Last Twilight in Paris

12. Helaine

12

Helaine

Paris, 1943

Lévitan.

After the lights went on, Helaine stood bewildered with the other women who had been brought from the police station in the middle of what had been one of the grandest department stores in Paris. She looked around the cavernous, arched hall in disbelief. She was familiar with the shop, where her family had once purchased the finest goods. But why had they been brought here?

Of course, Helaine had never really shopped at Lévitan. When she lived at home, she was not permitted to go out to the stores. And later after marrying Gabriel, she frequented the secondhand markets. But Helaine had passed Lévitan’s broad windows before, seeing her own reflection among the furniture and other goods displayed. And she had seen the name on shopping bags and labels. The department store had gone out of business at the start of the war. But to Helaine’s surprise, it was not empty. The shelves were stacked neatly with apparel and home goods, as though still open for business.

“What are we doing here?” Helaine whispered to the woman beside her. She received no answer. Their group was larger now than it had been at the police station, and Helaine guessed that they had been joined by prisoners from a second truck.

“Welcome,” the guard who had herded them inside said mockingly, “to Camp Lévitan.”

He led the women across the store, past the elevators to a narrow stairwell in the rear. They followed upward single file, their collective breath growing heavier as they reached a landing. Through a doorway, Helaine glimpsed large piles of blankets and clothing. They began to climb the stairs again, bumping against the narrow walls and one another as they went. At the top, the man opened a door and let Helaine and the other women into a long room. Inside, there were two rows of narrow cots, perhaps forty in all. A curtain ran down the middle, as if to separate the room for privacy. Some of the beds were already occupied and the people in them stirred, awakened by the new arrivals. A washbasin stood at the far end. “The toilet is one floor down,” the guard informed them.

“We are to sleep in the store?” Helaine asked.

“Yes,” the guard snarled. “If this is not grand enough for your tastes, you can always go to Drancy.”

Helaine bristled with fear. She had heard about Drancy, the transit camp the Germans had erected at the old military barracks outside the city, the crowding and starvation and hard labor Jews endured there. Even from this cursory glance, she could tell how much better life would be here.

“You will report downstairs for work at dawn,” the guard said, closing the door behind him and disappearing. There did not seem to be anything to do but choose an unoccupied bed and sleep in it.

The women who had just arrived looked from the bare, stained mattresses to one another. “Is this where we are to sleep?” Helaine could not help but be horrified.

“Of course,” an older woman snapped. “You were expecting maybe a canopy bed?” She sat up. “At Drancy, we slept on wood pallets, on straw. Have you no idea what we have endured, how much better this is?” The other women looked at Helaine with a mix of pity and disdain.

Helaine opened the door and walked down the stairs to the floor below where a large pile of sheets lay in a heap and a few of the others followed her. “What about these?”

“Taking from the deliveries is forbidden,” the older woman said, following her.

“They will never notice if we just take a few,” Helaine pressed. She fingered a fine silk sheet, reminiscent of the ones she had in her childhood room.

“We are not going to risk getting in trouble just because you think you are too good to sleep like the rest of us.” Helaine understood then that there was a collective responsibility—all might be punished for the infraction of one. She set the sheet down reluctantly.

Back upstairs, each of the women who had just arrived claimed a bed on the right side of the curtain. Helaine was horrified at sharing a room with a bunch of strangers, and even more appalled that some of them were male. She selected a bed at the very end of the row, close to the far wall.

“Here,” a voice said behind Helaine. She turned to see the older woman from earlier holding out a large, rough piece of fabric. “The linens you wanted to take have been cataloged and the guards will know if any go missing. Use this instead.” It was an old drapery, Helaine realized, not a blanket. But it would do the job.

“Thank you.”

The older woman sat down on the bed beside Helaine, which Helaine realized already happened to be hers. “Miriam,” she said by way of introduction. Her skin was papery, her complexion ashen.

“I’m Helaine. Where did you come here from?”

“Our house was on Rue Charlot.” Helaine recognized the address from the Jewish Quarter in Le Marais. “But I was arrested two months ago. Then we were sent to Drancy.” Helaine could not fathom what Miriam must have experienced at Drancy; she could see the haunted look in the woman’s eyes. “I was brought here a few weeks ago. Thank God they opened the department store. It’s for those with some sort of privileged status whom they don’t dare to deport east. My husband was a decorated officer in the Great War.” A note of pride crept into her voice. “So I’ve been given special designation as a veteran’s wife, even though he died years ago.” She blinked back tears, the memory clearly still painful. Then she cleared her throat. “And you? How have you come to find yourself here?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Helaine replied. “I’m not even certain why I was arrested.” As she was taken from the police station, she had tried to argue: she had only come to inquire about her husband; she had done nothing wrong. But her pleas had been ignored.

“You’re a Jew and that’s enough reason to be arrested these days.” Helaine had heard rumors that Jews were being taken from Paris in greater numbers, but she had assumed it was limited to the immigrant community. She had not realized that it extended to Jews who were French citizens. It seemed that Isa’s prediction that they would eventually come for all of the Jews was now coming true. Helaine could not help but worry for her parents.

“My husband is a cellist, and my father owned a substantial business, so perhaps it has something to do with one of them,” Helaine offered.

“Don’t question it further,” Miriam advised. “Do the work and don’t complain, because being here is as good as it is going to get.” Miriam coughed and her face turned grayer.

“You sound sick.” The deprivation and hardship had most certainly taken a toll on Miriam at her age. “If we tell the guards, surely you can go see a doctor.”

“No,” Miriam snapped angrily. Helaine was taken aback by her response. “Those who are seriously ill are sent to Drancy and deported. Leaving would be a death sentence. I’m never going back there again. I’m not sick.”

“I was sick as a child,” Helaine confided. “I nearly died.”

“My son was sick as a child.” She paused and her eyes grew hollow. “He did die.” Miriam’s voice cracked at the end. “He was my only child.” A tear rolled down her cheek. Helaine reached instinctively for her handkerchief. Then, realizing that she did not have one, she used the corner of her sleeve to gently dry Miriam’s face.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Helaine reached out and took Miriam’s hand. Helaine felt so much sadness at being separated from Gabriel and her mother. But Miriam had lost everyone she loved forever.

“It was during the flu epidemic of 1919. We couldn’t get medicine. But enough about that,” she said, swiping at the corner of her eye to prevent more tears from falling. Helaine saw that she had buried her sadness down deep beneath a crusty exterior to survive. “Anyway, if I wanted to see a doctor,” Miriam added, “I could get a pass.”

“You mean people leave here for appointments?” Helaine was incredulous.

“Yes, for doctor’s appointments and such. People are allowed visitors once a week as well.”

“But why?”

Miriam shrugged. “Perhaps because everyone here has some sort of privileged status. Also, Lévitan is in the middle of Paris. They don’t want the locals to know what’s really happening here, so they give the illusion of treating us better. There is not even that much security, just a single guard at the door.”

“Then why don’t more people try to escape?”

“Believe me, I have thought of it. But really, where would we go?”

Hours later, after they had gone to bed, as Helaine lay awake on the bare mattress, her mind raced, trying to understand all that had happened. She had been arrested and imprisoned. She remembered the abject fear of being taken against her will, not knowing where she was going. She could not leave. As a child, she had considered herself a prisoner. But now she saw that staying in the comforts of her parents’ house, surrounded by love, was not at all the same as the horror of being detained in these dreadful conditions. Gabriel was missing, doing who knows what and where. She had been separated from everyone she loved and everything she knew.

Run , a voice inside her seemed to say. Helaine considered the option, replaying in her mind her earlier conversation with Miriam about the relative lack of security. She could check if the exit to the dormitory was unlocked and sneak downstairs, or perhaps climb out the fire escape. What would stop her from simply leaving? She could return to her and Gabriel’s apartment or even run to her parents’ house. But at the same time as she thought it, Helaine knew she did not dare. The streets were heavily patrolled, and even if she could get out of the store, the chance of her making it across the city without being recaptured was slim.

Helaine rolled over onto something hard. The necklace. After she had been arrested, she remembered in the police car that she was still wearing it and quickly hid it in her pocket. Thankfully, she was not searched and was able to conceal it in the lining of her dress, so she had it with her still. But she needed to find a better place to stow it. She looked under the bed. However, the space was too open and exposed. Then she turned toward the wall beside her. There was a piece of cracked drywall low beside the cot and Helaine pulled at it, revealing a narrow space where it had separated from the bricks. She wedged the necklace in there and then replaced the drywall as well as she could.

Helaine turned over on the hard cot. She heard a rustling and knew instinctively that there were mice in the walls. She rolled toward the wall and scratched a line in the plaster to signal her first night there. Each day she would keep count until she was free again. She closed her eyes, trying to black out the sound and pretend she was home.

It seemed to Helaine that she could never sleep under such dire conditions. But at some point, she must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew, they were being awakened by bright lights.

“Up quickly,” a voice barked, and the women obeyed. They did not have fresh clothes to change into, and so the prisoners rose from their beds and stumbled down the stairs. As they passed the third floor, Helaine slipped from the group to use the toilet hurriedly. There was no shower or bath and she worried how they would ever get clean.

When Helaine rejoined the group, they were headed out the rear of the shop onto a shipping dock. A large truck had just pulled in beneath the arches of the Passage du Desir. It was marked with the insignia from Le Castagne , one of the largest moving companies in the city. The back of the truck opened, and workers began to pull out various household items from the truck, chairs and dressers and smaller items like lamps and bedding. Helaine was confused. The store had been closed for some time, so what were these items and why were they here?

“It’s called Operation Furniture,” Miriam whispered as they were directed into a line. “The goods will be passed down and you sort them.”

“So, we are workers in the department store now?”

“Workers?” she spat. “Workers get paid a wage. We are slave laborers, nothing more. There are two other satellite camps for sorting the belongings as well,” she added, “one at Austerlitz in a warehouse behind the train station and one in an elegant town home in Bassano in the 16th arrondissement. All are considered sub-camps of Drancy.”

It was not until the first item, a silver candelabra, reached Helaine’s hands that she understood what they were doing. She ran her hands over the engraved Hebrew lettering, recognizing it from her family’s own Shabbat candlesticks. A mix of horror and sadness washed over her. The “goods” were the contents of Jewish homes that had been emptied by the Germans because their owners had been sent to the camps. Helaine had known that Jews were being taken, glimpsed it with her own eyes. But some part of her had believed that this would all end at some point and people would be going home. Here, right before her, was evidence that they would not. Jewish homes were being robbed of their belongings with the absolute certainty that the owners would never return again.

Helaine stood frozen, trying to absorb this information. “Keep going, keep going,” Miriam urged in a whisper beside her. Helaine’s hesitation was causing a bottleneck in the line and the guard at the end had noticed and was looking at her. “If we don’t work well, we will be sent back to Drancy, and no one stays there long.” Helaine could hear the fear in Miriam’s voice. Helaine placed the candlesticks in a bin. For each type of household item, there were three piles: items that were broken and would be discarded, those that needed repair and finally those that were in good enough condition to be used.

“And the goods, what happens to them from here?” Helaine asked in a whisper.

“Most of the quality items are sent to Germany by train. The furniture is sent east, the office pieces to offices of the Reich, and the beds and such to new estates given to high-ranking SS by Hitler as a reward for loyalty. But the very best items will be displayed downstairs for the German officers to purchase,” Miriam added. So that explained why the shelves of the defunct department store were filled with goods. The Germans were using the store to sell the belongings that they had taken from the Jews.

Miriam turned back to her work and did not speak further. The sorting continued endlessly, box after box. They did not take breaks. Helaine hoped they might stop for lunch, but at midday, pieces of stale bread were passed down the line and the workers ate quickly at their stations. Just when it seemed they had sorted the entire contents of the moving truck, another pulled into the loading dock and the process began all over again. Helaine thought about the moving companies: Did they know what kind of work they were really doing and simply not care?

As she worked, Helaine marveled at the goods that she sorted, an endless stream of fine silver and china and linen. No doubt these were expensive and valuable objects; many of them had probably been cherished by their owners. There were practical items, too, pots and small appliances, can openers and clothes irons. The things that people had once needed in their daily lives, until their daily lives were gone.

A lump formed in Helaine’s throat as she thought of her mother. Surely she would not be able to remain in her home for much longer—if she had not been taken already. Maman might have been arrested and Helaine would never know. He laine wished that she could reach out and warn her. But even if that was possible, where would she go?

At the end of the day, a bell sounded. Helaine’s bones ached from the hours of kneeling and bending over boxes. She followed the other workers back to the fourth-floor dormitory, where they were given watery bowls of soup.

“Where do they make the food?” Helaine asked.

“The department store has no kitchen, so the UGIF sends food over from their central kitchen on Rue Guy Patin.” Helaine nodded. The Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) was the organization overseeing the Jews in Paris under the auspices of the Vichy government.

There was nowhere to eat, so they pulled back the dividing curtain and sat on the floor in between the two rows of cots.

Later, Helaine lay awake, unable to sleep. It was only her second night in the department store, and it already felt like an eternity. She thought of the people she loved: Her mother—did she wonder what had become of Helaine? Her father was likely somewhere abroad, powerless to help. Mostly Helaine thought of Gabriel, worrying about where he was and whether he would come for her or work to secure her release. He could not possibly know she had been arrested. Surely if he did, he would do something to try to help. She retrieved the locket from its hiding place in the wall and wrapped her hand around it, praying that he could feel her as well.

On the other side of the curtain, a man snored. The department store was stifling hot, especially the fourth floor, which heated up all day and only cooled a few degrees at night. Helaine stood and walked from the dormitory, then climbed the stairs toward the roof. The German guards thankfully kept to the perimeter of the store. They did not often come inside and never up to the dormitory, so the prisoners moved with relative ease. There was an overseer, Maxim, who was half-Russian. Himself a Jew, he had been put in a position of authority over the Jewish prisoners and everyone despised him for it. He was lecherous, Miriam had warned, saying that more than once she had seen his hands on the other women in places that they did not belong.

Helaine had been told that prisoners would be given the chance to go upstairs for fresh air once a week, though that had not in fact happened yet since her arrival. Sometimes the prisoners sneaked up there to smoke. But surely coming up here at night was not permitted.

Helaine stepped out onto the roof terrace and then stopped, surprised by the panoramic view of the city, as grand as any she had ever seen. The department store was in the center of Paris, right across from the mairie, or town hall, for the 10th arrondissement. The Eiffel Tower was so close it seemed to loom over her. Its lights did not twinkle as they once had, but had been blacked out, another casualty of the war.

Helaine looked out forlornly across the rooftops at the Paris skyline. The view made it almost possible to forget she was in a labor camp. It reminded Helaine of the first night Gabriel had taken her to his apartment above the city. Her eyes filled with tears of longing. She knew that she had it so much better than those in the other camps and that she had no business complaining. But she yearned to be free again and to walk the streets that had been hers ever so very briefly.

A whiff of smoke from below tickled Helaine’s nose, causing her to sneeze. She looked around anxiously, hoping that the guard below had not heard. Every night there was a bonfire in the alley behind the store where they burned the goods that were not fit to keep. Across the street, she glimpsed a woman in an apartment. Their eyes met. Helaine wondered how much the woman knew about who she was and what she and the others were doing here. The woman saw them. Yet she said nothing. Did nothing. Helaine took a last look at the Paris skyline, then returned to the dormitory below.

Life in the department store fell into a pattern after that. The prisoners were expected to be at their workstations at seven in the morning and worked without a lunch break until seven in the evening. Other times, though, their regular schedule was disrupted by the arrival of the delivery trucks. As soon as a truck came in, it had to be unloaded. More than once, the prisoners were awakened in the middle of the night and ordered to assemble a sorting team. When the trucks came faster, they worked longer days, fourteen and even sixteen hours without rest.

But the nights were their own. After their meager dinner, one of the women would use coffee they had bribed one of the movers for to make weak coffee on the lone electric burner by the washbasins. Every evening, they huddled around a contraband radio that one of the prisoners had pilfered from the sorted goods, listening for bits of news from London. Occasionally, someone would sing a childhood song, or one of the tunes that was popular before the war, taking them back to happier times. The prisoners would talk long into the night in hushed voices. No one spoke aloud in the daylight of the things that had happened to them, as if their communal suffering would have been too much to bear. But sometimes they whispered from cot to cot in the darkness, sharing their horrific stories of families torn apart, lives shattered without warning.

Lévitan, Helaine came to learn, was a study in contradictions. They were in the middle of the once-elegant department store, but their living conditions were spartan. In addition to not having a kitchen, the department store also had no bath or shower. Once a week, the prisoners were permitted to visit a vacant apartment in the adjacent building and given five minutes to bathe. They did not have to wear uniforms, but were allowed to remain in their street clothes.

One night a few weeks after she came to Lévitan, Helaine lay awake thinking as she so often did about Gabriel. She felt so alone without him. She pulled out the locket and ran her fingers over the letters, feeling part of the inscription: The Lord watch over thee and me. Of course, her locket contained only half of the quote; the other half was engraved on the locket Gabriel carried. Helaine felt stronger and more connected to Gabriel when she held it.

From the bed beside Helaine, Miriam eyed her necklace. “Where did you get that?” she whispered.

“It was my grandmother’s.” She showed it to Miriam. “It is actually one of two parts. My husband has the other half.”

“Just don’t let them catch you with it.” Helaine knew the necklace could be taken from her at any second. “What happened to your husband?” Miriam asked.

“I’m not certain,” Helaine admitted. She hesitated, not wanting to mention that Gabriel had claimed to be abroad playing for the Germans. It sounded somehow wrong, and she didn’t know if it was even still true.

“There are visits allowed on Sundays, if he is able.”

“I know.” The previous Sunday, Helaine had peered enviously over the rail at prisoners waiting for family members to appear. Watching the other families reunite, Helaine could not help but long for her own. Helaine shook her head sadly. “He’s much farther away.” She hoped that Miriam would not ask her where. “I would like to get a letter out, though.”

Miriam nodded. “We are permitted to send one letter per week and to receive mail when it arrives. Just remember anything you say may be read and censored.”

But Helaine didn’t know where Gabriel was or have an address to send the letter. She decided to send it to the Conservatoire in case they learned of his whereabouts. That night, Helaine wrote a letter on a piece of paper that Miriam provided.

Dearest Gabriel,

I’m writing with the news that I have been arrested and taken to the department store Lévitan as a worker. I am well. Please write back and let me know that you are safe. I pray that we will be together soon.

With all my love,

Helaine

Helaine gave the letter to Maxim. “I’d like to send this,” she requested, trying to ignore his leering expression. She felt as if she was sending a message in a bottle that might never reach Gabriel, or anyone at all. Helaine thought about sending a letter to her mother as well but did not want to risk her safety by bringing attention to her.

The next morning, she awoke and dressed. On the loading dock, Helaine was put to work sorting glassware and packing it in wood crates filled with straw. “Do it this way,” a young red-haired woman called Ruthie instructed beside her. She put the glasses in at an angle so that they leaned against one another.

“But I am doing it the way I was told,” Helaine protested.

“Exactly.” Ruthie lowered her voice. “Don’t. Look, if you place the straw just so, the goods will break in transit.”

“Oh…” Helaine understood then. Sabotage. “We have to put our prisoner numbers on the outside of the crates,” she said, gesturing to the small tag that had been affixed to her dress since shortly after her arrival: L186 . She was no longer a name, but a number. “They will know it was me.”

Ruthie shrugged. “Very hard to blame someone for a little straw shifting in transit.”

Helaine did as Ruthie told her, angling the glassware. Ruthie nodded with approval.

After that, Helaine noticed a dozen other acts of sabotage. One worker had a tiny hammer and she would hit the furni ture when no one was looking. People removed screws so items would fall apart, removed knobs on drawers. Others shredded and cut holes in garments. Each was a small symbol of defiance, a stand for their side against their jailers. It was a marvel that any goods made it to Germany at all.

The next night, Miriam nudged Helaine from sleep. “Here, we need you to take this pile of silver goods and leave it near the loading dock out back.” She held out a small silver tray with some cutlery upon it.

Helaine rubbed her eyes. “Me? Why?”

“Because you are relatively new and no one suspects you. One of the movers who is secretly helping us will take it and get it to the partisans—for a cut, of course.” Miriam paused, eyeing her warily. “We can trust you, can’t we?”

“Of course.”

“I said as much. And Ruthie vouched for you because you put the glasses in so they would break like she told you. So you’ll do it?”

Helaine hesitated. She wanted to keep her head low in the camp and wait until she could be free and find Gabriel. But she could not refuse. “Yes.”

“Good. Take it down to the loading dock. And don’t get caught.”

Helaine stood and eyed the silver. She could not just carry it openly, she decided. She tucked the smaller pieces into her clothes, then put the tray behind her back. She walked to the door of the dormitory and peered out to make sure neither Maxim nor the guard were nearby.

Helaine crept down the stairs. Her footsteps seemed to echo too loudly through the empty store. Her heart pounded and she was certain that she would be apprehended at any moment. When she reached the ground floor, she hurried to the rear of the store and opened the door slowly, so that it would not creak. She set down the tray and pulled out the pieces of silver she had hidden.

After depositing the silver, Helaine raced inside and started back upstairs. Then she stopped again. She had not seen much of the store since coming and she was curious to have a peek now. The first floor of the department store and its window displays had been left largely unchanged, and to a passerby who happened inside, it might look as though they were still in business or temporarily closed. The center of the grand hall was filled with counters displaying smaller goods, scarves, gloves and the like. Around the perimeter, there were stalls, each the size of a small room, displaying furniture like the set of a play. Helaine was struck with a sudden sense of nostalgia and longing.

As Helaine crept through the makeshift living rooms, she could almost hear the voices of those who had sat in these chairs and cherished these objects, crying out in protest. Some of the prisoners avoided the main floor of the store as much as possible. Too many ghosts, she’d heard Miriam say once. But Helaine did not mind. Walking among their belongings, she almost felt as though she came to know them.

Walking farther, Helaine discovered a small alcove toward the back of the store. She stopped and gasped when she saw it: a toy shop, with beautiful objects, dolls and trains and balls and wooden soldiers. She remembered it now, having come to the toy room as a child and leaving with a doll. But hers had been new, the dress crisp and unstained. The toys here now were all gently worn and loved, bearing witness to the children who were no longer here to hold them. Unable to stand the sight, Helaine turned and ran back up to the dormitory.

On her way back upstairs, Maxim appeared suddenly. “What are you doing?” His large frame filled the doorway and he stood over her too closely.

“I was just going to the bathroom.” For an awful moment, Helaine thought he had seen her with the silver. But he let her go without saying anything further.

Helaine hurried back to the dormitory. “Did everything go all right?” Miriam asked.

“Yes. Except for seeing Maxim. He didn’t suspect anything, but he makes my skin crawl.”

“Maxim is a lech,” Miriam said darkly. “And there are plenty of prisoners who give him what he wants in exchange for favors. He would rather have someone young and pretty like you, though. You must be careful to never be alone with him.”

A few days later when Helaine reached the line, the spot beside her was empty and Ruthie was nowhere to be found. Gone , Miriam mouthed when Helaine asked. Helaine wondered whether Ruthie had escaped. But seeing Miriam’s grim expression, Helaine knew that she had not. Rather, she had been taken to Drancy for certain deportation. She might have been caught packing the glassware wrong or smuggling the silver for the resistance, or sent for some other perceived infraction. There was a rumor that she and several others had been taken in reprisal for another prisoner trying to escape.

There was a quiet vulnerability among the prisoners after that. Before, Helaine had felt a false sense of security, when the truth was that they could be snatched away at any moment. Their safety here was promised by no one and their sanctuary might be taken for no reason, just as suddenly and arbitrarily as they had been stolen from their lives and brought here in the first place.

Helaine realized then how very fragile her existence was and she could not afford to take risks. Instead, she would do what she must in order to remain here, alive, until she and Gabriel could be together once more.