A LETTER FROM LISBON.

• Author: Rotenberg, Joseph
• Position: LITERARY SCENE - Lisbon, Portugal - Essay

MY FATHER Maurice was a 26-year-old private assigned to a Belgian infantry unit in Northern France in May 1940 when war swarmed across Western Europe like a plague of locusts, covering the victim nations over a period of hours, days, and weeks.

As one would expect, those individuals more firmly established in their pre-war lives often were least likely to possess the mobility to drop everything and run--the natural response to life-threatening action by an enemy bent on conquest. The elderly, the very young, and young families were in the majority, tragically unable or unwilling to flee.

With only the most basic training, Maurice was tasked with defending his country against elite German troops. Two weeks into the conflict, he awoke to be informed by his commanding officer that the Belgian government had capitulated to the Germans and that all Belgian combatants were free to go wherever they wished. It was 6 a.m. on May 24 and Maurice was stationed in the town of Abbeville, not far from the English Channel coast.

It was rumored that elements of the VII Panzer Corps were in the vicinity, so Maurice and some of his compatriots headed south on foot. It turned out to be a fateful decision to travel in that direction, as Panzer units in fact arrived in Abbeville at 6 p.m. that evening. At this point, in a mysterious move still unclear today, the Germans stopped their advance. This step allowed some 300,000 Allied troops to escape from the French port of Dunkirk by ship while the Germans dawdled.

Maurice did not dawdle. After barely escaping the Germans, he mapped out a plan to outrun the enemy (who were not, in fact, pursuing him) and headed in a southwesterly direction toward the Atlantic ports of Bordeaux and Bayonne-Biaritz. On foot, the trip of 300 miles would take him more than a month, what with the narrow roads crowded with thousands of refugees heading south with him. While not advancing on the ground, the Germans harried the civilians with unending dive-bomber attacks; the Stukas controlled the skies over France and they terrorized the many exposed on these roads.

In light of these conditions, Maurice decided he would buy a bicycle to speed his journey south. After a day of searching for a suitable vehicle, he lucked out when a farmer offered to part with an extra bike he wished to convert into cash. Maurice mounted his new transport and set out the next morning in the direction of Tours.

At this point, it is important to realize that, in these early, chaotic days of the war, the Germans, though successful from a battlefield perspective, hardly could be said to "control" the lands they had conquered. They might have commanded important crossroads and accepted the surrender of combatant armies, but much of the infrastructure they had attempted to destroy remained in place at least for several months before the occupation began in earnest. Thus, Maurice, while in the French countryside, was able to communicate with his family in Antwerp as he made his way south.

In no uncertain terms, his mother instructed him not to return to Belgium. She sensed the danger even though she was unaware of the full scope of the destruction that ultimately awaited her. She knew Maurice's older brother Jos had arrived safely with his young wife in America in 1939 and that her older son Jack had left Antwerp as well, and she hoped he, too, ultimately would escape to the U.S. Maurice heeded his mother's words and continued to advance towards the Atlantic Coast of France.

After two weeks of hard pedaling, he arrived at the bustling port of Bayonne. His first need was to find some lodging and some kosher food. The Jewish population of Bayonne totaled a mere 300 souls, but that number hugely had been augmented by hundreds of French and Belgian Jewish refugees.

Maurice was able to join a network of fellow escapees from Antwerp, whom he found at the local synagogue. Several of the new arrivals had heard there was work available at the docks, since most of the young French workers had gone to the front to defend France. He headed down to the busy wharves and soon found work toting 88-pound sacks from cargo ships into adjacent warehouses.

After two days of this backbreaking work, Maurice convinced the foreman that he had "office" experience and was assigned the job of counting the sacks that...