Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

my father’s house, the kitchen schedule was set aside for Pesach. The bank clerk’s family folded up the cots and moved its belongings out of the dining room. Each family packed its dishes, pots, and utensils and found space for the cartons in various closets. Women who had been strangers last Pesach worked together like sisters to scrub the kitchen of all traces of chametz. Together, we moved my father’s Pesach dishes and pots onto the newly-lined shelves. With these preparations complete, the boarders pooled their food and prepared the seder feast.

The delicious smell of Frau Stein’s chicken soup wafting through the house and the extra leaves in the dining room table reminded me of Mama’s seder long ago. In those days, at least a dozen people joined us. Hannah and I would set the table with Mama’s gold-rimmed Pesach china, just as Ruth and Eva were doing now.

Frau Miller was chopping nuts on the cutting board for charoses. Someone else was grinding horseradish for marror, and Papa was roasting the bone to represent the seder lamb and arranging it on the seder plate.

Dressed in their best clothes, the boarders entered the festive dining room at sundown. Papa greeted all of them as if they had been specially invited, not arbitrarily thrown together by the Nazis. With everyone present, Papa raised the silver becher and chanted the Yom Tov Kiddush and the berachah over the first cup of wine.

Presiding over the Seder in his black broadcloth suit, he looked handsome and self-assured. Yet he had aged. His jacket hung loosely over his hips when he stood at the head of the table; I realized he had lost weight in the past year. Wisps of white strayed over his lined forehead as he nodded to seven-year-old Herschel Muller. Haltingly, the young boy began to recite the Ma Nishtanah: “Wherefore is this night different from any other night?” My father answered the age-old question in a weak voice, recounting the exodus from Egypt.

When the seudah was over, the children ran to open the door for the prophet Elijah. They joined in the singing, managing to stay at the table until Chad Gadyah. All of us ignored the Nazis patrolling the streets below.

“Next year in Jerusalem” Papa intoned.

Fervently, we echoed his words.

Jerusalem! Would I ever get there? Just before Pesach, I had been to Berlin again. The director had appeared tense.

“Frau Kanner,” he said wearily. “It is imperative that we get three men out of Matthausen.”

“But you assured me—”

“Don’t you see? Those men would have been murdered. No one here will harm a woman with three little girls. Please, I beg you to have a little more patience.”

At night, in my small room, I had trouble sleeping. I could not find a comfortable position in the bed of a boy who had been incarcerated in a concentration camp. He should be here. And I should be in my own bed, in my own house, with my own family.

The linden trees were budding. Three months had gone by since Sal left Germany. I was afraid I would never see Sal again, never get out of Germany, never again have a home for my children. I shifted from side to side under the young man’s quilt. I heard the clatter of fire bells. The fire trucks seemed much too close. I jumped out of bed, ran barefoot to the single window.

The street below was deserted except for a mongrel dog sleeping in a stoop across the way. I realized I had been dreaming. Back in bed, I pulled the quilt over my head and heard the fire bells ringing again.

During the day, a Nazi patrol swaggered past me, four young men in brown uniforms with swastika armbands and swastika insignia on their peaked caps. I heard the scream of the fire engines, yet people in the street continued their stroll in the midday spring sun, oblivious to any danger. Didn’t they hear the alarm?

I felt dizzy. I breathed in the spring air to steady myself. I was able to walk on, but I could not stop the ringing in my head.

I went to see Herr Neman. “I have terrible headaches,” I told him. “And something is wrong with my ears. I hear ringing all the time.”

“I know a doctor in Leipzig,” he said. “She is Jewish, so she can’t practice, of course. But go to her the next time you’re there. Maybe she can help you. Send her my greetings. Let me know what she says.”

Two days later, I located the building in which the doctor lived, a five-story apartment house decorated with hideous gargoyles. I climbed to the second floor and knocked on the door. A tall woman with formal bearing and iron gray hair opened it.

I spoke first. “I wish to see Dr. Milstein.”

The woman looked at me for a few seconds, and my head began pounding under her scrutiny.

“Herr Neman sent me.”

At the mention of Neman’s name, the woman’s eyes softened. “Come in. I am Dr. Milstein.”

She led me into a living room, furnished with a deep green sofa and matching easy chairs. The russet draperies blended with the splendid Persian rug. The luxuriant furnishings contrasted with the severity of Dr. Milstein’s gray suit.

“Herr Neman sends his warmest regards,” I said.

“Thank you. Please sit down. How may I help you?”

“It’s my ears, doctor. I hear ringing all the time, and I have terrible headaches.”

“The Nazis closed my office, but I am still a doctor. I salvaged some of my equipment and small instruments. Sit in the straight chair, and let me examine you.”

When Dr. Milstein finished her physical examination, she led me to the sofa and said, “You are in perfect health. I find no physical cause for your problem.”

“But the headaches are unbearable.”

“Tell me about yourself. How old are you? Where is your husband? Are your children with you?”

After I had answered her questions, she said, “Your headaches and the ringing in your ears are brought on by tension. It is not uncommon in these times.”

I began to tremble. The doctor took my hands and stroked them gently. With this simple act of concern, I gave in to the feeling of helplessness I had been fighting all winter. She put her arms around me and let me weep. After a while, she placed a soft white handkerchief in my lap and left the room. When she returned, she was carrying a teapot and cups on a silver tray.

“It’s understandable that you are distressed,” she said as she poured tea. “Now, you must get a hold of yourself. I cannot write a prescription. You would have trouble finding a pharmacist who would risk filling it.”

The hot tea had relaxed me, but her reference to the strictures against Jewish physicians made me anxious again.

“Fortunately, I have some medicine left from my office,” Dr. Milstein said. She placed an envelope, filled with pills, into my hands. “Take one of these in the morning and one before you go to bed. And you must stop worrying so much. Worrying will not get you a visa.”

What will give me a visa? I wondered that night, and on many other nights afterwards.

In May, 1939, the Nazis announced a new regulation. Jews were prohibited from exporting silver. Silverware was the only exception, but the number of settings was limited to the number of persons in the immediate family. I received an order to appear at the warehouse where our crates were stored.

Sal and I had packed not only sets of silverware but also silver vases, platters and serving bowls. The crates also held my tall, antique leichter, three kiddush cups, our besomim halter, and menorah. I was incensed that the Nazis’ “regulations” would affect us even into the future, to the time when we arrived in Palestine. Whenever I would bench licht, and whenever Sal would make Havdalah or light the menorah, we would remember the Nazis. But though they would take these holy items, they could not take my faith. I would place candles on an ordinary plate and usher in Shabbos, as Sal would place his candles to commemorate Chanukah. We could drink Kiddush wine from glass goblets, and store besomim in glass bowls. The Nazis could not keep us from our mitzvos.

In the huge, drafty storage room, an SS officer stood by as a clerk pried open the boxes containing our household possessions. The clerk removed the cloth cover from the first crate and picked up a small velvet jewelry box. With a bored expression, he opened it and held up three silver bracelets, the gifts Sal had brought back from his trip to Palestine in 1935. The SS man looked at the list I had submitted with the shipment.

“You claim you are exporting household silver only,” he said. “What about this jewelry? I don’t see it on your list.”

“But these are just trinkets,” I protested. “At the last minute we decided not to wear them and tossed them in the crate. These plain silver bands belong to my children; they are worth almost nothing.”

“They are silver. They are not on the list.” His tone was ominous, and my exasperation turned into alarm.

“Now,” the SS man asked, “Is there anything else?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“We shall see.”

They spent the rest of the day emptying crates and trunks and checking each item we had packed against our list. Every single item was listed except the bracelets. I knew they would find nothing else; Sal was too meticulous a record-keeper. I stood for hours, and my feet ached, but I refused to sit on one of the dusty trunks. I was not going to appear weak.

Two days later, in Leipzig, a policeman came to the door of my father’s house, announcing he had a summons for Amalia Kanner. My hands shook when I heard my full name. Why had the police come here to Nordstrasse when my official residence was in Halle?

My father took the document and closed the door without uttering a word. “This orders you to appear at the Magistrate’s Court in Magdeburg the day after tomorrow,” he said.

“Papa,” I whispered. “They are watching me. How did they know I was in Leipzig? I register in Halle every week. I thought if I slept in my room once or twice a week, it would be enough. Now, I’ve put you and the children in danger.”

“You have to hide, Mia,” Papa said. “We must find a place.”

“There is no place to hide anymore. They’re watching us, all of us, all the time. They know where we’re supposed to stay, where I sleep, where I go, where you live. They know where every Jew is all the time.”

“You can’t go to Magdeburg,” he argued.

“If I don’t go, it will be worse. They will come and arrest me. I’m afraid for you and the children.”

“No, Mia, no!” he cried.

Once before I had heard my father wail with this same anguish—when the doctor told him Mama had suffered a stroke and would be confined to a wheelchair.

“Papa, you must get the children out of Germany. Get them out any way you can. You must find a way.”