The Brushmaker's Daughter Read online

  Dedication

  For Izzy, whose journey to read and learn our history is just beginning.

  Chapter 1

  It was just me and my Papa, running through the streets of Berlin in Germany, running for our lives. My small suitcase banged against my legs as I moved as quickly as I could, avoiding the streetlamps and the loud noise of traffic, trying to stay close to Papa and holding his arm. I breathed sharply, sucking in air and blowing it out in small puffs. My heart beat in my chest as fast as my breath came and went, maybe faster!

  “Do you think it’s this way, Papa?” I asked, trying to pull my father down a narrow laneway. I really had no idea where we were going.

  “No, Lillian,” he replied, resisting the tug and pausing a moment. His brow creased and he seemed to be listening for something; I didn’t know what. “It’s to the left,” he finally said. And then, he began to walk in that direction, dragging me with him.

  I hesitated. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “I know.”

  I probably should have known better than to question him. I could see that his face was calm and determined. Papa was always steady. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it. And this was all the more astounding for the fact that he was blind and had been born that way. It amazed me how quickly and easily he could do just about anything—usually more easily than someone who had perfect sight! I adored him, my Papa. I loved how strong and proud and sure of himself he was. I loved that he always knew exactly how I was feeling without having to ask a single question, as if he could feel my feelings, as if he could see into my brain and into my heart.

  “How do you do that?” I would ask whenever I watched him walk briskly on the street, prepare a meal, shop for groceries, get dressed in his suit with its matching tie that he could pick from his closet just by the feel of it, or a whole host of other skills. I had probably asked him that question a million times in my life.

  Papa would smile. “Some people think being blind is an obstacle,” he would say. “I believe it’s an opportunity to learn new things.”

  He had told me that a million times as well, but it still surprised me.

  A siren sounded in the background. I startled, pressing closer to Papa as my heart rate picked up again. He placed one arm around my shoulder and drew me even nearer.

  “We’re fine,” he said. “Keep moving.”

  This time, Papa’s voice was not nearly as even. And as his face tightened, I couldn’t shake the fear that pulsed through my body, rising from my feet into my stomach and up into my throat. There were Nazi soldiers everywhere on the streets of Berlin. And I knew they were hunting for Jewish people to arrest, like Papa and me. Things had been getting worse each day since that terrible man, Adolf Hitler, had come to power in Germany in 1933.

  We had come from the city of Poznan in Poland, where I was born. There was a lot of prejudice against Jewish people everywhere, including in Poland. So, we left Poznan for Berlin. That was in 1937. Some would have thought we were heading toward a place that was even more dangerous for Jews than Poland. But Papa believed we could disappear into the big city where no one knew us. I was only seven years old at the time. I didn’t ask questions. I trusted Papa as I always did. So, we left friends and family behind and came to Berlin.

  “I believe it will be safer for us,” Papa had said. And it had been for a while. We had managed at first to carry on with our new lives. We settled into a small neighborhood in Berlin called Kreuzberg, where there were only a few Jewish families, and we kept pretty much to ourselves. I went to school, and Papa worked in a textile shop.

  But soon everything got worse. In November 1938, the windows of the synagogue where we sometimes went for Friday night services were smashed, and other synagogues across Germany were burned. We could no longer go to movie theaters, and valuables had to be handed over to the authorities. A year later, in September 1939, Nazi troops marched into Poland and declared war. A year after that, our radios and telephones were taken from us and we had to be off the street at sundown. Parks and playgrounds were off-limits to Jews.

  And now it was 1941, and I was twelve years old. I was no longer allowed to go to school and no shops would serve Jewish customers. That’s when the warning came that Jews could be arrested from their homes and deported by trains to prison camps in far-off places where people were starved, tortured, and even killed. That was worse than anything I had ever imagined. The world I knew was disappearing in front of my eyes, and there was nothing we could do about it.

  After invading Poland, Germany had moved on to attack other countries across Europe, and the war was getting worse by the day. We had stopped hearing from friends and family members whom we had left behind in Poland. It was as if they had disappeared off the planet. And here we were, out on the streets of Berlin, running from our home and heading to a place that Papa said would be safe for us.

  “Are you sure you know where we’re going?” I asked again. I couldn’t help myself. It was fear that made me question my father over and over.

  “I know.”

  A motorcar suddenly came up behind us, revving its engine and screeching its tires. Papa grabbed me and pushed me behind a building, flattening us up against the wall and encircling me again with his arm. A cold sweat trickled down my back, and I shivered in the October evening air. Winter was coming. Soon, the snow would be on the ground here in Berlin. It was usually a time to play outdoors with my friends. If the snow was deep enough, we would make snowballs and throw them at each another, laughing and ducking when one came our way. But not now. There would be no laughter this winter. There would be no playing in the snow this year. And who knew for how long after that? I pulled my scarf tighter around my neck and tugged at the sleeves of my jacket, trying to cover my bare wrists. The jacket was too small for me, and had been too small for months. I hadn’t had any new clothes in a long time, and I didn’t know when I would.

  The car passed, belching black smoke. “Wait one more minute,” Papa said as I made a move to continue walking. A moment later, a second car passed.

  “How did you know?” I whispered. My voice shook.

  A faint smile passed over Papa’s lips. “I hear and I know.”

  I paused, waiting for his signal. “Now, we can go,” he finally said.

  We continued moving, turning left down another laneway, then right across a quiet street, and then left and right again. The cobblestones pressed up into the soles of my shoes. Like my jacket, they were also becoming too tight on my feet. One lone streetlamp flickered on and off as we crossed another street and then veered down one last narrow lane and into a small courtyard. Buildings rose up on either side of us, swallowing the last bit of light from the street behind us. We ducked around two small trees. Up ahead and to one side was a gray door. Papa walked up to it as if he had always known it was there.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Chapter 2

  Papa knocked two quick raps. I shivered again, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I looked around the darkened courtyard, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching us. When would that feeling of fear end?

  Meanwhile, Papa waited patiently, head tilted to one side, listening. Finally, we heard footsteps behind the door. A moment later it swung open. A man stood in front of us. His face was narrow, his dark hair brushed back off his forehead and slicked down with the same kind of hair cream that Papa often used—the kind that didn’t allow a single hair to escape. He wore a gray suit and dark tie. A red handkerchief peeked out of his breast pocket. His eyes were curious and warm. And even though I had no idea who he was, I felt my he
artbeat slow down and my breathing return to normal, as if he had lifted some weight off my shoulders just by standing there.

  “Otto Weidt?” Papa asked.

  The man smiled a wide smile that stretched across his face. “Morris Frey!” he exclaimed. “Come in. I’ve been expecting you.”

  We entered into a tiny hallway and followed the man up a narrow set of stairs and into a small room. The wooden slats on the floor spread up the walls and to the ceiling where one lone lightbulb dangled and swayed back and forth, casting shadows across the man’s face that appeared and disappeared with each swing. A sign high on the wall behind him read: Otto Weidt’s Factory. I glanced at Papa as a dozen questions flew through my mind. But before I could ask a single one, the man began to talk.

  “Did you have any trouble finding my place?”

  Papa shook his head. “A few cars here and there that we avoided. But the instructions that you sent me after I had written to you were perfect.”

  Instructions? When had Papa received instructions? I knew that he often relied on a kind neighbor of ours to read and help respond to any mail that he received. Is that how Papa had found this place?

  “I’m so glad that you’re here,” the man continued. Then he turned to me and bent forward. “And this must be your daughter.”

  “Yes,” my father replied, pushing me forward slightly. “This is Lillian. Say hello to Herr Weidt,” he added.

  I curtseyed as Papa had always taught me to do whenever I was meeting someone new. “Hello, sir,” I said.

  The man clicked his heels together and extended his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lillian, and welcome to you as well.”

  “Where are we?” I blurted.

  “Lillian!” There was a tone of warning in Papa’s voice.

  My face reddened. “Oh, pardon me,” I said. “I’m not trying to be rude. Really, I’m not.”

  Herr Weidt smiled and brushed the comment away. “Of course not. And you must be very confused indeed. I asked your father to keep all of this a secret until you arrived. The fewer people who know about this place, the better.”

  Know about what? Instead of answering all my questions, this conversation was only adding to them.

  “Come in,” Herr Weidt finally said. “I’ll show you around.”

  And with that, he opened a door behind him and led us into a long narrow room, humming with activity. A row of small tables, almost like the desks my friends and I had once sat behind in school, were lined up on either side of a center aisle. Men and women were seated behind these desks holding bundles of what looked like straw, or thick threads of some kind. They were weaving the fibers together and binding them into fat bunches, then scraping them across a line of nails that protruded straight up, as if they were combing the tangles out of them, just like I used to brush the knots out of my long, dark hair. Some of the workers had machines that cut the fibers down to a precise length. The machines sounded like our butcher chopping meat in the market. They made a hacking noise as the blades went up like cleavers and then slammed down onto a wooden platform. Fibers tumbled to the ground like snow falling in winter. The people were hard at work, faces pressed down to the bundles in their hands. No one looked up when we walked in.

  “You must be very curious about what’s happening here,” Herr Weidt said, reading my mind much like the way Papa always did.

  “These people work for me, and they’re making brushes and brooms. That’s what my factory produces,” he said proudly.

  I frowned. Brushes didn’t impress me very much. Of course, we all used them, now and then. But what was so important about brushes? Besides, this narrow room with only a dozen or so machines didn’t look much like a factory, at least not the kind I knew about. A factory was a big building with many machines.

  “The army needs my products,” Herr Weidt continued. “This is a very important factory for the Nazi soldiers. They need my brushes to polish shoes and clean uniforms, to brush their teeth and their hair. I don’t want to support Hitler and his Nazi military, but in this factory, I can keep my workers safe.”

  I still wasn’t sure what was so important about all of that. And I also didn’t like the idea of doing anything to help the Nazis.

  “There’s something else you should know, Lillian,” Papa interjected. “It’s one of the reasons we’re here. All of the workers in Herr Weidt’s factory are blind, just like me.”

  I gasped. All the workers blind? I looked around the room again. The brush hairs were flying through the hands of the workers at their little desks. The men and women weaved the fibers in and out of their machines so fast that it was all mostly a blur. How could they do that if they couldn’t see what they were doing? How did they not chop their fingers off in the process?

  “Papa, you won’t believe how fast everyone is working!”

  “Yes, I can hear the machines,” Papa replied, smiling.

  “And do you know what else?” Herr Weidt asked, tapping his temple close to his eye. “I don’t have much sight, myself.”

  My jaw dropped open. “You don’t?”

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head.

  “But you own this whole factory!”

  “I started with nothing, and I built it up to what it is today,” Herr Weidt said. “And there weren’t many to lend me a hand.”

  “Just like my Papa,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “And now, my promise is to help other blind people, like your father.”

  Herr Weidt led us through the factory, pausing here and there to introduce us to the workers. I wanted to stop and talk to each one of them. But Herr Weidt pushed us along.

  “There will be time to get to know each other later,” he said.

  We walked from table to table, shaking hands with the men and women who paused and nodded politely at me and Papa. But there was one more thing Herr Weidt told me. Not only was each person blind, but they were also all Jewish. At a time when Jewish people could not find work, Herr Weidt had given each of these people a job.

  “So, you’re hiring my father and the others because no one else will hire a Jewish person, especially one who’s blind,” I said after we had walked the length of the room.

  Herr Weidt sighed. “People like your father and the others are being treated so badly these days. It’s hard enough being blind, but having to deal with that kind of persecution against Jews makes my stomach churn.”

  My heart swelled nearly to bursting when he said that.

  When the tour was over, Herr Weidt turned to us. “We’ll begin your training tomorrow. But for now, you both must be exhausted and hungry.”

  I had lost track of the time since we had left our home in a hurry that morning. Papa hadn’t wanted to take the tram, afraid that soldiers might be inspecting the trains for Jews. So, we had walked, a distance that would normally only take a couple of hours. But we had taken a long, roundabout route, circling back every now and then when Papa thought someone might be following. Herr Weidt’s words suddenly made me realize how tired I was. My head pounded and longed for a warm bed to sink into. And my stomach gurgled and called out for food.

  “You need a place to stay,” Herr Weidt continued. “I take care of that for all my workers, finding them homes with good people. I have just such a place for you. There’s a lovely woman who lives close to my factory, a good friend of mine. She’ll give you a place to sleep and food to eat. You’ll be safe there.”

  Safe! I hadn’t felt safe for so long, I realized. But now, for the first time in a long time, I was beginning to believe that I might be.

  Chapter 3

  Hedwig Porschütz lived about a fifteen-minute walk from the factory, near Alexanderplatz, a large public square full of shops, apartment buildings, and restaurants. Her apartment was up a flight of stairs inside a three-story brick building. A stone path led to a bright red door.
Flower boxes hung under the outside windows. They were empty now in the cool fall weather. But I pictured that in spring and summer, they would overflow with white daisies and yellow daffodils, just like the flowers that had grown outside the house where we had lived in Kreuzberg. I knew those flowers were all gone as well.

  Frau Porschütz opened the door after Papa knocked and pulled us in from the hallway without even asking who we were.

  “Otto told me you’d be here,” she exclaimed. “It’s best to get you inside quickly,” she added, glancing around Papa’s shoulder before closing the door. “You never know who might be watching. Not everyone is a friend, I’m afraid.”

  I shivered in the entranceway while she stood back to look at us.

  “Herr Frey,” she said, reaching out to take Papa’s hand. He bowed to her. “And you must be Lillian. Welcome to both of you!”

  Frau Porschütz was not much older than Papa, I thought. She was wearing a simple flowered housedress with her hair brushed back behind her ears and held there with silver clips. She had a round face, a colored tint to her cheeks, and she was wearing bright red lipstick. When she smiled, I noticed that some of it had gotten on her front teeth. I tried not to stare.

  “I’m not so fond of my first name—Hedwig.” She wrinkled her nose when she said this. “So, everyone calls me Hetti, and you must call me that as well, even you, Lillian.”

  “No,” Papa protested. “It’s not proper.”

  Hetti waved the comment away. “I really don’t care much for formality. I insist on Hetti, even from you, Herr Frey. From now on, I will call you Morris. So, it’s settled then, right?”

  I looked over at Papa who shrugged helplessly.

  “You poor Mäuschen, little mouse,” Hetti said, looking directly at me. “So terrible to be on the run like this.”

  I gulped. Hetti clapped her hands together.

  “But first things first,” she said. “You must be starving.”