Tell No One Who You Are (3 page)

A
MONTH LATER
, her father left the apartment shortly after the curfew lifted at 7 o’clock in the morning and returned a few hours later holding a bunch of yellow badges. He took them into his workroom without saying a word.

Régine knew all about the yellow badges. They were made of cloth in the shape of the Star of David. All Jewish people were required to wear them by order of the German authorities. The yellow star meant that the wearer was Jewish, just as the signs outside shops signified that the owners were Jewish. The radio announcer explained that the badges should be sewn on sweaters, jackets or other outer clothing where they would be clearly visible.

The badges looked awfully big when she saw them in her father’s hand, and garish in their bright yellow color. No one would fail to notice them. Suddenly she felt afraid. What would it be like to be singled out this way?

The door to the workroom was open. Régine saw her father drop the badges on the table as he sat down. Then he reached into a mound of scrap material and pulled out a sheet of red felt and laid it flat in front of him. He grabbed a pencil, his scissors and the jar of glue. He picked up one of the badges, held it firmly against the red felt and traced the shape of the star. Putting the yellow badge aside, he picked up the scissors and began to cut out the red star.

Régine came up behind him. “What are you doing, Papa?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Can I help?”

“Here’s the glue. When I finish cutting out this red star, you stick it to the back of the yellow star. Then Mama will sew it to your dress. We’ll do the same with all of them, every single star.”

Régine just stared at the red and yellow stars. “Why?” she asked.

Mr. Miller put down the scissors. “If you are forced to do something that you think is wrong,” he said, “then you must protest. Understand?”

Régine nodded, even though she did not understand.

“The red means you don’t agree with having to wear the yellow star. It says you think it’s wrong. Red is the color of protest, the color of revolution.”

“But no one will see it,” Régine said. “The red is on the back.”

“
You
know it’s there,” her father said. “That’s what matters. It’ll be your little secret.”

“You mean, I can’t tell anyone?”

“Not for now.”

“When can I tell?”

“After the war,” he said. “Then we can turn them over to show the red side. And everyone will be proud of you. Because you wore the badge in protest.”

“When will the war be over?”

“Soon,” her father said. “I promise.”

He picked up the scissors and resumed his work of cutting the red felt in the shapes of stars. “Today Mama will sew the badges,” he said. “And tomorrow — guess what we’ll do.”

Régine smiled and shook her head.

“Tomorrow you’ll put on your nice dress and I’ll take you to the photographer. He’ll take a picture of you in your dress
with the yellow star. Then, when all this is over, we’ll go back and take one with the red star. And you will keep them as a memory of the war. And I will buy you a pair of gold earrings to celebrate.”

Régine had never been to a photo studio before. She ran into the kitchen and told her mother the news. But as soon as she mentioned the red star, she knew she had made a mistake. She did not want to cause her more pain than she was already suffering. Her mother was getting sicker all the time. She had been in and out of the hospital. At home, she sometimes spent the whole day in bed. Doctor Zilbershatz, the family doctor, an elderly man with a beard, came to the apartment with more medicine jars and gave her injections. He brought his wife sometimes and never took money for his visits.

Régine watched her mother walk slowly, with difficulty, into the workroom.

“What are you teaching our daughter?” Mrs. Miller said in a high, pained voice. “What is all this talk about protests and revolution? She’s too young to be involved in politics.”

“One is never too young to learn about social justice,” Régine heard her father say.

The next morning, she put on her best dress and walked with her father to Pierre Dietens’ photo studio at 128 rue Wayez. The dress was pink and decorated with small flowers. Her mother had bought the fabric long ago, and there had been enough material to make a dress for both herself and Régine. Together they had gone to the dressmaker, Madame David, who had taken their measurements and later came to the apartment for a fitting. Régine liked to wear her dress when her mother wore hers. Whenever they walked the cobblestone streets wearing the matching dresses, Régine felt she and her mother were like sisters.

But her mother had not worn her flowered dress in a long
time. She had lost so much weight it did not fit anymore. Régine’s dress still fit perfectly when she went to the photo studio, only now it bore the yellow Star of David with the red underside.

Monsieur Dietens, the photographer, brought out a stool for Régine to sit on. He told her to sit up straight and put her hands in her lap and look straight into the lens. He walked behind his camera, which was set up on a tripod, and his head disappeared under a black sheet. Without moving her head, Régine shifted her eyes to look at her father, who was standing to the side. She saw that he was smiling, and he winked at her.

“This way,” Monsieur Dietens said. Régine looked into the lens of the big camera, whose front expanded and retracted like an accordion. She straightened her shoulders and was conscious of the yellow star on the left side of her chest. She smiled at the thought of the red star underneath. That’s when Monsieur Dietens pressed the shutter with a terrific flash of light.

When the black and white print was ready, her father put it in a frame and hung it on the wall along with the other family photographs. Régine liked the photo. It was her favorite picture of herself. The secret it contained made her smile every time she saw it. She looked forward to the second visit to Monsieur Dietens’ photo studio, when the underside of the yellow star would be revealed to all.

W
ITHOUT SCHOOL
, Régine spent most of her days in the apartment. The walls of the living room were covered with family photographs. She got to know them well from staring at them so much. There was her Aunt Ida, her father’s sister, who lived in Brussels, only twenty minutes away by tram. She used to invite Régine for a dinner of roast beef on Sundays. Roast beef was something her mother never made, saying it was a luxury that “only Tante Ida can afford.”

Then there was her favorite uncle, Zigmund, her father’s brother who had gone from Poland to live in Germany first but left and came to Belgium when Hitler and the Nazis made life dangerous for Jews. When he still lived in Germany Oncle Zigmund had come to Brussels for a visit and brought Régine a doll as a gift. It was her one and only doll.

She stared at the picture of Oncle Shlomo and wondered what it was like in England now. When she was four, the family traveled to England by ferry on a visit and Oncle Shlomo taught her how to count to ten in English, the first English she ever learned. On the radio she heard that the Germans were bombing England. Was Oncle Shlomo all right?

The biggest photo hung above the bed in her parents’ room. It was black and white in a heavy, wooden frame. It showed a young, handsome couple, the groom thin and good-looking in a dark suit, standing next to his bride who looked very pretty in her long white gown. Régine’s parents
had married in Poland in 1923. They came to Belgium in 1928 with Léon, who was two years old.

Régine was struck by how much her father still looked like the handsome man in the picture. Only her mother had changed. She looked too old and thin now to be the person in the picture. She also looked sadder. Régine knew the reason as she looked at her mother in the bed beneath the photograph. She was getting sicker all the time and got up for short periods at a time, then had to go back to rest.

Her father no longer took Régine to the Solidarité meetings. Acts of sabotage increased against war factories and communication lines. It was very dangerous. Suspects were rounded up and taken to the headquarters of the Gestapo, the German secret police. There they were shot and their names published in the newspapers for everyone to see, as a warning to anyone who thought of opposing the German occupation.

But the Germans killed not only suspected saboteurs. Anyone thought to be communist or socialist was an enemy of the Nazis. Many were taken away, never to be seen again.

One of the first to disappear was Monsieur Demers, the upstairs neighbor who used to invite her father to listen to his radio. Even though he was not Jewish, he had been arrested as a member of a Belgian organization opposing the Germans.

Régine often thought about the red underside of her Star of David. If anyone were to find out about it, what would happen? Her father was in danger, too. Her mother brought it up every time her father left the apartment. “Be careful,” she whispered. “If they find out you’re a member of Solidarité, you will be taken away like your friends.”

“Don’t worry,” her father always answered. “They won’t find out.”

Few visitors now came to the apartment on rue Van Lint.
Not even Edgar Herman, her father’s best friend and also a member of Solidarité. He used to drop in regularly and Régine missed his visits, even though whenever he came, she had to guard his bicycle downstairs, because Léon’s bicycle had been stolen from that very spot.

When the Germans closed down Jewish businesses, including the leather companies, there was no work for her father. He found a new occupation. He took off his yellow badge and traveled by train to the countryside to get meat and smuggle it into the city. Not only could he be arrested for carrying the contraband meat, but also for riding the train, since Jews were forbidden to do so by the Germans. On the days he went to the country, Régine would go to the corner of rue Van Lint and Chaussée de Mons in the late afternoon and wait anxiously for his return.

He transformed his workroom into a butcher shop. His worktable became a butcher block and he sliced beef on it. Régine and Léon helped to wrap the meat for the women who came to buy it. Dr. Zilbershatz said her mother should have meat and her father was glad to provide it. But she had trouble digesting it and Régine often heard her vomiting in the bedroom.

T
HAT SUMMER
, the terrible summer of 1942, the more the Allied bombers flew over Belgium, the worse the German orders against the Jewish people.

The deportations had started in March. Unmarried men between the ages of sixteen and forty were singled out for the labor camps. They were to be put to work erecting German fortifications along the northern coast of occupied France.

Léon was sixteen years old.

The knock came early one morning. Her father answered it. Her mother was resting in bed. At first it didn’t seem too serious. The person at the door was a young man. He said he’d been sent to deliver a message to Léon Miller.

The young man was around Léon’s age. He seemed nervous standing in her father’s shadow. Léon leaned over and whispered in Régine’s ear. “I know that guy. He went to my school.”

“Is he your friend?” Régine asked.

“No, but I know him.”

The young man handed the envelope to her father and turned to leave.

“Hold on,” her father said. “What’s this about?” He opened the envelope, took out the paper and unfolded it.

Régine saw the look of anger spread over her father’s face. The young man, more nervous now, turned to go. Her father crumpled the paper and let it drop to the floor. He shoved the
young man, and Régine heard him yell out as he tumbled down the stairs. Her father picked up the crumpled ball of paper and threw it down after him.

“What’s going on?” her mother called in a weak voice from the bedroom. “Is something wrong?”

Her father slammed the front door and marched into the bedroom. She heard him say that Léon had to report to the train station in the morning. “We’ll ignore the notice,” he said.

“How can we ignore it?” her mother asked.

Her father did not answer.

A little while later there was another knock on the door. The same young man handed Mr. Miller another notice and ran quickly back down the stairs. Régine’s father closed the door slowly, reading the new notice.

Her father again walked into the bedroom, followed by Léon. Through the open door Régine saw her father and brother sit down on the edge of the bed. Her father explained the notice to her mother. “Léon must go to the train station,” he said, his voice a whisper.

There was no choice in the matter. If Léon didn’t go, the whole family would be taken away.

R
ÉGINE WATCHED
as her mother slowly packed Léon’s rucksack. Piles of sweaters, pants and blankets lay on the bed. Mrs. Miller folded each item with precision and placed it in the bag. Her movements were painfully slow and deliberate. As Régine saw her mother sit down on the edge of the bed to rest, she wondered how her mother would survive the long walk to the train station.

“You don’t have to come, you know, Mama.”

“Of course I have to come,” her mother said. “Papa and I will take him.”

“Yes, and I’m coming with you,” her mother said. “I’ve already told you and it’s settled.”

Régine watched her mother pack the last sweater. The bag bulged and she struggled with the buckles to close it. Then she took hold of the shoulder straps, pulled the bag off the bed and dragged it along the floor into the other room.

Her father and brother were sitting on the sofa. They had been speaking in whispers. From the bedroom door, Régine could not hear what they were saying. Her father was doing all the talking. Was he telling Léon the war would end soon and they would all be back together?

They rose from the sofa as they saw Mrs. Miller with the heavy bag. Léon hurried to take it from her.

“You don’t have to come,” he told her. “Papa and Régine will accompany me. Really, Mama.”