I wake up and cannot remember where I am. It is cold, and dark.
“Rachel?”
The plaintive whisper reminds me where and when I am. “Isaac, what’s
wrong?” I sit up and crouch on my knees, wrapping my blanket around me.
My brother sits up too, and crawls into my lap. He curls into a tight ball,
shivering against me.
“Isaac, what’s wrong?” I repeat my question, hugging my younger brother
against me. Isaac is only six, half my age, and I have been almost a mother
to him since we began hidding in this dank basement.
“I’m hungry, Rachel. I’m so hu- hung- gry.” He trembles against me
so violently I’m afraid he’ll shiver apart.
“Shh, Isaac, it’s all right. I know you’re hungry, I’m hungry too.
Here, you sit here, take my blanket, get all nice and cozy, and I’ll make
breakfast for us.”
I slide my brother off my lap, onto the tattered blanket which passes
for a bed, and wrap my own blanket and ‘bed’ around his shoulders. He sits
on the ground, quivering and whimpering quietly. I can do nothing more
for him.
I put a pot over the broken furnace that serves as our stove. Father
was so happy to find a furnace here, and some coal too. He said it was
perfect, because although the furnace itself still worked, the attachments
to the other parts of this warehouse had been disconnected. We came to
this storage building because it was abandoned, and our caution served
us well. We escaped from the Nazis by a hair. I repress that memory sharply.
It fills my worst nightmares, and will not help me in the day.
Through the narrow window near the roof of our cellar I can see the
working people walking to and fro on the street, and the dreary winter
light filters through the bars on the window, falling on my brother Daniel’s
face. He stirs, and turns over onto his stomach, pulling his blanket over
his head.
I envy his ability to ignore the outside world. Although I know he
is awake now, and cannot keep the cold out of his consciousness, and he
will soon be out of bed and I will have to devise a project to keep his
attention.
I take my pot of gruel to Isaac. “Here, baby, eat your breakfast.”
He is huddled in his blankets, shaking like a leaf. I kneel in front of
him. “Isaac, here’s your breakfast. Isaac-” I tip his head up. His eyes
are blank, staring through me. I swallow my fear and despondence and begin
to spoon feed my brother.
“Rachel.” My father puts his hand on my shoulder. “Rachel, what’s wrong
with Isaac?” His voice is harsh with privation and fear.
I stand. “I think it is the same thing Mother has.” Mother has been
sick with pneumonia or some other lung cold for several weeks. Sometimes
she can’t breath, and she has an awful hacking cough. “Isaac does not have
the same symptoms as Mother, but it is caused by the cold and damp in this
horrible basement.” I catch the resentment in my voice and stifle it. Father
cannot do any more than I can for Mother and Isaac, and the alternative
to this basement is even worse.
Father turns and walks away. He stops underneath the window, his hands
against the earth wall. I turn away from his pain.
I walk to the calendar Daniel has scratched in the wall and look for
the date. Slowly, I nod my head with satisfaction. I have a project for
my active brother.
Just at that moment, Daniel decides to get up. “Rachel!”
“Shh, Daniel!” I point to the window. “Daniel, the people will hear
you.”
He looks guilty for a moment, then discards the attitude and comes
over to me.
“Rachel, what do I do today?”
“Today you will have a special project, my brother. Tonight is the
first night of Hanukkah-”
“It is? Really Hanukkah?” Daniel interrupts. I look at him severely,
and continue my sentence.
“Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, and we don’t have a menorah.
Your job, my brother, is to make a menorah out of earth.”
He grins his impish smile and begins his project. For an eight year
old, my brother is very impulsive.
I look at my family’s faces in the flickering light of the ‘candles,’
small pieces of coal from the furnace, placed in Daniel’s menorah. My mother
sits with one arm around Isaac and one arm around my father as she tries
to sing the blessing for the Hanukkah candles. Her voice croaks, and grows
hoarse, but she manages to finish the blessing. She collapses in a coughing
spasm.
Father looks at me. “Rachel, will you do the next blessing?”
I am astounded at his request. Although it is plain that Mother can’t
sing, I am not Mother. Only Mother does the blessings. But as I watch my
mother’s pale face, I know that if I am not Mother, I am the next best
thing, and I am the only one who can be mother to my family. I take
a deep breath, and accept the inevitable.
“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, sheh-asah nisim lavotainu,
baiamim, haheim, baz’man hazeh. Amen.”
Then we all join in with the Shehechianu, the blessing for the first
day. “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, shehechianu, v’kiemanu,
v’higianu, laz’man hazeh. Amen.”
I look at my family, happy and smiling, starved and freezing, hopeful
in spite of all our misery. Isaac begins a joyful song, and I listen as
Father and Daniel join in. As the song ends, Father looks at me.
“Rachel, you’re smiling.”
Daniel looks at me too. “Rachel, you haven’t smiled in ages.”
I feel the smile on my lips, strange, yet familiar. It is a smile of
happiness in the midst of desolation, a smile that is on hundreds of Jewish
lips. It is a smile of hope that will last throughout the ages.
Rachel, Isaac and Mother did not last the winter. Father lived to
see Germany free of the Nazi rule, then died in September, 1945, from privation
and cold. Only Daniel was left, one survivor. He was adopted by a Swedish
couple, and lived to see his great grandchildren. His youngest granddaughter
was named Rachel.
