Read Online Hitler Made Me a Jew by Nadia Gould - Free Book Online Page B

went: on the bus, in the cafeteria, in stores as the lady explained that I was a refugee, that I was all alone—people wanted to help and gave me money.
    The lady didn’t know what to do because I refused to eat and she was worried. She kept buying me lox because I had eaten it once and she thought that I liked it. I was only happy and distracted when her husband took me riding in his car. Then I didn’t cry. I liked him because he didn’t talk. My other diversion was looking in their Encyclopedia for all the French words or the names of famous French people. I asked the social worker to give me French books by Balzac. She declared: “Absolutely no, it is against the policy of the agency. You must learn English. You have to forget French.”
    Soon after, the social worker registered me in the local public school. She and the Principal decided that I would do best in the fifth grade because I didn’t know the language and I was short. The pupils were tall but I could tell they were much younger than me. The entire morning I was in school that day I had to answer my name to every one who asked, “And what is your name?” I had to say over and over, “My name is Nadia and what is your name?” And they told me their names.
    During a break, as soon as no one was watching, I ran out into the street and pushed by an instinctive urge I went to see my redheaded German friend from the boat. I ran through the streets. I didn’t know where my friend lived. I wanted to hear her say the French words I had taught her. Miraculously, I found her. No one mentioned my going back to school after that. I stayed home with the lady who was religious and swayed as she prayed every morning, facing the same direction.
    One day to be helpful I washed a dirty dish. I was handling it and she grabbed it from my hands, rushed into the back garden and buried it in the ground. I thought she was crazy. I didn’t know about kosher laws and not mixing meat and dairy dishes.
    Her son was her other big concern. He was nineteen and worked nights in a war plant. He was a good son but she complained that he kept company with a girl of dubious background and a non-Jew on top of everything! She couldn’t do anything about it. As I went to bed early in the evening, I never saw him except one night when I heard him shout at his mother. I was surprised he could get away with being so disrespectful to her.
    Once when the lady was out I dialed the telephone operator and in my broken English explained to her that I wanted to locate my parents’ friends in Norfolk, Virginia; although I didn’t know the names of the relatives with whom they were staying nor the address.
    After a few days, I received a call from my father’s friend, Sasha. He had been stunned to learn I was in America. He didn’t know we had escaped from France. I could hardly believe I was speaking French to him, a person who knew me and my parents. I felt I was me again. Often since, I have wondered about the faceless telephone operator who had been so smart and had understood my despair on the phone. And most of all, I wondered how she did the detective work to find my parents’ friends.

Chapter 10
    Without My Mother (Concord, NH/Reading, PA) 1943
    Sasha promised me he would do all that was necessary to have me move in with them. They were now living in Concord, New Hampshire. It took a long time to get the paperwork done before I was given permission to move into their house. Several agencies had to investigate my new home and my new foster parents.
    Since I was going to leave their house anyway, the lady decided that she would go to work in a war plant also. The social worker said I could not be left alone in the house without her and decided I had to move temporarily until I could go legally to Concord. Again a separation and a crisis festered the day the social worker came to take me to a new home. I lost my sanity and I rolled