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"And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had spoken unto Moses."
-Exodus 9:12
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The seder didn’t start until late, and so Anna slept, her best dress on. She was lucky - she wasn’t like so many other children on the ship. When she had told her closest and only friend on the ship, David, who didn’t know where his parents were, who slept in the dormitory with all the other ‘strays,’ where it was common for three children to sleep in a bed, that she didn’t have to share a bunk. David was jealous of her, he’d said, but Anna had looked away. “I want to talk about something else.” He’d agreed, although it was clear that it bothered him that she was bothered, that he had bothered her. No, she didn’t have to share a bed with anyone, not with a brother or a sister. She only had one sister, and it wasn’t even as though she had a sister anymore. David had left - he wasn’t planning on going to the seder, he was going to read Marx - so Anna slept, and tried not to think about or dream about her sister.
It was when they had still been living in the ghettos before the President had begun moving the Jews and they’d told her that her sister had gone that Elsie was gone
A start. Anna woke now as she always did. She checked her room to make sure that everything was there. “Why?” David had asked her. “You have nothing worth stealing. Just some old books, some dresses that are too big for anyone else.” But to do it, to check the room, for whatever reason, it comforted her. “It’s about control,” she’d told him, and it was.
In one corner, there, was her diary. She hadn’t been able to bring much with her on the ship, but she had decided to bring this, her diary. When the Jewish Affairs men had checked their luggage, and saw her diary, they’d laughed, cackled to each other like hyenas, in an incomprehensible Bavarian drawl.
Anna knew they must’ve thought her to be some silly little girl, but that diary meant the world to her. She couldn’t bring home with her, but if she had her diary, it was, at least, something like home. It was almost funny. Just months ago, she’d told herself that she was 15 now, she was a woman. She was an adult, or nearly, and her mother had begun looking at Anna askance when she saw her writing in the diary. She’d thought of putting it away, even of burning it, or at least locking it up somewhere secret and safe. But then they were moved to the ghettos, and then to Madagaskar. So she kept the diary. It was home.
She’s - she’s gone her father answered and her mother cried
It had been a month since they had boarded the great ships that were, President Goerdeler had announced over the wireless, to take them to Madagaskar. Anna knew almost nothing about Madagaskar. She’d seen it on the globe in school, back when she could still go to school. Although her parents did not think that she heard, she knew the talk - how people didn’t know how many families the island could support. Some didn’t think it could even hold 500 families. But now they were here on the ships, sailing to Africa.
And no one had saved them. Europe had allowed Goerdeler to retake the old empire - it was only natural, they said - and Europe and the League of Nations had allowed the Jews to be persecuted.
Where - she’s gone what do you mean gone
“Anna?” Father poked his head into the room. “Yes?” His hair had started to gray and fall out, although he was only in his forties. He tried to keep up a brave face for Anna and her mother, for he was a doctor, a pillar of the community, but now he sobbed at night. Anna could hear him. His kippah, perched neatly atop his head, his pince-nez glasses nearly falling off his Roman nose - the family had often joked about his nose, how un-Jewish it was, and now here they all were - his cleaned and pressed suit almost made him resemble what he had once been - the beloved, handsome Dr Stern of Berlin, father to two daughters who he loved and called ‘the future,’ but he would never be the same man again, not since Elsie, and now that they were onboard the ship? Never. Her father had grown distant.
Anna she’s gone gone she’s -
He had once loved to read - she remembered, he’d read Shakespeare to her and done all different voices for the characters - his shrill cry for Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream had been her favourite; that had always made her laugh, and as a little girl his deep growl of Caliban had terrified her - but now he mostly sat silent and thought about something, when he wasn’t praying. He never used to pray.
“Father? Is the seder starting?”
“Yes, Anna. You wanted to hear what Rabbi Lansman had to say before, yes?”
“Of - of course, father.” She rose from the bed.
What - what happened to her? Is she dead, like Herr Meyer and Frau Meyer?
She set her diary down on the bed, walked to the cafeteria of the ship with her father. No. She would not cry. She would be strong.
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The seder plate was barer than usual. The cook onboard the ship, who was a friend to the Jews, or, at least, felt sorry for them, had given them a bone. They'd had been thankful, too, for the fact that they would have that, at least, on the Seder plate. It wasn’t just a bone, but “zeroa," as Rabbi Lansman had sagely called it in Hebrew. The night before, when they’d been arranging the table, he’d gone over what each and every thing on the plate meant.
“Zeroa,” he’d said. “Zeroa is to symbolise the sacrifices we once made to celebrate the Passover, in the land of Israel.” The people had murmured in agreement, and he continued.
“Zeroa, to symbolise the sacrifices with which our people had once celebrated Passover, to symbolise, too, the arm of the Lord, which brought our people out from Egypt, to the land of Israel.”
No she isn’t dead and her mother cried more I wish she were dead
Back home, they would have used a lamb shank, but there was none onboard the ship. When Rabbi Lansman and some of the other prominent men of the ship tried to tell the captain what it was they wanted, his response was curt, as it always was: “Take it or leave it,” he’d said, and, so, they’d taken it. They had no egg, sadly - those were, the cook had informed them, “not for Jews,” nor, indeed, any haroset, the sweet paste that stood in in for the clay with which the Jews had made the Pyramids of Egypt. Instead, with some irony, they’d had to substitute it with the dark, bitter bread that they were given every day and which they now refused to eat, since, after all, it was Passover. They had herbs, although they were mostly wilted, and bitter herbs, too.
A voice behind her: “Anna.”
“David! You’re here!” Anna pointed out a seat next to her and her parents. David shook his head, moved to sit - or, rather, crouch - in the corner.
The Rabbi had turned the dark cafeteria into a something like a synagogue. Perhaps it wasn’t customary, but, then, these were uncustomary times. The rows that the cafeteria tables were always were unaltered - the captain made sure of that. Nor were there any haggadahs - the burnings had seen to that. Rabbi Lansman said he would do it from memory, but first he’d said he wanted to say something. He stood on a table, his fierce dark beard swaying slightly as the rabbi moved back and forth. He did not speak.
And then he began. Anna saw, around the room, that men put on their tallises, or used suit jackets tied in the corners as a substitute. The rabbi had not insisted that men and women sit divided, but, rather, together - Anna, who, ordinarily, would have sat with the women, if they had attended services at all, now sat next to her father and mother together.
Like in a dream - for she was in a dream - Anna walked to the sitting room the parlor where she’d had so many happy memories and there sat her sister like a posed doll blood dripping from her mouth and her dress ripped open torn
The rabbi began to speak. “My - my friends.” His voice was slow and unsteady. He moved a hand to his face and wiped a tear. “My friends.” His tears flowed still. “Courage, my friends. Remember what the Torah tells us. Remember, my friends, please! Remember! Remember the story of our people, since we, too, are slaves in the land of Egypt, slaves in the land of Egypt, slaves as our ancestors were! Remember! There was a new pharaoh, a pharaoh who did not know Joseph, who did not know our people, and so there is a new pharaoh today. And that pharaoh, he - we were slaves, slaves in the land of Egypt. Had not the Almighty, Adonai, freed us from this oppression, from the wicked hand of the tyrant, then we would all still be enslaved. Each and every one of us in chains.”
She’s not there anymore her mother had said
He paused, wiped his brow. His beard now shook in the breeze of his words. “But we are slaves. We are slaves. Exiles from our own home, like the Jews of old. There is a new pharaoh, a pharaoh in Berlin. And he banishes us. There are no plagues, or, at least not yet, with which the Almighty might free us from the tyranny and cruel yoke of the pharaoh. There is nothing. There is nothing.”
The schwarze the soldiers Goerdeler's soldiers had raped her and she wasn’t there anymore
The people looked to one another, dismayed. “But please! Friends! Courage! We must have,” and here he took a breath, “courage! There are no plagues yet, but deliverance shall come. The Messiah shall come and we shall be delivered. We shall, I swear to you. Remember, and, yes! have hope! Remember, and pray, that next year, we may all be in Jerusalem, the Holy Land of Jerusalem. Pray, and remember.” By now, the rabbi wept openly. “Remember!”
The Rabbi sang. His voice was rough, scarred with tears, but it was clear to all what he sang:
Eliahu ha’navi. Eliahu ha’tishbi. El’yahu ha’giladi. Elijah the prophet. Elijah the Tishbite. Elijah the Giladite.
She was going to buy bread for us Anna with the last of the coupons we had and the schwarze found her on the way and they raped her and they cut off her tongue and she’s gone
Anna looked to find David. He was gone. She rose from the table, ran to go find him. “David!”
The rabbi’s song had grown louder, stronger. People had risen to sing along with him, to sing the song. Not Anna’s father.
Bim’erah yavo’lenu, yavo elenu - im Moschiach ben David, im Moschiach ben David. May he come to us soon - with the Messiah, the son of David. The people wept along with the Rabbi.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” murmured Anna’s father. “Next year in Jerusalem.”
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