A Kosher Deli in Nazi Germany

Noa Covo

 

I spent more time than I should have wandering the virtual streets of Nazi Germany. It wasn’t really Nazi Germany. It had been designed a bit differently, so that the moderators couldn’t take it down. The swastikas were all a bit lopsided, and the giant posters of Hitler looked more like Charlie Chaplin, but it was still a virtual country seething with rage. I left a scan of my Dad’s kosher deli in its streets.

Four years ago, my sister had scanned his life’s work. It took thirty seven seconds. When the blueprint of his store, including the list of kosher meats in the freezer, was done, he put his hands on his hips and studied the screen of my sister’s computer.

“There.” He grunted. “We did it your way. Happy?”

“No.” My sister said. She took the computer from my father and sent us both the scan. “It’s not for me, Dad. It’s for the tax returns. I think it’s an invasion of privacy.”

“So why did you do it?” Dad grumbled.

“Do you want to go to jail?” My sister asked. She snapped the computer shut and put it in her backpack. “I’ve got to get to a lecture. It was nice seeing you.”

I watched her hurry out the door with the same sense of purpose she’d had since she was five years old.

Two years later, on a cold Hanukkah night, we got the call. My sister and I were on our way home. I picked up the phone because she was driving. It was a shooter, Mom explained, at Dad’s store. By the time we got there they’d taken Dad away in a body bag, along with Mrs. Frishman, who used to babysit us, and Shmuel, who had escaped the Nazi death machine when he was ten, but hadn’t survived getting a chicken sandwich. It was a Neo-Nazi. The police caught him as he was escaping. He was a year younger than me.

Two weeks after a tear-filled night in which I took a copy of all that remained of my father and placed it in what was Nazi Berlin in all but name, my sister came by to visit. I brought her with me into the virtual reality.

“Is it safe?” she asked sensibly as we walked by a warped swastika flag.

“We’re technically in my living room.” I reminded her.

It didn’t make the hate seem any less real, and we both sighed in relief when we reached Dad’s deli, hidden between shops with angry German writing. The scan of the room had a menorah that Dad kept on the shelf next to the counter. I brought candles and matches. That Hanukkah, my sister and I lit candles in Dad’s deli as a Photoshopped Hitler watched over us.

 

Noa Covo is a teenage writer whose work has appeared in Reckoning and will appear in an Eerie River anthology. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.