The Family Behind the Walls

41. Jordanna

FORTY-ONE

JORDANNA

MAY 10TH, 1945 – HAMBURG GERMANY

“Bergmann children, collect your belongings. You’re being transported back to Hamburg to another displaced persons camp. They will be better equipped to help you in relocating relatives,” the Russian aide informed us yesterday morning after we’d had some breakfast.

The thought of returning to Germany seems impossible. We weren’t wanted there before the fires but now everything is different.

The Fuhrer has died, and the war is over.

In just an instant.

We’ve been sitting in this displacement camp since January, waiting for a change, a shift in the wind’s direction, the world to just end. Not one of us has said: maybe someday when we’re free… Because for every day longer we sat here as if objects on cots, the thought of someday became a question mark at the end of a confusing sentence. A life sentence.

I’ve been staring at the front page of a newspaper for days trying to understand what it might mean for us.

VICTORY IN EUROPE! NAZIS SIGN FULL SURRENDER

As if nothing ever happened and so many Germans weren’t convinced to rid the world of all Jewish people, now we can all just go back in time and live in harmony. Except it seems as though we’ve lost everyone aside from the three of us. How can we go back and live as if our world wasn’t stolen from us. We won’t get it back. No one can give it back to us.

Right after we were told we’d be leaving for Hamburg, I signed a few words to Alfie using the new skills we’d been given by the nuns, curious to see what he was thinking. He still doesn’t have an update about his parents either. They aren’t on any lists.

“I don’t want to go home,” I told him, alphabet-signing the word home because I still don’t know the correct hand gesture for that.

“If we stay here, we will give the Nazis what they wanted. If we go home, we are living proof that they lost the battle. We’re stronger than that,” Alfie said.

That was the end of our conversation on the subject. We’ve been traveling by train all day, speeding past unfamiliar land, some destroyed, some still intact but vacant of people, and some unaffected by the war—or so it appears.

We don’t know what’s left of Hamburg, if much at all. The firestorm might have taken down the entire city for all we know.

Maybe I’ve just forgotten how it feels to be free. It’s as if I’ve forgotten to blink. Something so natural is foreign to us now.

Flutters in my stomach force my arms to tighten around my waist as the train screams to a stop. We can see the sign for Hamburg outside the window. There is only one stop for Hamburg on this trip, so we know this is where to deboard.

I take Lilli’s hand and make our way to the car door. Alfie is behind me with his hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently to remind me that he’s here and with me.

There are signs across the platform. The largest of all the signs is for Displaced Persons. We approach the man holding the sign and he points to a pale yellow and blue bus with another sign in the windshield that says: Displaced Persons Assembly Centre.

The bus is mostly full, but we take the second seat in, squeezing in together on one bench. We don’t wait long before a driver boards the bus, closes the door and takes us to our next unknown destination.

There is no such thing as home.

Lilli grabs my hand and points out the window. “Hamburg Zoological Gardens?” There’s a sign to welcome us. A zoo of all places. I glance over at Alfie, reading the confused look on his face to match my own.

It’s not a prison for people. We should be thankful for that much.