Children of the Stars Read online

  Dedication

  To my wonderful family, Elisabeth, Andrea, and Alejandro, who joined me in the transformative experience of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that became this book.

  To the women and men of France who saved tens of thousands of Jews, political refugees, and stateless souls from the clutches of the Third Reich.

  Epigraph

  Anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.

  —talmud, mishnah sanhedrin 4:5

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue

  Part 1 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part 2 Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 3 Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Clarifications from History

  Timeline

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Auschwitz Lullaby Chapter 1

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Other Books by Mario Escobar

  Copyright

  Map

  A Note from the Author

  The book Children of the Stars has given me the chance to return to the mysterious territory of childhood. As we grow up, we lose the perspective of that magnificent discovery of being born and contemplating everything around us with the eyes of a child. Every inch that distances us from the ground pushes us irrevocably and farther away from the world we dreamed of changing but that we are now mostly content to endure. This book is about just that: the capacity we have as human beings to transform the world in each generation, when the balances are zeroed out and, for better or worse, everything begins again.

  Children of the Stars is a tribute to the power of everyday men and women to change reality. Centuries have hammered into us that people are simply a passive element in the unfolding of history, but civil resistance has often been the only thing capable of holding out against tyranny and oppression. From the plebian rebellions in ancient Rome to the American Revolution, from the pacifist movements for independence in India to the end of racial segregation in the United States, the power of the common man and woman is what has changed the world.

  The first time I entered the lush valleys surrounding Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, I thought I had stumbled upon paradise: small villages built of granite with a rainbow of painted wooden shutters, ancient hotels with their façades blackened by a hundred cruel winters, bucolic farms spread out between dense forests of beech and fir trees that absorbed and mellowed the intense light of summer. Something had happened here that changed history and that I knew, somehow, would also transform me.

  The story of the children saved by the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and many surrounding towns was unknown for quite a long time. After World War II, the French preferred to forget the Vichy regime and the persecution of those the collaborators called “pariahs” and “undesirables.” But in 1989, the documentary Weapons of the Spirit brought to light this beautiful story based on real events.

  Children of the Stars is the story of Jacob and Moses Stein—the unforgettable protagonists of this novel who, armed only with innocence, become young heroes against evil.

  Madrid, July 1, 2016

  Prologue

  Paris

  May 23, 1941

  “Every generation nurses the hope that the world will begin anew.” Those were the last words his father had said in the train station. The man had crouched down on his haunches in his ironed gray suit to be on Moses’s level. The child looked out with his big black eyes and sighed, not understanding what his father meant. The station filled with strangely sugary-smelling white smoke. His mother watched with tear-swollen eyes, and her cheeks were so red she looked as if she had just scaled a mountain. Moses could still remember her delicate white gloves, the damp, cold feel of that spring, and the sensation that his little world was ripping apart. His father attempted a smile beneath his thin brown mustache, but it ended up a tortured grimace. Moses clung to his mother’s legs. Jana smoothed the boy’s blond hair and bent down. She took her son’s chubby, rosy cheeks in her hands and kissed him with her dark lips, her tears mixing with the child’s.

  Jacob pulled at his brother. A light steam emanated from the engine’s wheels, and the train gave a final whistle as if the huge frame of metal and wood were sighing in grief over the souls it had to separate. Aunt Judith hugged Jacob’s chest, both protective and worried. All around, German soldiers moved like moths attracted by the light. They had neglected to pin the yellow stars to their chest that morning. Judith feared the Nazis could detect them with a single stony blue glance.

  Eleazar and Jana turned away. Their coats swirled among the crowd of people with hands waving goodbye to other loved ones. In the midst of that boundless ocean of raised arms, Jacob and Moses saw their parents melt away until they disappeared completely. Moses clung to his aunt’s hand with a ferocity intent on keeping her beside him. Judith turned her head and looked at her nephew’s short bowl cut, the blond hair gleaming in the sun that filtered through the station’s skylights. Then she looked at the other child, Jacob, with his dark brown curly hair. His big black eyes were set in a serious, angry expression, nearly rageful. The night before he had begged their parents to take them away from Paris, vowing that they would be good and behave, but Eleazar and Jana could not bring the children with them until they had a safe place to hide. Nothing bad would happen to the children in Paris, and Aunt Judith was too old to flee. She had taken them in six years before when the family could no longer endure the pressure in Berlin. Aunt Judith was more French than German; nobody would bother her.

  They left the station as the sky began to turn leaden blue and the first cold drops spilled over the stone pavement. Judith opened her green umbrella and the three huddled together silently in the futile effort to avoid the downpour. They arrived soaked at Judith’s tiny apartment on the other side of Paris, just where the city’s beauty faded into a scabby, gray scene that made the glamour of cafés and fine restaurants seem like a distant mirage. They had taken the metro and then the noisy, rusty tram. The two boys had sat in the wooden seat at the front while their aunt sat just behind and allowed her eyes to relax their efforts against tears.

  Moses studied his brother, whose brow was still furrowed. Jacob’s freckles blurred together with raindrops and his frowning red lips were tensed to bursting. Moses did not understand the world. Jacob always called him “clueless,” but the younger boy did understand that whatever had happened was bad enough to make their parents leave them. They had never been alone before. Moses still believed his mother was an extension of himself. At night, despite his father’s grumbling, he slept pressed up against her, as the mere proximity of her skin calmed him. Her smell was the only perfume Moses could stand, and he knew he would always be safe as long as her lovely green eyes watched him.
r />   As the boy had looked out through the dirty windows of the tram, the ghostly figures of the pedestrians jumbled together with the delivery trucks and old wagons that left the streets littered and rank with the droppings of their workhorses. This was his world. He had been born in Germany, but he recalled nothing of his home country. His mother still spoke to him in their native tongue, though he always answered in French, thus somehow making a statement against the place they had been forced to flee. Where would they go now? He felt like the world was closing at his feet, like when schoolmates avoided him at recess, apparently struck with fear or nausea at the sight of the yellow star on his chest. “Children of the yellow star” is what people called them. To Moses, stars were the lights God had created so that night would not swallow everything up. Yet the world now seemed orphaned of stars, dark and cold like the wardrobe where he would hide to trick his parents and from which he always jumped out as soon as possible so the immense blackness did not devour him completely.

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Paris

  July 16, 1942

  Jacob helped his brother get ready. He had been doing it for so long he went through the motions mechanically. They hardly talked as Jacob pulled off Moses’s pajamas and helped him into his pants, shirt, and shoes. Moses was quiet with a lost, indifferent expression that sometimes broke Jacob’s heart. Jacob knew Moses was old enough to get dressed on his own, but this was one way he could show his younger brother he was not alone, that they would stay together until the end and would be back with their parents as soon as possible.

  Spring had gone by quickly enough, but the hot summer promised to drag on. Today was the first day of summer vacation. Aunt Judith left very early in the morning for work, and they were to fix breakfast, straighten up the apartment, buy food at the market, and go to the synagogue for bar mitzvah preparation. Their aunt insisted on it since Jacob was almost old enough to assume the bar mitzvah responsibilities of Jewish laws. He, however, thought it was all nonsense. Their parents had never taken them to the synagogue, and Eleazar and Jana themselves had known practically nothing about Judaism until they got to Paris. But Aunt Judith had always been devout and became even more so after her husband died in the Great War.

  Jacob got his brother dressed and helped him wash his face. Then they both went to the kitchen, whose blue tiles were now dull from decades of scrubbing. The table, painted sky blue, had seen better days, but it held a basket with a few slices of black bread and cheese. Jacob poured some milk, heated it over the sputtering gas stove, and served it in two steaming bowls.

  Moses ate as if safeguarding his breakfast from bread robbers all around. At eight years old, hardly a moment went by when he did not feel rapaciously hungry. Jacob was just as capable of eating everything in sight, which forced Judith to keep the pantry locked. Each day she set out their humble rations for breakfast and lunch and at night prepared a frugal supper of soup light on noodles or vegetables in a cream sauce. It was scant fare for two boys in their prime growing years, but the German occupation was exhausting the country’s reserves.

  In the summer of 1940, the French, especially Parisians, had fled en masse to the southern parts of the country, but most had returned home months later as they saw that the German occupation was not as barbaric as they had imagined. Jacob’s family had not left the city then, despite being German exiles, but his father had taken the precaution of seeking refuge in his sister’s house, hoping they would not easily raise Nazi suspicion.

  Jacob knew that his family was doubly cursed: his father had been active in the Socialist Party and had written satirical tracts against the Nazis for years, not to mention that both Eleazar and Jana were Jewish—a damnable race according to the National Socialists.

  Paris was under the direct control of the Germans, represented by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and the Nazis had exploited and exhausted the populace. By the spring of 1942, it was nearly impossible to find coffee, sugar, soap, bread, oil, or butter. Fortunately, Aunt Judith worked for an aristocratic family that, compliments of the black market, was always well stocked and gave her some of the basic supplies that would have been impossible to acquire with her ration card.

  After their meager breakfast, the brothers headed out. The previous night had been muggy, and the morning foretold an infernal heat. The boys ran down the stairs. The intense yellow of the Star of David shone brightly against their worn-out shirts, endlessly mended by their aunt.

  The four sections of the apartment building, lined with windows, walled in the interior courtyard. From there they would pass through an archway and an outer gate leading to the street. Each side of the square building had its own staircase. As soon as Moses and Jacob stepped into the courtyard, they sensed something was wrong. They ran to the street. More than twenty dark buses with white roofs stood parked up and down the sidewalks. People swirled around as French police officers with white gloves and nightsticks herded them into the buses.

  A chill ran all the way up Jacob’s spine, and he grabbed hold of Moses’s hand so tightly the younger child made a noise and tried to pull away.

  “Don’t let go of my hand!” Jacob growled, yanking his brother back toward the building. He knit his eyebrows together.

  They were reentering the building when the doorwoman, leaning on her broom, sneered down at them and hollered to the gendarmes, “Aren’t you going to take these Jewish rats?”

  The boys looked at each other and took off running toward their stairway. Three of the policemen heard the doorwoman’s raucous calling and saw the boys dashing toward the other side of the courtyard. The corporal gestured with his hand, and the other two ran after the boys, blowing their whistles and waving their nightsticks all the while.

  The boys raced along the unvarnished wooden floor and the worn-down steps with broken boards, unable to keep their feet from pounding with terrible volume. The police looked up when they got to the stairwell. The corporal took the elevator and the other two agents started up the stairs.

  Jacob and Moses panted as they approached the apartment door. Moses reached for the doorknob, but Jacob pulled him, and they ran toward the roof. They had spent countless hours there among the clotheslines, hiding among the hanging sheets, shooting doves with their slingshot, and staring at the city on the other side of the Seine.

  When they reached the wooden door that led to the roof, they paused past the threshold, hands on their knees as they gasped for air. Then Jacob led them to the edge of the building. The roofs stretched out in an interminable succession of flat black spaces, terra-cotta tiles, and spacious terraces some Parisians utilized for growing vegetables. The brothers climbed up a rusted ladder attached to an adjacent wall and walked tentatively among the roof tiles of a neighboring building.

  The police watched them from the roof of Judith’s apartment building. The corporal, winded despite having taken the elevator, blew his whistle again.

  Jacob turned for a moment to judge the distance between the men dressed in black and themselves—instinctively, like a deer wondering how close the hounds are.

  The younger two gendarmes awkwardly climbed up the ladder and resumed the chase, breaking half a dozen roof tiles as they closed the gap second by second.

  Jacob stepped between two tiles and felt something crack. His leg fell through a hole, and searing pain shot up his shin. When he managed to pull his leg out, blood poured down into his dingy white socks. Moses helped him get to his feet again, and they kept running to the last building on the block. A chasm of more than seven feet separated the last rooftop from the next building.

  Moses glanced at their pursuers and then at the abyss shining with the intense light of summer. Despite the light of day, a cavernous darkness below seemed eager to swallow anything that dared fall into it. Moses turned his bewildered look to Jacob, at a loss for what to do.

  His brother reacted quickly. Just below them there was a small terrace. From there, a ledge circled the building to
ward the main road. Perhaps they could reach a house, then the street, then try to get lost in the crowd. Without a second thought, Joseph jumped and turned to help Moses, arms outstretched. Just as the younger child began to leap, a pair of hands grabbed his legs. He twisted and hit the rooftop hard.

  “Jacob!” Moses screamed, trapped.

  For a moment, Jacob did not know what to do. He could not abandon his brother, but if he went back up on the rooftop, they would both fall into the police’s hands. He did not understand why, but his parents had warned him about the Nazis sending Jews to concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

  The corporal leaned out over the rooftop and saw Moses from the ledge.

  “Stop it, you brat!” he bellowed as he grabbed the younger boy from the other policeman, held him by an ankle, and dangled him over the roof.

  “No!” Jacob yelled.

  His brother’s face was purple with terror, and he flailed like a fish yanked out of water.

  “Come back up here. You don’t want your brother to fall, do you?” the corporal called with mocking as he held Moses a little farther over the edge.

  Jacob’s heart beat harder and faster than ever in his life. He could feel it in his temples and in the tips of his fingers through his clenched fists. His breath abandoned him. He raised his hands and tried to scream, but nothing came out.

  “Get up here now! You and your people have wasted enough of our time today!”

  In the sunken eyes of the corporal the boy could see a hatred he could not understand, but he had seen it often over the past few months. He climbed back up the wall toward the roof and stood before the corporal.

  The corporal was a tall, heavy-set man whose stomach threatened to burst from his uniform jacket with every breath. His hat sagged to the side, and the knot of his tie was half undone. In his red face, his brown mustache quivered as his lips frowned and spat out words.