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81 Who Am I This Time? Marguerite Lederman Mishkin As our train pulls out of the Antwerp station, children sitting all around me are crying—it seems as if everyone is sobbing out the windows of the train except my sister Annette and me. As I clutch my doll, I look out the windows and see the faces of grown-ups, crying too, and waving at the children next to us. Why is everyone crying? I don’t understand. Finally, the day has come: October 15, 1949. I am eight years old and my sister Annette is nine. Our whole Mrs. Waintraub’s orphanage, at General Drubbeistraat 66 in Borgerhout, Antwerp, the place where we have lived for three and a half years, all the children and our caretakers, are starting our journey to Israel. This is an important day, and the orphanage matrons have been talking about and waiting for it a long time. Jewish people everywhere have been waiting for this to happen for thousands of years. The matrons say that Aliyah means that we are returning. I don’t understand the word “return.” To me it means going back to Mommy. But that isn’t what the matrons mean. They say it means we are going back home to Israel. But Annette and I have never been there. I want someone to tell me what language those words—“Zionist and Youth Aliyah”—are. They don’t sound like French words. I wish someone would tell me what those words mean. I don’t know much French, and they don’t sound like any Flemish words Mommy used. Anyway, the matron says that they have been preparing us for this day. I don’t remember. To me all these places where Annette and I are taken are the same now. To me, it doesn’t really matter anymore what the next place is. Annette and I have slept in many beds next to so many other little girls and have been told to sit at so many tables and eat whatever was just put before us. We have had so many things done to us that no one has explained before it happened that I know only one thing about this new place, whatever they call it. I know there will be no mommy and daddy there for us. Again. We come from a place called Rumst. We lived there with a mommy and daddy we don’t have anymore. Our mommy there used to take us to church to see the pretty stained glass windows and the statues of Jesus and Mary. We attended a Catholic nursery school. But we live in an orphanage now, and the matrons there say our mommy was not our real mommy. They are happy that we are finally going to Israel. Why am I not happy? Maybe it’s because I’m not Jewish, even though they tell me I am. Maybe I will be Jewish in Israel. They say Israel is a wonderful place. It is always warm there, and oranges grow on the trees. It never gets cold or snowy, and there are sunny beaches and an ocean to play in. There my skin will turn darker, and I will grow up strong, running around in the sunshine. Of course the grown-ups say other things about Israel too, things that are harder for me to understand. They say that in Israel everyone is a Jew. Everyone. There we 82 Out of Chaos will be safe, and no one can ever again do to us the terrible things that happened to Jews all over Europe up till now, and especially during the last few years. My question is, what is a Jew? I have been told that Annette and I are Jews, and that’s why we are here in this orphanage instead of in a house with a mommy and daddy. I know some children live that way, and I remember that once upon a time we lived that way too. I wonder if that is why some of the children on this train are crying. Are they leaving mommies and daddies? Where are our mommy and daddy? Will we ever have a mommy and daddy again? How does that work? I remember the woman we used to call Mommy, the woman our neighbors used to call Clementine or Mrs. Frans-van Buggenhout. She was the mommy the orphanage matrons have told us is not our real mother...

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