I thanked the man, and we walked in the only direction we had left. Away from him, away from the other officers behind us. And deeper into a ghetto where we had nothing left to offer.
“Where can we possibly go now?” Esther whispered.
“Come with me.” A boy near our own age stepped from the shadows. He looked a little like I remembered my brother, Yitzchak, with a thick tousle of dark hair and a pleasant smile. “My name is Avraham. You belong with us.”
February 16, 1943
Lodz Ghetto
Esther tugged at my arm, warning against following this complete stranger. But I’d have followed nearly anyone in that moment if it got us off the street. Besides, my instincts about people were usually reliable, and everything within me suggested he could be trusted. There was something in his eyes when he smiled, in the friendly tone of his voice. I immediately liked him.
But Esther and I hadn’t come to make friends. We were looking for someone who could create a resistance cell. Was he that kind of person? If we went with him, maybe we’d find out.
With Esther gripping my forearm, we followed Avraham into a dark building with six heavy doors for apartments on the main floor and a wooden staircase up the back. The mottled plaster and dingy paint didn’t bother me, but the smell did. It reeked of death in here, an odor that persisted despite the horrible draft. Perhaps the draft brought the smell in, for I’d also noticed it outside, carried like smoke on the breeze.
“This building is scary,” Esther whispered to me.
Avraham grinned, having overheard. “It is, which keeps our enemies out.”
In a strange way, that made perfect sense, though I wasn’t sure it made Esther feel any better.
“Do you live in here?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a cough.
He shrugged back at her. “The fact that we live is most important.”
“We?” I asked. “Your family?”
“No.” He stopped walking to look me directly in the eyes. “Not anymore.” A beat passed, maybe only a second, but it felt like hours before he smiled again, with more effort this time. “Two of my friends are upstairs.”
It could be the start of a cell, if they were interested and capable. Not everyone was.
What would it take to spread the resistance here? Did Avraham have connections? Could he get money?
Most of all, would he be willing to fight? To steal at every opportunity, attack when possible … and kill if necessary? Even a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of any of that.
Avraham began leading us upstairs, occasionally skipping a stair that looked weak in the center. Esther and I did too.
“We saw you hiding and knew you weren’t from Lodz,” Avraham said. “Then we heard the shots and figured you two were in trouble.”
“If you saw us, then surely you’ve seen others come through here … like us.”
Other resistance fighters, that’s what I meant. But I didn’t want to be the first to say the words, just to be safe.
Avraham glanced back. “No Jews come into Lodz anymore. They only leave.”
“How long?” Esther avoided my eyes as she spoke. “How long has it been since any large groups were brought in?”
He considered that a moment. “Not since early last year.”
“Are you sure?” She sounded distressed, and her whole body seemed to deflate a little.
“I’m sure. No one comes, and eventually we’ll all leave, either on the trains or in the wagons that collect the dead.”
I caught up to him on the steps. “It doesn’t have to happen to you. There are options—”
“I know.” His brisk nod seemed strangely confident, given the situation. “But we don’t need them.”
I furrowed my brows, confused by his statement. When we had a chance to talk in private, I’d ask what he meant.
The final flight of stairs was missing every other slat. Avraham grinned back at us and demonstrated how to hold on to the railing for balance as we made the steep climb.
“It’s scary at first,” he said, offering me a hand. “But once you’re used to it, it’s kind of fun.”
My idea of fun didn’t involve slipping on a step and falling through to the stairway below, but Esther nimbly jumped from stair to stair, even though her legs were shorter than mine.
The top floor of the building had a dusting of snow from visible holes in the ceiling, and the draft was brutally cold. The layout was similar to the floors below, except only one apartment door still remained in its frame. The rest were missing. When we hesitated, Avraham opened the door and widened it for us to look inside. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re safer in here than out.”
Don’t worry? What a ridiculous phrase these days.
We walked inside and I immediately noticed the other teenagers he’d mentioned, a boy and a girl, huddled next to each other in blankets. Their noses were red and they were shivering; their fireplace was empty.
Remnants of several families who had once filled this apartment were apparent—clothes left behind, someone’s teapot, a set of dusty books. Lives had been abandoned here, just as this room had been abandoned. I wouldn’t ask what happened to the people who lived here because I already knew the answer. I just hoped they had been strangers to these teens.
Avraham introduced us to Sara, who shared my sister’s name but nothing of her appearance: She had a closely shaved head and a wary expression that likely knew terrors about this war that I hoped I never would. The boy, Henryk, had nice eyes. Or would have had nice eyes, before the war. They were hollow now, like what I’d seen in my mother’s eyes for far too long. I could only guess at the horrors he’d seen.
“I wish we had something to offer you to eat,” Avraham said, sitting cross-legged beside Henryk. A lump formed in my chest. No, I wished we had food for them. We owed them that much.
“We’re grateful to be here,” I said as we sat, although I didn’t like that we were facing away from the door or that we were on the third floor of this apartment building. If it became necessary to escape, the front window wasn’t an option. I should have checked for a fire escape before we came in the building, but I’d been in too much of a hurry to get off the streets. That was a stupid mistake. “We don’t need anything,” I added.
“The greater our need, the nearer our God, no?” Sara asked.
“And God is very near now,” Henryk said with a smile.
Or rather, he was probably very near to God. My fingers could have fit around his wrist, and I saw every bone in his face, the skin a thin sheath that had become slightly translucent. His ragged clothes hung with such slack on his body that another person could have shared the extra space. He was clearly starving, dying a little bit more each day. All of them were dying.
Sara nodded at me. “Are you Polish?”
“No.” Then I saw where her eyes were focused, on my Catholic cross necklace. In all the commotion of getting in here, I’d forgotten to take it off. I fumbled to unfasten it and shoved it in my pocket. “I’m Jewish, the same as you.”
“You may be Jewish,” Henryk said. “But you’re different.”
I took a deep breath, then leaned in. “We’re couriers for the resistance.” Seeing no visible response, I continued, “We can get things into the ghettos that people need. Or we can get people out of the ghettos if that’s what they need more.”
“You’re too late,” Sara said, a bitter tone in her voice. “Where were you last fall?”
I shook my head. “What happened last fall?”
The teens looked at each other, nobody wanting to speak first. Esther filled in the silence. “We heard that something happened to the children here. Please tell me they didn’t …”
Her voice trailed off, and from the heavy silence that fell on the group, I knew she shouldn’t have asked. Henryk finally mumbled, “What is it the invaders like to tell us? Arbeit Macht Frei.”
German for “Work will make you free.” I’d h
eard that those same words stood over the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a place that existed for far darker reasons than forced labor.
“Our Judenrat believes work is the key to our survival,” Avraham said. “So when the Nazis demand a deportation, anyone who can’t work has to go.”
Henryk picked up the story. “The elderly, the sick, the disabled were turned over to the Nazis first. We all lost loved ones then, and we still mourn for them. But something worse was coming. Last September, the Nazis wanted another deportation.”
My gut twisted, wishing they wouldn’t continue the story. I already knew how it would end, and that was hard enough. But once they said the words, I’d have to hear them over and over in my head. I couldn’t stand that.
But Sara said, “The Judenrat gathered all the parents together in the square and insisted that they hand over their children. Sacrifice the innocent so that the parents might survive. Naturally, the parents objected, but …” Her voice broke.
“But they took the children anyway,” Esther mumbled, sealing the words in my memory.
“All of them,” Henryk said. “The rest of us are still alive only because we let them take the children.”
Another silence followed, and for the first time since becoming a courier, I had no idea what to do or say. My sister’s face entered my mind, and no matter how hard I tried to erase it just to be able to breathe again, I could not. Every ghetto I’d entered could describe their individual children who had been taken away since the invasion, but I’d never been to any place where they all were the chosen sacrifice, offered up so that the parents might live. I thought again of my mother, how deeply it had wounded her to lose two of her children. I imagined that same thing had happened to every mother in the Lodz Ghetto on the day their little ones were forced from their arms.
Esther finally broke the silence. “If you want revenge on the Germans, there are ways to do that. Sabotage, for example, maybe in the jobs you do here.”
Avraham and Henryk exchanged another look, but Sara only leaned forward. “We will not work for the enemy, not to survive and not if we die.”
I arched a brow. “You won’t work?”
“That’s why you’re hiding here,” Esther said. “You don’t want anyone to know.”
“They know,” Avraham said. “It’s only a matter of time until they come for us.”
Henryk tilted his head upward. “We’ve given our lives to God. Whatever happens to us now is all right.”
I blinked hard. “What is that supposed to mean? How can that be all right?”
“We’re ready for whatever comes,” Avraham added. “We’re at peace with our decision.”
“At peace?” I nearly leapt from my skin. “We are in a war!”
“Our governments are at war.”
“No, the Führer of Germany has declared war on you and me, on all of us!” I sat up straight, determined to make them hear me. “We can get you out of here.”
Avraham frowned. “Why?”
“Why?” I struggled to understand such an obvious question. “To give yourself the chance to live!”
“We want to live, of course. But that is in God’s hands.”
I shook my head, as hard as I wanted to shake him. “Just because God allows something to happen does not mean He wants it to happen!”
Sara touched my arm, two fingers only, again sparking a memory of my little sister. “If we escape, if we hide or fight, how does that honor God?”
“Hasn’t He commanded us to choose life?” I asked. “If you stay here, you are choosing death.”
“No, we’re choosing faith,” Avraham said. “The highest honor we can give God is to die in His name.”
“Or fight in His name,” I countered.
That was the wrong thing to say. Sara leaned forward. “Hiding from the soldiers is one thing. Defending one’s life in the moment is allowed. But killing them is different. That’s murder!”
I paused, wondering again how many Nazis I killed the night we attacked the Cyganeria Café. Or about the man I shot in that train yard. Were those murders, or a defense of innocent Jews?
Esther took over. “Chaya and I believe that God wants us to save ourselves. And we’ll save you, if you’ll come with us.”
The group stared back at us like we were speaking a foreign tongue, and maybe we were. Finally, Avraham said, “I’m sorry, but we cannot leave. Faith will sustain us.”
I hoped that worked, because they certainly weren’t being sustained by food or fuel, or even the comfort of their families.
“You will die here,” I said. “Avraham, listen to me, you will—”
“And when we do, we will take our place in history among God’s chosen people,” he replied. “We will die with honor.”
His words echoed in my ears.
My parents would die from fear, and their love for each other.
Others would die from a stubborn refusal to see the truth.
The teens in this apartment would die for God, to honor Him.
But they all would die.
And there was nothing I could do about any of it.
Esther and I whispered about it later that night as we lay beside each other in a corner of the apartment while the others slept. “You were too hard on them,” she said.
“Because they’ve given up!” I replied.
“No, Chaya. As much as the Nazis want to take our lives, they want to take our faith too. We fight for one, Avraham’s friends fight for the other.”
“What good is faith if you’re dead?”
“What good is life without faith?” A soft sigh escaped her lips, but she remained more patient with me than I ever was with her. “We’ll all die one day—no one escapes that fate. Our only decision is how we live before that day comes. Our path requires courage, but so does theirs. Both paths are ways to resist.”
“What was your path?” I asked Esther. “Where were you before you came to Krakow?”
In the quiet darkness, I could almost hear the moment her breath lodged in her throat before she stammered, “It’s … complicated.”
“I’ve got time to listen.”
But after a long pause, all she said was “Good night, Chaya.”
February 16, 1943
Lodz Ghetto
Sometime in the middle of the night, shots were fired in the street. I bolted upright, immediately wide awake, as were Esther and the other teens of this apartment. Sara must have been acting as a lookout while we slept, for she burst into the room and shut the door behind her. “It’s a raid!”
Her eyes shifted to me and something pinched in my chest. They had to be looking for me and Esther. Either the szmalcownik who took my sack turned it in, or the OD reported us. Patrolling soldiers would have found the gap beneath the fence where we entered the ghetto. They knew we were here, somewhere.
“We need to leave the ghetto,” I said, looking around the room. “Help us.”
“There are no ways out,” Avraham said. “It’s amazing you got in, but they’ll be even more vigilant now at the gates.”
“There’s always a way out,” I insisted. “Weak places where the wood has decayed or the brick has been chipped away. Gaps where the children sneak in and out to smuggle food, or—”
“Lodz doesn’t have those places anymore. That’s why it’s amazing you’re here. There’s no smuggling in Lodz, no sneaking. There are no holes.”
More shots were fired out in the street. If we could not escape, then we had to hide, but I wouldn’t ask Avraham for help. His punishment for hiding us would extend beyond cruelty.
While Esther scrambled to put her boots back on, I asked, “Is there any way out of this apartment other than the door?”
“There’s a fire escape, out the back window,” Sara offered.
“I’ll show them.” Henryk led us out of the apartment, into the hallway, across a rickety floor, and around a corner. At the end of that hallway, I lifted the back window to
access the fire escape. He whispered, “I know a way out of the ghetto, but it will be very dangerous.”
“Where?”
“There’s a munitions factory a few blocks from here, on the south end of the ghetto. If you can find a way into the basement, a window straight ahead will take you outside the ghetto walls.”
“Come with us,” I offered. “Please. If two of us can get out, then three of us can get out.”
His brows pressed together as if he was considering my words. I felt desperate for him to accept my offer, for there to have been one good thing about us coming here. But then he glanced back at the apartment where his other friends remained. “No, I—”
“God expects us to have faith.” I wasn’t giving up yet. “But doesn’t He also expect us to act according to our faith?”
Footsteps pounded the floor below us. They were coming up the stairs.
“That’s what I’m doing,” Henryk whispered. “Go. I’ll distract them for as long as I can.”
Esther went out the window first and I followed, but Henryk hadn’t yet shut the window before a bullet caught him from behind. He fell forward across the windowsill, and I pulled Esther with me against the building’s wall, where we wouldn’t be seen. She had covered her mouth with her hands to keep from screaming.
“Don’t look,” I whispered, trying to block her view from Henryk’s still body. A second later, we heard Avraham’s apartment door being forced open, banging against the back wall. Heavy footsteps followed.
“No,” Esther whispered. “Chaya, no.”
The words had barely fallen from her lips when Avraham and Sara shouted, “Shema Yisrael!” The first two words of our daily prayer, meaning “Hear, O Israel.” They got no further before gunfire echoed in the apartment.
I let out a silent scream of my own, pain rippling through me. Avraham, Sara, and Henryk had taken those bullets as proof of their devotion to God, and so that we could escape.
I hoped God would hear their words. I certainly heard them. I just didn’t understand them anymore.
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