The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan Read Free Book Online Page B

from elsewhere in Europe drifting over the borders, Bulgarian Jews had become increasingly unsettled. Already the rights of the country's forty-seven thousand Jews had been stripped by sweeping measures built on Germany's Nuremberg laws.
    Moshe, Solia, and their families could not have known it then, but even as the young couple rode east through Bulgaria's Valley of the Roses and into the mountains of Sliven, a drama was unfolding that would determine the destiny of the nation's Jews. In the early days of March 1943, the actions of ordinary citizens and a handful of political and religious leaders would change the course of Bulgaria's history. At the center of the drama would be families like the Eshkenazis, clustered in small Jewish communities throughout the country. The central players would come from Kyustendil, a rail town near the western border with Macedonia, and Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second-largest city, where the roundup of the town's Jews would begin early on a frigid morning in March.
    A little after midnight on March 9, 1943, the daughter of the rabbi of Plovdiv was sitting in the family den, reading Jack London. Her parents were asleep, and the house was quiet.
    The doorbell rang. Susannah Shemuel Behar looked up from her reading.
    In high school, Susannah had planned to go to the university and study astronomy. That was before life had changed for Bulgaria's Jews; it was before her father, racing to beat a curfew one night after presiding at a funeral, was jailed briefly for coming home ten minutes late.
    Now Susannah was part of Bulgaria's underground anti-Fascist movement. She had joined the illegal Union of Young Workers and had friends in the Partizan resistance: Communists, roaming the bitter cold Rhodope Mountains with their five-shot Austrian rifles. Susannah and her girlfriends were inclined toward missions of subterfuge and mischief. When comrades set about torching a leather factory or sabotaging an assembly line of canned vegetables bound for Germany, Susannah would stand lookout. At night around town, she posted anti-Fascist flyers—"Stop the War!"; "Germans Out!"; "We Want Jobs!" This work was usually undertaken in mixed pairs so that if a policeman passed by, the co-conspirators could embrace and begin kissing to disguise their mission. At home, Susannah stashed the literature in a perfect hiding place: her father's Bible.
    On the doorstep Susannah found Totka, the stout neighborhood bread seller. Susannah was alarmed: Totka was also the wife of a Plovdiv policeman. "Go wake up your father," the woman said.
    A moment later, the bearded, soft-faced rabbi appeared in his nightclothes. "They're going to arrest your family soon," said the policeman's wife. "Give me your gold. I will keep it and return it to you."
    Her father replied, "If we had gold, it would burn with us." Susannah knew what this meant. Her father had been telling her stories about Nazi Germany.
    Totka left. An hour later, just after 2:00 A.M., the bell rang again and Susannah opened the door to find a policeman in black boots and a blue cloth coat with shiny silver buttons. He gave the Behars thirty minutes to collect a few belongings and walk to the yard of the Jewish school. From there, they would await further instructions.
    Susannah's mother went into shock. She was unable to pack anything but a few coats and a little bread.
    Susannah, her brother, and her parents shuffled along a narrow road in the heart of Jewish Plovdiv, past Susannah's friend Estrella's house, past the Benvenisti home. They were flanked by the uniformed policeman and a plainclothes officer. It was quiet but for their footsteps on the gravel. Susannah looked up to see Big Bear and Little Bear—Ursa Major and Ursa Minor—suspended in the clear early-morning sky. Her mother worried aloud about Susannah's two sisters in the capital; she wouldn't be able to tell them what was happening. Susannah barely heard her mother. She was thinking of something her father