Daughters of the Occupation by Shelly Sanders

Author:Shelly Sanders
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

27

Riga, November 1941

THE STINK OF THE CHAMBER POT LEACHED INTO THE FRIGID air, combined with the whiff of dirty skin and hair and charred wood. Moonlight glowed through the frozen window, a misty beam delineating the cramped loft. One floor below, the Rosens spoke in disheartened voices. The babies were too weak to cry.

Miriam’s mother, wilted on the mattress, folded clothes with a mindless precision.

“Sh’ma yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu . . .” Miriam’s father bowed his head east, toward their window, and began chanting the Shema in Hebrew. A shaft of moonlight set off the severe contours of his stooped, devout figure.

“How can you pray now, after everything we’ve been through?” Miriam asked, her voice jagged with disdain.

He turned. Half his face was lit. “There is no better time to pray—”

“But you’ve prayed every day for months and nothing has improved. We don’t need more prayers. We need powerful, brave people to stand up to the Nazis and Latvians. That’s what we really need.”

“Prayer gives me hope,” he said with conviction. He resumed chanting the Shema.

Miriam watched him, unmoved. She didn’t see the point. Nobody was listening. Mired in depression, she packed her rucksack with Ilana’s tattered sweater, three pieces of bread she’d smuggled in from the factory, a pair of ribbed socks, her documents, and photos of Ilana, Monya, Max and her parents; and, in an effort to lighten the weight, she chose Anna Karenina over Simon Dubnow’s book. The sack would have been lighter without any book, but it was the only thing, apart from the photos, left from her former, civilized life. And unlike the photos, which brought Miriam to tears, the book carried her out of the ghetto to a fantasy world of exquisite clothes and beautiful music.

Her parents spoke in low voices as they packed, exchanging subtle looks of endearment, her father’s hand often stroking her mother’s back. Their love for one another, concealed behind closed doors before the war, was now as obvious as the frost on the window, which heartened Miriam. But it was a satisfaction so like disappointment, she drooped her head.

SHOTS FIRED INTO the clear, black night. Dogs barked. A woman cried for help. Miriam’s mother placed the lifeless spiderwort vine in her valise. They waited. Miriam crouched on the floor and wrapped herself in a scratchy wool blanket. Her father looked sideways through the window. Her mother shrank back against the newspaper-covered wall, eyes pasted on Miriam’s father.

“Celies! Wake up!” a man bellowed from the street in Latvian.

It was one o’clock in the morning.

More screams. More gunshots. Miriam’s cheeks went stiff when her father declared the shots were coming from Jēkabpils Street, only a couple of blocks away. Horses trotted up and down the street below, their jarring neighs divulging their anxiety within the madness. Glass shattered. Shrieks punctured the air.

The door of their house burst open. “Everybody get out!” a man shouted in Yiddish, demonstrating his traitorous clout as a member of the Judenrat, the Jewish council, established by the Nazis to police the ghetto.

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