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The Hitler Youth led Josef down the narrow corridor of the German passenger car. Tears sprang to Josef’s eyes. The Brownshirt who’d taken his father away on Kristallnacht had said, “We’ll come for you soon enough,” but Josef hadn’t waited. He’d gone to them with this stupid stunt.
They came to a compartment with a man in the uniform of the Gestapo, the Nazis’ Secret State Police, and Josef stumbled. The Gestapo man looked up at them through the window in his door.
No. Not here. Not now. Not like this, Josef prayed—
—and the Hitler Youth boy pushed Josef on past.
They came to the door of the Jewish train car, and the Hitler Youth spun Josef around. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening.
“What were you thinking?” the boy whispered. Josef couldn’t speak.
The boy thrust the armband at Josef’s chest.
“Put that on. And don’t ever do that again,” the Hitler Youth told Josef. “Do you understand?”
“I— Yes,” Josef stammered. “Thank you. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.” The Hitler Youth breathed hard, his face red like he was the one in trouble. He spotted the piece of candy Josef had bought for Ruth and took it. He stood taller, tugged at the bottom of his brown shirt to straighten it,
then turned and marched away.
Josef slipped back into his compartment, still shaking, and collapsed onto his bench. He stayed there the rest of the trip, his armband securely in place and as visible as possible. He didn’t even leave to go to the bathroom. Hours later, the train pulled in to Hamburg Central Railway Station.
Josef’s mother led him and his sister through the crowds to the Hamburg docks, where their ship waited for them.
Josef had never seen anything so big. If you stood the ship on end, it would have been taller than any building in Berlin. Two giant tan smokestacks stuck up from the middle of the ship, one of them belching gray-black diesel engine smoke. A steep ramp ran to the top of the tall black hull, and hundreds of people were already on board, milling around under colorful fluttering pennants and waving to friends and family down on the docks. Flying highest above them all, as if to remind everyone who was in charge, was the red-and-white Nazi flag with the black swastika in the middle.
The ship was called the MS St. Louis. St. Louis was the name of a city in America, Josef had learned. That seemed like a good omen to him. A sign that they would eventually get to America. Maybe one day visit the real St. Louis.
A shabby-looking man stumbled out from behind the crates and luggage piled up on the dock, and Ruthie screamed. Josef jumped, and his mother took a frightened step back.
The man reached out for them. “You made it! At last!”
That voice, thought Josef. Could it really be—?
The man threw his arms around Mama. She let him hug her, even though she still held her hands across her chest as if to ward him off.
He stepped back and held her at arm’s length.
“My dearest Rachel!” he said. “I thought I’d never see you again!”
It was. It was him. The shabby man who had lurched from the shadows like an escapee from a mental asylum was Josef’s father, Aaron Landau.
Josef shuddered. His papa looked nothing like the man who’d been dragged away from their home six months ago. His thick brown hair and beard had been shaved off, and his head and face were covered with scraggly stubble. He was thinner too. Too thin. A skeleton in a threadbare suit three sizes too big for him.
Aaron Landau’s eyes bulged from his gaunt face as he turned to look at his children. Josef’s breath caught in his throat and Ruthie cried out and buried her face in Josef’s stomach as their papa pulled the two of them into a hug. He smelled so ripe—like the alley behind a butcher shop—that Josef had to turn his head away.
“Josef! Ruth! My darlings!” He kissed the tops of their heads again and again, then jumped back. He looked around manically, like there were spies everywhere. “We have to go. We can’t stay here. We have to get on board before they stop us.”
“But I have tickets,” Mama said. “Visas.”
Papa shook his head too quickly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. His eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. “They’ll stop us. Take me back.”
Ruthie clung to her brother. Papa was scaring her. He scared Josef too. “Hurry!” Papa said. He pulled the family with him into the stacks of
crates, and Josef tried to keep up with him as he darted from place to place,
dodging imaginary enemies. Josef gave his mother a frightened glance that said, What’s wrong with Papa? Mama just shook her head, her eyes full of worry.
When they got close to the ramp, Papa hunkered down behind the last of the crates.
“On the count of three, we make a break for it,” he told his family. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop for anything. We have to get on that ship. Are you ready? One. Two. Three.”
Josef wasn’t ready. None of them were. They watched as Aaron Landau ran for the ramp, where other passengers had already queued up to hand their tickets to a smiling man in a sailor’s uniform. Josef’s father threw himself past the sailor and stumbled into the ramp’s railing before righting himself and sprinting up the gangway.
“Wait!” the sailor cried.
“Quickly now, children,” Mama said. Together they hurried to the ramp as best they could, carrying all the suitcases. “I have his ticket,” she told the sailor. “I’m sorry. We can wait our turn.”
The startled man at the front of the line motioned for them to go ahead, and Josef’s mother thanked him.
“My husband is just … eager to leave,” she told the sailor.
He smiled sadly and punched their tickets. “I understand. Oh—let me get someone to help you with those bags. Porter?”
Josef stood in wonder as another sailor—a German man without a Star of David armband, a man who wasn’t a Jew—put a suitcase under each arm and one in each hand and led them up the gangway. He treated them like real passengers. Like real people. And he wasn’t the only one. Every sailor they met doffed his cap at them, and the steward who showed them to their cabin assured them that they could call upon him for anything they needed
while on board. Anything at all. Their room was spotless, the bed linens were freshly laundered, and the hand towels were pressed and neatly stacked.
“It’s a trick,” Papa said when the door was closed. He glanced around the little cabin like the walls were closing in. “They’ll come for us soon enough,” he said.
It was just what the Brownshirt had told Josef.
Mama put her hands on Josef’s and Ruthie’s heads. “Why don’t you two go on up to the promenade,” she said softly. “I’ll stay here with your father.”
Josef and Ruth were only too glad to get away from Papa. A few hours later, they watched from the promenade as tugboats pushed the MS St. Louis away from the dock, and passengers threw confetti and celebrated and blew tearful kisses good-bye. Josef and his family were on their way to a new country. A new life.
But all Josef could think about was what terrible things must have happened to his father to make him look so awful and act so scared.
