“Frau Rosenberg made it herself. She’s a toy designer,” the translator explained.
The old woman said something, directly to Mahmoud.
“She says she would have made one for you too,” the translator said, “but she thought you might be too old for stuffed animals.”
Mahmoud nodded. “She can make one for my little sister, though, when we find her,” he told the relief worker. “We had to hand her off to another boat to save her when we were drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. It was my fault. I’m the one who told my mother to do it, and now I have to find her and bring her back.”
Frau Rosenberg looked questioningly at the relief worker as he translated, and her bright smile faded. Waleed ran off to show his mother his new toy, and the old woman led Mahmoud into the hallway just inside the house, where family pictures hung on the wall.
“I was a refugee once, just like you,” the old woman said through the interpreter, “and I lost my brother.” She pointed to an old brown photograph in a picture frame, of a mother and father and two children: a boy about Mahmoud’s age in glasses, and a little girl. The father and son wore suits and ties, and the mother wore a pretty dress with big buttons. The girl was dressed like a little sailor. “That’s me there, the girl. That’s my family. We left Germany on a ship in 1939, trying to get to Cuba. To escape the Nazis. I was very little then, and I’m very old now, and I don’t remember too much about that time. But I do remember my father being very sick. And a cartoon about a cat. I remember that. And a very nice policeman who let me wear his hat.
“My father was the only one to make it to Cuba. He lived there for many years, long after the war, but I never saw him again. He died before we could find each other. The rest of us couldn’t leave the ship with him. And no other country would take us. So they brought us back to Europe just in time for the war. Just in time to go on the run again.
“The Nazis caught us, and they gave my mother a choice—save me, or save my brother. Well, she couldn’t choose. How could she? So my brother chose for her. His name was Josef.” Mahmoud watched as she reached out and gently touched the boy in the photograph, leaving a smudge on the glass. “He was about your age, I think. I don’t remember much about him, but I do remember he always wanted to be a grown-up. ‘I don’t have time for games,’ he would tell me. ‘I’m a man now.’ And when those soldiers said one of us could go free and the other would be taken to a concentration camp, Josef said, ‘Take me.’
“My brother, just a boy, becoming a man at last.”
She paused a moment, then took the picture down off the wall reverently, with both hands.
“They took my mother and my brother away from me that day, and left me alone there in the woods. I only survived because a kind old French lady took me in. She told the next Nazis who came knocking that I was family. When the war was over and I was old enough, I came back here, to Germany, to look for my mother and brother. I searched for them a long time, but they had died in the concentration camps. Both of them.” The woman drew a breath. “I only have this picture of them because a cousin kept it, a cousin who was hidden away by a Christian family throughout the war. Here in Germany I met my husband, Saul. He had also survived the Holocaust. We stayed because he had family here. And we made a family of our own,” Frau Rosenberg said. She spread her arms wide and turned in the little hallway, showing Mahmoud the dozens of pictures of her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She put her hand to the old yellowed picture of her family again.
“They died so I could live. Do you understand? They died so all these people could live. All the grandchildren and nieces and nephews they never got to meet. But you’ll get to meet them,” she told Mahmoud. “You’re still alive, and so is your little sister, somewhere. I know it. You saved her. And together we’ll find her, yes? I promise. We’ll find her and bring her home.”
Mahmoud started to cry, and he turned away and tried to blink back his tears. The old Jewish woman put her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug.
“Everything’s going to be all right now,” she whispered. “We’ll help you.”
“Ruthie, komm hier,” Frau Rosenberg’s husband called to her. Mahmoud didn’t need the translator to tell him that Herr Rosenberg wanted them to join him in the living room.
Mahmoud dragged a sleeve across his wet eyes, and Frau Rosenberg tried to hang the picture back on the wall. Her old hands were too shaky, though, and Mahmoud took it from her and hung it back on its nail for her. His gaze lingered on the picture. He was filled with sadness for the boy his age. The boy who had died so Ruthie could live. But Mahmoud was also filled with gratitude. Josef had died so Ruthie could live, and one day welcome Mahmoud and his family into her house.
The old woman gave Mahmoud’s arm a squeeze, and she led him into the living room. Mom and Dad were there, and Waleed and Herr Rosenberg, and the space was bright and alive and filled with books and pictures of family and the smell of good food.
It felt like a home.
Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are all fictional characters, but their tales are based on true stories.
JOSEF
The MS St. Louis was a real ship that set sail from Nazi Germany in 1939 with 937 passengers on board, almost all of them Jewish refugees trying to escape the Nazis. The Jews expected to be admitted to Cuba—some of them to live there permanently, some to stay only temporarily until they were admitted to the United States or Canada. But when they arrived, the Jews were told they would not be allowed to land. The reason was political: The Cuban official who had issued the refugees’ entrance visas had fallen out of favor with Cuba’s president at the time, Federico Brú. To embarrass the official, Brú retroactively canceled the Jews’ visas. Nazi agents in Havana helped keep the Jews out too, by spreading propaganda that turned the Cuban people against the refugees. The Germans didn’t want the Jews in their country, but they also loved seeing the refugees turned away by other countries. To the Nazis, it was proof that everybody else in the world secretly agreed with the way the Germans were treating the Jews.