The way he looks at me is so warm that it floods me with sadness and happiness at the same time.
“Everything,” I murmur.
And so Jacob begins to tell his story. He tells us how he met my grandmother and Alain in the Jardin du Luxembourg on Christmas Eve 1940, and that he knew at first sight that my grandmother was the love of his life. He tells us that he became involved with the resistance early, because his father was involved, and because he believed that it was up to the Jews to begin to save themselves. He tells us that he and my grandmother used to speak of a future together in America, where they could be safe and free, where people were not persecuted due to religion.
“It seemed a magical land,” he says, looking out the window. “I know that now, in the world today, young people take freedom for granted. All of the things you have, all of the freedoms you enjoy, they are things you were born with. But during the Second World War, we had no rights. Under the German occupation, those of us who were Jewish were considered the lowest of the low, vermin to the Germans and to many French too. Rose and I dreamed of living in a place where that would never happen, and to us, America was the place. America was the dream. We planned to come here together, to raise a family.
“But then that terrible night happened. Rose’s family would not believe us, would not believe the roundup was taking place. I insisted she must come with me, that she must keep our child safe. She was two and a half months pregnant. The doctor had confirmed it. She knew then, as I did, that the most important thing was to save our child, our future. And so Rose made the most difficult choice of all, but it was, in truth, the only choice she could make. She went into hiding.”
I can feel myself beginning to tremble, for in Jacob’s words, in the French lilt of his voice, and in the emotion of the story, I can almost see it playing out before me like a movie. “At the Grand Mosque of Paris?”
Jacob looks surprised. “You have done your research.” He pauses. “It was the idea of my friend Jean Michel, who worked alongside me in the resistance. He had already helped several orphaned children escape through the mosque, after their parents had been deported. He knew that the Muslims were saving Jews, although it was mostly children they were taking in. But Rose was pregnant, and she was still very young herself. So when Jean Michel approached the leaders there and asked them to help her, they agreed.
“The plan was to deliver her to the mosque, where they would conceal her as a Muslim for a time, maybe a few weeks, or a month, until it was safe to move her out of Paris. Then, she would be smuggled, with money I had given to Jean Michel, to Lyon, where l’Amitié Chrétienne, the Christian Fellowship, would provide false papers and send her farther south, possibly to a group called the ?uvre de Secours aux Enfants, the Children’s Relief Effort. They mainly helped Jewish children get to neutral countries, but we knew it was likely they would accept Rose and assist her, because she was only seventeen, and she was with child. But beyond that, I do not know what happened, or how she escaped, exactly. Do you know how she got out?”
“No,” I tell him. “But I believe she met my grandfather when he was in the army, in Europe. I believe he brought her back to the United States.”
Jacob looks wounded. “She married someone else,” he says softly. He clears his throat. “Well, she would have believed me dead by then. I told her that no matter what, she needed to survive and protect the baby.” He pauses and asks, “He is a nice man? The man she married?”
“He was a very nice man,” I say softly. “He died a long time ago.”
Jacob nods and looks down. “I’m very sorry.”
“And what happened to you?” I ask after a long pause.
Jacob looks out the window for a long time. “I went back for Rose’s family. She had asked me to do it, but in truth, I would have gone anyhow. I dreamed of a day when we could all be together, without the shadow of the Nazis. I believed that I could save them, Hope. I was young and naive.
“When I arrived, it was the middle of the night. The children were all asleep. I knocked softly on the door, and Rose’s father answered. He took one look at me, and he knew. ‘She is gone already, isn’t she?’ he asked me. I said yes, that I had taken her somewhere safe. He looked so disappointed in me. I can still remember his face as he said, ‘Jacob, you are a fool. If you have led her to her death, I will never forgive you.’
“I tried in vain, for the next hour, to tell him what I knew. I told him that the roundup was to begin in just a few hours. I told him that the l’Université Libre newspaper had reported that records of some thirty thousand Jewish residents of Paris had been handed over to the Germans a few weeks earlier. I told him about the warnings issued by the Jewish Communists, who spoke of the exterminations, and how we needed to avoid capture at all costs.