When they came….
When they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
When they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.
When they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
"Kitty, can we talk?" Rogue asked her roommate. Kitty looked up from the book she was reading and nodded.
"Sure, Rogue. What do you want to talk about?" Kitty asked her. While they got along, they were two very different people.
Rogue sat down and faced Kitty, unsure about how to begin. She had so many thoughts floating around that she needed to talk to someone her own age, someone who had a connection to this. While the professor was alive during the time, he wasn't her age and he was safe in this house. None of the other teachers, with the single possibility of Logan, were even alive then. As for Logan, he wasn't around right now. Taking a deep breath to clear her head she started. "Did you have family in the Holocaust?" Rogue asked.
Kitty took a minute, looking at her friend, then nodded. "Yes I did, the Pryde's did. I heard stories from my grandparents before they died. My father's mother's family had been in the U.S. since the turn of the century so they had distant relatives who died. It was a lot closer for my mom's family. My grandfather was in Triblanka with his family. He was the only one to make it out. My mom's mother escaped Poland thanks to friends of hers, but she only managed to get her little sister out with her. We don't know about my father's father. He wouldn't talk about it. We did manage to track down a service record that showed that he had served in the U.S. Army. I think he found people he knew among the walking skeletons. That is why we think he won't talk about it." She took a breath, a little shocked that she had said so much.
"I have all of these memories floating around about Birkenau because of Erik, but it's been over a year and some of them still persist. I have a hard time believing he managed to survive, let alone so many others. I wonder if it will happen to us." Rogue responded, sharing things she had only shared with Scott, the Professor and Erik himself.
"I think, I hope, that if it does, people will stand up to it." Kitty told her, "The Jewish people made a promise to themselves and to their children to never let it happen again to ANYONE. Including mutants. And there will be other people to help us out too. There always are." Kitty explained.
"Who helped out the Jews?" Rogue asked she knew some had in small amounts, but didn't see any large scale ones.
"For starters, the Danes helped out the most, only losing about 100 of their Jews to the Holocaust, so them and Sweden which took the Jews. Gentiles, like the Professor, helped out. Even the Polish, like the ones who helped my grandma, and German people too." Kitty told her to help relieve some of the anxiety Rogue was clearly feeling.
Then Kitty got an idea. "How would you like to meet some people who escaped because of people helping them?"
Rogue nodded. "I would like that…."
Kitty grinned. "Hold on a moment." She then rushed outside and picked up the phone. After spending a couple of minutes on the phone, she went to the professor's office and knocked.
"Come in!" the voice said. Kitty walked in to the oak paneled room and towards the cluttered desk.
"Professor, Rogue seems to still be having problems adjusting to some of Erik's memories of the holocaust and is worried that if it happens with mutants, no one will help out. So I have this idea." As she talked, the professor nodded.
"I don't think that would be a problem…perhaps she'd even be encouraged to talk about her own tale. It has been a hard year for her, and I've been hoping she'd recover on her own, but yes…yes I think this will help. Go ahead." And with this permission, Kitty thanked him and ran back to her room.
Rogue had been sitting there, letting the different thoughts go though her head. It was mostly the thoughts that had occupied her head for the last year, replaying the words that Erik had said, the words he had said to her on the boat before he tried to kill her. She hadn't read much into the words then, but now phrases like "She was supposed to be the land of freedom" resonated with her.
When Kitty barged in, it broke Rogue from her thoughts. "Come on!" Kitty then grabbed her hand and started to pull up Rogue, like a child with an unresponsive mother. She didn't resist and was soon on her feet and moving. The door to the garage was closed but, with her gloved hand on Kitty, it didn't make a difference. They passed right though the door with just a little tingling sensation. They did it again to get into the car.
"Where are we going?" Rogue asked, a little nervous.
"You'll see. Don't worry, I got the Professor's approval." Kitty replied heading towards New York.
The car ride wasn't silent, but Kitty wouldn't tell where she was taking Rogue, and Rogue didn't want to get back on the holocaust subject, so mostly they talked about school and which people were the cutest and who was stuck up and other things that two normal teenage girls might talk about.
After a while they pulled up to a nice looking building in Manhattan, the street lamp signs said "JCC—Celebrating 75 years of serving you."
"What's a JCC?" Rogue asked hesitantly.
"It's a Jewish Community Center. This one happens to be in a synagogue as well. There are some people in there I would like you to meet." Kitty responded, walking though the doors.
It opened in to a lobby with some chairs. There was a second floor and two walkways. Kitty took the one slightly to the left of where they were. Rogue looked around and noticed pictures on the walls and a garden outside. There also appeared to be a basement level. As they walked down the hall, they came to a large room with two sets of doors. One set was ornately carved with wood; the other was a pair normal looking doors. Sounds of laughter could be heard coming from inside the second pair, which Kitty lead Rogue to. Rogue could only wonder what kind of madness Kitty was going to inflict on her. Walking in through the doors, she saw about fifteen elderly men and women sitting around tables, some with cards, two playing chess and another with Mahjongg tiles and a few of whom from which the source of laughter was coming from. Then, one of the women saw them.
"Kitty!" The women shouted and hobbled over to them. "And look, you brought a friend too." The women had a thick eastern European accent. "Who is this one?"
"This is Rogue. We are doing a project for school and she want to ask you a couple of questions…if that is alright?" Kitty told her.
"Of course it is! Rogue, what a strange name people are naming there kids these days. Why just the other day I was flipping though channels and saw a show where the name was Buffy! Why, in my day, that never would have been an appropriate name, especially not for a girl. Bah. Welcome Rogue, I'm Gertie." Gertie addressed Rogue. "Now then, what is this project?"
"Umm…I….I'm doing a report on the survivors of the Holocaust." Rogue wasn't used to being put on the spot like that, and her accent came out thicker, but she did manage to figure out where Kitty was going with it. A hush passed though the room and Rogue began to feel eyes on her and started to blush.
"Good for you! It is nice to see children your age taking an interest in history. Now then, let's sit. I am an old woman you know." Gertie said, leading Rogue to a free table. The games started up again and Kitty went to talk to one of the men.
"Now then, how do you know Kitty?" It was clear that she wasn't avoiding the subject, but wanted to get to know Rogue a little better.
"We go to school together." Rogue replied.
"At that nice private school Kitty goes to. How nice. Now where are you from?"
"Mississippi."
"How nice. Now then, what did you wish to know?"
"How did you escape?"
"I lived in a small town in Poland. I was in the Warsaw Ghetto when the riots erupted and managed to escape via the contacts the uprisers had on the other side of the wall. They hid me for months until Warsaw was liberated from Germany. Is that all?" She asked.
Rogue nodded, a little surprised that she could talk so freely about it. Then, she noticed Kitty smiling with a man standing just to the right of where Gertie was sitting. "Rogue, this is Dan." Kitty told her. Gertie smiled and stood up.
Dan sat and smiled. "Hello, it is nice to meet you." He said with a German accent.
"Hello. I was wondering, how did you escape?" She asked, noting that he seemed a little younger then Gertie.
"I was very young. My mother knew some Gentiles who offered to take my older sister and me when things started to look bad. They didn't let us forget who we were and made it a habit of telling us 'Jewish' stories. Unlike some of the people who you hear about in the news who never knew that they were Jewish. Unfortunately, neither of my parents made it out."
These stories continued. "My name is Greta. I'm from Denmark and escaped on the fisherman boats." "My name is Michael, I'm from Russia and had friends who hid me." Until to her question "How did you escape?" She got the response "I didn't. I was liberated."
"Liberated from where?" She asked.
"From Bergan-Belson," was the reply. It was an older man. He had given his name as Aaron from Macedonia. He proceeded to tell his story to her. At the end, she thanked him.
"Ready to go?" Kitty asked her. Rogue nodded, she wasn't sure what she was expecting but it wasn't this. As they were walking out, Gertie came up to the girls.
"Kitty, I expect that we'll see you again in a couple of days for Yom Ha'Shoah. Perhaps Rogue would like to come along as well?" Gertie asked.
"What is Yom Ha'Shora?" Rogue asked.
"It's Holocaust Remembrance Day. We remember all of those who died, as well as those who lived." Kitty explained.
"I would love to come, Gertie." Rogue told the older woman. As she and Kitty left, Rogue looked back at the people there. "All of them are survivors," she commented, "at least one of them has seen hell and come back from it. Thank you, Kitty. I would like to come to Yom Ha'Shora and with you the next time you come back, if that's all right."
Kitty nodded. "I come here pretty often. There is a JCC in Salem Center, but I find it filled up with mostly stuck up kids who think that they are privileged to have a place to themselves and go to private schools and everything. The kids that come to this one have a connection to their past. In Deerfield, we had a few holocaust survivors, but they weren't as involved as these people are. It was a shame, the kids would do their thing and the adults would do theirs. Here the adults help out with the kids, especially the younger ones and the older kids go and help out the older adults. It's a Mitzvah…um…a good thing to do." At that Kitty looked kind of confused. "I've never been able to translate it well…"
"It's okay, I get what you mean." Rogue responded. On the way back home, Rogue kept talking about all she had learned. Kitty responded, adding in her comments as well. When they got back to Xavier's, he called Rogue up to his office.
"How did it go today, Rogue?" The Professor asked her.
"Great Professor. I didn't realize that so many people risked their lives to help others."
He nodded, and then reached for two books on his desk. "Kitty had mentioned that you were worried about people helping us mutants. I have two books that I would like you to read. I thought about the different ones I could give you, mostly about survivors' stories, but in some ways you are a survivor yourself, even if you weren't actually there. These I think are the two best books on people helping out their bosses, neighbors, friends and strangers. I have more if you are interested, but lets just start with these. When you are done with them, we shall have a discussion about them. I won't make you write a book report, or anything else, but we should talk about them."
Rogue nodded and he passed her the two books. The first one had a picture of a girl about her age on it with the title "The Diary of Anne Frank" underneath it. The book was a bit on the thick side and looked a little daunting. The other one was much thinner with another picture of a girl and a necklace similar to the one Kitty had that ended in a six-pointed star. The title of that book, printed on the front, was titled "Number the Stars". It was fiction and underneath it had an author name. Seeing how puzzled Rogue looked by the choices, the professor elaborated.
"'The Diary of Anne Frank' is a must read. In fact, had you come a year earlier, you would have read this in English class. I make sure no one passes though these doors without reading this book." Rogue nodded, she had seen this in the library and younger students always reading it. Now she knew why. She was still very puzzled by the other choice though.
"'Number the Stars' is a piece of fiction is based off of true events. The main characters, their families, most of the names mentioned are made up. The events that surround them are not. Events that most people are not aware of, it is another book that is often assigned in English class to students old enough to understand. I think you shall enjoy them. Just remember, if you want to talk, about anything, feel free to knock." Rogue again nodded and headed off. She went outside to the garden and began to read.
She read at every possible moment. She still had to attend class, and the Professor had decided that, while not making her write a book report, she would have to write a report to him on what she had learned. He called it independent study.
It took her a little over a week to finish "Anne Frank", and she cried at the end. "Number the Stars" took her about two days and she was hopeful after reading it.
She had all but forgotten about Yom Ha'Shoah until a week later, when Kitty showed up to her door all dressed up in a black dress, black dress shoes and her Star of David necklace.
"What the occasion? Somebody die?" Jubilee, another roommate, asked Kitty. Jubilee was lying on her bed looking over the newest Seventeen and cracking her gum as loud as she could.
Kitty glared at Jubilee, "Yes, about 11 million people." She replied, which got Jubilee to stare at Kitty with her jaw hanging open in speechlessness.
"Are you ready to go?" Kitty asked Rogue.
"Um…give me a minute. I have to confess. I kind of forgot." Rogue apologized, getting off of her bed and getting a dark dress on.
"Don't worry about it, I forget sometimes too. It's not a big deal in Deerfield so most years I don't go. However, since I've come here, I've attended a lot more." She told Rogue, as Rogue got dressed.
Jubilee just sat there, trying to figure out what they were talking about. When Rogue was dressed, they took off.
It was a longer ride this time because they hit traffic. Still they got there with a little time to spare. This time they went in the same door and down the same hall, only when they got to the two sets of doors, they went in the wooden ones, which were open this time. There were people lined up outside the doors, some talking but most moving though. Kitty walked up to the doors and though them, Rogue followed her. They walked into a room with rows of chairs, a stage, a podium, and something on the wall. Finding a seat near the back, Kitty pointed to the thing on the wall. "That's the ark, the Torah is kept there."
That's when a man walked up to the podium. "That's the Rabbi," Kitty informed Rogue. She took a good look at the Rabbi and realized that, unlike a priest, his clothes didn't look any different from any of the other people in the audience, complete with a thing on his head.
"Kitty, what's that one all of the males head?" Rogue whispered.
"It's a yamaka." She whispered back. Then the choir started:
Eli, EliShelo yigamer leolam
Hakhol ve-hayam
Rishrush shel hamaym
Berak hashamayim
Tfilat Ha-adam
Hakhol ve-hayam
Rishrush shel hamaym
Berak hashamayim
Tfilat Ha-adam
Oh Lord, my God
I pray that these things never end
The sand, and the sea
The rush of the water
The crash of the heavens
The prey of the heart
The sand, and the sea
The rush of the water
The crash of the heavens
The prey of the heart
The song and the overall somber mood here enraptured Rogue. The Rabbi began to speak and then him and other members of the congregation stood up and begin to read names and stories of survivors and victims. Near the end, the Rabbi again addressed the congregation.
"Does anyone else have a story to tell?" He asked.
Rogue took a breath and stood up. "I do!" This surprised herself and Kitty but stood up and walked to the podium. "This is the story of Erik Lensheer and his friend Moshe. Erik was a teenager when he went to Berkuanu; he was ripped from his mother's arm. He met Moshe there, and together they worked on surviving. Unfortunately, Moshe did not survive. Erik did, but has since grown to be a bitter man." She went on to describe things that happened. Still, she kept it short.
At the end, she took a breath and noticed Gertie crying a little. Walking back to her seat the Rabbi asked again and when no one stood up, he dismissed the congregation with another song.
Gertie came up to Rogue, as she and Kitty were getting ready to leave. "That was a very sad story, but you talked as if you knew it."
"I have listened to his story many times. Thank you again for sharing yours." Rogue replied.
"I could say the same of you." A man's voice startled Rogue and she turned around. Behind her was the Rabbi. He wasn't very old, only in his mid-40's from the looks of things. He had a ring of dark hair and a beer belly. "I'm Rabbi Richman. I understand you are Kitty's friend?"
Rogue nodded. "Thank you for letting me come and talk."
"No problem, we are open to everyone, no matter what religion. You told a very interesting story and spoke with a lot of passion. If you ever need to talk, feel free to come in." He told her.
"Thank you," she replied and shook his hand.
"Its what we are here for," he explained, shaking back.
Kitty then excused them and got Rogue back in the car. "He is a nice, understanding man. He helped me when my parents went though the divorce and I was here. You should take him up on his offer."
"I might, but what did you tell him?" She asked.
"Nothing, he knows I'm a mutant and probably extrapolated. I told him I was a mutant months ago because the Mutant Registration Act was in the senate hearings and I wanted to see his reaction. He didn't have a bad one, and he has become someone out of the mansion who I can talk to." Kitty explained, driving back to the mansion.
A couple of nights later, Rogue was having problems going to sleep, she kept seeing skeletons, the smoke from towers and remember being torn away from people she cared about, every time she closed her eyes. Noting that it was only about 11pm, she went to the hall phone and dialed the number Kitty gave her.
"Hello, Rabbi Richman?" She asked into the phone. "It's Rogue…I'm fine, but I'm having trouble sleeping…I'm a mutant, and I absorbed memories from people." There was a pause, then noise on the other end. Clearly whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't that.
"Last year I absorbed the memories of that man, Erik and I've been worried…" The conversation went on for another hour. By the time it was over, she was feeling much better. She understood that if it was to happen for mutants, people would be there fighting for mutants and helping them out. It also made her feel better that people wouldn't just stand ideal by this time, as long as people remembered what happened before.
The End
Notes and Acknowledgments: Minisinoo's "Letters and Papers from prison" inspired this story.
Yom Ha'Shora really does exist, and it really is for remembering the survivors and the victims of the holocaust. Depending on where you go it consists of prayers, name readings, stories, and songs. I have been to four Yom Ha'Shora services, singing in three of them. The service I used in this is an amalgamation of the four I was at and stories I have heard of some different ones. Yom Ha'Shora falls after Passover usually in early to mid April.
The Song I chose was Eli, Eli a song I sung at Yom Ha'Shora services in the children's choir. It was written by a woman while in a Nazi Prison; right before she was suppose to be executed. Music was written to it much more recently.
So some of you might be wondering why I chose those books: This story wasn't about the holocaust in general. If you want that go read "Letters and Papers…" This story was about people who survived because other people risked their lives to help other people. There is NOT a story better then "The Diary of Anne Frank" and I honestly believe that everyone should read this story. "Number the Stars," tells a fictional story of two Danish families, and the true story of the Danish people and especially the Danish Jews. It isn't a story that is very well known, and that is a shame.
So why use this particular poem? I don't know. That is the one that best fit the story.
The Rabbi is based off of my uncle, and the stories are from sources I have read. The Warsaw ghetto uprising really did happen. The people Rogue meets are based off of older people who I know.
The JCC is a real organization. I made up the celebration 75 years, but the building is based off of the synagogue I attended as a child.
Recommendations: "Night" by Elie Wisel, "Maus" by Art Spigelman, "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer" by Irene Gut Opdyke, and of course "The Diary of Anne Frank" by Anne Frank, (but try to find a more recent copy, most of the older ones were missing pages that her father kept out about her thoughts relating to her mother) and "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowery.
Finally I leave you with these words:
To forget the past is to repeat it, never forget.
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