Hitler Made Me a Jew (7 page)

I remember three things about this summer: Miss Case, the lake, mostly in the morning, and an incident on a canoe trip. The camp's main activity was camping trips into the wilderness. An expedition group would comprise six girls with a group leader and a male guide. A new camper would begin with a test: a three-day trip. Then she could undertake longer expeditions if she showed herself capable.

On one of these beginning trips, I imagined myself to be an Indian as we paddled in our canoe in the middle of a peaceful lake gliding on the motionless water. I watched the foliage soon to turn gold, in the distance. It was all tranquil and grand. Then a girl on the boat broke the spell, asking our guide, “What is that awful-looking purple house?” I was surprised to see the purple house in the wild.

“It's a shelter for fucking Jews.”

The girls giggled and chatted about these Jews and their nerve to settle everywhere without respect for nature, and the nerve of them to have come here in Ontario from who knew where, and how disgusting they were, and how like them it was to have built an ugly purple house in this glorious nature setting.

My throat tightened. Before I realized what I was doing I said, “My father is Jewish!” In the quiet that followed I felt a great relief and some shame. This mixture of feelings seemed to me so wrong that I promised myself never to be embarrassed about my being Jewish. I kept asking myself why hadn't I come out with it “I am Jewish!” Did I want not to embarrass the people? Or was I ashamed of being Jewish with these people?

Miss Case heard of the incident, and she apologized, but I couldn't erase the memory from my mind. I told her how bad I felt not to have told I was Jewish. She said she didn't blame me. She knew her girls were prejudiced, and that's why she had wanted me in her camp. I guess I was the only Jewish girl in this camp. The sole representative of a minority for those days.

The lake in the morning remains fixed in my mind: huge and silver. I liked it best early in the morning when we plunged in it as soon as we woke up. I liked to be the very first one in the water because I liked breaking the smooth surface. Then the water tickled my bare body with the most exquisite touch. We also went in the nude at night before going to bed, but I didn't like it then as much. It was too dark, and I couldn't see anything, but early in the morning when everything wakes up and begins it was delicious.

Later after that summer, when she thought I was older, Janine invited me to tea. I didn't expect to find two uniformed French soldiers when I arrived. They were training to become pilots. No one else was coming, that was clear: I could see the table set for four. I was flattered that she had chosen me to come to tea. I noticed that the most talkative soldier (and the one who looked the older) was trying hard to impress Janine. She didn't seem to mind. In fact I had never seen her so skittish.

I pondered about the good-looking younger soldier whose name was Jean-Marie Meunier. He explained to me that the Bretons add Marie to their sons' names. He had to explain many different things because I was so ignorant. He was an intellectual. He liked Giraudoux, Matisse, Miro. I liked being in the company of people who knew about writers and painters even though much of what they talked about was above my head. I planned to be attentive and have Jean-Marie like me because I was a good listener.

We had tea and cakes. When it was time to go, Jean-Marie asked for my phone number, I felt lucky I could give Madame Nunez' number. I couldn't bear the thought of not having a telephone number. The minute I had given the number I was already waiting for his call—almost as soon as I had left Janine's apartment. No wonder it seemed I didn't hear from him for an eternity. I was trying to remember his looks. Was he really as good-looking as I thought he was? Why would he like me? Did he know how dumb I was? I didn't want him to know where I lived. Our tenement was too ugly. I didn't want him to know I lived in a dump. I couldn't stop thinking about him. He was the closest to a real lover I had ever had. I was pleased to be able to muse about a real person. All my previous daydreaming had been so vague. Now I had a real image to fantasize over. It was agony and delight—sweet and sour.

Finally he called, and I could hardly speak. Madame Nunez standing close to me didn't help either. We made “un rendez-vous,” at the corner of Fifty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. That had been my suggestion because I didn't want him to see my house. We walked and walked. New York was so easy to walk in those days. There was no crime to worry about. We held hands.

We walked all over town, going down to the piers, talking about books and novels and characters and Montherlant and Sartre and Camus (his favorites), while I was still reading old stuff, Balzac, Zola and first discovering Proust. Sometimes it rained, which made it more romantic. We didn't kiss yet. We brushed-grazed but hardly touched, and it was tantalizing.

One day we were to meet as usual. It was snowing. I waited over an hour on the corner of Fifty-fifth Street, but he didn't show. I went back home with a cold. Why hadn't he kept his word? Why hadn't he come? Gloomy, torturous days went by, and then a letter with a distinctive handwriting from him—a handwriting that a lover should have. It made my heart throb just to glance at the address written with black thick strong lines. He was sorry we had not met. Would I come to another rendez-vous? He would explain. Shameless I flew to meet him.

He said a friend had told him that he, too, was going with a girl called Nadine that same night we were to meet. And his friend told him that this Nadine made love with anybody. Jean-Marie didn't want to believe it was me, my name was not Nadine, but his friend insisted it could be. The descriptions fit me. Jean-Marie decided to go to his friend's rendez-vous to check. Then, of course, he discovered the girl was not me. By the time he came to our rendez-vous on Fifty-fifth Street, I had left. He had caught a cold too. It seemed a believable story. I wanted to believe anything as long as it meant it was going to be love. And then we kissed.

His training was over, and he was now a pilot. He was returning to France. We promised to write, and there was more soul kissing on the benches of Sutton Place facing the East River. And we said goodbye. It was passionate. This kissing was a revelation to me.

I thought he had left, but that Sunday I was surprised upon returning home to find Jean-Marie. He was in my house, surrounded by my mother's guests. The first time he had ever been in my house, the first time he had met my mother. I was deeply embarrassed, but also relieved. He still liked me even after having been in my house!

We corresponded for many years, when he was sent to war in Indochina. The perfect absent lover.

Chapter 12

Summer Camp Jobs 1946-47

While I was a junior in high school, I found a job in a summer camp for underprivileged children in Long Branch, New Jersey. It was a sad-looking camp with two rows of bungalows facing each other, separated by a rectangular space with a flagpole in the middle. It looked like a set for an army play and it was the opposite of Northway Lodge, my first camp experience in America.

This was a camp for the poor children who came two weeks at a time to escape the sweltering city heat. The camp season was made up of five sessions. The camp was administered by a charitable agency, and as a junior counselor I received no pay. I was getting experience, however, and that was important.

The camp was not close to the ocean, but when the wind blew, the sea air came our way. So we imagined we could smell it. Once or twice a session we went to the beach and had a look at the waves.

I was in charge of ten campers in one bungalow. I still didn't speak English well, but the children didn't seem to mind. We led a military life. My only memory of it was my friendship with Gloria.

She was an art student at Music and Art High School, which was the first time I had heard of that school. We were the only junior counselors in camp. She became my friend because she was willing to be patient with my lack of language and we were both passionately looking for boyfriends. The other girls were full-fledged counselors, one or two years older than us, and they used this age difference to patronize us. They walked around like peacocks, as if they knew everything. Gloria and I knew they were full of hot air, not as pretty as we were and in general lacking all the qualities we possessed. This knowledge cemented our friendship.

As soon as we had time off, we went searching for handsome escorts. We were more interested in showing off than in pursuing the real thing. The search itself was the excitement. We laughed and had thrills looking at possibilities, or impossibilities, and imagining. This was much more satisfying than if we had found somebody. We were window-shopping. At curfew, we would get back in the nick of time and laugh ourselves to sleep, exhausted and fulfilled.

The day the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima, we had picked up two toothless soldiers on the boardwalk in Long Branch. They were cooks at Fort Dix, and they told us: “The war is over.” Gloria and I laughed hysterically, left them and ran and ran. They were too ugly, and the news they gave us empowered us to be mean to them. Everything was yet to come for us: life was full of promises. We were sixteen.

That summer also stands out for me because one day I heard the counselors talking about entering someone in a beauty contest. I was shocked to hear them mention me as a possible contestant. It sent all kinds of new emotions down my spine. I had thought that I had a terrible figure—I was still under the judgment of Luba about my lack of beauty. I began wearing a bikini, which was rare in those days; and I gave up my coat in the summer.

In my last year in high school, I saw an ad in
P.M.
, a liberal daily newspaper. The only newspaper I read and loved. The ad asked for counselors to work in the first co-racial camp in America. I replied with the list of my camp experiences. Dr. Patrick, the owner of this co-racial camp, asked me to come for an interview. We met in his office in Harlem—my first visit to Harlem.

Dr. Patrick was unusually good-looking with light tan skin, blue eyes and curly short hair, gray on the sides. He spoke with a hushed voice, so low I had to pay close attention. I was intimidated, but he put me at ease and told me about the camp: “It's in the Catskill Mountains in Roscoe, New York, an experimental camp, a co-racial camp—the first of its kind in the States. You'll have to attend our training sessions. I want the camp workers to know one another and to know everything about the campers and their families. This is meaningful work. I want it to succeed!”

I couldn't believe my luck to be even considered for a significant job like this at Camp Willowemoc. I agreed to attend the training sessions and do as much work as necessary. I told Dr. Patrick that my friend Joan might be interested. “Good,” he said. Joan decided to go with me and agreed it would be a fulfilling job and a worthy cause for us.

We met new, dedicated people, black and white. Dr. Patrick led awe-inspiring meetings. He talked to us, and we talked back to him as we sat on the floor in a circle. This was my first participation in a democratic exchange of ideas.

By the time we settled in camp all the counselors were friends. I was the counselor for the small boys on the hill. The hill had two sides, a side for the boys and a side for the girls. All the boys had men counselors except the boys in my tent. That was because they were only seven-years-old and Dr. Patrick thought they would fare better with a girl. My boys were openly disappointed at having me as their counselor. They wanted a man, and they told me so. To make up for this and have them save face on the hill, I promised I would look extra tough in public. When the campers in the neighboring tents teased my boys because I was a girl on the boy's side, I went through a fit of anger and screamed at my boys so hard the surrounding tents had to agree I was the toughest, meanest counselor on the hill.

Everything was going on well until the counselor of the nearby tent asked that I take one of his boys into my group. He had problems with him, and he thought it might be better for the boy to be with a younger group. Dr. Patrick and his nurse authorized the move, and I had no choice. They told me: “This boy is a leader. He has creative ideas. He knows how to get others to do what he wants.” Hearing this I decided perhaps he wouldn't be so bad in our group and that by flattering him, I might make him my assistant.

After a few days, we smelled a foul odor that we traced to his trunk. We opened the trunk and found that all his pants, neatly stacked, had shit stuck to them. Now I understood why they gave me the boy. I was furious. My colleague said it was not his fault and that he had told Dr. Patrick and his nurse about the problem. “So?” I demanded. “What am I supposed to do?” I just got a blank stare and a shrug as the answer.

I gathered up the soiled, stinking pants and took them to the laundry room. The lady in charge said, “Sorry—you're not bringing these in here!”

Feeling persecuted, I made a hole in the ground and buried the pants. The way the lady in Philadelphia had buried her dishes to make them kosher. The fat boy had no more pants. The Dr. Patrick consulted again said, “O.K. we'll call his folks, and we'll send him home. I don't know what else we can do.”

All at once I felt sad. Now that the problem was so easily settled, I didn't want to see the boy leave. In desperation, I told him, “You are going to be tied to me all day. The minute you have to go, you'll go—I'll be there and this way there'll be no accident.”

And that's how we were, tied together, for an entire day. When I had to be freed I had someone hold him for me. All day long, I asked him, “Do you have to go?” When the evening came, he begged me to untie him. He promised he wouldn't do it in his pants anymore, and he didn't. It was a triumph. Later I learned that his parents, who were both doctors, had faced this problem before, but had not known what to do for him. They had not said anything because they were afraid their son wouldn't be admitted to camp. They had hoped something would happen to change their son and it did. I thought it was a miracle.

The countryside around Camp Willowemoc was beautiful with big old trees and clear cool streams, large enough for going swimming. We took walks and had picnics, and sometimes we went on overnight camping trips with bonfires and cookouts. The boys rolled in the grass and climbed trees, and we read stories in the shade.

The kids thought I was funny because they told me that “fluck” meant rain. And I would say fluck if it rained, and they went crazy with delight. After I learned what the word meant to them, that it was close enough to a forbidden English word to sound shocking to them, I kept using fluck to help me get on their good side. They were a handful. In the evening I tucked them in and kissed them lightly on the cheek, but I remember taking pleasure in pinching their cheeks according to their behavior that day. Sometimes I felt I was ready to explode, but I had to be patient and tolerant with these little monsters. Still I was attached to them.

We, the counselors, had our fun too. Del, who was one of the most sought-after guys in camp, flattered me with his attention. I thought he was the best-looking black counselor. He courted me openly but never made serious demands. He taught me how to dance the jitterbug. To my surprise I loved the dance. Before that I had thought ballroom dancing was frivolous and stupid. Why do people like dancing cheek to cheek, I wondered. Later I learned that Del had sex, in secret, with another girl. I didn't care, I was seventeen and not ready for sex. We fondled a lot. It was called petting and it was what everybody was doing. Petting was not considered sex. Nothing was more sacred than one's virginity and one's reputation. Petting was like necking.

My new friend that summer was Loretta, a music student at Music and Art High School. She was six months older than I, but I felt she was much older because she was so reasonable, with her hair in a pageboy cut and her sweater and her single strand pearls. She looked virtuous. Her sweet beauty and quiet ways attracted the most unlikely young men to her. One asked her, “Are you J.B.?” “What's that?” she asked. “Jail bait—it means under eighteen!” he said. Her company was very comforting to me when Joan, my best friend, abandoned me for Marshall. We went on our day off together, Loretta and I, and had adventures. Once, we hitchhiked and got a ride with young men who flirted with us during the trip. Loretta was annoyed with me because she had to handle them alone when I fell asleep in the back seat. Our destination reached, they refused to stop and tried to talk us into going somewhere else. We were scared for a while, but we insisted, and they reluctantly agreed because Loretta had a way of getting us out of trouble; she was so ladylike and reasonable.

Sex was on our minds all the time. Joan was having a most passionate love affair with Marshall, a factory worker who was planning to be a union organizer. She thought he was gorgeous with his fine features and thin moustache. Under his spell, Joan became subdued. I missed her assertiveness and her independence. She lost her authority over me. I was not ready to give in to love, and I couldn't understand Joan's total surrender to Marshall. Also, I was irritated to see them constantly kissing and fondling. I resented him terribly.

Dr. Patrick had forbidden lovemaking and particularly co-racial love. He didn't want black-and-white couples to go to town together. The counselors remarked that Dr. Patrick made rules that he didn't follow because he was having an affair with his secretary, who was white. We thought it was unfair.

As discontentment grew, other injustices were pointed out. The one that surprised me especially was that blacks like Dr. Patrick could be discriminatory. We were told to observe who had been chosen to be a counselor and who had been designated to work in the kitchen. Then it became clear that the light-skinned people were the counselors and the very dark-skinned ones were in the kitchen. They were all college students, and we had all trained together to be counselors, so why were the very black people made kitchen helpers?

A secret meeting was called to discuss this problem in depth. I remember I was talking just as Dr. Patrick came into the room. I froze, sure that I was going to be struck down. But Dr. Patrick was not concerned about me. He sat and asked that we continue. I took it upon myself to go on with what we had been in the middle of discussing, even though I was agitated to have Dr. Patrick listening. I remember trying to be honest and at the same time feeling embarrassed to tell the truth. It was not the same having the “enemy” there. I felt awkward because I liked him, and I also felt treacherous. Yes I was discovering that people are not always what they claim to be. Some people can be self-serving even while working for a good cause. I had to face some of the truth about Dr. Patrick and continue to like him in spite of it. He admitted there was discrimination in the way he chose the counselors. He said he thought that the white parents who came to look over the camp would prefer light-skinned people to deal with their children. But we knew better because the Whites who were sending their kids to this camp were more liberal and certainly poorer than the black parents. The irony also was that the Blacks who could send their children to camp were very rich. It was clear that Dr. Patrick wanted to please them at this point.

Washington Irving High School's yearbook of 1946 was called “Daisy.” Washington Irving was an all-girls school. Daisies were the symbol of its students. My name appears as Dina Nadia Balter. These were the names given me by my parents and registered as my official name on my birth certificate. My parents called me Nadia. Dina was just an extra name. When I came to the United States the school secretaries registered me under my official name Dina, which followed me through my entire school career. But when I applied for a passport I changed the order of my names and I took Nadia as my first official name.

The Principal of my high school was Dr. Mary E. Meade. Annette Rubman, Mary Holbrook and Clara B. Garnett were teachers who signed my yearbook.

Names. Family names. I enjoy putting these names down just for their own sake. Like spices, I think they add taste and color and they help memories to surface. I remember vaguely Dr. Meade. She was a formidable administrator, serious and ethical. The school was run like a ship: clean with shining copper knobs, waxed floors, clear windows, well built like a bank. It was famous as an art school but offered a regular diploma also.

I chose the school because Annette was there, and she had chosen it because it was close to her home. My good friend Joan Bromberg chose the school because it was close to Greenwich Village where she lived. The closest school to my house was Julia Richman, considered a good academic school. In 1944 all New York high schools were considered good.