A Flicker of Light (15 page)

“Go on.” He felt his heart pound in his chest. He knew instinctively what she would say.

“My parents are from a very, well, you know…an old, well-established family, and…” she swallowed hard, “Do you understand?”

“So you’re saying you don’t want to marry me?”

“No, that’s not it at all. I am saying that I will marry you, but my parents may not approve. They probably won’t give us their blessing. But that’s never stopped me before. I do as I please; no one dictates my life.”

“What do you want, Greta? I don’t want to
do anything to make you unhappy.
”

“I want you, and I always get what I want.” Her matter of fact, self-assured behavior made him laugh.

“Do you want to elope? Would you rather I never asked them at all?”

“Yes and no. Somehow, I want to give them a chance to say yes, but please, Aaron, don’t be hurt if they say no.” She touched his face.

“As long as you love me, nothing can hurt me, and I want to assure you that we will need nothing from them. I will practice medicine and take care of you myself. I’ll make sure you never want for anything.” He reached for her, taking the cigarette out of her hand and putting it out in the ashtray. Then he enfolded her in his arms and kissed her long and hard.

Greta’s parents looked mortified when the couple told them of their plans. Her mother’s eyes grew so large that they looked as if they might fall out of her head, while her father just sat there, arms folded across his chest with a deep scowl on his face. They forbade the marriage and t
old Greta she must forget Aaron
. Her father insisted she put this boy out of her mind when she returned to school. He demanded that the relationship be terminated immediately. When Greta refused and gathered her things to leave with Aaron, her father
told her that, as of now,
he no longer had a daughter. To him, she
had
died at that moment. Then he took a knife from the kitchen drawer and cut the lapel of his shirt. This, Greta explained to Aaron, meant that a Jew was in mourning.

Chapter 17

G

reta
laid her head on Aaron’s shoulder as he held her in his arms during the train ride back to school. Tears wet her cheeks. “I am so angry I could scream. How dare my father think he can tell me what to do, or how to live my life?” The others on the train looked on, their faces masks of disgust. Such public displays of affection had been deemed strictly forbidden in the New Order of Germany.

Meanwhile

News of
Kristalnacht
, or the Night of Broken Glass, that occurred in Berlin, spread to Jewish communities throughout Europe. It had begun when the Nazis had made an accusation concerning a Jew in Paris. The Nazis claimed that this Jew had assassinated Ernst
VonRath
, a German diplomat. In order to fan the fires of anti-Semitism, the radio stations broadcast propaganda about the evils of the Jewish population, and how they intended to destroy Germany. Many
suspected
that the crime had
actually been carried out under Hitler’s orders. The consequences, as pred
icted by the Third Reich, were
catastrophic. On this night,
November 9, 1938,
which came to be known as
Kristalnacht
, Jewish businesses suffered at the hands of vandals. Synagogues were burned to the ground and Jews were beaten in the stre
ets throughout Germany. From that date
, forward, it became a requirement for all Jews to wear an armband with a yellow Star of David whenever they walked outside. The college expelled Aaron and Greta due to the new law. No more Jews would be
allowed to attend the
universites
. Restrictions extended to the parks and restaurants. Open persecution of anyone of Jewish faith became acceptable and commonplace.

Several weeks following their return to the campus, Dr
.
Blumgarten
sent a letter to Aaron. Busy with Greta, Aaron had left it on his desk for several days. Finally one afternoon as he retrieved his Latin text from the shelf, he’d noticed the envelope and opened it just one hour before the dorm master appeared with papers forcing him to evacuate his room. The dorm master said that all Jewish studen
ts were being expelled from
theu
University
. Aaron was stunned. The lett
er from the doctor
bordered on hysteria, which was unusual for Dr.
Blumgarten
. The
doctor said he had secured enough money for Aaron, himself
,
and his wife to leave Germany and go to America as soon as possible. Dr.
Blumgarten
felt sure that soon the Jews would be unable to leave and find themselves trapped in the hatred spreading through
the land
. This was much more than speculation, the doctor assured Aaron. Things were going to get very ugly. Many of the wealthier Jewish population were already missing, arrested without reason. They were followed to
their homes by the Gestapo, the dreaded secret police
, who confiscated their possessions. The unfortunate Jews simply disappeared. The medical clinic where Aaron had been employed, the one Dr
.
Blumgarten
had lovingly established for the indigent, had been burned by thugs on
Kristalnacht
.

Aaron read the letter twice. The students had already begun to feel some of the effects on campus, but not strongly, at least not until
his expulsion
. That night he’d been scheduled to work. When he presented himself to fulfill his obligation at the Fassbinder bakery, he found
Anke
in tears as she told him that she and Ludwig had to terminate him. He finally accepted the severity of the situation. At that point, he went to Greta to discuss their future plans. When he arrived at her dorm room, he found her clearly distressed. She too had been expelled, and just
like his, her papers demanded that she be gone by midnight. The dorm ma
ster brought a letter to Greta
from her hometown along with the expulsion papers. It had been sitting on the dorm ma
sters desk for several weeks and she had forgotten to deliver it until now
.  The letter was from Mrs
.
Schouserman
, her childhood neighbor, who had been kind enough to send a note informing her of the arrest of her parents. It had occurred the week after their visit. From what the letter told her, the Gestapo arrived early one m
orning. Within minutes, the
Ziet
lmans
were taken away
, handcuffed, in the back of an
SS wagon. Just that simply, Greta had lost her parents and everything she knew. The house that she grew up in now belonged to the Nazi Party, and she had no idea where to begin to look for her family. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I want to go see my brother. I want to find out what he knows. Maybe he has had word from my parents. Will you come with me?” Greta asked
,
gripping the letter in her hand as she looked at Aaron.

“Of course I will, S
weetheart. I would never let you make this trip by yourself. Don’t
cry. Come on. Come here and let me hold you
. We’ll figure out what to do. Please stop crying.” He held her until her body stopped shaking and
the tears no longer fell. Then he made arrangements for them to go by train to Frankfurt to see her brother.

Travel was difficult. Every stop found them presenting their
papers to guards
who would sneer when they
saw the Star of David brand in the center. One whispered, “Christ killer,” under his breath as he handed the papers back to Aaron.

They arrived
late in the afternoon, just as the sun had its last bright moment of the day before it set. They knocked at the door. A tall, slender woman, with almost white-blonde hair escaping from her bun in tufts, hunched as she opened it just a crack. She could be no more than twenty-five years old, but she had the demeanor of one far older. The wrinkles in her brow and the slight hump in her back gave her the appearance of poor health.

“Yes, what do you want?” She spoke with the impatience of someone who’d lived a life of hard labor.

“Hello, my name is Greta
Zeitelman
. You must be my brother’s new housekeeper. David
Zeitelman
, your boss?”

“I have
no boss. I don’t know any
Zeit
lman
.” The faint cry of an infant came from the back of the house.

“He lives here.
My brother?”
Greta said. She had begun to turn pale.

“I live here with my husband, and I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about; and quite frankly, Fraulein, I don’t care.”

The door slammed with a thud in Greta’s unsuspecting face. She grew frantic, running up to strangers and asking everyone that she could
find
on the street if they knew the fate of her brother and his family. Finally, a man wearing a gray hat with a short brim that had been pulled down to cover his balding head stopped. “The people who used to live here are gone now.” His voice was abrupt and harsh.

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to get involved. I think it would be wise,
Frauline
, if you stopped asking so many questions. They’ve been taken away. That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows. Goodbye.” He hurried down the street as Greta stood helplessly watching him. Panicked, she began screaming wildly and stomping her feet. Then she told Aaron that she planned to talk to the SS at their headquarters. “How dare they do this? They can’t just take my family and everything that we have. They just can’t do this.”

Aaron restrained her; he had begun to understand the power that the Nazi Party possessed, and what they could
do if they so chose. He knew better than to allow her to go to the officials. The laws of the past no longer held any validity. Jews had lost all of their rights as human beings.

Through much investigation, Greta learned that her parents and brother, along with many of the families she’d grown up with, now resided in a work camp somewhere in Poland. In an effort to find out more information, Aaron took Greta to see Dr.
Blumgarten
. “Sweetheart, it is best if we go and see my friends. The doctor is very influential. He knows lots of people. They may be able to help us find out exactly where your family has been sent. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to the Nazis. They may take you, as well, and then I would have to fight them.” He smiled, trying to soothe her fears, but his heart felt heavy in his chest.

Once she’d exhausted all of her other options, she agreed to go with him to see the doctor and his wife. Mor
r
is and
Chaya
Blumgarten
had just finished packing when Aaron arrived. The doctor grabbed him, holding him tight in a warm embrace. Then
Chaya
hugged him
,
too.

‘This is Greta, my girlfriend.”

“Hello, Greta. I’m Dr.
Blumgarten
, and this is my wife
,
Chaya
.” The doctor patted her shoulder and his wife smiled.

“Hello. It’s nice to meet both of you. Aaron speaks highly of you.”

“Greta’s parents have been arrested. We don’t know why or where they have been taken. Do you have any idea of what is going on?”

“You two chil
dren had better sit down,” Dr.
Blumgarten
motioned to the couple. “Yes, well, from what we hear, Jews are being sent to a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, and from there they are deported to a concentration camp called Auschwitz. There is no way to help them escape. We have tried to get family members out, but have been unsuccessful. I’ve even offered to pay, but to no avail. I am afraid that we must leave Germany and try to save ourselves right now. When the war is over, we will come back and look for our loved ones.”

Tears fell
onto Greta’s black leather purse as she listened.

“Young lady,” Dr.
Blumgarten
addressed Greta, “do you have any money? I ask because it costs a great deal to buy papers and the necessary transportation out of here. Even then, I am not sure you would be able to acquire everything you need. It is very difficult. It has cost me all I have. We leave here with nothing but our lives.”

“This is terribly frightening, I don’t have anything. My parents had all of the money. Besides, I can’t just go.
I would be leaving them behind,
” Greta said.

“I suggest that you get out if you can. I would help you if I had the resources. I am afraid that we had just enough for
tickets for ourselves and Aaron,
”
he
said. Turning to Aaron, his face genuinely saddened, he patted the manila envelope on the table. “We have been trying to contact you. I am so glad that you came. I have left countless messages at your dormitory and you never responded. We had decided to go to the school to look for you. In fact, we planned to go there tonight. It is good that you are here. Right here in this package are your papers. They are forged. According to the paperwork, you are now an Aryan male. Your new name is Gunter
Voughen
.”