Someone has set a wooden crate by their car, making it easier to climb in. Jakob hands his suitcase up, breathing in the stale aroma of dust and decay. He shudders as he hoists himself from the crate to sit at the edge of the car, trying to push aside the image of the hundreds, thousands, maybe more, who undoubtedly boarded the same car before him, bound for places like Treblinka, Che?mno, and Auschwitz—names now synonymous with death. His chest tightens to think that Bella’s parents must have been on a train just like this.
Bella peers up at him from the platform and smiles, and Jakob is nearly brought to tears. He is in awe of her strength. Two years ago, she’d nearly given up the will to live. He’d barely recognized her. Today, she reminds him of the girl he fell in love with. Except now, it’s not just them. Now they are a family. Jakob extends his arms.
“Up we go,” Bella whispers. “Got him?” she asks, before loosening her grip.
“Got him.”
Jakob kisses Victor’s cheek, and then tucks him into his elbow and holds out his free hand for Bella. When all three are inside, the others in the car immediately gather around. There is something about Victor, his malted-milk scent and his satiny skin, that breathes hope into the harried survivors around him.
A whistle blares. “Dwie minuty!” the conductor hollers. “Two minutes! Train departs in two minutes!”
Their car is full, but not overcrowded. Jakob and Bella know most of the faces on board—several from ?ód?, a few from Radom. Most are Jews. They are destined for a Displaced Persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany. There, they’ve been told, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, which everyone refers to by its acronym, UNRRA, and the Joint have set up shop to provide the refugees with hospitable living conditions and, for the first time since most can remember, an ample food supply. At Stuttgart, Jakob and Bella hope, they’ll be better able to communicate with Bella’s uncle in Illinois. And if all goes well, in due time they’ll be allowed to emigrate to the United States. To America. The word sings when they speak it—of freedom, of opportunity, of the chance to start anew. America. Sometimes it sounds too perfect, like the last note of a nocturne that hovers, suspended in time, before inevitably growing faint and disappearing. But it’s plausible, they remind themselves. Their sponsorship, they hoped, would soon be approved, and then all that would be required were three visas.
Jakob and Bella talk frequently about the idea of their son, should their plan come to fruition, growing up American. About what it will mean to introduce Victor to a lifestyle, a language, a culture completely foreign. Surely, he’ll be better off, they say, even though they have no concept of what growing up American entails.
A second whistle sounds, and Bella jumps.
“Oh!” Jakob cries, “I nearly forgot!” He transfers Victor into Bella’s arms, reaches for his camera, and lowers himself quickly back down to the platform.
Bella shakes her head, peering down at him from the car door. “Where are you going? We’re about to leave!”
“I meant to take a photo,” Jakob says, waving his hand. “Here, quickly, everyone, look this way.”
“Now?” Bella asks, but she doesn’t argue. She motions for the others to join her and they gather quickly at the door. Together, they stand tall and smile.
Through the lens of his Rolleiflex, Jakob studies his subjects. Adorned in collared trench coats, wool dresses that hang just below the knee, tailored blouses, and closed-toed leather shoes, the group appears, he realizes as he brings it into perfect focus, much better than it should, all things considered. Exhausted. But also—Jakob glances up and smiles—proud. Click. He snaps the photo just as the train’s wheels begin to turn.
“Hurry, love!” Bella calls, and Jakob pulls himself back up into the car.
The Home Army soldier struts by and slides the bottom door to their car closed. “Open?” he asks, pointing to the top door.
“Open,” the passengers in the car quickly agree.
“Suit yourselves,” the soldier says.
The train begins to crawl. Jakob and Bella stand at the door, watching the world outside slide by, slowly at first, then faster as they pick up speed. Jakob grips the wooden door with one hand and wraps the other around Bella. She leans into him for balance, bending to kiss the top of Victor’s head. Victor stares up at her, unblinking, holding her gaze.
“Until next time, Polsko,” Jakob says, although he and Bella know well there very likely won’t be a next time.
As the train accelerates, Bella looks up at the fleeting Polish cityscape, taking in the seventeenth-century stone fa?ades, the red-tiled roofs, the gilded dome of the Katedra ?wi?tego Aleksandra Newskiego. “Good-bye,” she whispers, but her words are lost, swallowed up by the rhythmic clack of the train rattling along its tracks, speeding west, toward Germany.
—
The Displaced Persons camp at Stuttgart West isn’t so much a camp, but a city block. There are no fences, no boundaries, just a two-lane hilltop thoroughfare called Bismarckstrasse, lined with a row of buildings on either side, three and four stories tall. Jakob and Bella’s apartment is fully furnished, thanks, they learned, to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had paid a visit to the neighboring Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camp just after V-E day. Shocked and infuriated by what had occurred there, Eisenhower asked the locals in Stuttgart to provide some shelter for the Jews who’d lived to see the end of the war; when they refused, he lost his patience and demanded an evacuation. “Take your personal belongings, but leave the furniture, the china, the silverware, and everything else,” he ordered, adding, “You have twenty-four hours.”
Though most of the Jews who landed in Stuttgart West were left with virtually nothing—no home, no family, not a possession to their names—the camp embodies a welcome sense of renewal. It helps that Bismarckstrasse is home to a handful of survivors from Radom, including Dr. Baum, whom Bella had seen for tonsillitis as a child and who now performs check-ups for Victor every month. It also helps that the DPs are able, finally, to honor the traditions and holidays that for so long they were banned from celebrating. At the end of November, when they were invited by the Jewish chaplains of the U.S. Army to a celebration in honor of the first night of Hanukkah at Stuttgart’s opera house, they were elated. Jakob and Bella, along with hundreds of other DPs, had ridden by trolley car to the city center for the standing-room-only service. When they left, they were struck, for the first time since they could remember, with an overwhelming feeling of belonging.
No one in the camp talked about the war. It was as if the DPs were in a hurry to forget about lost years, to start fresh. And that they did. In the spring, romances at the DP camp popped up with the fire lilies. There were weddings to attend on the weekends, and each month, half a dozen babies were born. There was also a push to create an educational system—another luxury that had for the most part been discarded during the war—for the camp’s youth. Apartments were converted into classrooms where the children took classes in everything from Zionism to mathematics, music, drawing, and dressmaking. There were classes for adults, too, in dental mechanics, metalwork, leatherwork, goldsmithery, and needlework. Bella led a class in undergarment, corset, and hat making.
Jakob and Bella spent most of their days those first few months in Stuttgart hopping between the UNRRA’s office, where a group of Americans rationed out food, clothing, and supplies, and the U.S. Consulate General’s office, where they checked daily on the status of their emigration papers. “Anything from my uncle, Fred Tatar?” Bella asked, at each visit. They’d received just one telegram so far, back when they first arrived at the camp: Working on sponsorship, Bella’s uncle wrote. But they hadn’t heard from him since.
—