non-Jews who had lived through the war. Mention the Rex to a non-Jew, and he would talk about the day the rocket hit. Mention the Rex to one of the few surviving Jews, and he would talk of another day, April 14, 1941, when the Rex had offered a special matinee showing of a Nazi movie called
Jud Süss
, or
Süss, the Jew
. It presented the story of a Jew in the Middle Ages who had risen to a high position in Frankfurt am Main and squeezed taxes out of the good Christian people until they were ruined. After the screening the local people marched down the Pelikaanstraat, smashing Jewish shop windows. When they got to the Van Den Nestlei synagogue, they broke into the building and carried the Torahs out onto the street. For a short time they seemed content simply to throw the scrolls around and unwind and abuse them. But they finally burned the synagogue and then marched on to lay siege to two other principal synagogues in the city.
W HEN HERSHL and the very pregnant Dwora arrived in Antwerp, they went to the Silberman family house on Simonsstraat, across from the elaborate masonry of the elevated tracks. The strangers who were living there assured them that there were no Silbermans in the house.
On December 28, 1944, Dwora gave birth to their first child, a girl. Knowing nothing about babies, she turned to the flourishing black market to buy as much food as she could. To Dwora, Antwerp looked almost prosperous. There was trade and busy shops, and she bitterly reflected that the Flemish seemed to have thrived on selling to the Germans. She bought food as though she expected it to vanish from the markets. Soon her parents would comeback from somewhere. Her brother and his wife would be coming back from Auschwitz. They would need a lot of good food. They would be so hungry.
To the disappointment of the people living in the Simonsstraat house, Hershl’s family did return, and after a court battle the Silbermans got their house back. But no one in Dwora’s family was among the returning survivors. Now Dwora was certain that her instinct had been right: She should never have left them in Antwerp and gone off with Hershl.
In March 1942, when the Germans had begun deporting Belgian Jews to Auschwitz, they had not taken only young people who would be good laborers, as Dwora’s parents had expected. The deportation was not, in fact, about labor at all. Her parents had been taken, and so had the aging Rabbi Mordechai Rottenberg, along with his wife and children. But the Rottenbergs’ daughter, Recha, had married a Swiss Hasid, Yitzchak Sternbuch, and during the war the couple lived at the Lake Geneva resort of Montreux. From this position of relative safety, they had smuggled Jews into Switzerland and had then gone on to ever wilder schemes, such as swapping Jews for money and equipment. In her search for niches of safety in the Final Solution, Recha had discovered that the Germans would not hurt Jews who had South American passports. The Germans had a vague idea that at some point they could swap these South American Jews for Germans living in South America. The Paraguayan government was delighted that its passports were worth something to people with hard currency, and it made the documents available for a handsome fee.
Among the hundreds for whom Recha obtained these papers were her two brothers, Chaim and Jozef. As a result, they were sent to a labor camp in Germany instead of a death camp. Both brothers had inherited some of their father’s charisma, and Jozef in particular had an easy charm and an impish wit. Before the war, he had taken to Antwerp’s commercial world, becoming an entrepreneur who understood the role of money in getting things done. After their sister got them South American papers, it was Jozef who tried to get money to Sam Perl and the others in the transit camp, so that if they were sent to Auschwitz and could jump off the train, as many were talking of doing, they would have some cash.
Jozef’s
Jud Süss
, or
Süss, the Jew
. It presented the story of a Jew in the Middle Ages who had risen to a high position in Frankfurt am Main and squeezed taxes out of the good Christian people until they were ruined. After the screening the local people marched down the Pelikaanstraat, smashing Jewish shop windows. When they got to the Van Den Nestlei synagogue, they broke into the building and carried the Torahs out onto the street. For a short time they seemed content simply to throw the scrolls around and unwind and abuse them. But they finally burned the synagogue and then marched on to lay siege to two other principal synagogues in the city.
W HEN HERSHL and the very pregnant Dwora arrived in Antwerp, they went to the Silberman family house on Simonsstraat, across from the elaborate masonry of the elevated tracks. The strangers who were living there assured them that there were no Silbermans in the house.
On December 28, 1944, Dwora gave birth to their first child, a girl. Knowing nothing about babies, she turned to the flourishing black market to buy as much food as she could. To Dwora, Antwerp looked almost prosperous. There was trade and busy shops, and she bitterly reflected that the Flemish seemed to have thrived on selling to the Germans. She bought food as though she expected it to vanish from the markets. Soon her parents would comeback from somewhere. Her brother and his wife would be coming back from Auschwitz. They would need a lot of good food. They would be so hungry.
To the disappointment of the people living in the Simonsstraat house, Hershl’s family did return, and after a court battle the Silbermans got their house back. But no one in Dwora’s family was among the returning survivors. Now Dwora was certain that her instinct had been right: She should never have left them in Antwerp and gone off with Hershl.
In March 1942, when the Germans had begun deporting Belgian Jews to Auschwitz, they had not taken only young people who would be good laborers, as Dwora’s parents had expected. The deportation was not, in fact, about labor at all. Her parents had been taken, and so had the aging Rabbi Mordechai Rottenberg, along with his wife and children. But the Rottenbergs’ daughter, Recha, had married a Swiss Hasid, Yitzchak Sternbuch, and during the war the couple lived at the Lake Geneva resort of Montreux. From this position of relative safety, they had smuggled Jews into Switzerland and had then gone on to ever wilder schemes, such as swapping Jews for money and equipment. In her search for niches of safety in the Final Solution, Recha had discovered that the Germans would not hurt Jews who had South American passports. The Germans had a vague idea that at some point they could swap these South American Jews for Germans living in South America. The Paraguayan government was delighted that its passports were worth something to people with hard currency, and it made the documents available for a handsome fee.
Among the hundreds for whom Recha obtained these papers were her two brothers, Chaim and Jozef. As a result, they were sent to a labor camp in Germany instead of a death camp. Both brothers had inherited some of their father’s charisma, and Jozef in particular had an easy charm and an impish wit. Before the war, he had taken to Antwerp’s commercial world, becoming an entrepreneur who understood the role of money in getting things done. After their sister got them South American papers, it was Jozef who tried to get money to Sam Perl and the others in the transit camp, so that if they were sent to Auschwitz and could jump off the train, as many were talking of doing, they would have some cash.
Jozef’s
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