ATHOTS Chapter Two

Rachel was seventeen when her world began to fall apart. And yet she barely noticed it, she was so ridiculously happy in the midst of it all.

On an August night in 1940, when the world was beginning to crumble, Isaac led Rachel out onto the front steps of her home, under the stars, and asked her a question. 

Her answer was yes, spoken softly through trembling lips... and then he kissed those lips and held her close while the stars shone gently down. In the darkness, the stars sewn to the coats of the happy young people on the steps could not be seen. And the tramp of Nazi boots in the street went unnoticed until a voice called out.

"Aye, Juden! What are you doing out after dark? Back inside before I call the night watch!"

Rachel only stared in confusion, but Isaac grabbed her hand and pulled her inside. 

He slept on the couch in the Adlers' home that night... they didn't dare let him cross the street after that. And from then on, Isaac always left before dark, until the winter months when the sun set early. Then the little apartment across the street was abandoned and the attic of the Adlers' home converted into a room for him.

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When Rachel was just barely eighteen, she walked to the altar in a dress of creamy lace, draped in a veil that touched the floor. Words of blessing and of promise were spoken in Hebrew, and her mother cried. Isaac's smile melted Rachel's heart and when he lifted her veil to kiss her at the end of the ceremony, she turned eyes up to his that were truly, truly happy. Happy... and innocent still... although black and angry words were scrawled on the door of Jewish homes and Jewish children wept in the streets of the ghetto.

Only two more months of Rachel's life were destined to be happy. She and Isaac were given the apartment above the watch shop. She baked and sewed and sang and dreamed, and Isaac made watches and saved money and spoke of a home in the country. And Nazi boots thundered through the streets below.

The two happy months passed like fleeting birds... and faded away with the summer. Autumn came and the windows of the shops were smashed in. Precious watches were stolen, valuable tools destroyed. Cruel Nazi fists and boots smashed Rachel's wedding china, tore the beautiful lace of her wedding veil, turned over her kitchen table, sliced open her feather pillows and threw treasured books into the streets below. Pieces of Rachel's life were snatched up outside by greedy hands as they fell to the ground. Horrible words were shouted... and a giant yellow star was painted on the broken walls of her home. The star was labeled beneath with one single word in dripping black paint... the most terrifying word of all...

Juden.

Isaac was in the shop below and Rachel upstairs when they came. He heard her terrified cries, heard the crashing of furniture... and the sound of a hand striking human flesh... and he tried to push past the men who wore the Nazi boots to reach his Rachel.

They fought him, they beat him, and finally left him bound on the floor in the rubble of the shop while they ransacked his home above. 

He was lucky. Many men who fought back were immediately taken away. Taken to... no one knew where... and never seen again.

Rachel found him when the soldiers had gone. Her fingers shook as she knelt by his side and tore at the ropes that bound him. Dark red finger marks stained her cheek and her tears fell on his hands. 

His fingers were broken, but his spirit was not. He was more angry than he was frightened. And though his left arm hung limp at the shoulder, that didn't stop him from holding his Rachel close the moment his hands were free, and wiping her tears as she cried.

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Send the children away. The words were only whispered, never spoken aloud... they were too painful. 

Bekah was only eight, and little Shonie only six. They clung to their mama and papa and sister, sobbing piteously, when at last the painful truth was explained... still in a whisper, always a whisper. 

"When will we see you again?" Bekah whispered, and her voice trembled. She looked up at Rachel and a tear fell from the older girl's eye, to land on the cheek of the younger.

"Soon, my Bekah, my Shonie, dear little sisters," she whispered, her own voice breaking. And then she hugged her sisters close, partly because she couldn't look at the anguish in their eyes and partly because she couldn't bear to let them go.

"Yes... soon..." Mama whispered brokenly and smiled through her tears.

Soon.

It was only a word.

And words meant so very little in those days. The only one that truly meant something was that ever-present word scrawled on doors and walls and windows and yellow stars in terrifying black paint.

Juden.