Resistance

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

  Esther was unconscious when they carried her to the truck, or I thought she was. I hoped she’d remain that way for some time. They wouldn’t do anything to her until she was awake. Did she know that? Would she think to fake sleep if she did wake up?

  I needed to keep myself awake. We couldn’t have slept for more than an hour or two since we first entered that barn. I was exhausted, moving as quickly as I could to follow the tire tracks and wearing out even faster with the bags on my shoulders. They seemed to get heavier with each step.

  Inside my head, a voice whispered to drop the bags, but I couldn’t allow myself to do that. Whether I found Esther or not, I still had to go to Warsaw.

  That thought burrowed into me, a new weight that proved heavier than ten bags combined. If I couldn’t find Esther, there would come a point when I would have to refocus on the mission and get to Warsaw.

  I didn’t think I’d be capable of that. Never knowing what happened to Yitzchak had hollowed out my parents’ lives. Mine too, in many ways. I couldn’t wonder about Esther too. I would not leave without her.

  As I feared, after about ten kilometers, the truck turned onto a main road and the tracks quickly faded. No, this wasn’t good. What was happening to Esther now? I knew too many of the possibilities, each one worse than the last.

  I had to think. I had to control my scattered emotions and just think.

  My options on the main road were to go left, toward Warsaw, or right. If they were taking her to Warsaw, I’d never find her again. If the truck went right, I had a chance.

  I walked to the right, solely because I needed the truck to have turned that way. I knew that was foolish reasoning. But I had nothing else left.

  Eventually, a small town rose ahead but I couldn’t find a sign to tell me its name. I’d never been here, and I wasn’t aware of any ghettos nearby. Likely, any Jews who’d once lived here were deported to larger cities long ago. I noticed a small military presence, perhaps a single company of soldiers, but nothing that would ordinarily concern me.

  However, this was hardly an ordinary time for me, starting with the German knapsack and ending with Esther’s overstuffed shoulder bag, both of which practically screamed for me to be stopped and searched. I couldn’t carry these through town.

  So before entering, I cleared a spot of snow in the field and put both bags on the ground. Then I rolled enough snow to create the base of a wide snowman. I added a snowball trunk and head and even put two pebbles in place for eyes. It cost me a half hour to build it, but if it worked, it was time well spent.

  Unless it became the reason I never found Esther. Maybe she was a half hour farther from here by now.

  Keeping hold of my last vestiges of hope, I walked on, trying my best to fit in. Trying to look like I wasn’t in a full-fledged panic over what could be happening to Esther right now, if she was even still alive.

  The Gestapo frequently took over local jails for its own use, and jails were often located in the center of a small town like this, so that was the direction I took. I saw soldiers here and there, but the townspeople were going about their business, so I did too. I knew this routine. I’d done this a hundred times.

  But it had never felt like this before, like I was a walking advertisement for the resistance movement. Every step I took, every turn of my head, every false smile seemed to scream my true identity.

  I had to stay calm. I had to do better than this. For Esther’s sake. For my own sake.

  Several Nazi Kübelwagens were parked all over the city, but I was looking for a truck, and I began to notice how many of them were here too. How could I know which one carried her away? I couldn’t know. Even if I’d seen it, they all looked alike.

  “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz!”

  It took a moment to realize the young soldier was speaking to me, telling me his heart is mine. If only he knew how literally I believed that. I turned and offered a brief wave, nothing flirtatious, but friendly enough for him to let me pass without thinking I was interested.

  But it didn’t work this time. He ordered me to stop, and I did, immediately readying my papers for his inspection.

  “You don’t need those,” he said, brushing them away. “What’s your name?”

  “Helena Nowak.”

  “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  My smile was tepid and I began walking again, thoroughly bothered that he followed alongside. “I don’t leave home very often.”

  “Well, I’m glad you left it today. I’ve just finished with my duties.”

  How nice for him.

  “Perhaps we can get a coffee together, no?”

  No. Still walking, I said, “I’ve got some shopping to do, then I’m expected back at home to help with chores.”

  “I can walk you to the shops. I’ll be good company.”

  On a normal day, I could get rid of this boy like he was dust to be wiped from a shelf. But I was exhausted, cold from being out in this wintery weather for so many days, and increasingly worried about Esther. I was also out of excuses. All I could think of was to say, “I was headed to the town square.”

  He took that as permission to come along and fell in beside me, thinking he’d set himself up on some kind of date. Later in his barracks, he’d brag to his bunkmates about the pretty Polish girl who likes him.

  If only he knew.

  “I started out at the bottom, but I’m working hard to get noticed. I might be a Soldat today, but one day, I’ll lead this army.”

  “You and Hitler together.” I smiled sideways at him, mostly at the idea of this ignorant schlump aspiring to lead anything more complicated than a line of schoolchildren out to play.

  Perhaps my joke was lost in translation because he only nodded. “Perhaps not today. But watch me tomorrow, and the day after that. You’ll see.”

  I wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t be here tomorrow. By then, I’d have to be as far from this place as possible. With or without Esther.

  I couldn’t leave without Esther.

  I might have to leave without Esther.

  My breath became shallow, but I tried to force that away before he noticed.

  “What are your duties?” I didn’t care how he answered, but as always, the conversation needed to be about him, not me.

  “If a report comes in about a person in hiding—a Jew or Gypsy or partisan, perhaps—I’m part of the team to go and find them.”

  “You’re with the Gestapo?” My heart pounded, but I couldn’t let my sudden interest in his work show. I casually threw out a hand and hoped he didn’t notice the sweat on my palm. “There can’t be many places to hide around here.”

  “You’d be surprised. Just last night, we found a Jewish girl who’d been hiding in a barn. Tiny little thing near your age, I’d guess, like a scared kitten. We were all surprised she’d managed to hide this long.”

  It occurred to me that the woman who reported us surely had mentioned two girls, one with my description. If she had told them that I was Polish, hopefully the Gestapo wouldn’t be as interested in finding me.

  Or maybe this ambitious young man suspected that I was the second girl and was hoping to trap me.

  Swallowing the new wave of panic, I asked, “What happens to those you find?”

  He pointed to a building down the street. “We keep them there until we can ship them to a labor camp. But you’re in no danger. The cells are well guarded.”

  My gut twisted. Of course they were. How could I possibly get Esther out?

  He continued, “We had to make an exception for the girl from last night, though. She claims to have typhus. So we couldn’t keep her in the cell with the others.”

  “Oh?” It was nearly impossible to hide the concern in my voice. “What was done with her?”

  “For now, we’ve got her tied up in back like a dog.” He chuckled until he realized I was not. “We’ll bring a doctor in from the town to examine her. If she’s only pretending to be sick, then we’ll return her for questio
ning—”

  “Questioning? Why?”

  “My superiors believe she knows more than she’s telling. Why else would she refuse to give us any information, even her name?”

  “And if she is sick?”

  He shrugged again. “Obviously, we can’t allow disease to spread. You understand, I’m sure.”

  I did understand. One way or another, Esther was going to be killed.

  February 20, 1943

  Skierniewice

  I got rid of the young soldier only when I ducked into a shop that sold women’s undergarments, explaining I was shopping for my mother. His face turned a hundred shades of red.

  “I may be in here for some time,” I explained, “but perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow, or the day after that.” Or when it rained pigs.

  He promised to watch for me, and I definitely watched him from the corner shop window until I was sure he was gone. I asked the store clerk for directions to find the town doctor and then hurried that way.

  Except when I arrived at his office, breathless from running and ready to offer any bribe necessary to get a quarantine order for Esther, his nurse informed me that he was out on visits on behalf of the “occupiers.”

  That word caught my attention. A Nazi-friendly office would never refer to them that way. I didn’t know if she was speaking for herself, or if that was also the way the doctor thought of the soldiers, but it gave me a glimmer of hope. Was there any chance he’d find a way to get Esther out?

  I couldn’t risk asking, but it didn’t matter anyway because the nurse informed me the doctor wasn’t expected back in the office for several hours. When it would be too late for Esther. I thanked the nurse and retraced my steps back to the Gestapo building the young soldier had pointed out to me.

  It was right on the road, which ordinarily would have allowed me to study it from the window of a small café across the square, except that as the day wore on, more and more military vehicles parked between us.

  If I had a grenade, I could make quick work of many of those soldiers, but I doubted I’d actually use it. Not if it endangered any of the prisoners inside. Or Esther, in the back.

  After another hour of watching, a man exited the building with a doctor’s bag. I immediately left the café and hurried to catch up with him.

  “Doctor!”

  He turned, wearing a courteous smile, grandfatherly wrinkles, and eyes that struck me as sincere. “Yes?”

  I’d rehearsed in my mind what I was going to say, but now that I was looking at him, the larger lies vanished. Instead, I said, “There’s a prisoner inside … a girl I know. I think she’s out back.”

  His expression softened. “A friend?”

  “What can I do for her?”

  He sighed. “I’m afraid there’s nothing any of us can do, for her or for any of the people caught up in these atrocities. I wrapped her wrist—”

  “Why?”

  “It looks fractured, but I can’t be sure. And I told them that while she has some sort of illness, it’s not typhus, and that I’d return tomorrow to check on her. My hope is that it will buy her some time, but that’s all I can do. Frankly, if they leave her outside tonight, by morning she truly will be sick, or dead from exposure.”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, unsteady and unsure of what to do. Desperate and quickly running out of time, I had to risk more than I usually ever would. “There must be a reason to quarantine her, sir, any reason.”

  He shook his head. “I’d need evidence.”

  “Then find evidence, please. Fake it if you have to.” He started to walk away, but I touched his arm. “I’ll pay you, sir. Whatever amount you ask.”

  He stopped, his expression full of sympathy, but his tone was uncompromising. “What happens to me when they discover the truth? I’m sorry for what happened to your friend, but take my advice and stay out of it, or I’ll be treating you in there next.”

  I quietly thanked him, then returned to the café. My hope was to be alone with my thoughts there, but instead, the café was beginning to fill with soldiers who were off duty after a change in shifts.

  I sat among them, ignoring their flirtatious calls to join their tables, and trying to keep my emotions in check. Was the man who broke Esther’s wrist in here? Because none of these soldiers seemed to feel any guilt for having done such a cruel thing.

  Instead, they reclined in their chairs, laughing as they tossed around a pack of matches for everyone to light up their cigarettes.

  The pack eventually fell onto the floor near me. It looked empty, but I’d been keeping count. If they started with a full pack, there were two matches left. I put my foot over it, then pretended to drop my gloves. When I picked them up, the matchbook came with it, and I left. My cup of coffee also disappeared with me, but I hoped the café owners wouldn’t notice my theft.

  Once I was alone again, I checked the matchbook and rolled my eyes. My counting was off by one. Only a single match remained. I’d have to put it to good use, testing a theory I’d overheard Jakub and Rubin discussing months ago in planning one of our raids.

  Three jeeps and two trucks were parked in a line on the road between the town square and the Gestapo building. Soon there would be fewer of them.

  I had one last purchase to make, a small kitchen knife from a market in the minutes before it closed for curfew. And as I walked back, I noticed a bicycle casually left in front of an apartment.

  I stared at it a moment, wondering whose it was. Did a mother use it to get to work each day, her only way to feed her family? Was it a schoolboy’s, one of the lucky few to still be getting an education? Or did it belong to a Nazi sympathizer? Did its owner laugh when he heard rumors of what was happening to my people, or was he the kind to hide someone in his home?

  Whoever he was, he had just donated this bicycle to the cause of the resistance. May God bless him for his generosity, however unintended.

  Then I waited until dark, until the streets were quiet. Until my heart was about to burst with worry. Two soldiers patrolled the front of the Gestapo building, but I was already in place beneath one of the trucks. I nicked the fuel line, though not much because I didn’t want them to hear the gas dripping into the coffee cup. When it was full, I scooted out from beneath the truck, leaving a small trail of gasoline behind, the thinnest line I could manage with my cold, nearly numb hands. That got me as far as the second truck, farther from the Gestapo station, where I repeated the same action until I was at the jeep with a full cup of fuel. I had to leave the relative safety of the vehicles then, and the same moon that I was grateful for last night now offered far more light than I wished it did.

  I kept to a low crouch and moved slowly, though I had to watch for the soldiers, so my thin line of fuel was getting poured out too fast. It’d run out long before I was far enough away from them. I’d have to move quickly.

  When the last of the fuel was gone, I pulled out the matchbook. The slight breeze in the air was another problem. I had hoped to light the match and toss it down but now I had to get close to the gas with the flame. This was incredibly foolish, impossibly dangerous. I could just as easily blow myself up.

  Using my body to guard against the wind, I lit the match and immediately used it to light the book itself. As soon as the cardboard shell was burning, I threw it onto the fuel.

  Everything happened in mere seconds. The line flared up, then traveled like lightning to the truck, where the fuel had been collecting. It immediately ignited a booming fire that popped the truck’s hood open and set the engine aflame. Heat rushed back at me just as quickly, fierce enough to be felt even with my arms in front of my face. The line of fire continued almost instantly to the second and third trucks, where the fuel had been collecting the longest. The last truck exploded into the air with a booming sound that would be heard for kilometers around.

  I didn’t see it land, because the explosion knocked me to the ground, and I immediately launched back onto my feet, racing away from
the crime scene. I tried keeping my body directly in line with the flames, which I hoped would prevent the soldiers from seeing me, but it probably wasn’t necessary. The entire square was in commotion with soldiers and civilians rushing from their shops and buildings, bumping into one another in their rush to get away from whatever happened next.

  I reached an alleyway near the café and followed it to a street that I’d already explored earlier. I knew the route to the back of the Gestapo building: a high-fenced yard where I hoped Esther was still being kept.

  Soldiers were shouting and a siren was going off in the town, which helped me more than the Nazis could have known. Moreover, I heard a second explosion. The fire must be spreading. Good.

  I was prepared for the tall brick fence back here too. A tree on this side had long tentacle-like branches that would carry me into the yard. I scaled up the trunk and shinnied out across one of the thick lower branches, momentarily reminded of Esther’s story about the tree in the school yard. Then I saw her, and my heart sank.

  Esther hadn’t noticed me yet, though I certainly took in her disheveled appearance. The dark bruise on one side of her face. Her bandaged wrist. How very small she looked against the tree. Her attention was focused on the wailing sirens and shouting soldiers. A third explosion went off in the street, giving me a great amount of satisfaction. I hadn’t expected the plan to work so well. Perhaps the trucks contained some fire-sensitive equipment.

  When I dropped into the yard and called Esther’s name, she jumped, and shook her head in disapproval. “Chaya? Did you … out there, did you do that?”

  Both arms were tied around the tree’s trunk, which must have caused her wrist considerable pain. Up close, I noticed the bruise was even worse than it appeared from a distance. There was a cut on her cheek too, and other smaller bruises on her neck and probably elsewhere that I couldn’t see. Without a word, I used my knife to cut through the ropes and then led her by her good hand back toward the wall.