It was time to face reality. Those who had made it back to the bunker had probably been killed or arrested. Maybe others had escaped, going to the forests or joining other resistance groups up in Warsaw. As awful as it was to let them go—Rubin, Jakub, Hanusia, and even Esther—I needed to move on and make some decisions of my own.
Beginning with leaving the safe house. Remaining here had become as dangerous as running. Maybe more. I was surrounded by weapons, money, food, and blank identification papers ready to be forged. Everything in this apartment gave my people a chance for life.
And would also guarantee my death. It was only a matter of time before the neighbors began wondering about the teenage girl who rarely went out and never had visitors. About the people who used to come and go at odd hours, often after curfew. Why hadn’t they returned ever since the Cyganeria Café was attacked?
Soon after they asked each other these questions, they would ask the Nazis, who would answer with my imprisonment and torture. Then they would kill me.
I wouldn’t wait around for that to happen. I had to leave Krakow, the scene of our crime. More than anything else, I longed to return to the Podgorze Ghetto one last time, to beg my parents to leave with me. But the guards at the ghetto gates would be watching for me, for the blonde girl who threw grenades at the café, then vanished into the night. I wondered if any of my grenades had killed their soldiers.
If they had, I wished I’d had more. The Germans were still here.
So was I, and I’d become more determined than ever. If the Germans took Akiva from me, I would find another resistance group to join and dedicate my life to it. Wherever I went from here, I intended to take with me as much contraband from this safe house as possible.
However, as I began packing the next morning, I found a note under my door. I didn’t know how long it had been there, only that it hadn’t been there last night.
With my breath caught in my throat, I unfolded the note, signed by someone known only as Antek. My heart leapt. Antek was a code name for an Akiva member who worked closely with our leaders. Maybe he’d seen me near the bunker.
I paced the floor while reading the note over and over. It read, “Despite our losses, we continue to fight. Meet a friend at point B at the usual time tomorrow. Prepare to travel.”
Point B was in Krakow’s Old Town, an easy walking distance from the train station. The usual time was nine in the morning, two hours after curfew was over, when the streets would already be busy enough for us to avoid any suspicion.
When I’d memorized the note, I immediately flushed it down the toilet. After that, I took time to think through every detail.
Who of our members might still be alive? Jakub’s leg was never the same after that bullet, and Esther couldn’t have survived while other, stronger people were taken. I liked Rubin, though it would be harder to travel with him than Hanusia. I hoped Hanusia would meet me.
But for now, I was happy just knowing that a spark of life remained within Akiva. No matter who would meet me tomorrow, at least I didn’t have to be alone anymore.
At least the resistance continued.
February 14, 1943
Podgorze Ghetto, Krakow
After a long afternoon of arguing with myself, I decided that I had to return to Podgorze Ghetto and see my parents. I knew it would be dangerous. I knew the soldiers there would still be on alert for any suspected resistance members. But it was also my last chance to say good-bye.
The main entry gate was between two tall archways with the Star of David on top. The concrete walls that stretched out from either side were also arched, designed to look like a series of Jewish gravestones. That was no accident.
The day those walls went up, the people here were buried alive and this place became a graveyard-in-waiting. Like every other ghetto, the people wandered about with vacant eyes, empty stomachs, and a gnawing sense that time was running out.
I studied the ghetto gates from a distance before entering, carefully targeting a soldier who’d be most likely to let me in. I wanted someone who seemed bored, whose attention had wandered back home rather than staying focused on the war.
With the change of a new shift, I finally spotted the guard I wanted. I’d seen him here before and he was kinder than the others. More important, his brain seemed duller than the others. But this didn’t mean I could relax. Five other guards were at the same gate, and my timing wasn’t as good as usual. I preferred to come when it was busier. When they were more easily distracted and hurried.
Nor would my usual excuses be as effective as before. I couldn’t tell them I’d come to sell to the Jews—no one had money left to buy anything, and the Nazis were barely keeping up the ruse of caring whether anyone in the ghetto lived another day.
But I was smuggling in food for whoever might remain. Today, it was canned stew, much heavier than the potatoes I usually brought. I held my posture straight and tall, hoping the Nazi in front of me didn’t notice how the cans hidden in my bag were weighing me down.
Normally, if I was discovered, I’d have some chance of talking my way out of any serious trouble. Not with these particular cans. They were supposed to have been issued to German soldiers fighting on the front, but we stole them last fall. If they were found, I’d have no way of explaining myself.
“Why are you coming to Podgorze Ghetto today?” the soldier asked as he examined my papers.
“Bringing supplies to Eagle Pharmacy,” I said, a lie that was boosted by the blankets I’d packed near the top and around the sides of my bag.
I followed it with a smile, hoping to look friendly. Eagle Pharmacy was an excuse that usually worked well here. It was run by a Christian man who gave out medicine for free, tended to minor health issues when he could, and most important, managed a secret operation to smuggle children out of the ghetto into safe houses. We loved him for that, but crucially, the Nazis tolerated him. Better he deal with typhus than them.
The Nazi checked the top of my bag but not as thoroughly as he should have, then waved me inside. I released the breath that I was holding and took my first few steps.
“Wait!” This was one of the OD, calling me back. I closed my eyes a moment and steadied myself before turning around. I knew about this man. Before the war he had been a laborer, uneducated and poor. Now he had a blue jacket with lapels and a necktie like the upper class wore, strutting down the streets as if his costume made him something great. When the Nazis asked for volunteers for the Jewish police, he was one of the first to step forward. Now he had power over people who’d barely looked in his direction only a few years ago, and he relished every moment of it.
Some of the Jewish officers had retained their integrity, their loyalty to us, but not this man, who’d chosen cruelty and betrayal as the measure of his worth. If he could not be respected or admired, then he would be feared. It took everything I had to hide my loathing of him, and an extra dose of courage. It was possible he knew me too.
He stared at me far too long, then took a lock of my blonde hair in his hand, twisting it around his fingers. “You are Polish?” he asked. “Catholic?”
“You see the crucifix I wear?” I countered, gesturing to the chain around my neck.
“A Jew would wear a cross if it benefited them. Can you tell me, please, the Hail Mary?”
I smiled. That wasn’t even a challenge. “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou—”
“Enough.” For a moment, I thought he might let me go, but instead he turned me around. He was going to inspect my bag.
“It’s only blankets for the children,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “The pharmacy expected them this morning. I—”
“I have children too. It’s a cold winter.” He reached into the top of my bag and pulled out the first blanket. “For my youngest.” He pulled out a second blanket. “For my eldest.” I had five blankets with me and was quickly becoming worried that he may have an entire flock of cold children. He
pulled out two more blankets. “For my wife and myself.”
One blanket remained. I felt him staring at it, wondering what he might get in exchange for a blanket on the black market. It wasn’t much. I never brought in anything visible with any real value. That was only an invitation for theft. But apparently, he wanted that last blanket.
He widened the bag and I felt his hand reach down. When he pulled the blanket up, it would disturb the way I’d wrapped the cans of food. I braced myself, barely daring to breathe. As soon as the cans clanked together, my plan was to swing the bag around and hit him with it as hard as I could. Then I’d run. I probably wouldn’t get more than five or six steps away, but it’d almost be worth it if I could break his arm.
He tugged on the blanket and because of the cans, it didn’t pull out. I began sliding the bag off my shoulder, ready to strike.
Not particularly ready for the consequences.
“Let the girl go!” a Nazi soldier called to the OD. “She’s here for the pharmacy.”
He grunted at me but immediately obeyed his German masters. “Get going, then, for what little good a single blanket will do.”
I nodded back at him, keeping my emotions carefully in check. A part of me regretted not leaving him with the broken arm, though obviously, that would have ended even worse for me. I rounded the first corner I came to, then turned yet another corner until I found myself on a street filled with a long line of people, their ration cards in hand, probably waiting for a wagon with bread or soup. Their children darted about on the streets, the stronger ones building snowmen together while the weaker ones merely sat on the sidewalks, leaning against the buildings, barely looking at me as I passed by. I quietly distributed the cans to them, just as I’d done in other ghettos. Twelve cans. Twelve families that would have a bite of food tonight. The people here were noticeably thinner since the last time I came. Twelve cans of food would save no one.
Worse still, I kept two cans back. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe that made me—even in some small way—like the OD who took those blankets for his family. But I still had a family too. These two cans were for them.
I lowered my eyes as I walked to my parents’ apartment. Since the last time I came, the ghetto had been divided between workers and nonworkers. In the next round of deportations, those judged unfit to work would be sent away first. My father should be in the workers’ group, but I’d been told he faked an injury during the division of the ghetto, ensuring that he remained with my mother, listed as a nonworker.
If my parents were happy to see me again, there was no sign of it in their expressions. We hugged, and there was a stiff clutch against my back from my father’s hands. His strength had kept him alive so far, but it couldn’t last much longer.
My mother was alive only in the sense that her heart continued to beat. I wondered if she kept living only out of hope for Yitzchak to return. With each passing day, that hope faded a little, and so did she.
Maybe it wasn’t fair for me to judge them this way, not when the same thought nagged at me every time I returned here. Knowing what had happened to Sara was awful, but the uncertainty with Yitzchak was much worse. A question never answered, an itch never scratched.
Mama smiled faintly at me, but although it had only been a short time since I’d last seen her, she seemed to look at me as if I’d become a stranger. Maybe I was a stranger now. My mind was older than my sixteen years, and I carried myself with confidence and purpose. Outside the ghetto, I had enough to eat, so my face wasn’t sunken and hollow like too many faces that stared back at me here. Like my parents’ faces today.
A hanging sheet now divided this room between my parents and another couple, and three more families had crowded into the other rooms of this tiny apartment. It occurred to me as I looked at their cramped conditions that if the space was divided evenly, each person’s share would be roughly the size of a coffin.
I hated thinking that way, but I did. And it took more effort than usual to shake the image from my mind.
At least we were allowed some privacy in the bedroom, but our conversation would have to be brief and meaningless since the others, with nothing better to do, were almost certainly listening. I pulled the two cans of food from my nearly empty backpack and gave one to each of my parents. My father brought the can to his chest in obvious gratitude, but my mother didn’t even seem to register what she was holding. He quietly took her can and folded it into his coat, then promised that he would make sure she ate.
“How long can you stay this time?” he asked.
“Not long.”
I never stayed long. These were my parents in name and by blood, but they didn’t feel like my parents anymore, not as we once were. Certainly, I had changed too.
My father gestured to the same small chair where I usually sat, and he and my mother settled on the wood crates on the floor that served as their bed.
“There are rumors,” he said with a hopeful smile. “The Germans have spread themselves out too thin, and their defenses are weakening.”
I shook my head. “It’s not true, Papa.”
“They say the Polish army is preparing to fight again.”
“The Polish army remains underground, if it still exists at all.” I drew in a breath. “Please don’t believe any rumors from inside the ghetto. Where would the people get such news? No letters are allowed here, no newspapers, no radio. Someone wants to believe the war is ending, and that hope turns into rumors, which turn into beliefs that get people killed!”
I watched his smile fade with every harsh word, but this might be his last chance to finally accept the truth and escape this horrid place. Which was why it hurt so terribly when he replied, “We know our fate. We’ve accepted it.”
Anger rose within me above the pain. He was like a man agreeing to drown simply because someone had pushed him in the water. But as much as I wanted to yell at them or shake them back to their senses, all I could do was lower my voice and lean in to my parents, fully aware that my mother was tracing her finger along the folds of the thin sheet below her, only marginally listening.
And as cruel as it was to tell them the truth of what was happening outside the ghetto, knowing it would shatter any hopes of Yitzchak being alive, I needed them to fight for their own lives now. “You must get out now, or the same thing will happen to you that happened to Yitz and Sara. Do you still have the identification papers I brought you a few months ago?”
“We have them, Chaya, but they’re no good to us.”
“Staying here is no good. You know how things will end if you stay, Papa. You must see that by now!”
“The ghettos are safer,” Mama said, still distant. “Out there we were harassed, beaten. Here, at least we are alone with our own people.”
I turned to my father. “Papa, please—”
“Chaya, enough. It’s more than your mother can take.”
His words were gentle, but I didn’t want a gentle voice now. I wanted him to be defiant, bold. I wanted my parents to fight for their lives as hard as I was fighting.
Suddenly, I wasn’t here as a member of the resistance, or even as a daughter obligated to help her family. I was their little bird again, frightened and lost, desperate to be held in my parents’ arms as they whispered words of comfort and promised to make everything better. I was their child, and I still needed them. Why couldn’t they want to live for my sake?
I stifled my tears, but Mama had already lain down on her bed, evidently too tired to continue talking. Papa suggested it might be better if I left and let her sleep. I patted her shoulder and heard her murmur my name. I knew she loved me, just as I would always love her. But looking at her, I silently vowed again never to quit fighting, never to accept defeat. And always to remember that every act of resistance mattered.
Papa walked me to the bedroom door, and after assuring that we were alone, he whispered, “I heard of some Krakow Jews who attacked the Germans at the end of last year, at a café in town. Were you part
of that?”
I looked him in the eye, not much different from the way I looked at that Nazi. And I lied to him as fluently as I had at the gates. “Of course not, Papa.”
“The Jews were part of that scout group you used to belong to, Akiva. You’re not still with them, I hope?” His eyes focused on mine, and for a brief moment he was the stern, protective father I’d always known.
For that one moment.
Then my mother called out and in his distraction, I repeated, “Of course not, Papa.”
He should have known I was lying, but he probably needed to believe me. He nodded, assuring himself that his little girl wasn’t capable of what had happened at the Cyganeria Café.
Then he gave me a hug, holding tight as if this would be our last time together. I didn’t know if that was because of what was coming for him, or for me, but whichever it was, when I said good-bye it felt final. My heart tore all over again, but I had to keep going.
Tomorrow morning, I would meet my contact within the resistance, to hear what Akiva asked of me now. Quite possibly, it would be a mission from which I was not expected to return.
Of course, I was almost never expected to return from any mission, and so far, I always had. Maybe there was only a little hope, but any hope at all was more than I ever dared ask for.
February 15, 1943
Old Town, Krakow
The meeting place was at the base of the ruined statue of Adam Mickiewicz in Krakow’s Old Town district. This was where we laid the wreath the night we attacked the Cyganeria Café nearly two months ago. I wondered how many Poles saw the wreath before it was removed.
Old Town today was nothing like the square where I used to play as a child. Now enormous red flags with black swastikas hung from every balcony and topped every flagpole. The trumpeter who used to play the first notes of the Polish anthem every hour from St. Mary’s Church had been silenced. The square was thick with the usual shoppers and businessmen, but now they cautiously mixed with Nazis and other German officials. I never stared, but I always looked.
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