame Krakowski’s rule and coming to the kitchen in the middle of the day? I turned and for an instant I was immobilized, not believing what I saw. Eva was holding onto Sal’s hand, her face transfixed with joy. Was it possible? Only when I heard my name in the voice more familiar to me than any other did I know that my husband had come back.
In the thirteen months since Sal’s arrest by the French gendarmes in the ancient Montmorency hotel, I had prayed every day to God. I prayed first for my husband’s safety and well-being; then I added my plea to bring him back to us. I had not heard from Sal nor had any word of him for five months, not since the day Paris had fallen to the Nazis in June, 1940. From that time on, I had no idea where he was; nor could I imagine how Sal would learn where to find us. So I prayed for a miracle.
God is good. He has heard and answered my prayers. He has reunited me with my husband and my children with their father. How else but through His intervention could this great good fortune be ours now?
“I was one of the thousands of nobodies.”
I saw at once that Sal had lost weight. I wondered whether he had worked outdoors, because his face and neck were uncharacteristically dark, as happens from long exposure to sun and wind. His smile was warm and loving. “Dearest, Mia,” he said.
“Sal, are you all right? How did you know where we were? How did you get here? Are you hungry?” There was so much I wanted to know, the questions tumbled out. Before he could answer, I realized others had to know Sal had come. “I must tell the director you are here. And Eva, find Ruth and bring her to the kitchen. I will make coffee for us. It’s not real coffee, Sal; it’s ersatz. The substitute is all we can get now, but it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“Yes, I know,” Sal said, “That’s what I’ve been drinking.”
Word spread through Chateau Montintin and members of the staff came to the kitchen to meet Sal and congratulate me. In the excitement of that first afternoon, all that Sal was able to tell me was, “I saw Hannah. Both your sisters and Herman are all fine and send their love.”
“Thank God,” I said. “But when?”
“Later, Mia,” he said. “It is a very long story.”
I looked at my watch and realized I had to prepare the evening meal. I took Sal up to my room, where he could rest for a while. He did not wake up until the next morning.
It was so wonderful to have Sal with me again that I minded nothing, not the small room with its rickety furniture that was our home, not the scarcity of food, not the worn out clothing on our backs, not the hard work in the kitchen day after day. I felt none of these inconveniences. What I felt was Hashem’s loving-kindness. My husband was well. Our children were with us and we were cared for.
I asked the OSE officials if Sal could stay at Montintin and share my room with me. In return for his room and board, he would help me in the kitchen and function as a general handyman. They readily agreed but made it clear that his stay was unofficial. It did not matter to us that they could not pay him for his work. What was worrying, however, was that Sal’s presence at Chateau Montintin was not legal. The OSE was not able to secure papers from Vichy government officials. The important thing was that the OSE agreed to shelter him and that we were together.
In our room in the evenings after we had finished work and after our time with the children, Sal told me all that had happened in the months we had been apart.
The first and saddest fact he told me was that his father had passed away. Mail deliveries had continued during those last chaotic days before the French surrender to the Nazis in June, 1940, and Sal’s aunt sent word to him from Poland.
Early in June when it became clear the that the Germans would sweep through the northwest on their way to Paris, the French authorities decided to close Maison La Fitte in Damini, the camp where Sal was interned. When they announced they would move all the prisoners to Bordeaux, Sal had gone on the train willingly. What would have been the point in escaping from his guards when they were taking him further away from Germany?
For several weeks the men were housed in military barracks where they waited uneasily and followed the progress of the advancing Nazi armies. It was there that Sal was handed a letter from his old aunt in Mielec, Poland. Sal showed me the letter, written in pencil on copy paper. It said Markus had not been well most of the winter. There had been no doctor and not enough food or medicine. Everything was in short supply. Markus grew weaker and weaker until he died in the night in his sleep.
While Sal was still sitting shivah, France and Germany signed the Armistice. That gave Germany Northern France from the Rhine to the Atlantic. It also stipulated that the Nazis would occupy the narrow strip of land along the western coast to the Spanish border. Bordeaux was the leading harbor for the Atlantic coast.
Immediately after the Armistice, the French guards told their German prisoners, “You are free to go.”
The German gentiles, most of them businessmen who had lived in France for some years, remained in Bordeaux to await their compatriots. The Jews realized that if they stayed, they would soon be at the mercy of the Nazis again. They packed everything they could carry and began to walk south.
With some twenty other Jewish men, Sal hiked along the coastal road, sleeping at night in open fields. The men pooled their funds to buy food, but the French farmers, like the ones I had encountered on my own trek to reach Montintin, often refused payment. It took just over a week for the men to reach Bayonne, a seaside resort one hundred and twenty miles south of Bordeaux. Bayonne had once been home to a substantial Jewish population, and the leader of the Jewish community still resided there. He was an elderly but efficient man who arranged for them to stay in a local guest house. His only advice to the men was, “Try to get yourselves on a ship.”
It was their first night in a proper bed for many months, but the men woke each other early in the morning. They were all anxious for passage out of France. Following the Jewish leader’s directions, they reached the waterfront.
The waterfront was mobbed with desperate men, clamoring for places on a battered troop ship that was to sail northwest to Cornwall. Men were pushing and shoving, yelling in French, Polish, Czech and Flemish. The crowd was immense and Sal became
Comments (0)