SARAH’S STAR

Michael Ginsberg, 2023

My daughter, Sarah, 16, walked into our living room, holding up a star-shaped cloth: yellow, faded and ragged.

Is this what I think it is, Dad?”

“Depends on what you think it is,” I said, smiling.

 “Looks like the badges that Jews were forced to wear during World War 2,” Sarah said. “I found it while I was looking through Great Grandma Sarah’s things. I just wish I knew more about her.”

I wasn’t surprised that my sensitive, inquisitive daughter wondered about her sensitive, inquisitive great grandmother, whose name and spirit she inherited.

 “She was living with us her last 10 years,” I explained. “I heard enough about her life to know there must have been a lot more, so I kept asking questions, and she kept saying she wanted to leave it all buried.

“Then, one day, she came to me and said, simply, ‘It’s time.’ I knew exactly what she meant.”

“Why, then?”

“I really think she was preparing to die. She passed away a few weeks later.”

 “So, she talked to you. Can I see what you wrote?”

“No,” I answered, and her face dropped. Then I explained: “She didn’t want me to write anything down, so, I tape-recorded her; she was OK with that. Funny thing is, I’ve never gone back to listen to what I recorded. I’d say it’s time.”

Sarah and I settled in to hear her Great Grandmother’s story.

*                      *                      *                      *                      *

I turned 16 on New Years Day, 1939. Everyone in our Jewish neighborhood in Berlin felt like they were falling into Hitler’s black hole.

I was falling into love.

His name was Alexander. We met at my father’s shirt factory, during a New

Years/birthday party my dad hosted for his employees and their families. Alexander’s father, manager of the plant, was talking with my dad as I walked by.

“Sarah,” my father said to me, “Remember Mr. Becker, my right-hand man?”

Mr. Becker smiled warmly at me. Then he waved me toward him.

“Don’t tell your dad, Sarah, but I’m actually left-handed,” he said, grinning and shading his mouth, as if he was telling me a secret.

I immediately liked him.

I liked him even more when he called his son over to join us.

Alexander was one year older than me, and six inches taller. I hadn’t seen him in years, but his hair was still as blonde and straight as mine was dark and curly. After just a few minutes, I decided he was brighter and more mature than any other 17-year-old boy I knew.

I wanted to know what he had decided about me.

I soon had my answer. As my parents and I were leaving, he tapped me on the shoulder, smiled, and said, “I should like to get to know you.”

I replied, ‘Yes you should,’ trying to sound as nonchalant as I could.

A day later, I found a note on our front door: “Sarah, tell me how.”

The following day, I left a note that said, “Please knock.” He did.

Nervously stepping inside, he asked my parents if he could take me for ice cream. They nodded, clearly charmed by his formal manners. (I thought it was a little weird, but cute.)

A few weeks later, after several visits, my parents said they were worried that we were getting too serious.

“He isn’t Jewish,” my father said. “That’s a problem.”

I thought to myself, “For you, maybe. For me, maybe not.”

I didn’t share that conversation with Alexander. After a few more casual encounters, my parents and I finally reached an uneasy truce, with no words spoken about Alexander, no emotional blood spilled, and no sign that Alexander even knew there had been a problem. (Maybe he wasn’t so smart after all.)

He showed up one day in a clean, well-ironed German army uniform, ‘Alexander Becker’ embroidered on the chest and two patches sewn under his name. He said he and his friends had joined a military youth troop, simply because they liked wearing uniforms. He earned one patch for attending all the training sessions, the other for keeping his uniform clean and well ironed. In other words, this tall, handsome young man in a military uniform was no warrior. As he himself said, “I’ve never ironed anyone against his will.”

The next time Alexander showed up at our home, he wasn’t wearing his uniform.

“What happened?” I asked. “Too busy to iron it?”

I thought I was clever; Alexander didn’t. His face turned sour, and he walked out the door.

I was stunned. He always seemed to have a good sense of humor and easily laughed at himself. Not this time.

He was back the next day.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I acted like an idiot.”

“No, you didn’t,” I insisted. “I was the idiot. I’m sorry for my wisecrack.”

“OK,” he said. “We were both sorry idiots.”

Then he explained what had happened with his troop.

I walked into the room for a troop meeting, and the commanding officer got in my face and ordered me to remove my jacket. The entire troop was surrounding us, staring.

Holding up my coat like a trophy, our commander told the group, “Your friend Alexander violated our values and our trust. He went over my head and complained to command HQ that I had kicked someone out of the group simply because he was gay.

“I actually had; we don’t want any of them around.”

Then he pointed at me: “And you, young man, we don’t want anyone like you or your Jew girlfriend around, either. Get out.”

He added, “Next time I discover someone in our group is gay, crippled, or whatever, I won’t toss him out.

“I’ll just shoot him; less paperwork.”

*                                        *                  *                  *                  *

Alexander kept hearing from group members that cadets who were members of “forbidden” groups – from Romas to Poles to anyone with disabilities or dark skin – were unceremoniously purged from the troop. No one was shot.

Alexander seemed to accept what had happened to him, but my parents didn’t. He had clearly won them over, especially my mom. She was angry about his treatment and decided he deserved recognition, so she and my dad presented him with a spray-painted “Golden” iron, and a statement read solemnly by my mother:

We’re proud of you, Alexander, and issue you this award for your strong values, your charming stories, your sincere questions about Judaism, and the loving eulogy you delivered when our cat, ‘Meow,’ died.

P.S. My parents suggested he not show the certificate to anyone.

*               *                  *                  *                  *

That was our last celebration, as rumors spread rapidly that the Nazis were rounding up Jews, herding them into cattle cars and sending them – we didn’t know where, but the rumors included a tasteless joke about “last resorts.”

That wasn’t all. Jewish-owned businesses, including my father’s, became targets for window-bashing bricks. Then, a group of Nazi troopers charged into the shirt factory one day, roughly escorted my father out, at gunpoint, and announced that Alexander’s father was now in charge.

Mr. Becker politely declined the promotion, but one of the Nazi troop leaders snapped at him, “We’re not asking; we’re telling you that you’re running the factory.”

A few nights later, I heard a tap on our front door. I opened it, and there was Alexander, holding a finger to his lips and waving me outside. Breathing hard, voice quivering, he told me to ask my parents to come outside. I tried to speak, but Alexander held up his hand.

“Please,” he said, forcefully.

I told my parents a friend in trouble needed their advice. Looking puzzled, they walked out with me, and, when they saw Alexander, they froze, and I froze.

Alexander said he had train tickets and exit papers for my parents and me to leave Germany, that night. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Go back inside and pack one suitcase apiece,” he said. “You have to leave. Now. Your lives depend upon it.”

I had never seen him so assertive, my parents so passive.

When we returned with our suitcases, my mother surprised me: “Alexander,” she said, “We don’t want to leave without you. You’re ‘meshpucha,’ part of our family.”

Alexander said the Nazis would slaughter his ‘meshpucha’ if he left with us. “Please, get in the car,” he said. Then he hugged her. For the first time, I saw tears in his eyes.

We piled in the car, and Alexander drove us to the train station. No one spoke, until we arrived.

“I love your daughter,” Alexander told my parents at the station. “I’m not a Nazi; I believe in God, and I’m doing what I know I should do.”

That was it; we didn’t even kiss goodbye.

A train took us to a boat, which took us to New York. My parents and I landed at Ellis Island and settled in Brooklyn, with help from relatives. We were safe, but lost and frightened. And, as the war ended and the enormity of the Holocaust became apparent, we felt guilty for escaping.

I felt guilty for leaving Alexander. I tried to reach his mother by phone. No luck. I wrote. No answer. I finally gave up and was preparing to fly to Germany, although I had promised myself never to step foot there again.

I didn’t have to. A few days before my flight, Mrs. Becker called and told me about Alexander. She said three million German soldiers were killed in the German invasion of Russia, along with 20 million Russian soldiers and civilians. The bodies of another million German soldiers were never found, including Alexander’s, and they apparently had given up looking.

The words “given up looking” shot through my brain.

Changing the subject, I asked Mrs. Becker about her husband. When the war ended, she said, Mr. Becker handed the factory keys to a Jewish agency that helped Holocaust survivors. He continued, as a volunteer.

“That cost my husband his life,” Mrs. Becker said.

It started with Nazis calling him “Jew lover.” Then they insisted the factory be converted to building caskets for German soldiers. My husband told them he was no longer in charge, and, besides, the shirt factory wasn’t designed for woodwork. They responded, “Build caskets, or we’ll build a special one, just for you.

“A day later, he was shot and killed as he left the factory for home. The Nazis then burned down the factory, without even waiting for the workers to leave. Almost all of them still in there were non-Jewish German widows.”

I had no words left, but Mrs. Becker said she had something else to tell me. “You must have wondered,” she said, “why Alexander had rushed you out of the country so quickly.”

“That day,” she said, “Alexander received a phone call from one of the other recruits in the youth group. His friend said he was proud of Alexander and ashamed that he didn’t stand up for him.

“The friend told him that you and your parents were on a list to be

picked up the next day and sent to ‘some kind of ‘camp.’ That’s all he would say.”

I couldn’t listen anymore, so I mumbled “thank-you” to Mrs. Becker, wishing I could hug her. We promised to stay in touch, a promise neither of us would keep.

I traveled back to New York, carrying an image of Alexander’s father, bleeding to death on the street, and Alexander, alone in the dense, dark Russian tundra, lying on a mound of frozen, blood-stained snow and grass.  Only later did it come to me that Mrs. Becker was almost certainly carrying similar nightmares.

After years of loneliness and mourning, back in New York, I eventually met an older Jewish man: a widower, gentle, generous, and lonely, too. His name was Isaac, but he wanted to be called Ikey. And he had a grown son, a young doctor who he was so proud of.

Ikey and I married in a small, quiet ceremony and lived a small, quiet life together.  I remember often waking up, shivering and muttering about cold, red snow. He would hold me and hum Yiddish lullabies. I had never known Yiddish, but I hummed one of Ikey’s lullabies when he was closing his eyes for the last time.

*           *           *           *           *

The recorder clicked off.

My daughter was crying So was I.

“Such a sad story,” she said. “What she suffered, it’s awful. And Alexander.’

I leaned over, hugged her, and continued.

“As I was helping your great grandma to her bedroom that night, she looked up at me and said, childlike, ‘I still love him.’

“I assumed she was referring to Ikey. Then I heard her barely whisper, as if in a dream:

‘Alexander.’”

*           *           *           *           *

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

I’ve often mocked the authenticity of messages flashed across movie and TV screens, claiming some movie was “based on a true story.” I now consider those claims with less skepticism, because “Sarah’s Star” is based on a true story.

I constructed great grandmother Sarah from a conversation I had in Brooklyn, with my mother’s doctor, the son of a German-Jewish woman. (I never learned her name.)

As a young woman in Germany, “Sarah” had a non-Jewish, German boyfriend who signed up for a Hitler youth group because he liked the uniform. He helped his Jewish girlfriend escape, while he stayed behind. She found out after the war that he most likely had died in combat on the Russian front. His body was never recovered

When the doctor told me his mother’s story, she was still alive, but he wouldn’t set up an interview with her, despite my persistent attempts at charm, guile, and every other strategy I had learned during my years as a newspaper reporter.

I built “Sarah’s Star” from the story skeleton the doctor shared with me (above, in bold). The details are all products of my imagination.  mg