Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  After a short ride in the truck, the human cargo was unloaded again and carried through a shady, wooded area. Karl enjoyed the sweet breeze that played on his eyelids. He liked the sound of crickets chirping along a stream, and when he was at last dumped without ceremony against a tree trunk, Karl was grateful that he was propped upright and could look around him.

  ***

  Alfie knew he was dreaming, and yet it was not a dream.

  He could smell the scents of the woods. Crickets fiddled and bullfrogs boasted on the banks of the Vistula River. It was very dark everywhere except for fireflies that bobbed drunkenly in the branches of the bushes.

  Alfie was walking in a line of men. He lifted his feet high like a soldier marching. He did not stumble when he walked, even though the path was dark. Werner-kitten rode on his shoulder and rumbled in his ear. Ahead of him, Alfie could see the forms of the boys from Sisters of Mercy Hospital. They too were being carried. Slung over the shoulders of strong men, they were being taken some place . . . someplace. But where?

  His friend Werner looked up at him. Alfie was glad to see his face.

  “I thought they killed you,” Alfie said to Werner the boy.

  “Yes,” Werner replied. His eyes looked worried.

  “Where are they taking us?” Alfie asked. He hoped that Werner would answer him. Werner was smart. He always knew the answers.

  Werner could not point. His hands dangled over the shoulders of the man who carried him. Werner moved his eyes to show Alfie where they were marching to. Alfie looked up to a high hill with a big metal tower on top. There was a square cement building on the hill as well. Alfie thought that the tower looked very much like the radio tower on top of the Polski Radio broadcasting studio where the captain had gone to send his report to London. But it was not the same. There were crickets and bullfrogs. This seemed a very lonely place.

  “What is this place?” Alfie asked Werner.

  “Look behind you,” Werner said.

  Alfie looked over his shoulder. The kitten stopped purring. Marching along behind Alfie was a Hitler-man in his uniform. Over his big shoulder was Pastor Ibsen. Pastor Ibsen was also wearing a uniform, but it was like the ones Alfie saw on all the Polish soldiers.

  “Are you awake?” Alfie asked Pastor Karl, who had his eyes closed.

  Pastor Karl opened his eyes. “Hello, Alfie,” said the pastor just like always. “I like your kitten.”

  Alfie wanted to hug Pastor Karl, but he could not stop marching. “Where are we going?”

  “There.” Pastor Karl’s eyes pointed to the tower.

  “Why is the Hitler-man carrying you?” Alfie asked.

  “I cannot walk,” Pastor Karl replied.

  The bullfrogs bellowed loudly, almost drowning out Pastor’s voice.

  “Why?” Alfie asked, but the sound of bullfrogs became so loud that he was certain the pastor could not hear him.

  Then the pastor looked up into the starry sky. There were lights moving above them, bright lights. Suddenly Alfie knew that the sound he was hearing was not bullfrogs, but the rumble of airplane engines.

  “You must run!” shouted Pastor Ibsen. “Run and tell them!”

  Alfie could not run. His feet kept marching in the line with all the rest. He looked down at his clothes and saw that he was also dressed in the uniform of a Polish soldier. Why was he marching between these Nazi soldiers?

  “I can’t run!” he cried to Pastor Karl. His heart was pounding. He was sweating because he was afraid. Something terrible was ahead on the path. He knew it, and yet he could not make his legs stop marching forward.

  Pastor Karl raised his arm to the tower. “Tell them.” Small spouts of flame erupted in the blackness. A popping sound rattled all around the ground where Alfie marched! There was a great explosion beside the tower. The light from it made the metal frame glow like a skeleton against the sky.

  Alfie looked at the face of his friend Werner. “RUN, Alfie!” Werner shouted. “It has begun!”

  “I can’t run!” Alfie cried. His legs marched on toward the fire and the spurting lights that Alfie now knew were guns firing down on them. “Help me!” Alfie cried to Pastor Karl.

  “Step aside,” replied the pastor in a kind voice. “One step to the side, Elisha. Tell them. Tell your captain.”

  Alfie stepped one step to the side, and now he was no longer marching with the rest. He backed up as other Hitler-men, carrying men on their shoulders, marched on without seeing him.

  “Where do I run to, Pastor Karl?” Alfie shouted after him as fire began to fall from the sky in sheets like a waterfall.

  There was no answer. In the glow of the fire, Alfie saw the Nazi soldiers lay their burdens down in the grass of the hillside.

  ***

  Hess brought a staggering Wolfgang von Fritschauer to the grassy knoll on which the transmitter stood. “Now,” he observed in a friendly fashion, “now is your opportunity to prove your loyalty to the Führer.”

  “Yes, I see,” slurred Wolf. “Now we can strike at Poland after such pro . . . what’s the word?”

  “Provocation. Exactly,” agreed Hess.

  “And my part?” asked Wolf. “Do I lead . . . attack the town, or stay here and broadcast!” he mumbled.

  “Neither,” said Hess quietly.

  “Then do I lead the prisoners so we can be seen retreating?”

  “Nothing as involved as that,” corrected Hess.

  “What am I expected to do then?”

  “Why, Wolf,” said Hess in a kind voice, “you are expected to die.” He shot Wolf through the neck with a Polish Army-issue pistol.

  Wolf’s body was laid out on the grass. Hess placed the pistol in Wolf’s outstretched hand. It would be clear to any observer that the man had been killed while directing a Polish attack on the German radio transmitter.

  ***

  Operation Canned Goods continued in the woods between Gleiwitz and the Polish border. Karl Ibsen was wide awake when he was placed against a tree trunk, but he had no strength to escape. To Gustav Ahlman, he remarked, “What will you say to the Judge of the Universe? You know this war is going to bring great destruction and sorrow on Germany. Is that what you want?”

  “It will bring your destruction first,” Ahlman said, pressing the muzzle of his pistol against Karl’s head.

  “Oh, God,” Karl cried, “receive my spirit!”

  Then Ahlman pulled the trigger.

  ***

  “Where do I run to, Pastor Karl?” Alfie whispered the question once again as a wide gulf of water separated him from the pastor. Would he find no answer? “Where should we go?”

  Silence. No crickets. No bullfrogs. No explosions or thrumming engines. Only silence and a very bright light all around Alfie, as if a silver cocoon had suddenly surrounded him and made him safe. Alfie was not afraid any longer. But still he asked the question.

  “Where?”

  The voice of Pastor Karl was soft and happy. “The Promised Land.”

  “A good idea,” Alfie replied.

  The light began to fade. “More with you . . . than are with them.”

  “Very good,” Alfie said, feeling happy. He reached up and stroked Werner-kitten, who purred in a sleepy way on the pillow.

  Alfie knew he was dreaming. Werner was on Alfie’s pillow. Jacob was fast asleep in the bed beside him. There were no crickets chirping. No fire or explosions. But something was coming to Warsaw. Alfie was sure of that when he opened his eyes and sat up.

  “Are you awake?” Alfie shook Jacob’s shoulder.

  “Huh?”

  “Wake up.” Alfie shook Jacob again.

  “What?” Jacob sounded angry. He fumbled for the clock and held it close to his face. “Elisha, it’s 4:30 in the morning. Go back to sleep.”

  “No.” Alfie said, feeling very sure that he must not go back to sleep. “We have to tell the captain. The planes are coming.”

  Jacob lay very still with the clock in front of his nose. It ticked
loudly. There was another sound. Alfie knew that Jacob was new awake. The sound was the terrible buzzing of engines.

  “Planes.”

  “Coming to Warsaw.”

  “Now? Luftwaffe?”

  “Yes,” Alfie said, climbing out of bed and looking for his trousers. “We should tell the captain. And then we should go to the Promised Land.”

  ***

  Hess was inside the radio station and on the air. In excellent Polish he announced that the forces of the Polish Army had liberated Gleiwitz from German oppression. Hess called on Poles working nearby to rise up in revolt.

  He ordered machine guns to open up on the concrete building. Moments later, all the windows were shattered and there were convincing pock-marked walls to prove the reality of the attack. The gunners were extremely careful not to damage the antenna or the transmitter.

  36

  The Promised Land

  Friday, September 1, 1939

  Warsaw

  Orde awoke suddenly. Something terrible had happened. The air was filled with the unending rage of a beehive buzzing full blast. Without realizing what was on his face, he brushed plaster and glass from his cheeks and groped for the lamp that had been on the table beside the couch. It was not there. Plaster was on the table, strewn on the floor of the hotel suite.

  There were planes overhead, planes so near that they seemed to be in the room! Double-engine planes. Luftwaffe!

  He put his feet on the floor and cut his right foot on glass from the broken lamp. Outside, not far from the Bristol, another bomb crashed down. The floor shook. Then another boom! And another, moving closer in a perfect rhythm. The whole building shuddered. Another huge chunk of ceiling crumbled down, filling the room with choking plaster dust.

  Orde coughed. He tried to call out to Alfie and Jacob in one room and then to Lucy in the other! Their names caught in his throat. He gasped for breath and wondered why it was so dark. The blackout curtains hung crazily from a broken rod. The glass of the windowpanes was gone. Orde could see fires in the distance, the eruption of flame like a waterspout in the direction of the airport!

  Orde remembered the light switch in the bathroom. Maybe it still worked. But he could not walk across the floor because of the litter of glass shards. Orde groped in the darkness for his slippers, miraculously finding them where he had left them by the sofa. They were full of rubble. He shook them out and slipped them on the wrong feet.

  “Jacob!” he cried, shuffling toward Lucy’s room in confusion. He tripped over an upturned chair. “Lucy!” he shouted.

  Behind him he heard the voice of Alfie in a sing-song cadence above the incessant droning of the motors. “We have to go now, Captain! Get dressed, Lucy!”

  Alfie emerged from the room, the kitten tucked into his shirt. The little black-and-white face peered out at the neck just beneath Alfie’s chin. A second head.

  “We’re all right, Captain,” Alfie said.

  Then, behind Orde, Lucy came to the other door in her nightgown, her hair falling over her face. By the light of yet another explosion. Orde could see that she had a cut above her right eye that was bleeding. She held her hand to it, then looked at the black liquid that was her own blood. “I’m not hurt,” she muttered.

  “Get dressed,” Alfie said. “We have to go. Pastor Ibsen said it’s time to go to the Promised Land.”

  ***

  There was no traffic in Muranow Square. No taxis. No trams running. Peter Wallich slept on an iron cot in a long line of other iron cots in the dormitory of the Community Center.

  He opened his eyes to the sound of distant motors and a thumping, like a paper bag filled with air being popped. He sat up and listened. Other men and boys in the room snored and wheezed on as though nothing were out of place in the sounds of early morning.

  Peter got up and pulled his trousers over his nightshirt. He found his shoes and undarned socks and stumbled through the unfriendly iron frames of the cots.

  It was hot, even though it was not yet light. The thumping sound grew louder. Not nearer. Just louder.

  He pushed through the swinging door out into the dining room. It was deserted, dark. He threaded his way through the long wooden tables and benches to the entrance, then out through the door, where the buzzing sound increased in volume.

  Peter searched the vaguely lightening sky. It seemed empty, except for bright morning stars. Daylight was coming, slowly turning the deep purpose of the eastern sky to hues of violet. Pastel shades reflected in the taped and boarded windows of houses and shops all around the square. The gold of newly stenciled letters on baker Menkes’ shop caught a ray of light. But it was not sunlight!

  Far across the rooftops, in the direction of the angry whirring sound of a buzz saw, a flash of light exploded like lightning. The airport? Had a plane gone down? Several seconds later the resounding boom of that explosion reached Peter’s ears.

  Several other joined him on the steps. “What is it?” asked a boy of about twelve.

  No one wanted to answer what they thought it was. What they feared it to be!

  Peter looked toward the open window of Rabbi Lubetkin. Why was that window open? No tape. No boards. Did the rabbi not believe that they could come here?

  The distant humming of the bee swarm was suddenly accompanied by a slap! slap! slap!

  Bombs?

  Across the square, Peter could just make out the form of Rabbi Lubetkin as he ran out on his front steps, his wife at his side.

  Had they left their windows open so they could clearly hear this terrible moment?

  ***

  Pulling her robe around her shoulders, Rachel followed her father and mother out into the tepid morning air. The scents of the river drifted around her.

  Papa walked slowly down the steps and then out into the street so he could see better. He held his hand up like a scout looking for a trail or shading his eyes against the sun. But there was no sun—only distant fire and the sound of airplane engines. So it had begun! He stared to a faraway place on the horizon, where puffs of smoke erupted like little mushrooms.

  “The airport,” he said. “It is true.” He turned. “Downtown Warsaw. There.” He pointed to a spiraling purple plume of smoke. “Polski Radio, maybe.”

  “But will they bomb us, Aaron?” Mama’s voice trembled.

  “No.” He sounded so certain. So confident! Why then was Rachel still so afraid?

  Across the square, Dolek’s horse-drawn milk wagon plodded up the street. It seemed ludicrous to see something so ordinary on such a morning. The wagon turned lazily into Niska to continue its regular route.

  Rachel watched it with astonishment until she remembered that the old milkman was mostly deaf. Probably his horse was deaf, as well.

  “What do we do now, Aaron?” Mama’s voice was still shaking.

  “No air-raid sirens,” Papa said in that same confident tone. “No doubt the Polish Air Force is giving them a beating.” He turned away and walked back up the steps. Then he gathered Rachel and Mama into his outstretched arms and urged them inside.

  Once in the foyer, Rachel felt almost normal. Nearly unafraid. This was her house. Everything was just the same. No matter if a little something was going on at the airport, nu? Even so, her heart was pumping hard.

  Papa glanced all around him. He looked at the ceiling and at the walls. His gaze was not friendly. “Maybe the Poles have fallen asleep. Maybe the sirens do not work. Make a call, Etta,” he instructed. “Get the telephone chain up and busy. Sirens or not, have morning prayers in the air-raid shelter, I think.”

  ***

  A hint of daylight pushed back the darkness, creeping over the broken windowpane, then through the torn blackout curtain. Outside the hotel room, women wept noisily in the corridor, while others shouted. Someone was yelling for everyone to get down to the air-raid shelter. Still there were no sirens wailing over the city.

  Lucy bandaged Orde’s foot while Alfie stood beside the window and peered out across the rooftops
. Jacob sat quietly in the chair beside him. His eyes were closed, his lips moving silently. Orde knew the boy was praying, and he was glad for it. His own thoughts were laced with prayers, but his mind was jumping like a bullfrog from puddle to puddle.

  The corner of the ceiling was down. Lucy was on her knees, worrying over his foot as though there were nothing else. Dear God, where to take them? How to get them out? I waited too long.

  Two walls were cracked with diagonal fissures running top to bottom. How is the outside masonry holding up? The sound of engines was almost gone. Very far away he heard the sound of feeble anti-aircraft fire. Probably this one raid over downtown Warsaw was nothing more than the Germans leaving a little calling card, a brief memo that the real stuff would soon be arriving. Right now the battle was far to the west. Some impatient Luftwaffe pilot had not been able to resist the urge to wake up Warsaw and then scoot back to business.

  Still no sirens. Yet the cry came. “Get to the shelters!”

  Orde made a sudden decision. He looked at Lucy’s face, at the cut over her eye. The sad resignation and worry on her expression. “I’m going to the office. You all go down to the shelter until—”

  Alfie turned. He was not smiling anymore. “Not the shelter, Captain,” he said without doubt.

  “I’m going to get to the shortwave radio. Try to find out what’s happening,” Orde replied quietly. “It’s a long way to the office, and the shelter here is—”

  “We should stay together, Captain,” Alfie said. He turned back to the window.

  Lucy looked into Orde’s face as if to beg him to listen. Alfie had seen something. Orde frowned, considering what it would be like for the four to them to be caught out in the street in the open if the bombers came back.

  Lucy put a hand on his arm. She bit her lip, and her eyes held the silent entreaty, Do not leave without me.

  Jacob looked up as the distant popping sounded in the morning air. “I don’t want to go to the shelter. If a bomb falls on me, I want it to be just a bomb. Not a whole building along with it.”