Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  Into this beehive came the word that Rabbi Lubetkin was coming to inspect the work of his congregation, coming to bless the work that had been done and that which was being done.

  Groups of bearded Hasidim came first, as if to prepare the way. Their black caftans flapped like the glossy wings of crows in the sunlight as they moved steadily toward the soup kitchen to form a welcoming committee.

  ***

  Wolf’s view of Muranow Square from the window of Kowalski’s apartment reminded him of a swarm of insects. Since dawn the square had been attracting Jews by the hundreds. More continued to come, and none ever seemed to leave until the area was filled with milling bodies.

  They seemed to be doing nothing more than talking. The Jews created knots of conversation that unraveled and formed anew as different speakers approached and earlier members broke away to join other groups.

  What was all the discussion about? Wolf raised his field glasses and tried to discover the topic by examining newspaper headlines over the shoulder of black-coated gesticulating speakers.

  At last one front page remained still long enough for him to make it out. In Yiddish phrases the paper announced an obituary for Poland: GERMANY AND RUSSIA SIGN NONAGGRESSION PACT.

  Wolf was exhilarated by the announcement of the event. The three hundred Russian divisions would be kept on the sidelines! It was still important that the Nazis not fire the first shot, but a Polish response to provocation would undoubtedly happen soon, and then the attack on Poland would begin.

  But it also meant that Wolf would have to hurry. He would have to locate Lucy and return her to Germany quickly. He again raised the field glasses to his eyes.

  On the far side of the square, directly in front of the Community Center building, a double line of marchers appeared. The twin ranks, providing the only orderliness in the whole chaotic scene, instantly attracted Wolf’s attention. One glance and Wolf snorted in derision. These were not soldiers at all, but the ragged boys who played at being soldiers.

  As Wolf watched, the rows of broomstick warriors marched and countermarched as if oblivious to the surging crowd that surrounded them. When they halted, they were facing Wolf. He noted the scarecrow-thin figure, his too-short trousers flapping against his bony shanks, walking up and down the ranks with his back toward the Kolwaski building.

  Wolf snorted again at the ludicrous figure of the boy playing officer, then his snort turned into a strangled cough. The officer-boy had turned to salute a sandy-haired man who had stepped out from the crowd.

  The features of the man seemed to leap through the field glasses directly into Wolf’s apartment. It was the Britisher who had interfered on the dock in Danzig! Wolf swung his gaze back to the thin, pinched face of the boy. Peter Wallich! Lucy must be close at hand!

  ***

  As the word of Rabbi Lubetkin’s imminent arrival leaped from the parapets and ricocheted from the buildings of Muranow Square, Peter Wallich laid aside his shovels and called his troop together in front of the community building.

  Lucy left her work in the kitchen and joined the throngs outside in the square who gathered to welcome back their beloved rabbi from his long convalescence.

  From her place beside Alfie, she could see Orde talking seriously with Peter. The boy had dust in his hair, giving it the appearance of tarnished copper.

  Everyone had heard the unveiled threats that the German Führer had hurled at the Jewish population of Poland last night, and then this morning came the terrible news about Russia. Without equivocation, Hitler promised to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. The Jews of Poland, he claimed, wanted to plunge Germany into war, and he would retaliate if they continued their agitation against the Reich!

  Lucy had transcribed the speech for Orde. He had rewritten his daily story and focused on the pillowcases and bags that formed the pitiful bulwarks of the Warsaw Jewish community. He had compared them to the concrete bunkers in Germany that had been under construction for years.

  Lucy watched Peter Wallich and his little band as they performed their drills as the ragged honor guard for the rabbi. She could not help but compare them with the hundred thousand Hitler Youth she had seen at the Nuremberg rally last September. They had marched with burnished shovels over their shoulders. Lines had been straight. Voices had roared.

  Behind Lucy, the baker Menkes blustered about the preparedness of the Polish Army and about the readiness of the Jews of Warsaw! “If the Germans come here, we will show them a fist! Fight the rats!”

  Just then a small boy darted past and climbed the brick wall beside the Community Center. Poised on the top of the wall like a bird on a wire, he reached deep into his pocket, whipped out a piece of chalk, and with five bold strokes drew a picture on the bricks.

  Then he flapped off the wall and disappeared into the crowd, leaving behind him the likeness of Hitler scraped upon the gray bricks! There was no doubt about the identity of the face in the cartoon. The oval shape of the face; one definite stroke curving down over the forehead in the Führer’s cowlick; that tiny brush of a mustache! And over the entire face was drawn an insulting, dismissing, enormous X!

  A ripple of laughter rose, then the pattering of applause. Lucy smiled with the rest, but her heart grew heavy with a sense of uneasiness for these people and this place.

  Involuntarily she looked up and remembered that Wolf had told her about the German Führer’s plans for Poland. The bombs will fall here first. Hitler had said as much in the broadcast last night. No matter how many times he changed his policies; no matter even that he had now signed a pact with Stalin, the one thing that never changed in Hitler’s rhetoric was his hatred of the Jews. He had drawn their caricature in his mind and crossed them out with the vengeance that the little urchin had used when marking on the brick facade of the Community Center.

  Attention returned to matters of real importance to the people of Muranow.

  “Here comes Rabbi Lubetkin!”

  “See how pale he is!”

  “He is walking without help! The Eternal be praised!”

  ***

  Wolf hurriedly scanned the ebb and flow of the crowd around the sandy-haired man and Peter Wallich. Lucy must be nearby, she must be! He sensed her presence even before he saw her, then lined up the field glasses on the back of the woman he knew was Lucy, even before she turned.

  At last! A feeling of urgency filled Wolf. He would not wait a single minute longer. He would follow her, capture her, and take her back to Germany.

  A last glance through the field glasses confirmed that Lucy was not leaving. She and the British were watching Peter Wallich drill his pitiful troop. Wolf tossed the glasses down and turned to the door to go.

  Halfway down the stairs, someone was coming up. The figure called out to him, “Herr von Fritschauer. Good! I have news.”

  Gustav Ahlman! What was he doing in Warsaw? “Not now, Ahlman.” said Wolf, starting to push past. “I’ve spotted her at last.”

  Ahlman moved in front of Wolf, blocking the stairs. “Important news,” he repeated. “New orders.”

  An angry sweep of Wolf’s arm caught Gustav off balance, shoving him against the banister. “Get out of my way, “ Wolf shouted, and he ran down the stairs.

  Wolf scarcely heard the echo of Gustav Ahlman’s voice calling out, “New orders!” In Wolf’s mind there was only one objective, one focus of all his attention: to capture Lucy.

  It was indeed time for Wolf to return to Berlin. Great things were happening, events in which he had the duty, the right, to participate. But Wolf knew that he could not go until this duty was accomplished. He could not leave Warsaw having failed to erase the shadow on his reputation.

  How could he have been so deceived.” A mystery surrounded Lucy Strasburg. The woman he had believed to be an ignorant peasant was standing by the side of a military Britisher. She was obviously connected somehow with the largest community of Jews in all of Europe.

  Wolf dodged a knot of black-coated men standi
ng in a circle. Their beards and earlocks bobbed in rhythm as they gestured gnarled fingers toward newspaper headlines. A babble of voices rose from the square and assaulted Wolf’s ears: Yiddish, Polish, German, even Slavic tongues for which he had no names. It was as if all the Jews from all of Europe had been poured into Warsaw and stirred together.

  Wolf darted to one side of the crowd of men and bumped into two short plump women walking with linked elbows. With heavily laden shopping bags hanging from their arms, they revolved slowly around like a gate swinging on rusty hinges and blocked Wolf’s path. Wolf tried to pass by him, only to have them pivot in front of him and bar his way again.

  He bounced up on his toes, trying to see over the crowd. Lucy had seemed so near through the field glasses! Up close, the square was both expansively broad and packed with bodies! It was almost as if they were deliberately preventing Wolf from reaching her!

  He pushed between the elderly women and a group of schoolgirls. The girls, a flock of twittering birds in dark blue jumpers, braids, and freckles, pointed at him and giggled. What could this Saturday person be so anxious to find in Muranow Square?

  Wolf hopped up on a low brick wall and scanned the crowd in the direction of the Community Center. He thought he had lost his way completely until he spotted again a file of broomsticks marking time to the marching steps of their bearers. There she was! Lucy’s glowing blond hair was unmistakable. She was still where he had seen her last.

  Wolf started to jump down from the wall but found the crowd pressed in around him. He turned, looked down into faces that stared back at him. Jewish faces, every one. He turned again and saw a completely solid ring of people watching him with anticipation.

  They think I’m going to speak, he thought with confusion. They must believe I have a message to deliver. Indeed, those in the ring nearest Wolf were asking for silence, shushing the others around them.

  “Husband!” a voice cried out. “It’s him! The man I told you about.” Wolf tried to see who the words came from. He located an arm pointing at him and followed it back to the mousy face of the woman from the Dorbranksy apartment.

  Wolf was confronted by a powerfully built man whose curly black hair seemed to spill off his head and flow over his brawny arms and out the collar of his shirt. Cracow, the woman had said . . . no doubt her husband was a steel worker!

  Wolf attempted to stride past. “What do you mean, breaking into my home? Scaring my family?” demanded the man.

  Wolf touched the pistol in his pocket. But when he saw how awash he was in a sea of angry, questioning eyes, he left the pistol undrawn. “Must be some mistake,” he argued. “I don’t know you.”

  “We’ll see whose mistake it is,” said the man, reaching out for Wolf.

  “Von Fritschauer, wait!” called Gustav Ahlman from just beyond Wolf.

  Ahlman lunged through the ring of people, clutching for Wolf’s sleeve. Wolf jerked outside Ahlman from just behind Wolf.

  “Von Fritschauer, wait!” called Gustav Ahlman from just behind Wolf.

  Ahlman lunged through the ring of people, clutching for Wolf’s sleeve. Wolf jerked aside, and Gustav’s rush carried him into the face of the steel worker.

  “What’s this? Another one?” shouted the man. He drew back a fist the size of a pipe wrench and crashed it against Ahlman’s nose. Gustav’s nostrils exploded in spurts of crimson and au audible crunch of cartilage and bone.

  Wolf seized on the distraction as an opportunity to shove two onlookers out of the way and plunge on in pursuit of Lucy. He must not lose her now!

  ***

  Allan Farrell skirted the rim of the Whispering Gallery that overlooked the rotunda of the cathedral floor without even glancing at the painting or the statues. He had many other things to think about, and his mind had long since ceased to contemplate the art work.

  When this operation had first begun, Allan had worried that making so many trips up the hundreds of steps might attract unfortunate attention. But none of the priests or lay attendants paid the slightest attention to one more tourist amid the crowds of sightseers.

  In the satchel he carried was another smaller leather bag. This inner bag was actually one of the packages Allan was making the repeated trips to deposit. Eight packages meant eight deliveries to the Golden Gallery high atop the outside of the dome.

  When Allen reached the last of the spiraled iron stairs and emerged into the breezy London afternoon, he congratulated himself on his timing: he was alone on the platform. This simple fact meant that he would not have to wait for an opportunity to make another deposit.

  Allan listened at the top of the stairs for the clatter of footsteps that would give away the approach of more sightseers. When he heard nothing but the sighing of the wind, he immediately opened the satchel and removed the inner bag with its already attached length of a light rope.

  A quick check showed that the wires connecting the radio receiver and the explosives were firmly attached. Allan counted stone pillars around to the right from the stairwell. When he reached the fourth one he stopped and lowered the bag over the railing and into the opening in the lead-sheathed curve of the roof.

  When the bag had gently come to rest at the bottom of the opening, Allan dropped the end of the cord in after. Out of habit he leaned over the rail to see if any trace of his handiwork could be seen, but nothing was visible. Perhaps if someone had hung by their toes over the parapet and dangled headfirst they could spot the little bag, but not otherwise.

  Allan picked up the outer carrying case with a great sense of satisfaction. Six eggs in the nest, he thought. Almost home.

  ***

  The linking of Rachel Lubetkin’s arm through her own startled Lucy. Cradling her baby brother on her hip. Rachel led Lucy into the packed gathering that had assembled to hear Rabbi Lubetkin speak publicly for the first time since his arrest in November.

  The synagogue itself was not large enough to hold the numbers of men and women coming into the auditorium. The enormous hall was filled to standing room only, and still the crowds trailed out the double doors and into the square.

  Yet room was made for Lucy Strasburg. A heroine, was she not? One who saved the life of one Jewish boy? And now she stood beside the rabbi’s daughter.

  ***

  Wolf escaped from the clutches of the steel worker from Cracow and from the pursuit of Gustavg Ahlman, but neither of these successes amounted to anything. Lucy was gone! By the time Wolf had reached the far corner of the square, she had vanished as surely as if the earth had swallowed her up.

  The Britisher had also disappeared, and the last definite connection with Lucy, Peter Wallich, was marching out of Muranow Square at the head of his ragged band of play soldiers.

  Wolf revolved slowly around in place. In his mind he cursed Ahlman for delaying him, cursed the couple from Cracow for interfering, cursed all the Jews of Muranow Square and his own excruciatingly bad luck.

  What to do now? He could only think that if he had once spotted Lucy from the window of his rented apartment, he could do it again. He went back to the Kowalski flat, this time skirting the edge of the square instead of forcing his way through the middle. He was careful to turn up a side street in order to avoid the spot where he had encountered the woman and her husband.

  Deep in thought, he ascended the stairs toward his apartment. Perhaps it was time to enlist additional aid from Berlin. If he could reach Himmler, and explain how close he was to success, next time he would have a ring of operatives around the square. That was the answer, no doubt of it. Perhaps Reichsführer Himmler would shed some light on what the new orders involved—in code, of course.

  Wolf pushed open the door of his room. It had been stupid of him to rush out and leave it unlocked, but he had been in a hurry; Ahlman’s interruption had delayed him, and the result had been failure instead of success. Wolf decided that he would give Ahlman the cursing of his life when next they met; he might even denounce the oaf to Himmler.

  Two strides
into the living room, Wolf saw the oaf already present to be cursed and denounced. Ahlman was seated in a chair with his back toward the view of Muranow Square and al Luger semiautomatic pistol pointed at Wolf’s midsection. His eyes were surrounded by saucer-sized purple rings, and where his nose had been was an ungainly mass of tape and sticking plaster.

  “Major von Fritschauer,” Ahlman said flatly, “your new orders are that you will accompany me back to Berlin at once.”

  ***

  “Have you selected a headquarters for the Gleiwitz operation, Agent Hess?”

  “Yes, Reichsführer. There is a schoolhouse in a nearby village that is suitable,” answered Hess. “My assistant has already made the necessary arrangements.”

  “Excellent. And have the participants been identified?”

  “Yes, Reichsführer. We have selected thirteen, including Wolfgang von Fritschauer. I trust you approve the selection of Karl Ibsen as well?”

  “Considering the timing,” commented Himmler with a thoughtful look in his eyes, “it is absolutely poetic.”

  “And the code name that has been assigned?” inquired Hess as he stood to leave.

  “I am certain you will appreciate the subtlety.” Himmler smiled. “Your code is Konserven—Operation Canned Goods.”

  ***

  The entire block of solitary cells groaned aloud as morning came with muggy regularity. Karl opened his eyes to the insistent peeping of the young sparrows. A few moments of just-breaking sunlight slid across the bricks and illuminated the nest where four feathered heads with bright button eyes poked up from the lip of the nest.

  On the window ledge, mother and father sparrow looked at their offspring with a kind of dare in their expression. It was nearly the last of August. Karl knew this from the marks on his brick calendar. It was time the young sparrows learn to fly. Already they had hopped up on the edge of the nest and flapped their stubby wings in imitation of their parents. But today was different. For some reason Karl could not understand, this was the day when they would fly.