They breathe as quietly as they can despite the exertion, listening intently for footsteps, shouts, the crack of a rifle. Nothing. Jakob waits a full minute and then nudges his nose around the corner. No one, it seems, has seen them.
‘Come,’ Jakob says, and they make their way, out of sight now, toward the fence. When they reach it, Jakob kneels and works quickly with the wire cutters, his forehead damp as he clips away methodically at the steel until he’s cut a hole large enough for them to fit through. ‘You first, love,’ he says, lifting the flap of fence. Bella crawls on her stomach through the opening; Jakob passes her the suitcase and then follows, bending the chain link back down behind them as best he can. ‘Stay low,’ he says.
They scramble to the meadow, where they drop to hands and knees and crawl, their bodies enveloped in stalks of overripe wheat that sway beside them as they edge away from the freshly lacerated fence, from the factory and the cattle cars filling up with the men and women who the night before had slept by their sides. On all fours, Bella is reminded for a moment of the morning she’d crawled across a meadow to reach Lvov at the start of the war. There was so much at stake, it had seemed, at the time – so many unknowns. But at least then, she’d had a sister. She’d had her parents.
After a few minutes she and Jakob pause, standing on their knees so they can peer through the tips of the grass toward the factory. They’ve travelled quite a distance – AVL appears small, like a beige brick on the horizon.
‘I think we’re safe here,’ Jakob says. He pats at the stalks around them, creating a lair of sorts so they can stretch out. The wheatgrass is tall; they can sit up with their heads still obscured. Bella, sticky with sweat, spreads her coat on the ground and climbs on top. Jakob glances again toward the factory. ‘We should wait until dark before we press on.’ Bella nods and Jakob scoots to sit beside her, reaching into his pocket for a half a boiled potato. ‘Saved this from last night,’ he says, unfolding his handkerchief.
Bella isn’t hungry. She shakes her head and pulls her shins to her chest, rests her cheek on a knee. Beside her, Jakob frowns, bites his lip. They haven’t spoken about what happened the night before at Glinice. What’s there to say? Bella has thought about trying to open up, to explain what it feels like to lose a mother, a father, a sister – her whole family – what it feels like to wonder how different things would be had she and Anna been in hiding together during the pogroms in Lvov, and had she convinced her parents to come to AVL. The factory, like the ghetto, will soon be liquidated, but if her parents had taken jobs at AVL, at least they could have tried to escape together. Bella can’t bring herself to talk about these things, though. Her grief is larger than words.
Around them the wheat whispers and sways in the breeze. Jakob wraps an arm around Bella’s shoulders. As she closes her eyes, tears gather in her lashes. They sit in silence, the minutes stretching into hours, with nothing to do but wait as the amber light of the afternoon fades to dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Halina
Countryside near Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ August 15, 1942
Her father hums as he drives, tapping his thumbs on the wooden steering wheel of the tiny black Fiat. Behind him, Halina and Nechuma sit close, their arms linked at the elbow. Thankfully, their old friends and neighbours the Sobczaks had come through for them again, and were willing to lend their car for the journey. Halina had considered travelling with her parents from Radom to Wilanów by train, but worried that they would have to cross too many checkpoints at the stations. The car, Halina hoped, would be the safer bet, even though it would mean scrounging for fuel, which was expensive and nearly impossible to come by. Halina had promised to refill the Fiat’s tank upon returning it to the Sobczaks, and had insisted that Liliana hold on to the silver bowl and ladle Nechuma had left with them before they were evicted, in exchange for the loan.
From the back seat, Halina watches as her father takes in the scenery – the cerulean sky, the verdant countryside, the sun’s brilliant reflection on the winding Vistula River. She had offered to drive, but Sol insisted. ‘No, no. Let me,’ he said, nodding as if it were his obligation, but in truth she knew he’d love nothing more than the chance to take the wheel. For fourteen months, he and Nechuma have lived in a world confined by brick walls and barbed wire, by blue-starred armbands, by the tedium and fatigue of forced labour. Halina smiles, knowing how good they must feel out here, on the open road. Together, they drink in the fleeting smell of freedom, sweet and ripe like the scent of the linden tree flowers washing over them through the open window.
Nechuma has just finished describing what it was like to live and work at the Pionki arms factory. ‘We felt so old there,’ she says. ‘The others were practically children. You should have heard the gossip – I’ve fallen in love … she isn’t even pretty … he hasn’t spoken to me in days – the jealousy, the drama; I had forgotten how exhausting it was to be that young. Although,’ she confides, lowering her voice and leaning into Halina, ‘sometimes it was quite entertaining.’
Halina can’t help but laugh, imagining her parents surrounded by frivolous chatter. She was happy to hear that at Pionki they were better off than they had been in the ghetto, and she would have been comfortable with them living out the war in the factory confines had Adam not warned her the week before that it was to be shut down. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t find out earlier,’ he said. ‘It could happen any day.’ Halina knew she had to get her parents out before they wound up in one of the dreadful camps the Jews were being sent to when their labour was no longer needed.
Receiving permission to extract her parents from Pionki, of course, was hopeless. Halina knew she would have to work outside the system. A week ago, armed with her Aryan papers and a pocketful of zloty, she visited the factory intent on bribing a guard at the entrance to let her parents leave discreetly at the end of their workday – she would claim they were old friends, wrongly accused of being Jews. But she arrived on a Friday, and her mother had been taken along with the rest of the female laborers to the public showers; Halina had to work that evening, and couldn’t afford to wait for her to return. This morning, sensing that she was short on time and that one hundred zloty might not suffice, she decided to bring along the last of her mother’s jewels – the amethyst. Nechuma had slipped the necklace to Isaac on the day of their transfer from the ghetto to Pionki, begged him to bring it safely and quickly to Halina. Isaac had written to Halina in Warsaw right away, claiming that he had a special purple delivery and that she should come for it as soon as possible.
Hitler had put the price of life on any German who accepted bribes from Jews, but as Halina learnt at Adam’s work camp, this didn’t stop many of the Nazis from accepting them. And sure enough, when she flashed Pionki’s entranceway guard the brilliant purple stone, his eyes lit up. He returned fifteen minutes later, with her parents in tow.
‘Left here,’ Halina directs at a wooden sign for Wilanów, a small farming village on the outskirts of Warsaw. As they veer off of the main thoroughfare, the paved road turns to dirt, and Sol glances in the rear-view mirror, smiling at the image of Halina and Nechuma beside one another, enjoying the closeness.
‘Tell us about you, about the others,’ Nechuma says.
Halina hesitates. Her parents haven’t yet heard about Glinice, about Bella’s family. She hasn’t had the heart to tell them. The past hour has been so pleasant, talking with her mother about trivial things, it’s felt almost normal. She’s reluctant to invite the sadness of the world back in just yet. So instead she tells her parents about Adam’s recent close call with the landlord’s wife, telling the story for the laughs and glossing over the fact that she’d been petrified at the time; she tells them about her job in Warsaw working as a cook for a German businessman; about how Mila had recently found work, also posing as Aryan, in the home of a wealthy German family.
‘And Felicia?’ Sol asks over his shoulder. ‘I’ve missed her so much.’
‘Mila
’s landlord was suspicious of Felicia from the start,’ Halina explains. ‘Took one look at her sad, dark eyes and knew she was Jewish. Mila has managed to pass with her papers, but for Felicia it is much more difficult. I’ve found a friend willing to keep her in hiding.’ Halina tries to keep her tone light, even though she knows how much Mila’s decision to leave her daughter in the care of someone else had tormented her.
‘She’s there alone, without Mila?’ Sol asks, and Halina can tell from the reflection of her father’s eyes in the rear-view mirror that he’s no longer smiling, that he’d intuited the parts she’d left unsaid.
‘Yes. It’s been hard on both of them.’
‘Sweet girl,’ Nechuma says softly. ‘Felicia must be so lonely.’
‘She is. She hates it. But it’s for the best.’
‘And Jakob?’ Nechuma asks. ‘Is he still at the AVL factory?’
Halina hesitates, looks down at her lap. ‘He’s still there, yes, as far as I know. I wrote to tell him you’d left Wałowa, and he asked if I could help get Bella’s parents out, too, from the Glinice ghetto, but …’ Halina swallows. It’s quiet in the car. ‘I tried,’ Halina whispers.
Nechuma shakes her head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s … they’ve … Glinice has been liquidated.’ Halina’s voice is barely audible above the hum of the engine. ‘Isaac says there are a few people still left, but the rest …’ She can’t say the words.
Nechuma brings a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. And Wałowa?’
‘Apparently Wałowa is next.’
Halina can hear her father’s breath grow heavy in the front seat. A tear rolls down her mother’s cheek. What joy they’d felt at being reunited at the start of the journey has evaporated. No one speaks for several minutes. Finally, Halina breaks the silence. ‘Slow down, Father – it’s this next one on the left.’ She points over his shoulder to a narrow drive. They follow it for two hundred metres until they reach a small, thatched-roofed farmhouse.
Nechuma dabs at her eyes, sniffs.
‘Is this it?’ Sol asks.
‘It is,’ Halina says.
‘What do they go by again?’ Nechuma asks. ‘The owners?’
‘Górski.’
Adam had found the Górskis through the Underground on a list of Poles with space to spare who would accept money in exchange for hiding Jews. Halina didn’t even know if Górski was their real name, just that they could take her parents; and with her steady work, she could afford to pay them.
Halina is familiar with the home – she’d visited once, to introduce herself and to inspect the living conditions. The wife had been out, but Halina and Pan Górski, who hadn’t yet offered up his given name, had gotten along well. He was middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair, a bird-like build, and kind eyes. ‘And you’re sure your wife is all right with this arrangement?’ Halina had pressed before she left. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘She’s nervous of course, it’s only normal to be, but she’s on board.’
Sol slows the Fiat to a crawl as they near the house. There isn’t another home in sight.
‘You picked well,’ Nechuma says, nodding.
Halina glances at her mother, allowing herself for a moment a childlike pride in Nechuma’s approval. She follows her gaze, taking in the small cottage with its squat, square frame, cedar-planked siding, and white shutters. She’d chosen the Górskis partly because they seemed genuinely trustworthy, and because they lived an hour from Warsaw, in the country; without any neighbours nearby, Halina hoped there would be less risk of someone reporting them.
‘It’s nothing fancy, but it’s private,’ Halina says. ‘Don’t let yourselves get too comfortable, though. Pan Górski says the Blue Police have come knocking twice already, looking for hideaways.’ A captured Jew, they’ve heard, can be worth as much as a bag of sugar, or a dozen eggs. The Poles take the hunt seriously. The Germans, too. They’ve come up with a name for it: Judenjagd. Jew hunt. Jews caught can be delivered dead or alive, it makes no difference. The Germans have also imposed the death penalty against any Poles found with a Jew in hiding.
‘The Górskis have promised to tell no one, of course, not even their family and closest friends. But keep your false IDs on you at all times,’ Halina continues. ‘Just in case. We can’t expect them not to have visitors.’
Nechuma squeezes Halina’s elbow. ‘Don’t worry about us, dear. We will be fine.’
Halina nods, although she doesn’t know how not to worry about her parents any more. It’s become second nature, tending to them. It’s all she thinks about.
Sol flips the key to the ignition; the engine burps and quiet comes over the car as he and Nechuma peer through the bug-splattered windshield at their new home. A blue-slate walkway leads to the front door, where a brass stirrup-shaped knocker glints in the sunlight.
‘This works,’ Sol says. He glances at Halina in the mirror. His eyes are red.
‘Hope so,’ Halina breathes. ‘We should head inside.’
Sol pulls the driver’s seat forward so Nechuma and Halina can wriggle their way out, and then opens the Fiat’s trunk to gather what is left of their belongings – a small canvas satchel carrying a change of clothes each, some photographs, his Haggadah, Nechuma’s handbag.
‘This way,’ Halina says, and her parents follow her around the house to the back, where half a dozen greying shirts hang from a length of twine strung between two maples and where there is a small vegetable garden planted with peas, cabbage, and tomatoes.
Halina knocks twice at the back door. After a minute, Pan Górski’s face appears in the window, and a second later, the door opens. ‘Come,’ he says, motioning for them to enter. They step quietly into the shadows of a den and Sol pulls the door closed behind them. The room is just how Halina remembers it – small, with low ceilings, a paisley armchair, a weathered sofa, a set of bookshelves on the far wall.
‘You must be Pani Górski,’ Halina says, smiling at the slender woman standing beside her husband. ‘I am Halina. This is my mother, Nechuma, and my father, Sol.’ The woman nods quickly, her hands wrung together in a ball at her waist.
Halina looks from the Górskis to her parents. Despite their time in captivity, Sol and Nechuma have figures that are still ample, soft around the edges. They make the Górskis, with their narrow waists and protruding shoulder bones, look like skeletons.
Sol sets their satchel down and steps forward to offer his hand. ‘Thank you for this, Pani Górski,’ he says. ‘You are very generous and brave to take us in. We will do everything we can not to bother you while we are here.’ Pani Górski eyes Sol for a moment before lifting a hand, which Sol envelops in his. Be gentle, Halina prays, or you’ll break her bones.
‘Madame,’ Nechuma offers, also extending a hand, ‘do let us know what we can do to help around the house.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ Pan Górski says, glancing at his wife. ‘And please – call us by our given names, Albert and Marta.’ Marta nods in agreement, but her jaw is tight. Something about the woman’s demeanor doesn’t sit well with Halina. She wonders what conversations the Górskis have had before their arrival.
‘I should be getting back soon,’ Halina says. She points to the bookshelf. ‘Could you explain to my parents how this works before I go?’
‘Of course,’ Albert says. Sol and Nechuma watch as Albert wraps his torso around the small case and slides it gently along the cedar-planked wall.
‘It’s on wheels,’ Sol notes. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Yes, you can’t see them, but they make moving it easier – and quieter.’ Albert brings a hand to the wall. ‘The wall has eight planks from floor to ceiling. If you count up to the third, and press just here, by these two nails,’ he says, running his fingers over a couple of iron nailheads flush to the wood, ‘you will hear a clicking sound.’ Sol squints at the wall as Albert presses firmly against it. Sure enough, the wall clicks, and a small square door swings open. ‘I’ve aligned the hinge with the seam of the
planks, so unless you know it’s here, the door is invisible.’
‘Meticulous work,’ Sol whispers, genuinely impressed, and Albert smiles, pleased.
‘There are three stairs that lead to the crawl space. You won’t be able to stand,’ Albert says as Sol and Nechuma crane their necks, peering into the black square behind the wall, ‘but we’ve laid down some blankets and left you a flashlight. It’s dark as night down there.’ Sol swings the small door open and closed a few times. ‘This here,’ Albert says, pointing to a metal latch, ‘will let you lock it from the inside.’ He pushes the door closed until it clicks again, and then rolls the bookcase back into place. ‘Now, come,’ Albert says, waving over his shoulder, ‘let me show you to your room.’ Marta steps aside and brings up the rear as her husband leads the Kurcs down a short hallway to a bedroom just off the den.
‘When it’s safe,’ Albert says, ‘you can sleep here.’ Sol and Nechuma take in the room, with its white stucco walls and two single beds. A rusted mirror hangs over a simple oak dresser. ‘We’ll let you know when we’re expecting visitors. Marta’s sister Róża, she comes by twice a week. Should someone arrive unannounced, we’ll delay them at the door to give you time to slip into the crawl space. You’ll need to bring all of your things, of course, so perhaps it’s best not to unpack.’
‘You have a son?’ Sol asks, eyeing a pair of boxing gloves in the corner.
Marta flinches.
‘Yes. Zachariasz,’ Albert says. ‘He’s joined the Home Army.’
‘We haven’t heard from him in several months, though,’ Marta adds quietly, looking at the floor. They make their way back to the den in silence.
Nechuma lays her hand on Marta’s shoulder. ‘We have three sons,’ she says.
Marta looks up. ‘You do? Where – where are they?’
‘One,’ Nechuma explains, ‘last we heard, works at a factory outside Radom. But the other two we haven’t heard from since, well, the start of the war, really. One was taken by the Russians, and our middle son was in France when the war broke out. Now, we don’t know …’
We Were the Lucky Ones Page 26
