MARCH 29, 1946: A group of 250 German police armed with U.S. Army rifles enter the Stuttgart DP camp, claiming they’ve been authorized by the U.S. military to search the buildings. A fight ensues and several Jews are injured. Samuel Danziger, from Radom, is murdered. His death, along with the attack, is widely reported in the American press; soon after, the United States imparts a more liberal policy on opening its doors to Jewish refugees.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Jakob and Bella
The North Sea ~ May 13, 1946
Standing on the bow of the SS Marine Perch, Jakob lifts his Rolleiflex and tinkers with its aperture as he gazes down through the lens at his wife and son. A steady breeze rolls off of the sea, salty and cool, carrying with it a breath of spring. Bella cradles Victor in her arms, smiling as the click of Jakob’s shutter fills the space between them.
They’d set sail from Bremerhaven that morning, following the Weser River toward the North Sea. By evening, the Perch, as she was affectionately called, will turn her bow west as they prepare to cross the Atlantic.
Three weeks earlier, they’d received confirmation from the U.S. Consulate General in Stuttgart that—pending a physical exam (refugees with serious conditions weren’t permitted to enter the United States)—their sponsorship would be approved, and their visas would await them in Bremerhaven. Dr. Baum had administered the exam and passed Jakob, Bella, and Victor with perfect marks. They were photographed and issued certificates of identification. Two weeks later, they bade their friends at Stuttgart farewell and boarded an overnight train. In Bremerhaven they slept for a week on the floor beneath a sign reading EMIGRANT STAGING AREA until the Marine Perch sailed into the port and they were allowed to board.
The Perch is an old thousand-passenger troop vessel—one of the first of its kind to bring refugees to America from Europe. A Liberty Ship. Without any savings to their names, Jakob and Bella relied on the Joint to pay their combined $142 fare; it had also doled out $5 in pocket money to each of the refugees on board. Before leaving Stuttgart, Jakob and Bella had saved up their UNRRA coffee rations, trading their sought-after grinds for a pair of clean shirts—a crisp blue shirt for Jakob and a white blouse with a scalloped collar for Bella—and for a new white cotton bonnet for Victor. They wanted to look their best when Bella’s uncle Fred greeted them on U.S. soil.
A young woman approaches, cooing. Since they boarded the ship, hardly a minute has passed without someone stopping to ask Victor’s age, where he was born, or simply to congratulate Bella and Jakob on the young traveler accompanying them on their journey to the States.
“Quel age a t’il?” the young woman asks, peering over Bella’s arm.
“He’ll be one in August,” Bella replies in French.
The young woman smiles. “His name?”
“We call him Victor.” Bella touches the back of her index finger to the soft skin of Victor’s cheek. It hadn’t taken her and Jakob long to decide what to call their firstborn. Victor summed up the elation they’d felt when the war finally ended and they came to grips with the notion that, despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges they’d faced along the way, they’d not only survived, but they’d managed to bring new life into the world. Someday when he’s old enough, Jakob and Bella often mused, their son would understand the significance of his name.
The woman tilts her head and nods, her eyes fixed on Victor’s pink, heart-shaped lips, parted slightly as he sleeps.
“He’s beautiful.”
Bella stares, too. “Thank you.”
“Such a peaceful sleeper.”
Bella nods, smiling. “Yes, seems he hasn’t a care in the world.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The Kurc Family
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ~ June 30, 1946
You’d better hurry,” Caroline says, smiling up at Addy from her bed in Hospital Samaritano’s maternity ward. “Go,” she adds, in her best schoolteacher voice, indicating that she won’t take no for an answer. “We’ll be fine.” With her southern American accent, the word fine is long and loose around its edges.
Addy looks at her, and then at Kathleen, asleep at the foot of the bed in an incubator. She was born two days earlier, three weeks premature, weighing in at a mere two kilos. She’s healthy, the doctors assure them, but she’ll need the warmth and oxygen of the incubator for at least a week before she can leave the hospital. Addy kisses his wife. “Caroline,” he says, his eyes wet, “thank you.”
Not only had Caroline helped him find his family through the Red Cross, she’d also cashed in her American war bonds, the only savings to her name, to help pay for the family’s passage from Italy. Addy had begged her not to—had sworn he would work out a way to pay for the tickets himself—but she had insisted.
Caroline shakes her head. “Please, Addy. I’m so happy for you. Now go!” she urges, squeezing his hand. “Before you’re late.”
“I love you!” Addy beams, then bolts for the door.
His parents’ ship is due into Rio at eleven. On board with Nechuma and Sol are his sister Halina and brother-in-law Adam, along with a cousin Ala, who had lost touch with the family at the start of the war but survived in hiding, Nechuma wrote, and Herta’s brother Zigmund, whom Addy had met only once before the war. Genek, Herta, and a son, Józef; Mila, Selim, and Felicia; and Addy’s cousins Franka and Salek and aunt Terza are scheduled to sail for Rio on the next ship from Naples. Fifteen relatives. Addy can’t quite digest the reality of it all. It’s been his singular dream since he arrived in Brazil: to find his family alive and well, to bring them to Rio, to start over together. He’d told himself over and over that the scenario was plausible, but there was always the very real possibility that it wasn’t—that his dream was just that, a dream, one that would eventually slip into the realm of nightmare and haunt him for the rest of his years.
And then the telegram came, and Addy spent weeks laughing and crying, suddenly unsure of how to conduct himself without the weight of the guilt and the worry that had bonded like a barnacle to his insides for the better part of a decade. He was lighter now, and unencumbered—“I’m free,” he told Caroline once, when she’d asked him how he felt. It was the only way he could describe the sensation. Free, finally, to believe with all of his heart that he wasn’t alone.
Addy had replied immediately to Genek’s telegram, imploring him to come to Rio—Vargas had, for the time being, opened Brazil’s doors again to refugees. The family in Italy readily agreed. They would apply for visas right away, Genek wrote. The process of acquiring the paperwork and the passage to South America would be slow, of course, but it would give Addy time to prepare for their arrival.
As soon as the decision was made, Addy got to work pulling together living arrangements: for his parents, an apartment on Avenida Atlantica; for Halina and Adam, a one-bedroom studio just down the street from his on Carvalho Mendonca; for his cousins and aunt Terza, a two-bedroom flat on Rua Belfort Roxo. He’s furnished each space with a handful of essentials he’s built by hand—bed frames, a desk, two sets of shelves. With Caroline’s help, he’s collected a hodgepodge set of plates, silverware, and a few pots and pans, along with a couple of sarongs and canvases of inexpensive art to hang on the walls from the S?o Cristóv?o flea market. The apartments are sparse; they pale in comparison to the beautiful home on Warszawska Street where he spent his youth, but they are the best he can do.