Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman

Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman

Author:Robbie Waisman [Waisman, Robbie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781547606016
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00


I OVERSLEPT.

I quickly looked over to see that Abe’s bedding had been stripped. The worn leather-bound brown suitcase in which he had packed his few belongings, including prints of his photos taken in Écouis, was gone.

I leaped out of bed, panicked. Not bothering to do up the laces of my shoes, I skirted down the staircase, taking two, three, even four steps at a time, running at full speed, to the dining room. He wasn’t there. Madame Minc said he’d left, but if I hurried, I could catch up to him at the train station.

My legs soon became strained, my muscles sore, from my running. I could feel a blister bubbling on one of my heels. Somehow, though, I made it, breathless and wheezing, to the station.

It was early morning, and a large crowd of French commuters was pushing its way onto the platforms.

I wove in between and ducked through them, but I couldn’t find Abe anywhere. Jumping up and down to see over and through the bodies, I started calling out Abe’s name. A train arrived, quickly swallowing up most of the crowd, and I was left alone on the platform.

My shoulders slumped, and I sighed. I had missed him. I might never see him again.

“Romek,” I heard a voice call. I looked up to see Abe standing on the opposite platform. The professor was beside him. Abe and Professor Manfred waved for me to join them. I started to climb down the platform wall to cross the tracks when a train conductor walking past grabbed the scruff of my neck and pulled me up. He pointed toward the exit. In Yiddish, I explained, while pointing, that I needed to get to my friend on the other side of the tracks. The conductor snapped something back at me in French, his nostrils flaring, his eyes wild.

“You can’t cut across the track,” the professor called out. “It could electrocute you. We will wait for you.”

By the time I made it to Abe, I was crawling on my knees from fatigue. Abe fell into my arms. His soft and round flesh felt warm and familiar.

“The professor says you can come to see me off,” he said when he pulled away. I looked into his face. His cheeks, like mine, were soaked in tears. “It will be a journey, maybe the last we take together.”

Abe was taking a ship from Cherbourg, a port that had just reopened after being destroyed during the Allied invasion of France. I’d never been to the sea before, seen the ocean, or smelled such scents of seaweed and the fresh, salty breeze. The light on the northern coast of France seemed fainter, the sky higher, the birdsong distant, like their voices were moving up toward heaven, not down to earth like rain.

The ship was so large that standing close to it, I couldn’t see where it started and where it ended. I would make paper boats that I would sail on the Kamienna River. None compared to this ship.



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