Her Star of David: Prologue

Prologue


The year had been 1939, during the hot dog days of summer, when my family had to leave Berlin for Amsterdam. My parents had come to believe that things in Germany would get much worse than they already were, so they decided to move. One month later, the war started. Leaving Germany had been one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life; I had to leave all of my friends, relatives, and my home. We had to leave behind most of our furniture, our German culture, and nearly everything else we had set up for ourselves in Berlin. When we had arrived in Holland, we moved into a small apartment on the third floor of a building near a local park. None of us spoke Dutch, and none of us knew the Dutch customs. We stood out in the way we dressed, spoke, and the way we did things. We had to learn the customs as quickly as possible before the Green Police noticed our differences. I had been only thirteen years old; my brother was eight.
Amsterdam had been covered with Nazi soldiers. It was surprising to me how we didn't go somewhere where there were not any soldiers, like Switzerland.  When I asked my mother, she said something about saving money. That will never make any sense to me. My younger brother and I had been forced to attend a small, rundown school for Jews. My mother got a job in a local shoe factory. My father, keeping with the stereotype about Jews, was a banker. I had wanted to get a small job to help my family pay the expenses for a teacher to teach us Dutch, and for school, but my mother forbade it, fearing that if the Green Police came through, they would recognize me as a Jewish adolescent and take me away to a labor camp. Eventually, however, she gave in, and I got a temporary job as a paperboy.
Even after we learned the language, we still had rather thick German accents, and my father made my brother and I practice speaking with a Dutch accent for hours on end until it stuck with us and we sounded Dutch.
             For a long time after we arrived in Amsterdam, I was rather homesick and I missed Berlin. We kept receiving letters after our arrival, telling us of the friends and family we had that were being taken to concentration camps. It took me a long time to get used to my new surroundings.
There was, however, one upside to moving to Holland. Well, this was an upside that was more for me rather than anyone else, really. Her name is Addie Emerson. She's a beautiful young girl who also moved up here from Germany, though she is not Jewish. She had thick, black, long, wavy hair that cascades down to the middle of her back when she wasn't wearing it up. She's tanned to the point where she wasn't considered pale, and there was a rosy glow in her cheeks that appeared darker against her skin when she blushing. She's a bit shorter than I am, maybe by one or two inches, at most. She is rather skinny, with gentle curves that graced her figure. Her mouth is a soft, dark pucker, full, and pouty. The most beautiful physical trait, though, are her eyes. They are a dense green color, like moss or forest trees. They often look a bit dream-like, like she is thinking of something else when you are talking to her, though it does sometimes seem like she can see into your soul when she stares directly into your eyes.
Addie didn't go to Jewish schools, naturally, though I often see her standing by the gates of the school, staring at us when we are leaving for home. She stands there nervously with her schoolbag clutched to her thin frame, trembling slightly as she watches us leave for home. I noticed during her first few visits that she always has a certain look of sympathy on her face when she sees us, like she feels bad for us. I've seen her when she watches the German troops take Jewish families out into the streets to take them to the concentration camps. She always looks like she either wants to cry for the Jewish families or like she wants to help them, somehow, though it is not possible for her to act in that sort of way unless she herself wants to be taken to the camp.
Because of these things, I do not think she feels the same way about Jews as her family does. Her father cannot stand us, and her mother simply does not have an opinion about us, though she often sides with her husband.
             Sometimes I wish I had the courage to go up and speak with Addie. She's so beautiful, and I know that she attracts the eyes of nearly every boy she passes. Many boys that I go to school with also find her attractive. I do not spy on her, though I sometimes feel like I do when she walks by me or is standing by our school or by the entrance of the ghettos. She is often there before and after her school hours, staring at all the Jews with sympathy clearly visible in her expression and in her eyes. It makes me wonder if she wants to help us. It makes me happy to know that some of the people around here believe in us and don't think we're responsible for any kind of disaster.
My mother often told me that when the war was over, I would attend school like other kids, and we would be able to do all the things we could before the war and before we had all of our limitations. She said that we wouldn't have to wear the ridiculous stars on our clothes, anymore. We could go back to Germany, back to Berlin. We could ride bikes, take public transportation, eat in any restaurant, shop in any store, go to whatever place we wanted, and just about anything else we wanted to do. I would be able to attend the same high school as Addie and all of her friends, and I would be able to be just like any other kid my age; I would be like Addie.
My name is Charles Haswell, I am now seventeen years old, I am Jewish, the year is now 1943, and I am madly in love with Addie Emerson, daughter if one of the most respected colonels in the Nazi army.