The Family Behind the Walls

1. Jordanna

ONE

JORDANNA

JANUARY 4TH, 1942 – HAMBURG, GERMANY

Eighteen Months Prior

I wish these pretty wallpapered walls—blush-pink with cheerful white flowers in my bedroom blocked out more sound. I’ve pinned up drawings and clippings from magazines to add another layer of padding, but nothing works. I’m truly fortunate to not share a room with my brother, Max, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear him and his friend, Alfie, endlessly talking about a girl from their private Sunday school class. Max, who is only two years older than me and has never even had a girlfriend, is giving Alfie advice. How can he possibly give advice when he doesn’t know anything himself? Maybe they’ve simply run out of things to talk about since Alfie is here all the time.

“Just tell her you think she’s beautiful and ask her to go to the theater next Friday night. Perhaps she has a friend, and I could join you,” I hear Max say, his voice full of excitement.

“Jordanna.” Lilli, the littlest of us Bergmann children, says my name as if it’s a statement rather than the start of a question. She’s perched up against two pillows on her bed across the room, combing her porcelain doll’s deep brown hair. The doll resembles Lilli and I, with her big brown eyes and long dark lashes, pale complexion, and rosy cheeks. Lilli brushes that doll’s hair so often, I wonder how the doll still has any hair.

“Yes?”

“Why do you always look so grouchy when Max and Alfie are playing and laughing?”

Lilli is six and wouldn’t understand why the constant noise coming from Max’s room bothers me. “I’m not grouchy. It’s just hard to think when they’re so loud.”

“Then why do you always smile so big when Alfie is in our room being silly?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my cheeks burning hot.

“That.” Lilli giggles. “Your cheeks turn red whenever he’s talking to you.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Well, don’t you know how to kiss?” Max’s voice booms through the wall.

That’s it. I roll off my bed and stomp through our bedroom, into the hallway and up to Max’s closed door, then knock.

“What is it?” Max asks between rolls of laughter.

I push the door open, finding Max sitting on the edge of his bed and Alfie on his wooden writing desk chair, holding one of Max’s old teddy bears in his hand. They’re both laughing so hard I don’t know how they can breathe.

“It’s after eight. I’m tired and I don’t want to listen to your noise anymore,” I say. “Are you showing Alfie how to kiss a bear?” My question is meant to sound humorous, but I don’t think it comes out that way.

Alfie’s thick, chocolate brown hair falls to the side of his forehead as his gaze finds the teddy bear. With a brief glance back at me, he tosses the old stuffed animal onto Max’s bed. “I should get home anyway,” he says. “My father said I had to get up early tomorrow to go down to the emigration office with him and my mother.”

“Emigration?” I ask. “What for?”

“The same reason hundreds of others line up there every day,” Max says, standing up from his bed and walking toward me. He gives me a brotherly look, the one where his eyes grow wide. Then he mouths the word, “Stop.” Max rests his hand on the doorknob while staring down at me, waiting for me to step out of his room. How can any of us leave Hamburg? All I can think about is Alfie and his family planning to leave Germany. They can’t leave. I’d never see Alfie again. I shouldn’t have come storming in here like a thunder cloud. I don’t want Alfie to leave. Max could be quieter and that would be fine, but I don’t mind listening to Alfie laugh. “We’ll keep it down until he leaves. Sorry for disturbing you.”

In the past, I might argue to stay, just to be the annoying younger sister he claims me to be so often, but my stomach hurts, and my heart is pounding hard. I might cry. I back away and Max closes his door. He can’t leave .

I’m about to return to my bedroom when I hear Papa’s low voice coming from the family room. I tiptoe down the hallway, stepping over the one creaking wooden floor plank and press my body flush against the wall to listen in on their conversation.

“I understand those aren’t the exact words he used, but he said the topic has been very secretive,” Papa says, his voice a quiet hush.

I know better than to eavesdrop after all, it didn’t help me just now with Max and Alfie but if I don’t, I’ll never know what’s going on because Mama would prefer to keep the evils of the world a mystery to us.

“Then what are we supposed to believe?” Mama asks.

Papa exhales heavily and clears his throat. “Well, he also mentioned a report that was released in Minden recently, outlining the process of deporting Jews to Warsaw in cattle cars where they’re then sent to work in factories. And if they can’t work—if they’re old or ill?—”

“If they’re old or ill…then what?” Mama replies, her words pinched.

Papa clears his throat again, a tell-tale sign that he doesn’t want to say anything else. I don’t think I want to hear anything more either. I knew I would have been better off not listening, but it’s too late now. “The report stated they’re shot if they aren’t capable of working.”

“This is already happening here then. How can you be sure we have nothing to worry about? What are we going to do? We can’t just sit here and wait for this to happen to us…”

There’s a moment of silence and my muscles tense, waiting to hear what Papa thinks.

“Dalia, I understand this relentless fear of the unknown. I feel it too, but my former deputy officer reassured me just today that my—I mean, our immunity to the Jewish deportations is still in place. I’m a decorated war veteran who fought for this country, Jewish or not, and I’m a descendant of a mixed marriage. Both of those statuses will protect us.”

Mama explained the mixed ancestry Nuremberg Laws to me with a visual chart not long ago, showing what grade-level of Judaism our family is since different laws apply to different grades. She said Papa is half Jewish, but since he married her, who has two Jewish parents, his status is no longer considered mixed, only Jewish. Then the three of us were born with seventy-five percent Jewish blood, which makes our entire family Jewish, plain and simple. I don’t think Papa really has any form of protection because his parents come from a mixed marriage…

“Leo, you know that isn’t true. We as a family are Jewish.”

Papa huffs with frustration. “I know. I’m clutching at straws, but we can rely on my immunity from the Great War, though.”

“How long before the rest of the Jewish people in our community are taken away in cattle cars too?” Mama asks, her voice shaky.

“Darling, my focus is on you and the children, as selfish as it might sound. You are all more than enough to worry about right now. It’s hard to predict how horrifying things might become here for others. It’s a terrifying thought and I’m sorry, but we must keep our heads down, follow the rules, and pray it’s enough to keep us all well.”

Pray it’s enough? Papa has never relied on prayer. He stands by facts as he’s said many times throughout my life.

“We mustn’t tell the children any of this. It will only scare them,” Mama says.

“Avoidance won’t help. They need to understand the reality of what’s happening around them. They know they’ve been home-schooled for years instead of attending public school because they’re Jewish. The truth is only becoming more unavoidable.”

Mama sniffles. “I’m their mother. I want to shield them from it all, and instead I feel as though I’m keeping them held up like prisoners in this apartment. Jordanna is missing out on her adolescent years and striding right into becoming a homemaker next to me. I want more for her. She’s so brilliant and strong, and it breaks my heart knowing the restraints are only going to get tighter for her.”

“She’s like you. Her strength will carry her through this until the end,” Papa says.

With a scoff, Mama responds, “What exactly is the end, Leo?” A clap against the sofa is Mama’s telltale sign of anger. She always slaps the sofa to punctuate her question before her heels clunk heavily against the floor.

I hurry back to my bedroom, knowing she might rush off to her bedroom. I close myself inside, finding Lilli asleep with her doll pinned beneath her arm and the hairbrush on the floor. I pull her covers up over her nightgown and turn off the dim lamp, leaving me in the dark with nothing but terrifying thoughts of cattle cars, forced labor, and people being shot turning over in my head.