Which meant that she was already as dead as that boy on the ground outside. Only neither of their bodies knew it yet.
When Fishel confirmed that I was the courier, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer under her breath, then widened her coat to reveal the package, my purpose for coming.
It was a baby girl, probably no more than five months old. She was bundled up in a knitted blanket that likely contained the same lice that gave her mother this disease.
“I made this blanket for her.” The mother fingered it tenderly. “I hope it will always be her special gift.”
I’d have to dispose of this blanket as soon as possible, as well as the clothes, and anything else that connected the baby to this ghetto.
“My daughter’s name is Cypora.”
A Jewish name that had already been changed on the forged birth certificate I was carrying. From the moment I left the ghetto, this baby would be known as Irena, a good Polish name.
“We have to go,” Fishel said nervously. “The sleeping pills will wear off soon.”
Which explained his worries about me arriving late. They gave the baby the pills too early.
“Will my daughter grow up knowing who she is? Knowing who I am?” The mother’s eyes became bright with tears, wondering if she was doing the right thing, if it wouldn’t be better to let her daughter die here as a Jewish child.
It was a question that always filled me with guilt. If this war ended—no … when this war ended—the parents of these infants would never know where to begin looking for their child.
I touched her arm, speaking softly. “Your daughter will grow up. That is most important.”
My words seemed to satisfy her, so I emptied my bag of the shawls. We’d already sewn a mesh patch into the bottom of the bag that would allow in enough air for the infant until I was safely out of the ghetto.
The mother kissed her daughter and whispered, “My dearest Cypora,” likely the last time her true name would ever be spoken to her. But when I held out my arms, she couldn’t force herself to give the baby up. Fishel leaned in, taking the baby. “It must be this way,” he said. “Give her a chance to live.”
The woman agreed, and immediately sank to the floor, quietly sobbing.
I choked back my own tears. If I was going to assure this woman that she had made the right choice, then I had to stay strong. But inside, every sob that emptied from the woman cut my heart a little more.
This was the right thing to do. I knew it, and also knew I’d have to remind myself of that again at least a thousand times before this mission was over.
I hoped this was the right thing to do.
Fishel lowered the infant into the bottom of my bag; then we put down a thin piece of wood to be sure Cypora wasn’t suffocated from above. The shawls went in last of all. Hopefully, that would be enough.
He helped to raise the bag onto my back, but before I left, I offered the weeping mother the best hope I could. “The family who is taking your daughter are good people. They always wanted a child of their own and never could have one. They will love her as you do, and protect her as courageously as you have until now.”
The mother looked up at me, her eyes empty of light. “May God go with you.”
Fishel promised to check in on her again, then led me from the apartment.
“I have to go out through a different gate,” I said. “They’re watching for me at the one I entered.”
He clicked his tongue. “That’s farther away. We have to hurry.”
But with a sleeping infant tucked into the bag on my back, we couldn’t go too fast, nor could we draw any attention to ourselves, especially since we were passing the Judenrat offices now, which were usually shared by the OD. We picked up our steps and took whatever shortcuts we could, but it was all done with our heads down, the same as most other people trapped in here.
When the west gate came into view, Fishel shook my hand, grateful but eager to see me go. “I hope to see you again.”
I hoped so too. That would mean both of us had survived today’s smuggling job. That would mean I’d safely escaped another ghetto.
I chose the guard who looked most likely to give me a pass, this time a German about my father’s age. I didn’t like to interact with the Poles or the OD. They were usually more adept at recognizing one of their own.
I had my papers ready for him and he made the same inquiries as the officer did when I tried to get in. I showed him the shawls and complained that the women inside the ghetto must not have any money left to purchase them because these were very good shawls.
“What do the dead need with money?” His cynical laugh was like a drill on my chest. He thought we were sharing a joke. I thought about sharing my knife with his gut.
I bit back the response I wanted to give, but before he gave me permission to leave, I heard a soft coo coming from my bag. Quickly I asked, “May I go, sir?”
He frowned. “Why the hurry?”
The bag shifted behind me. The baby was rolling over. Waking up.
“I have a long way to go home, and curfew is coming. My mother will worry.”
The coo became a sleepy cry, and I coughed loudly enough to cover it, then added, “Also, I might be getting sick. I should get home, sir.”
The Germans feared typhus. If he thought I might have it, maybe it would help me get out of here faster.
“Go,” he finally said, shoving my papers back at me.
That was all I needed to hurry away from the gate. I ducked into a nearby Catholic church and sat in a pew to unpack the bag. The baby was already awake but still lethargic from the sleeping pills. She was too thin but seemed strong. Her tiny body wanted to live.
“May we help you?” a priest said, appearing in the aisle beside me.
I looked up, startled and empty of words. My pulse was still racing from leaving the ghetto and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I needed to.
Before I could answer, he noticed the baby and seemed to understand. “Ah, it’s you.”
He held out his arms for the baby, assuring me she’d be safe with her new family.
“One day.” I hesitated a moment, making sure the priest heard me. “One day her adoptive parents must tell this child who she really is. The sacrifices her mother made.”
When he promised they would, I gave him the baby and left, hoping this child, who would be raised saying Catholic prayers and attending Mass, would retain a kernel of her Jewish origin within her heart.
I hoped.
But whatever happened, at least I could end this day knowing one life had been saved.
For now, that was enough.
October 12, 1942
Podgorze Ghetto, Krakow
While I was at Tarnow Ghetto, the decision was made for Akiva to leave Kopaliny Farm. The neighbors had noticed the number of people who came and went, and were asking too many questions. Dangerous questions with answers that could send every single one of us to the losing end of a firing squad.
We’d relocate inside Krakow’s ghetto, a place that had been sealed from the outside world for a year and a half. It was home to my parents now, and would’ve been my home too had I not been sent away. One of our members offered us his empty apartment on Jozefinska Street. The scouts snuck in through holes in the wall, talked ourselves in with fake papers, or joined the shift of workers returning to the ghetto at the end of a workday—those who left were counted far more carefully than those who returned. I was one of the last to enter, because although I understood the need to be closer to our people, to work where we were needed most, I didn’t want to go. I’d seen enough ghettos by now to know how difficult it was to live in them.
No one laughed here, and smiles were fleeting. They spoke often of the past and rarely of the future. Bread wagons, a source of life, came through occasionally, but trucks to collect the dead were part of the daily routine. Oftentimes the body could not be buried, so it was simply covered with newspapers, and soon the shock of seeing bo
dies left this way became commonplace.
Death had become normal here, inevitable. And since there was nothing to fear from the normal, attempting to delay one’s death seemed almost illogical, like resisting the urge to breathe.
I’d visited my parents a few times since becoming a courier, but today was going to be different. My father sat cross-legged on their worn wooden floor and gestured that the small chair against the wall was for me. When I sat in it, he asked, “What is the news from the outside world? You always seem to know.”
Everything I knew was awful. So instead I said, “Grandmother Lindner is well. She asked me to say hello.”
The first part was true, the second was not. Tensions were already high in the home where my grandmother was staying. I wouldn’t make it worse by paying her a visit. She was kind without exception and baked a babka cake that made my mouth water just to think of it. But she was also fixed in her ways: her Yiddish language, her Jewish proverbs that seemed relevant to every possible conversation. If the family who was hiding her was ever raided, my grandmother would be easily identified as Jewish. I checked in on her as often as possible, but neither she nor the family ever knew I’d passed by.
“And are you well?” Papa asked, hopefulness in his voice. “You look good.”
“You need to worry about yourselves, Papa, not me.”
“We’re still your parents.” His eyes creased. “My little bird, of course we worry about you.”
I hadn’t heard his nickname for me since I was small, and it was hard to hear it now. I only shook my head, stuffing my emotions down. “I’m good, Papa. You can see that.”
“Not always.”
He looked around for any signs that someone was listening to our conversation, but my mother was the only other one in the room and she was staring out the window, barely aware that I’d come. Something had collapsed inside her when she lost her two younger children, like part of her died with Sara and vanished with Yitzchak.
Although we appeared to be alone, Papa lowered his voice. “Sometimes you’re here in the ghetto … sometimes you’re not. So we worry.”
Mama mumbled my name but remained looking out the window. From her view, she could see the entrance gate to the ghetto, one I sometimes used while smuggling. I wondered if she’d ever seen me come through.
I leaned in close to my father and withdrew two bifolds from a pocket in my coat, which I passed to him. He unfolded one and then the other, then looked up at me, clearly confused. “What are these? They look like—”
I shushed him and whispered, “They’re identification papers. Polish papers for you and Mama.”
“These aren’t our names. How did you—”
“I can get you and Mama out of the ghetto. I know of a safe house near Krakow.”
He closed the bifolds. “These aren’t our names, Chaya. That isn’t our life.”
“Just until the war is over, Papa. I can help you.”
“Yitzchak’s coming back here, to the ghetto,” Mama said. “We’ll wait here for him.”
I turned to her. “No, Mama, Yitz isn’t—”
Papa placed his hand on my arm. “This is where Yitzchak will look for us when he comes back.”
If he was put on the trains like Sara, then Yitzchak wasn’t coming back, because the kids who were taken away on those trains never came back. Those trains carried passengers in only one direction, ever. Away from the ghettos, to an almost certain death.
But now my father was whispering to my mother, telling her everything was all right, and I knew our conversation had to end here, for her sake. Robbing her of hope would’ve been almost as cruel as the Nazis had been to rob her of her children.
Papa stuffed the fake identification papers into his pocket. “Your mother and I will talk about it later.”
“Will you promise to look at what I gave you? To really think about it?”
He nodded, and I hoped he meant it, that they would look at what surrounded them and realize that taking a risk out there was far better than the certainty of remaining here. I wanted to shake him and beg him to say yes; then I would take care of the rest. I would take care of them.
I stood to leave, but Papa gestured to their small half-room. “You could stay here, with us,” he said.
“I have a place nearby, with friends.” I tried not to see the hurt in my father’s eyes when I spoke. I loved my parents more than anything, which was probably why visiting them had become so difficult. Where was the father of my childhood, who always knew how to make everything all right? Where was my mother, who sang me to sleep every night and was the sunshine in our home each morning? There was no Yitzchak, no Sara.
Even I was nothing like I’d once been. I’d grown stronger, bolder, more proud of my identity than I’d ever been before, and I needed to be with others who felt the same way. Maybe Papa understood that. He never asked me to stay again.
The easiest excuse was to tell myself that they couldn’t know about the work I was doing, that my staying there would have endangered them. But mostly, I stayed away because I knew the papers I’d just given my father would probably never come out of his pocket again, and I didn’t know how to save people who no longer cared to save themselves.
Beyond that, I was drawn to the energy in the Jozefinska apartment: our secrets, our goals. We had started as a handful of teenagers led by an amateur newspaper editor, his young wife, and a job counselor. Our leaders had become unlikely generals in our acts of resistance, and I was as willing a soldier as anyone on the front lines. We’d become an organization formidable enough to gain the respect of larger resistance movements in Warsaw, and we had begun discussing ways to get the Nazis’ attention here in Krakow.
“How far are you willing to go?” a fellow scout named Rubin asked me one night. He was a couple of years older than me, with slightly wavy hair and a dimple in one cheek when he smiled. Like me, he’d been sent away from Krakow by the Judenrat last year, though he’d lost all of his family soon after in an Aktion on the streets. Also like me, he was eager to do anything he could for the resistance. Rubin had become one of my closest friends within Akiva, the person I always went to first for ideas or advice.
“How far?” I grinned. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make them regret coming to Poland.”
He was echoing the same thoughts our leaders were already debating. It was no longer enough to do courier work, or to respond defensively to Nazi aggression. The time had come to take a few bites of our own. Perhaps we were only fleas nipping at the heels of a giant, but if our actions stopped the giant from crushing everything within his path for even a moment, then it was worth it.
Despite our leaders’ lack of experience in the world, they were learning fast and passing on to us everything they could. Rubin compared it to being thrown in an ocean and being told to learn to swim.
So we did. And we still are.
Rubin showed me how to fire a gun. I taught him to lie. All of us learned about grenades, studied the routes of Nazi patrols through Krakow, and began to scavenge, buy, or steal anything that helped in our cause.
Within weeks of our move to Jozefinska Street, Dolek returned from a meeting with other resistance groups up north, announcing that from now on, Akiva would be divided into cells of five. We were not to ask for the names of people in any other cell, and especially not for any details of their missions. If we were ever captured, the less we knew, the better.
My cell was assigned to begin raids on German storehouses. Acquiring weapons and ammunition were the top priority, but medical supplies, money, and food would also be valuable.
Rubin acted as the leader of our cell, simply because he was oldest and took direct orders from Akiva’s leadership. A younger boy named Jakub worked with us too. He was brilliant and willing to do anything asked of him, but since he’d attended only Jewish schools while growing up, he spoke very little Polish and no German, which limited his usefulness. Hanusia was brave and clever, though she lacked the sp
ecific look for a courier. Finally, Meriam was an experienced courier who’d taught me a lot over the past few months. It was good to have her along.
“Where are we going first?” I asked Rubin.
He smiled over at me. “How would you feel about taking a ride on a train? It should be loaded with supplies meant for the Germans.”
I grinned back at him. Perhaps with our help, it would arrive at its destination a little lighter than when it began.
October 20, 1942
Bochnia Countryside
Waiting at the apartment until it was time for the raid seemed to take forever. In keeping with the requirement for secrecy, we didn’t discuss any details there, so I was anxious to know what my specific role would be, but Rubin said only, “Wear dark clothes.”
Finally, the time came. Each of us was to smuggle ourselves out of the ghetto by five o’clock and meet in Old Town. From there, we borrowed a wagon from a sympathetic Pole whom Hanusia used to work for—under the agreement that if we were caught, he would claim it had been stolen—and drove east to the outskirts of Bochnia. A supply train would pass our way at precisely 10:14 p.m.
As we rode, Rubin assigned our tasks for the evening. Hanusia would guard the wagon at the final stop, our end point for completing the mission. Three of us would station ourselves along the tracks to gather up any boxes thrown from the train. They might be heavy, had to be snatched up as soon as they were dropped, and would have to be carried all the way to the wagon, up to three kilometers ahead. Jakub and Rubin were obvious choices for that job.
“I’ll be at the third drop point,” Meriam offered. “I’m older and stronger than Chaya.”
Both of those were true, but I decided she was also wiser than me, choosing the job that didn’t require her to climb into a moving train. That task fell to me.
Meriam dropped me off first by the tracks outside Bochnia, right before the train would pick up speed on its way to Krakow. A small station was here, but there’d be no passengers boarding. It’d be a safe place to hide while I waited for the train to pass by. When it did, I’d have five minutes to get inside a boxcar, then would make a supply drop every five minutes after that. Jakub had carefully calculated the places each of them should hide along the tracks to find the boxes as soon as I dropped them. After the third drop, I was to get myself off the train when I found a soft place to jump.
Resistance Page 3
