My Canary Yellow Star (21 page)

“Marta, wait up!” Ervin’s voice. Tears of relief ran down my face when I heard that they too had been assigned to building 5.

Building 5 was a tall house with peeling yellow paint. At one time it must have been home to three families, one on each floor. Now it teemed with frightened people.

We picked our way up the stairs to the second floor.

“There is no space to sit,” Ervin said.

“The crowd seems to be a little thinner at the far end of the room,” Gabor pointed out.

We waded into the bedraggled crowd. No one even spoke when we accidentally disturbed their emaciated bodies with our feet. A tug at my sleeve. I looked down at a ragged, bearded creature sitting on the floor. I had never seen him before.

“Marta Weisz, don’t you recognize me?”

His voice was familiar.

“It’s me. Sam Lazar.”

I crouched down for a better look. The skeletal man bore little resemblance to the jolly Mr. Lazar I remembered.

“Have you seen your mother?” he asked.

“Mama? What do you mean? Where is she?”

He pointed to the ceiling. “She’s on the third floor.”

I hugged him and we made our way to the staircase.

My mother and I saw each other at the same instant. She and my aunt were huddled with another woman in a corner of the grimy hallway. They looked so gray, so worn, so old that my heart wept. Mama struggled to her feet and stumbled toward us, her arms outstretched. We hugged and hugged. I wanted it to last forever. Aunt Miriam was grinning from ear to ear.

“Have you heard any news of my Judit and my Adam?” A timid voice interrupted us. Mama’s companion turned her head away from the shadows. It was Mrs. Grof.

“Rachel was the first person we saw when we were brought here,” Mama said. “She was picked up by the Arrow Cross while she lined up for food.”

“Why aren’t Judit and Adam with you?” she asked.

We told her everything we knew. After a long moment, she smiled.

“My Judit and Adam are all right,” she said. “I can feel it in my bones. They’ll come home when the war is over, you’ll see. I can hardly wait to see them!”

None of us answered her.

The three women shifted closer together to make room for us beside them on the floor. There we stayed day after day, without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The days melted into nights, until we lost count. The world around us whirled in a gray haze. Then suddenly, there was Peter. Peter in his Levente uniform. Peter holding a canteen of
water to our lips. Peter giving us thick slices of black bread. We fell on the food like ravenous animals.

“Slowly, slowly,” he warned. “Eat slowly or you’ll be sick.”

“What are you doing here?” Ervin asked after the food had revived us.

Peter motioned in the direction of the family sitting closest to our group on the stone floor. They were straining to hear what we were saying. We moved to the head of the stairs, where we couldn’t be overheard.

“How did you get in here?” Gabor asked.

Peter laughed. “Getting in is no problem. Getting out – now that’s more difficult. I told them at the gate that I had to come into the Ghetto to find the Jews who had cheated me. Exactly the same thing I told the Arrow Cross at the synagogue on Dohany Street. It worked both times.” He looked at his watch. “Good. Right at this moment, the guard is changing at the front gate.”

Ervin cracked his knuckles. “So?”

“So we’ll walk out of the Ghetto together,” Peter said. “When Stein told me you were taken into the Ghetto, I went to St. Stephen Park to get your Schutz-Passes. It’s a good thing you showed me where you had hidden them, Ervin. I’d already heard that you had been brought here with your sister, Mrs. Weisz,” he said to Mama.

“Our Schutz-Passes were torn up by the Arrow Cross,” Mama said.

Peter’s smile widened. “I have some extras, thanks to Stein and his friends.”

He gave me the Schutz-Pass of a girl called Leah Klein. The grainy photograph in the protective passport was so faded that nobody could tell it wasn’t me. Mama became Mrs. Ida Klein and Aunt Miriam was Mrs. Eva Singer. There was no Schutz-Pass for Judit’s mother.

“Say goodbye to Mrs. Grof,” Peter said to Mama and Aunt Miriam. “I didn’t know she was with you, so I didn’t bring her any documents. I’ll come back for her another time.”

“Rachel has to come with us,” Aunt Miriam protested.

“We can’t leave her here. You might not be able to come back,” Mama said, sounding every bit as determined as my aunt. “If Rachel doesn’t come with us, I cannot leave either.”

Mrs. Grof was silent, her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that the tips of her fingers had turned white.

“There is no time for this. We’re taking too long,” Peter warned. Then he sighed. “Fine! You win! Mrs. Grof can come with us. If anyone asks, I’ll say I forgot her papers.” He looked at the rest of us questioningly. We nodded our agreement.

We made our way to the front gates of the Ghetto. I was breathing so rapidly that I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. The Arrow Cross guards stationed there stopped us.

“Where are you taking these Jews?” the younger of the two guards asked.

“I was ordered by my platoon leader to escort them out of the Ghetto. They’re Swedish citizens,” Peter said casually. He handed our Schutz-Passes to the guards. “Here are their documents, comrade.”

“What does your platoon leader want with them?” the older Arrow Cross soldier asked.

“I have no idea,” Peter said. “I just follow orders.”

The second Arrow Cross began to examine our Schutz-Passes. Aunt Miriam moaned quietly, but Mama hushed her. The guard’s eyes traveled over us. His face was full of contempt. “What do you think we should do, Fritzi?” he asked his partner. “Should we let them go?”

The first Arrow Cross shrugged his shoulders. “Why not, Jancsi? Who gives a damn about these Jews? The fewer of them there are, the better I like it.”

We were already a few feet away from them when the older guard called out, “Halt! You showed us five sets of papers, but there are six Jews with you.”

Before Peter could answer, Aunt Miriam suddenly broke away and ran toward the guards.

“Leave us alone! What do you want with us?” she cried.

Peter bolted after her to stop her. Ervin had one arm clasped around Gabor’s waist to keep him from running after them as well. His other hand was over Gabor’s mouth to stifle his screams. Shots rang out. Aunt Miriam was on the ground, Peter’s body draped over hers. They were both
dead. I realized with a shock that the keening sounds I was hearing came from my own throat.

Dead! My Peter, dead. It couldn’t be. The hand grasping my arm was my mother’s, not Peter’s. The tears intermingling with mine were my mother’s, not Peter’s. The sobs I was hearing were coming from my mother’s throat, not Peter’s. And my aunt – so charming and gay, so kind, so full of life – dead! The thought was inconceivable.

I could hear Ervin screaming at the guards. “What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy? We’re Swedish citizens. You killed these people for no reason at all. You killed them because your comrade forgot to bring one of our Schutz-Passes. I will get Mr. Wallenberg immediately. He will report you to your superiors.”

The younger guard became frightened. “It wasn’t our fault. What were we to think?”

“Get out of here!” the older guard cried. “All of you!”

The gates closed behind us.

“Where should we go now?” I asked. It did not seem to matter.

“Back to St. Stephen Park, I suppose,” said Ervin.

“But it isn’t safe any more.”

“The Arrow Cross has already been through it. Besides, what choice is there?” Ervin took Mama’s hand and led our forlorn group away from the Ghetto.

When we got back to the safe house, we comforted each other as best as we could, but without much success. Gabor covered his head with a yarmulke. Then, with tears running down his cheeks, he began to pray: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

After Gabor finished reciting the ancient words, Mama put her arm around his shoulders and drew him close to her.

“I had to say the Shema for her,” he said, sobbing. “There was no time back there for her to say it herself.”

The Soviets were advancing, we’d heard, and the war would soon be over. Too late, too late. Peter is forever gone. Aunt Miriam, dead. I’ll never see them again, I thought to myself.

T
he shelves of the grocery stores were completely bare, but Mama had got hold of a sack of dried beans on the black market and she made watery soup out of it. All of us had become skeletal. Ervin and Gabor had to punch new holes into their belts to keep their pants from falling down. The black skirt I had once been so proud of hung loose on me. I had become accustomed to the constant gnawing hunger pains in the pit of my stomach.

We had moved into the kitchen of the apartment at 2 St. Stephen Park. The bathroom had become too small a living space since Mama and Mrs. Grof had joined us. I walked over to the window above the kitchen sink and looked outside. Nobody would have guessed that Christmas was around the corner. The few dour individuals who had ventured outdoors were lean and shabby. They scurried about
with frightened expressions on their faces. No laughter, no joy lightened the twilight.

On Christmas Eve, a symphony of drums pounded in the sky. The Soviets had begun a heavy, continuous bombing of Budapest. We were freezing. All heat and electricity had been cut off, and we had no wood for our stoves: we had already chopped up all of the furniture. We had no water. In the entire building only one toilet, down in the basement, was working. If any of us needed to use it, we had to climb down four sets of steep stairs and endure a long queue as we awaited our turn.

The next morning, Christmas Day, we were gathered around the gas stove in the kitchen. We had made a small fire in the tray below the gas rings, and the warmth of the flame felt wonderful over my outstretched fingers. Ervin and I were sitting so close to each other that I could see each individual freckle on his nose. I could also see the small brother I used to play with in the outlines of this gangly stranger. My brother’s obnoxious younger self reappeared when I dropped my head nostalgically on his shoulder. He drew away from me.

“Ugh! Your hair reeks!” he cried.

“Thanks a lot. Yours doesn’t smell so good either. What am I supposed to do? In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have water.” I was desperate to wash my hair, but drinking water was our priority.

Mama looked troubled. “We’re becoming uncivilized,
like beasts in the jungle. We must get cleaned up somehow. What can we do?”

Gabor had the answer: he organized us into a snow brigade. He put his jacket over his tattered clothing and went into the icy street to fill a pail with snow. He then carried the pail up the front steps, where he passed it to Ervin. Ervin carried the snow up the staircase to the second floor, where he gave it to me. I carried it up to the third floor, where I handed it over to Mama, who took it up to the fourth floor and gave it to Mrs. Grof. Mrs. Grof melted the snow over the mini bonfire below the gas rings and poured the resulting water into the bathtub. We had arranged to use the tub with the married couple who had replaced us in the bathroom. We repeated this process over and over again until the tub was full. We were too weak to carry more than one pail at a time, so filling up the tub took a long time.

“We have enough water for only one bath,” Mama said. “We’ll have to draw lots to decide the order we’ll get to bathe. It’s the only fair way.”

We put five folded pieces of paper, each marked with a number between one and five, into a hat and drew lots.

“I’m first,” Ervin crowed.

“I’m second,” Mama said, unsuccessfully trying to hide her pleasure. Before the war, she used to spend hours in her scented bath.

Gabor didn’t look too happy about coming third, while Mrs. Grof wore a positively thunderous expression about
being fourth. What should I have said, coming last? It was the luck of the draw. There was nothing I could do about it, so I kept quiet.

“Everybody must take a very quick bath, then the water won’t cool down too much by the time Rachel and Marta get their turn,” Mama said.