My parents had another full-time job now: getting us out.
Fourteen
In April 1938, the Nazis require all Jews to register any assets worth more than five thousand Reichsmarks. These were then appropriated to “support the German economy.”
Not long after the Germans arrived, I made a terrible mistake.
The moment the Anschluss was announced, swastika pins and badges of the Nazi Party sprouted on the shoulders of my former classmates, of shopkeepers, and of our neighbors. People who knew us. People we had spoken to almost every day of our lives, but who turned overnight into enemies. Anneliese’s mother pinned a swastika to her daughter’s dress every morning, but Anneliese swore she took it off as soon as she was out of her mother’s sight.
The day of my mistake, we planned to sneak away to the movies while my parents were out in search of visas. We couldn’t be in danger in a cinema, I thought. There was no reason a Jew couldn’t watch a movie in her own city.
“She’ll kill me if she ever finds out I’m not wearing it,” Anneliese said as we set off, showing me the swastika pin she’d slipped into her pocket. She turned to me, frowning. “Orly. Yesterday I saw Frau Cohen turned out of the baker’s. They wouldn’t even let her buy bread!”
Anneliese’s astonishment made me impatient. Of course non-Jewish bakers didn’t let us buy bread. Every day there were fewer people we could trust. The butcher wouldn’t sell meat to us. He said, “Don’t you people have one of your own?”
Anneliese and I continued walking in silence, past a giant billboard proclaiming Judentum ist Verbrechertum. Judaism is criminality. Leering over the words was the giant head of a long-nosed caricature of a Jew. These signs, these noses, were everywhere. Anneliese followed my eyes.
“Your nose is nothing like that.” She took my hand. I didn’t know how to explain that the noses didn’t even rate in my hierarchy of fear. A shape-shifting unease had become part of us. We were steeped in it, sweating it from our pores. There was nothing our parents could do to protect us from it because we absorbed it through the air.
I didn’t know how to articulate this to Anneliese, to explain what it felt like to live in my skin. I shrugged.
“Look, wear this.” She pulled another swastika pin from her pocket. “I have an extra one. At least that way they will leave you alone.”
I stared at her. Put on a swastika? Betray my parents? Betray almost everyone we knew?
Anneliese shifted her weight impatiently. “If you don’t wear it we can’t get into the film.”
“Ana, no, you don’t under—”
At the same moment, a gang of teenage boys in Hitler Youth uniforms rounded the corner and started toward us. Anneliese pulled her own pin back out of her pocket and fastened it to her collar. Hurriedly, my cheeks flaming with heat and fear, I followed suit, accidentally sticking myself with the pin. I thought I might vomit.
The rampaging youths hurtled by, looking for an old man to torture, no doubt. As they passed they glanced at us, but only cursorily. They registered our badges and moved on.
“See? If we wear it to the theater, they’ll let you in. Come on!” She tugged at my hand. But suddenly I didn’t feel like watching a movie. I didn’t feel like walking the streets with Anneliese. I tore the pin from my coat, not even caring if I ripped the fabric.
I couldn’t look at Anneliese’s face. I didn’t want to see pity in her eyes. I threw the pin into the sewer grate at my feet and turned my face from hers. “I need to go home.”
My feet quickened on the pavement, but I did not feel them. I did not feel my body at all. I hovered somewhere above my skin, somewhere I couldn’t be hurt.
“Orly, wait!” Anneliese’s footsteps, coming after me. Breathing hard, she grabbed my hand. “Don’t be a fool. You shouldn’t be alone.”
I whirled to face her. “I need you to protect me, do I?”
Tears started in her eyes. “Oh, Orly, I don’t know what to do! Everything’s gone mad.” Her skin started to get red blotches like it did when she was upset.
I started walking again and she kept pace with me. “Orly, I—”
But I never heard the rest of her sentence.
“Look who’s here,” came a low voice behind us. “It’s the Büchsenmasseuse. The Jewish Büchsenmasseuse.”
I didn’t even need to look at his fat, grinning face to know that it was Heinrich Müller, our old tormentor, in a brand new uniform. We were still two blocks from home. The last time he had used that word with us, we had slapped his face. But he knew I couldn’t hit him now. Even Anneliese didn’t dare to slap him now. She took my hand again.
“How touching. A Jew lover,” he sneered. Something jabbed the back of my thighs, lifted my skirt. I spun around, yanking the material down. I was in my body again now, burning hot. I opened my mouth.
“Orly, don’t.” Anneliese pulled my hand, this time with force, yanking me back.
We ran. We ran all the way to our building, Heinrich singing as he huffed along behind us. I recognized the words of his song. “Der Jud! Er ist überall auf der Erde zuhaus und ist so verbreitet wie Wanze und Laus. Der Jud!” The Jew, he is at home all over the world. And is as common as a bug or a louse. The Jew!
“Where are you going, little Jew? We were just starting to have fun. Anneliese, does your Daddy know who you’re playing with?”
We fell against the wooden door, my hand shaking as I fumbled with the doorknob. Heinrich used his baton to lift my skirt again. “Just wanted to see if it’s true you people have tails.”
“Stop it, Heinrich, leave her alone.” Anneliese tried to shove him away from the door but he forced his way past us.
“I think I need to have a chat with your parents about the company you’re keeping.”
We took the stairs two at a time, Heinrich easily keeping up. I prayed that Anneliese’s parents were not home. As we passed my door, my steps faltered, but as Anneliese continued, I followed. I could not leave her. I could not lead Heinrich to my parents. But we were leading him to Anneliese’s. We should not have come home. We should have gone anywhere but here. Then again, Heinrich had always known where we lived.
“Mutter! Open up, please open.” Anneliese rarely had keys; her mother was usually home.
The door swung inward, and Anneliese stumbled into the doughy bulk of her mother. Heinrich was right behind me. I willed myself to look up at Frau Meier. “Let her in, Mutter, please.” Anneliese had turned back for me.
Frau Meier’s lips stretched toward her ears, but I couldn’t call it a smile. I knew then I wouldn’t go in even if she let me.