Raquela (27 page)

Raquela and Lili stared through the windows; the Nissen hut closed around them; they were with Gerda in the cave in the Carpathian Mountains.

“He lived a few days. I had no milk in my breast. We tried to give him water from our hands.”

She paused. “It was better he died so soon. He could never have survived. We lived in the woods for three years before we were liberated.”

“Three years!” Raquela blurted out. “Surely you couldn't have survived in a cave that long!”

She was back in reality. Back in Cyprus. She regretted her remark, but surely Gerda didn't expect her to believe she could stay alive in a cave for three years.

Maybe something happened to the people of the Holocaust. Maybe the hunger, the terror, the dying all around them, did things to their sense of time.

“It was three years,” Gerda repeated dully. “We went into the cave in June 1941, and we came out in July 1944, when the Russians drove the Nazis back. But my husband was very weak; he weighed only sixty pounds. He died after we were liberated.”

That night Raquela wrote her first letter to Arik.

     Athlit was just a beginning. I think that's where I began growing up.
     But Cyprus! Tens of thousands crowded into tents and iron huts. There is so much to do, so much to learn, Cyprus is going to age me so fast in these next six weeks, I think I'll bridge the fourteen-year-gap between us.

FIFTEEN

NOVEMBER 1947

M
idmorning the next day, Josh Leibner appeared in the maternity ward.

“Can you take time off?” he asked. “I want to take you to hear Golda Meir.”

“Golda Meir in Cyprus!” What could have brought the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency to the prison camps?

“There's an outbreak of typhus,” he explained. “The doctors are afraid it may hit the children. We want to get all the babies out before we lose them. Golda's been able to convince the Palestine government in Jerusalem to let the parents with babies under one year old leave immediately.”

“You mean the British are bending the rules? No more seven-hundred-fifty-a-month quota?”

“Not exactly. They'll just deduct the number from a later quota. Golda's here to try to convince the
refugees
to bend the rules. They're the ones who decide who should go first. You know the rule: first in, first out. Golda met yesterday with Sir Godfrey Collins—he's the commanding officer here in charge of the camps. Golda learned he got a cable from the chief secretariat in Jerusalem. It said, ‘Beware of Mrs. Meir. She is a formidable person.' She's so formidable, she may have scared him into letting all our orphans go, too.”

Raquela laughed. “I can't leave here without permission from Old Battleship.”

They entered Matron White's office. “Are you sure you have enough aides to cover you?” the British nurse demanded.

“Two excellent young women,” Raquela said.

The matron waved her hand impatiently. “You can go, but don't make a practice of this.”

Raquela hurried to her room to pick up her cape. The day was somber; rain threatened.

The Cypriot taxi driver opened the door of the cab. Soon they were driving to the second complex of camps, at Dhekelia, near the Mediterranean shore. It was called the “winter camp” and was eighteen miles from the camp at Caraolas.

They pulled up in front of a dilapidated wooden gate crisscrossed with the ever-present barbed wire. Soldiers inspected their ID cards and opened the gates.

Raquela saw a straggly line of people, in ragged European winter coats and shawls, waiting in front of a dark iron hut. Obviously newcomers, straight off a British prison ship, they milled around, bewildered, resentful. Behind them were the round black iron huts that looked like sewer pipes: their future homes.

“We've got more than thirty thousand in the camps,” Josh said bitterly as they walked across an open area and came upon a crowd of people circling an improvised grandstand made of vegetable crates. Men, women, even small children, were talking, arguing, gesticulating.

Josh introduced Raquela to a small, attractive young woman with curly black hair and a smiling, freckled face. “This is my wife, Pnina, and this is Ehud, and Ruti.”

Raquela shook hands with the two children—a boy of eight whose serious face was a carbon copy of Josh's, and a two-year-old freckled miniature of her mother.

“Josh has told us about you.” Pnina's voice had a breathless quality. “We'd like you to visit us whenever you're free. We live in the first house near the port in Famagusta. You can't miss it; it's a two-story white stone house with a porch. We just have to be careful when we talk.” She lowered her voice. “An important judge lives right over us.”

“I'll be delighted to come on my days off.” It was good to know there was an American family from Palestine with children; maybe she could relax with them away from the barbed wire.

The air grew still. A heavyset woman in a dark tailored suit and white shirtwaist, clutching a bulging black pocketbook, strode toward the makeshift platform. Golda climbed to the top of the crates and began speaking. The words, strong and simple, sounded to Raquela like the footsteps of a soldier marching.

“There is typhus in the camps. We cannot allow Jewish babies to die. We owe them life. I am asking you to make a sacrifice.”

An angry voice interrupted. “Sacrifice! What kind of sacrifice do you want from us now? Haven't we sacrificed enough?”

Golda's voice grew a little softer. “We know what you have suffered. But we're asking one more sacrifice. Those of you whose turn it is to go to Palestine in December—we're asking you to give your certificates to families with babies.”

A man in a tattered raincoat shook his fist in the air. “Hitler did enough to me in Europe. Now I've been in this hell for six months. I want to get
out!
”

“Listen to me!” The voice pealed forth across the crowd of angry people.

They grew silent.

“Friends, hear me out. They're talking about us right now at the United Nations. I am sure you will not have to remain on Cyprus much longer; eventually all of you will be released and you will all be free to come home to us.”

Derisive laughter filled the cold winter air.

Golda looked down from the crates. “You must believe me. Whoever gives up a certificate now will be on the quota in January. If we delay getting the children right out, they may be dead of typhus. We want them to live. We want you to live. We want all of you to come home.”

“She's right!” a woman called out. “I've waited so long, so many years. I can wait another month. Golda, take my certificate. I have no babies anymore to be saved. My babies are dead.”

A few days later a “baby transport” sailed from Famagusta to Haifa.

NOVEMBER 29, 1947

Raquela sat with the Jewish doctors and nurses in an iron hut, listening to the shortwave radio.

At Lake Success, New York, the nations of the world were about to vote on the U
NSCOP
recommendations—whether or not to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

In Jerusalem, David Ben-Gurion sat at his desk surrounded by the leaders of the Jewish community.

In the camps in Cyprus the refugees waited to learn their fate. A Jewish state, they were sure, would set them free.

The vote on partition was beginning. Raquela put her head close to the radio. Her temples throbbed. The roll call began:

“
Afghanistan votes no
.”

“
Argentina abstains
.”

“
Australia votes in favor of partition
.”

Raquela held her breath. Would Golda's prophecy be fulfilled? She remembered Golda's voice, speaking in Dhekelia…
You will all be free to come home to us
.

The votes continued. The Soviet bloc and most of Latin America were voting in favor of partition. Even the Commonwealth countries were breaking away from the motherland. The United States and France voted yes. The eleven Arab states voted no. Great Britain abstained.

Raquela looked up at a calendar on the wall.
It's the twenty-ninth
, she thought. She had long ago decided that twenty-nine was her lucky number.

From Lake Success she heard a voice tallying the results.

“
Thirty-three in favor. Thirteen opposed. Eleven abstentions
.”

Tears rolled down the cheeks of the doctors and nurses.

A new voice came over the radio, speaking from Jerusalem:

“
Tens of thousands of people are in the streets, singing and dancing. Mobs are crowding into the courtyard of the Jewish Agency. Mrs. Golda Meir has just appeared on the balcony
.”

Golda's voice entered the iron hut. Raquela shut her eyes. She saw Golda again, her dark hair pulled back, her words simple, forceful. She was describing the Jewish State that would be born of this vote:

“
The Jewish State will offer equal rights and opportunities to all its citizens. The Arabs have nothing to fear; we reach out to our Arab brothers the hand of friendship
.”

The doctors and nurses sprang up, hugging and kissing one another, then linking arms and dancing the hora.

Raquela ran through the hospital compound into the prison wing. “Wake up! Wake up!

“What's the matter? What's happened? What now?”

“The UN has just voted. We have a state!”

Cries of joy swept through the iron wings of the maternity ward.

A woman reached up to touch Raquela. “My baby was born in Cyprus, but he will grow up free. In a Jewish state.”

A young woman turned her head to the wall, sobbing. “If only my mother and father could have lived to see this day.”

Lili began the
Shehekhiyanu
, the prayer of thanksgiving. A hush fell on the crowded maternity room. Even the infants were still. Raquela, Gerda, the mothers and nurses and aides, all joined Lili in the prayer.

“
Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Who has sustained us and brought us to this day
.”

DECEMBER 1947

The air of the maternity ward had changed. The prehistoric monster had been transformed. On sunny days rows of white diapers flapped outside the huts like flags in the wind. On rainy days the wet diapers were strung on lines inside the arched walls. The nursery at the far end of the ward, heated by a small kerosene stove, became a white island of bassinets lined with sail cloth and protected with white netting. The babies nestled in pieces of army blankets that had been softened by countless scrubbings and purified by the sun.

A new midwife arrived—Hava Rosenbusch, a dark-haired, blue-eyed woman. Originally from Germany, where her father had been a doctor, Hava had been a classmate of Raquela's in nursing school. Hava's coming made Raquela's life easier. They shared their days and nights and the burden of responsibilities for the maternity ward.

Even Old Battleship's tyranny in the dining room was circumvented; the doctors and nurses convinced a British officer that they needed a separate kitchen for their kosher diet. They found an empty hut and moved in; now they had rooms of their own and their own dining area where they no longer had to jump when Old Battleship entered. Here they could relax together.

“May I help you, Sister?”

Raquela, holding a warmly wrapped premature baby in her arms, looked up.

A young British soldier stood in the doorway.

“You know about premies?” she asked.

“My sister had one. I used to feed him all the time.”

He tiptoed toward her and looked down at the tiny bundle. “Why don't you let me feed the baby?”

Raquela wasted no time accepting. She gave him a white apron, a diaper for his shoulder, and a surgical mask, which he put over his nose and mouth. He settled himself comfortably in a chair. Raquela handed him the baby girl and a bottle of milk. Tenderly, he fed the premature baby. Raquela smiled at the paradox—a premature refugee snuggling in the arms of a British guard.

The young soldier looked longingly at the white island of babies. “It's a bit of home here,” he said. “Not like the rest of this bloody camp.”

He lifted the baby over his shoulder, carefully rubbing her back until he heard a tiny burp. “Guess she's had her dinner. I'll come back and feed her again if you'll let me.”

“You're welcome anytime.”

“I'll bring my buddies, too, if I may. By the way, Sister, my name is Richard.”

The next night, Richard appeared with another soldier. “We guard different gates,” he explained. “But we each left a buddy on duty. They'll come to feed more premies for you when we get back.”

They fed the babies; then Richard and his friend tucked them in their cribs, wrapped them in extra blankets, and warmed them with hot-water bottles. Raquela invited the young men to stay for a spot of tea. She fixed a tray with American biscuits and the canned peaches she received from the JDC, and soon, joined by more young nurses, they sat around the coal-burning stove, chatting as if they were in an English drawing room.

Raquela kept their nocturnal visits a secret lest Old Battleship have them punished for invading her domain.

Soon Raquela's six weeks would be over. Meanwhile, she was determined to use every day to win more concessions for her mothers and babies. She had to sign for every diaper and shirt she requisitioned from the neat stacks on the shelves of the Red Cross hut. Colonel John Richardson, a pleasant, sandy-haired Englishman in charge of the hut and its sorely needed supplies, told her one day, “I'm being shipped back to England soon. From now on, when each baby leaves the hospital to go back to the camps, I want you to give it an extra shirt and diaper.”

“You're very kind, Colonel Richardson.”

A few days later he entered Maternity. “Nurse Levy,” he said, “please come with me.”

She followed him to the Red Cross hut. “I want to give you
all
these diapers and shirts. But you'll have to find a place to hide them.”