Lilli’s
Quest
Copyright © 2015 by the Estate of Lila Perl Yerkow.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:
Lizzie Skurnick Books
an imprint of Ig Publishing
Box 2547
New York, NY 10163
ISBN: 978-1-939601-54-4
Contents
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
PART II: 1942–1946
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
PART III: Summer 1946
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Lilli wakes up to the sickly yellowish light of a November morning. They are still living in that high-ceilinged, ground-floor flat on Heinrichstrasse. The sun never pierces the tall, narrow windows and to Lilli, who hates the darkness, all of the rooms feel like the insides of brown-paper bags. It is 1938 and Lilli is eleven years old.
She and her younger sister Helga, who is ten, share a bed, very high and with tall, knobby bedposts that are carved with elaborate scrolls. The bed once belonged to Oma and Opa, their grandparents. Lilli’s youngest sister Elspeth, now five, is still sleeping in her old baby cot, which is positioned crosswise at the foot of the family heirloom.
Today begins like an ordinary day. The girls of the Frankfurter family wake up, shiver as they wash themselves at the kitchen sink, and dress in their itchy woolen jumpers, thick black stockings, and sturdy oxfords.
They help Mutti prepare the family breakfast of hot milk, bread, and very small rations of jam, which is running short, as are many so-called luxury goods in Germany in 1938. The country, under its Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler, is arming not only for war in Europe but to take over the entire world. And Hitler’s armies need to be equipped with the best of everything.
But war shortages aren’t something that Lilli is thinking about right now. She’s more concerned with thoroughly removing the despised skin that has formed on her mug of boiled milk. Mutti gazes at her frowning. “Always the same,” she mutters in a tired voice. “You are throwing away nourishment, my child. It’s hard enough to get milk these days, hard enough to keep body and soul together.”
Lilli can’t help noticing that Mutti, who was once so pretty, with her flaxen hair and flirtatious smile, has become faded, and that there is a faint new crease in her forehead. Papa, who has also come to the breakfast table, is dressed in his usual going-to-the-office suit. But in truth he won’t be going anywhere. Many months ago, Papa was dismissed from his job as a chief scientist at a chemical plant near the town where the Frankfurters live.
When Papa arrived home in the middle of a workday, the astonished girls asked why. “You should already know the answer,” Papa told them, not unkindly. “Why have all of you been forbidden to attend school with German children? Why did the Jewish school then burn down?”
Lilli flashed a bitter smile. “Of course, I know. They hate us, the Jews. What will you do now, Papa?”
There was no answer. Every day Papa dressed for the office. Sometimes he left the apartment and tried to find a job among his Jewish friends. Money had been saved but it was running low, and the Frankfurters had to borrow small sums from Mutti’s family, the Bayers, who were not Jewish.
Papa responds to Mutti’s criticism of Lilli. “Let the child indulge herself, Martina. Who knows what’s coming?”
Papa is so handsome, in Lilli’s opinion—his high cheekbones, the curl of his lips, his dark hair and amber-brown eyes, the richness in his deep voice.
Mutti has caught something in Papa’s words. “You mean . . . ? Do you think there will be trouble today, Josef?”
Lilli’s eyes and those of her sister Helga flash to the six-pointed yellow star with the word Jude, for Jew, which is sewn onto the sleeve of Papa’s suit. If he goes into the streets searching for work, everyone will know that he belongs to the race that Hitler has sworn to wipe out. Already Jews in Germany have been stripped of their rights as citizens. They’ve been mocked, attacked, beaten, and even arrested. From her parents’ conversation, Lilli senses that something truly evil may be coming.
Yet, the day goes by quietly enough. The older girls do their lessons with Papa instructing. Elspeth practices her alphabet and her reading, urged on by Mutti, and then goes off to play with her dolls. Papa reads the evening newspaper, which has been delivered to him by a kindly neighbor, Mr. Doppler, who is a so-called “pure” German and need not fear being questioned or even arrested by one of Hitler’s special police.
Darkness descends and the girls go off to bed.
It is midnight, or perhaps later, when Lilli awakens to the sound of a distant roar that is punctuated with crashing sounds like those of china or glass being smashed and by the thudding noises of heavy objects being tossed from high places. She lies there for an unknowable time trying to make sense of what is happening. This isn’t the first time that the Nazis have attacked Jewish-owned shops, homes, and schools. But this nighttime assault is much more terrifying than the usual daytime incidents.
Lilli nudges Helga, who sleeps on her stomach, her head sandwiched between two enormous goosedown pillows. “What, what?” Helga moans in annoyance.
“Oh, you are so deaf,” Lilli scolds. “Get up and come with me to the window. Something terrible is happening. They are destroying everything that is Jewish. And the sounds are coming closer.”
Barefoot, the girls tiptoe to the window so as not to wake Elspeth. Cautiously they lift a slat of the partially open wooden blinds for a fuller view. But all is darkness. “It’s nothing,” says Helga. “You and your dreams.”
Lilli