Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 24 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
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List in the back inside cover of Zeide Nachum’s siddur:
1945
March 23 – Digging pits
March 28 – Erev Pesach, we are walking
April 17 – 23 Nissan, Matthausen camp
April 19 – The Wehrmacht comes and chooses people
April 20 – Train ride to Austria
April 22 – Walking through the forest
Naomi put the siddur back in its place on the high shelf. “Have you ever shown this to Binyamin, Zeide?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“Because in recent months he’s been looking for information, answers to some questions he’s had about how this place was established and how it all started, how it was managed, what happened to my father before he passed away…”
“Lots of subjects. Is there something that connects them all, do you think?”
She pondered for a moment. “I think he just wants to revisit things, check them out more thoroughly.”
“Nice explanation.” Her grandfather smiled. “So he sent you to ask me about how the camp was established?”
“No, I asked because the subject came up during one of our conversations. And you didn’t continue writing after you came to Samson Lager?”
“I see it’s not only Binyamin who is taking an interest in these things; his sister seems to be doing so, too! And the answer to your question is no.”
She brushed off her skirt and stood up. “Why not?”
“First of all, we were in the same place the whole time. There were no dates of special changes or movements. And besides…” He fell silent for a minute and then raised his eyes to his granddaughter. “I wanted to think that all that wandering meant the end of the galus, and that here…well, we hoped Mashiach would be just around the corner.”
“And he didn’t come,” Naomi said in a near-whisper. The words froze on her lips as someone suddenly began knocking wildly at the door, and then tried to turn the knob.
“Mrs. Einhorn! Mrs. Einhorn!”
Naomi leaped to the door and opened it in alarm. Her eyes grew round when she saw the little figure standing there. “Fanny! What happened?”
“Morah Naomi, where is your grandmother?” The seven-year-old’s eyes were opened wide, but she wasn’t focusing. “Because my mother said that she should come to us fast! Zuska has been sleeping and sleeping since the afternoon, and she’s not waking up!”
“My grandmother is at the infirmary now,” Naomi said as she grabbed her coat. “Go home, Fanny—your house is very close by. I’ll run to call my grandmother, or Dr. Katzburg.”
“How will you go out, Naomi?” her grandfather called from behind her, his voice deep and hoarse. “We’re not allowed out at these hours.”
“Even now, when the diseases are raging and everything?” She shook her head. “Do you think they’ll be angry at me if they catch me?”
“I’ll go,” he said. “They won’t do anything to an old man.” He looked toward the small figure who had disappeared in the darkness. “Stay here,” he said firmly to his granddaughter, and he took his coat and went out into the windy night.
***
“Zuska is in the infirmary, and she’s still sleeping and won’t wake up,” Fanny said in greeting to Naomi the next morning. “When is she going to wake up? My mother says that no one knows!”
“We’re going to daven,” Naomi said, smiling at her warmly. “Hashem will help, and she’ll wake up soon, get well, and come back to our class.”
The children gathered around, all looking nervous to some extent. Zuska Neiman was the first of the children in the preschool to get sick, and while they didn’t understand the magnitude of it, the fact that Zuska was one of them worried them all, and they were eager to talk about it.
“She’s very sick,” someone said knowingly.
“My uncle is also very sick,” another added.
“Maybe she’ll die,” a little boy contributed.
“Not true!” Fanny, Zuska’s younger sister, gasped. “She won’t!”
“B’ezras Hashem she won’t,” Naomi said calmly. “We’ll daven for her together, the way you know how, my little tzaddikim, right?”
“And for your husband,” ten-year-old Surele said quietly.
Naomi thanked her with a nod and a smile and said, “Come, let’s daven for all the sick people, okay?” And when her group recited Tehillim in loud voices after Shacharis, even the children from the other group tried to join in and mumble along.
Rivku, the assistant, didn’t say a word.
Even after breakfast, the atmosphere in the classroom remained heavy and dismal, and Naomi tried to find a way to lighten it up with something optimistic. Her worry for Aryeh and her conversation with Zeide last night—which had been cut off by Fanny’s frantic visit—jumbled together in her mind until they melded into one decision.
“Children,” she said to them, thinking about the inner cover of Zeide’s siddur, “maybe today we’ll try a new game, a story-game, about everything that would have happened if—” she lowered her voice—“if when the Nazis tried to take over the world, they would have failed.”
She was met with a resounding silence that seemed to bounce off the walls.
“Let’s say the Nazis would not have won over America, Britain, and the other nations, but that those countries would have won the Germans.” She sat down on the chair near the board. “And all the Jews would have been released from their labor.”
“Whoever wasn’t dead yet by then,” Surele said.
“Of course.” Naomi took a deep breath. “And at the end of the war, the Yidden would have gone back to live in the many different countries, like they had been living before the Cosmos-Fuhrer—” she lowered her tone to a whisper, and only her lips formulated the words, “yemach shemo v’zichro”—“rose to power. Maybe they would have even gone to live in the Holy Land. Think about it! They could have merited to live in Yerushalayim, with many other Yidden! And get up in the morning to the pure air of Eretz Yisrael! And hear the birds chirping as they swooped through the blue skies there!”
The older girls sitting at the school desks took deep breaths; some of them glanced at the big window to their right. The younger children, sitting on benches on the side of the room, didn’t quite understand every word Naomi was saying, but they were captivated by the tone of their teacher’s voice and the gleam in her eyes.
“So maybe today we can imagine that we are such children,” she said, “in a world where lots of Yidden remained alive, and they live free lives, without being afraid. And now we are in the holy Eretz Yisrael. Who wants to come with me in a few minutes to pick the flowers of Eretz Yisrael?”
“I want to go to a medicine store there and buy lots of antibiotics for everyone who needs it,” Surele whispered. Her delicate friendship with Zuska had just recently begun to blossom.
“Maybe they will give Zuska antibiotics,” Fanny said thoughtfully.
“There’s a terribly long list of sick people,” Surele replied. “But maybe they really give the children medicine before everyone else, because for them, sicknesses are dangerous.”
“So I’ll make an antibiotics factory!” Dror Elkovitz announced. “Morah Naomi, do you know that our baby Cherut already got some of the expensive medicine? So I’m going to make such a factory, and Zuska and all the other sick people will have enough, and then everyone will get well!”
Everyone’s eyes were on Naomi.
“Excellent, children! So maybe, instead of pretending today that we’re taking a trip to the flower field in Eretz Yirael, we’ll play-act the stores of the Jews there. Who wants to sell vegetables? Who wants to be the baker and sell bread and cake? Who wants to sell candies?”
The enthusiasm mounted, and even Rivku and Katy were swept up in the hubbub and helped give out the jobs, the stores, and the positions. Only when Naomi walked out at the end of a very busy day and met Babbe, who looked drained as she leaned tiredly against the wall, was she suddenly cast back into the day-to-day reality, so starkly different from the colorful world that she had created for the children.
“Babbe! How are you doing?”
“Baruch Hashem.” Her grandmother’s eyes were nearly closed.
“Are you feeling okay?” Naomi began to grow alarmed. Please, let Babbe stay well and not chas v’shalom get infected!
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just exhausted.”
Naomi nodded. “You haven’t slept at all in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Twenty-eight,” Babbe clarified. “I did doze for a few minutes here and there, on a chair in the infirmary.”
“Is everything…” Naomi was afraid to ask. “Is everything okay in the infirmary?”
“I can’t say everything is okay,” her grandmother said, after a few moments. “Aryeh will come out of it, b’ezras Hashem, and recover—I’m almost sure of that. But the conditions of many of the other patients…it’s not so simple.”
“What about Zuska, my student?”
“She needs antibiotics,” Babbe replied, and her eyes opened. “And there needs to be someone to fight for her to get it. Otherwise, she has no chance.”
Naomi didn’t ask if Babbe meant that Zuska had no chance of getting well without the medication, or that she had no chance of getting the medication without a battle. She was totally confused. “Fight?” she asked. “Who?”
“You.”
Naomi looked at her grandmother, who had abandoned the wall and was walking slowly toward her one-room unit. “Why me?”
“Because Leo Sherer is angry at Zuska’s parents for sending their daughters to you. And yes, I know that his Suzy also sent her Dror to your group—but we have a tendency to forgive family, right? But when it comes to others, it’s a whole different story… So you bear something like an eighth of an eighth of the responsibility here.”
“Me!” Naomi blinked rapidly.
“And besides—and this is the more practical reason—you are Elky Cohen-Kush’s good friend, and from what I understand, she has something to do with all the medicine deals.”
“Medicine deals?”
“They are literally deals.” Babbe glanced behind her. “Dr. Katzburg and I are trying to make the list in the order of priority, medically speaking, and as far as we are concerned, Zuska is first. But,” she sighed, “these decisions are not in our hands.”
***
“On spices? I never saw such a thing written on the spices in Israel!” Bentzy protested.
“Maybe not on the packages of all the companies,” Dena said as she finely diced the vegetables for a salad. “But there are certainly those who point out that spices and herbs need to be checked before using.”
“Fine,” he capitulated. “Let them write it—what do I care.”
“But it’s not written on your spices.”
“So we are like those who don’t write it.”
“And let’s say a Jew buys a package and there’s a bug in it, and he doesn’t know that he has to look at the spices and not just pour into the pot without checking it first?”
Bentzy opened the pot on the stove and took a sniff. “It would be very sad, of course.”
“And it would also be an aveirah, of course,” Dena said quietly. “I only thought about this after my mother once called me over and showed me a lump in a container of paprika, which turned out to be a fat worm.”
“Yuck,” he said, and picked up the ladle. “But there are no worms in this pot, right?”
She smiled. “I checked the paprika before I used it.”
“You know, Dena, there’s something important that you don’t seem to understand.” Bentzy sat down at the table with his full plate. “And that is: Vienna is not Yerushalayim.”
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