The Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman Read Free Book Online Page A

moved toward the room she shared with Marta, Clara could see the worry on her mother’s face as she began to remove the yellow stars that were stitched to the tattered coats of her two daughters.
    Climbing into bed, Clara arrangedGittel and Lotte next to her beneath the covers. The dolls had once belonged to Clara’s grandmother. They were very old and filled with straw. Each doll was dressed in the bright-colored apron and kerchief of a Russian peasant.
    Clara’s grandmother had told her that when she was a young girl, she had carried the dolls in her arms as her family made a night crossing. They had crossed over the Carpathian Mountains from their home in Russia to escape the Cossack armies that had burned Jewish houses and shops.
    Her grandmother’s family had to flee their Russian village because Jews were being beaten. In Russia this was called a pogrom.
    “We had to leave everything behindand run for our lives,” Grandma had said. “But Gittel and Lotte were very brave, and they wanted to go along. So my mother let me carry them over the mountains and all the way to Austria.”
    “On your night crossing,” added Clara.
    “Yes,
maydel
, on my night crossing to freedom,” Grandma replied as she put the two dolls in Clara’s arms.
    Now, as Clara drifted back to sleep in the dark, she hoped Papa would let her take Gittel and Lotte with her to wherever he planned to take the family to escape the Nazis.

2
    A few days later Clara’s father began collecting all the family’s valuables. He took a large pillowcase from Mama’s linen drawer and led the family through each room to look for things that could be sold. To Clara it seemed almost like a game.
    From the parlor he took the beautiful silver tea service he’d given Mama ontheir first wedding anniversary. From their bedroom Papa took his own pocket watch with its hand-engraved fob and all of Mama’s jewelry, even her wedding ring. Clara and Marta followed him, looking for things to put into the pillowcase.
    “Soon we’ll begin our night crossing to Switzerland,” Papa told them as he made his way to his daughters’ room. “There, Jewish people are still free from the Nazi police. We’re going to pretend that we have visited cousins here in Innsbruck and that we are Swiss citizens returning home,” he explained.
    Into the pillowcase went the Star of David on a gold chain that Marta had been given upon her graduation fromthe eighth grade. Marta frowned. She didn’t want to leave the few friends she still had, and she didn’t want to leave Innsbruck.
    “But some people say that the Nazis won’t stay for long, Papa,” Marta softly protested.
    “In Switzerland we can live a normal life while ‘some people’ wait to find out if the Nazis stay or not,” Papa murmured, moving toward the dining room.
    He picked up a small cut-glass dish and four brass napkin rings and dropped them into the pillowcase. But when he reached for the pair of old silver candlesticks, Mama stopped him.
    “No, Albert! Please—anything, everything but these!” she said.
    The candlesticks had been in Mama’sfamily for generations. They were nearly ten inches high, and candles were lighted in them before every Sabbath and on holidays. Clara and Marta had helped Mama polish them once a week for as long as they could remember.
    “But Helen, these are worth a fortune,” Papa gently argued. “And we’ll never be able to hide them so that they won’t be found.”
    Still Mama would not part with them. “That monster Hitler may take away everything else, but he won’t have my entire family history!” Mama said.
    So Papa left with the pillowcase of valuables under his worn coat to buy the arrangements for their escape to freedom. Some of the money would be given to the people who would risk their lives just by helping the family along the way.

    Watching Mama defend the candlesticks reminded Clara of the many Friday evenings they had spent together, gathered around the