The Good Doctor of Warsaw

by Elisabeth Gifford

  His head as bald as an egg, a bow-tie and a well-tailored suit over his bulky torso, Czerniakow adjusts his round spectacles as he sees Korczak come into his office.

  ‘At last, a ray of sunshine in a bleak day.’

  ‘I’ve been called many things, but never that. But now here’s a puzzle. What are all these sections of wall for? Yet more madness?’

  ‘All I know about them is that the Jewish Council has had to pay for them and supply the labour.’

  ‘Do you think it’s possible that they intend to move us all into a Jewish district in Warsaw? They have a Jewish ghetto in Lublin now.’

  ‘Warsaw is a completely different situation. Lublin’s now part of the German Reich and subject to their jurisdiction while Warsaw is part of the German Generalgouvernement, and I’ve been assured that there are no plans for a ghetto here. Some Jewish districts possibly, but not a segregated ghetto. What is bothering me at the moment, however, is this situation with all our Jewish children forbidden to go to school. Mind you, the Poles are not faring much better, having to leave education at ten.’

  Czerniakow taught for many years in Warsaw’s schools before being elected to the senate and the Jewish Council. Like Korczak his heart remains with the children and their welfare.

  ‘We are teaching the children at home now. And I might tell you about how Stefa and I have been giving lectures at the young people’s commune on Dzielna Street, helping them set up an underground school. They have some excellent young people training to teach.’

  ‘Ah, Yitzhak Zuckerman and his friends at the Dror commune. I know nothing of that, of course.’ Czerniakow leans back in his chair, crosses large workman’s hands across his suit jacket. His black eyebrows and thick lashes hint at how he once looked as a student, before middle age rendered him portly and bald. ‘Strange how history repeats itself. Remember dodging the Tsar’s police in the days of the underground university, never holding classes in the same place twice it seemed?’

  ‘And we both know the inside of Pawiak prison. Of course, it’s what the young people really want to hear about, the days of the flying university.’

  ‘Well, just remember we’re not so young any more, my friend.’ Czerniakow looks down at the armband with its blue Star of David fastened around his meaty forearm, then at Korczak’s coat sleeves bare of any band. ‘You know the risks you’re taking, going round town like that.’

  Korczak looks at him sternly from over his wire-rimmed glasses, speaks quietly. ‘And let the children see me treat the Star of David as a badge of shame? Never.’

  As summer turns to autumn the sections of wall grow taller, but since nothing further happens people get used to seeing them, then almost forget about them altogether.

  It’s Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, a day of forgiveness and new beginnings. Korczak likes to take the children to the great synagogue to hear the poetry and faith of their tradition.

  But later that day, as the children gather for the celebratory main meal in the hall, a van with a loudspeaker blares past. It takes a while to make out the message, then absorb the meaning. All Jews must move into a designated district. One of the teachers runs out and brings in a copy of the afternoon paper.

  Stefa hurries over to study it with Korczak while the children continue eating, the room buzzing with a hum of conversation. She looks around the crowded hall, fifty new orphans since the siege. A deep crease between Stefa’s eyes, new lines across her forehead.

  They study the newspaper’s map. The borders of the ghetto are inked over the map of Warsaw, a jagged black line scored around the main Jewish areas like pieces of a puzzle that can be excised from the city’s heart.

  ‘And we’re outside the ghetto.’ Stefa shakes her head. ‘Surely they won’t make the children leave their home.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ says Korczak grimly, pulling on his coat. He winds a muffler around his neck to hide the military braiding on his jacket collar.

  He’s thinking of the kindness of the German officer who helped them spend the summer in Little Rose, but this time Korczak’s charm falls on stony ground.

  For the next two weeks, Warsaw is in an uproar as Polish families move out of the ghetto area and Jewish families move in, everyone trying to make exchanges. Businesses are lost, bribes change hands and there are deals and swindles from Sienna Street to Muranow. And in the meantime, the Germans continue to strip the best Jewish apartments of anything that takes their fancy, evicting entire families so they can move themselves into the best apartments around Theatre Square and St John’s Cathedral, places where the architecture has a suitably Germanic feel.

  Far away, pinned up on the wall of an architect’s bureau in the German Reich, there’s a new blueprint for Warsaw, for a provincial German town of a few thousand people, all Jewish and Polish architecture erased.

  *

  He wanted to make it cheerful, a circus troupe on the move with music and ribbons and drums, but there hasn’t been time in the end. The children line up in twos in the courtyard wearing their winter coats and good shoes, carrying what they can – everything that Korczak thinks will be essential inside the ghetto, pots of flowers, pictures, toys, books. There’s a cold damp soaking through to the bone.

  Korczak takes out the new orphanage flag. On one side is a blue six-pointed star on a pennant of white silk, for the children to carry proudly. He still refuses to wear the obligatory armband, the Star of David treated like a symbol of shame. At least the children are not expected to wear the armband, there’s that mercy.

  On the reverse side of the pennant is a green silk chestnut leaf.

  ‘To remind us of the tree in our garden. To remind us of home,’ Korczak tells the children.

  Sara pulls his sleeve. ‘And Pan Doctor, it’s like little King Matt’s flag, in your storybook.’

  He smiles and nods. ‘You are right, Sara, clever girl. You see, everyone needs to try to make the world a better place, just like little King Matt, and even if it doesn’t work out as well as we hope to begin with, we must never stop trying.’

  He hands the flag to Erwin with instructions to carry it high and straight.

  Now old Zalewski stands in the front yard saying goodbye to the children, his blunt soldier’s face cut and swollen, a split lip. The day before, Zalewski applied to Gestapo headquarters for permission to go with the children into the ghetto.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s against the law for a Pole to work for Jews?’ the Gestapo officer screamed at him.

  ‘But the children are my family,’ Zalewski protested before the first blows fell on his head.

  One by one, a hundred children hug the old couple, their grandparents. Mrs Zalewski dabs at her eyes every so often with her apron.

  ‘And drive that cart carefully,’ Zalewski tells Henryk Sztokman gruffly. He hobbles over to check the ropes on the tarpaulin. ‘That’s four hundred pounds of potatoes there to last the winter.’ He takes his hand away from the horse reluctantly.

  At the front Erwin holds high the green flag of King Matt and the Star of David. The children file out through the gate, passing through the fragile fog of their breath in the cold air. Someone tries to sing, but it’s too sad and the song dies out.

  Korczak won’t look back, but Stefa glances one more time at the gracious white building where they have lived for almost twenty years, at the little oriel casement in the roof where he wrote each afternoon, at the generous windows that flood the house with light. How often had she heard visitors tell her that it looked more like a mansion for someone important than a children’s home?

  ‘This is a house for important people,’ Stefa would always remind them.

  They walk quietly along Krochmalna Street through the chill air, feet shushing against the wet cobbles.

  At the ghetto entrance on Chlodna Street the children wait quietly while their papers are checked. They look up at the ten-feet-high mesh gates with interest, at the German guards, at the walls topped with spark
ling broken glass that stretch away on each side. A German guard, a long coat buttoned over his thick middle, circles the potato wagon and looks under the tarpaulin. He orders Henryk down. He signals to the young guard to lead the horse away.

  Korczak runs over.

  ‘Is there a problem? We have permission to take supplies through.’ He shows the guard the papers but the man shrugs.

  ‘Permission cancelled.’ He turns away. The children begin to file in through the gate, but Korczak isn’t letting the matter drop, furious because can’t the man see with his own eyes that he’s stolen the very food meant for children? For children. What kind of black heart does the man have?

  Korczak draws himself up in his uniform, every inch the Polish major, yelling. ‘I shall be reporting you to your superiors. This is disgraceful.’

  Unperturbed, the German guard waves him away. ‘Go and see the Gestapo if that’s what you want.’

  It’s not hard to leave the ghetto the next day – after all, it’s a district not a prison – and Korczak sets out early for leafy Szucha Avenue. The building for Polish Religious Affairs and Education has been repurposed as Gestapo headquarters. Red-and-white sentry boxes with armed guards now flank the entrance with its rational, square-cut columns.

  Korczak has heard plenty of rumours about the brutality that takes place inside the Gestapo headquarters. He can’t escape a chill of fear as he marches defiantly through the courtyard, his army boots ringing on the marble flagstones. He demands to see the officer in charge of ghetto affairs.

  He’s shown politely into an office and left to wait. On the desk there’s a row of paperwork lined up with exactitude next to a telephone and an anglepoise lamp. An officer’s hat with its skull insignia hangs on a coat stand, two arms branching behind it like horns. To Korczak’s right is a glass-fronted bookcase. It takes a moment for his eyes to register not papers but iron manacles, a bullwhip, blunt hammers and metal knuckledusters.

  A Gestapo officer in a brown uniform enters. Korczak explains in his best official bluster that it is essential the supplies of confiscated potatoes be returned to the children immediately.

  ‘You speak excellent German, Major,’ the officer remarks cordially, casting his eyes over Korczak’s Polish officer’s uniform, narrowing his eyes a little at the threadbare braid on the cuffs.

  ‘Thank you. I spent a year studying in Berlin at the Medical Institute and gained a great respect for the humane and efficient methods of the German doctors.’

  ‘Indeed. But I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about these Jews, Major, or why you’ve been put in charge of what are Jewish orphans.’ He reads through Korczak’s papers for a few moments. Suddenly the Gestapo officer’s face flushes. He rises up, his face filled with hate, the chair scraping back. ‘But it says here you’re Jewish. What are you doing, impersonating a Polish officer? Where is your armband?’

  Korczak also stands tall, defiant and belligerent. ‘There are human laws which are transitory, and higher laws which are eternal—’

  The furious officer grabs Korczak by the collar, rips off his officer’s insignia and begins to beat him about the head. It’s only when Korczak is lying on the ground, a boot blow in his stomach, in his ribs, in his back, that the Gestapo officer’s temper is finally sated.

  ‘You will be transferred to Pawiak prison for infringement of regulations regarding hygiene and the quarantine of the Jewish Community.’ He scribbles a note and drops it by Korczak. ‘And here is a receipt for your potatoes.’

  Bleeding and semi-conscious, Korczak is bundled into a black van and driven back into the ghetto. They pull him out in front of a squat building with rows of barred windows, Pawiak prison.

  Looking up, he’s not too dismayed. He’s been here before, twice, for anti-Tsarist activities. Under the Tsar’s regime a little money to the guards could buy extra food, the right to bring in blankets, even books to carry on studying. But as he hobbles down to the subterranean entrance and the iron bars are unlocked and he enters a corridor rent with screams, Korczak begins to understand that Pawiak under the Nazis is a far darker place.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LVOV, SEPTEMBER 1939

  Hungry, cold and exhausted, longing to wash in hot water, Sophia and Misha reach Lvov the day after the Red Army take the city. Sophia is limping. They’ve taken days to travel the last fifty miles, sleeping in the open, walking most of the way, and now the blister on her heel has burst.

  They wander through the old town. Red flags with black hammers and sickles hang from balconies, bristle around lamp posts. Soldiers in brown padded jackets and sheepskin hats are distributing blankets and soup and leaflets. Soviet marching songs blare from loudspeakers, interspersed with messages in Ukrainian and in Russian, congratulating the Ukrainian working people of Lvov. They are now freed from the oppression of their Polish overlords by the Soviet army.

  Taking their bowls of soup, they listen to a soldier stationed nearby describing life in the Soviet Union to the sullen crowd around him. It’s a paradise. A group of Polish soldiers are sitting at the edge of the square, smoking and looking lost. A Soviet truck draws up and begins to load the soldiers.

  There’s a tang of snow in the air, the light fading. They spend the rest of the evening trudging around a town already packed with refugees and displaced people. Thousands of Jewish families have fled across the border towards Lvov in the last days to avoid the German regime.

  It’s late by the time they find a small room to rent.

  ‘Name?’ asks the woman at the desk. A brief glance between Sophia and Misha.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Wasserman,’ Sophia says.

  This isn’t what she imagined for the first time they shared a room. There is one narrow bed. She looks around the wallpaper stained with rings of damp, at the bed with its worn covers, the grubby netting at the window. Sophia draws the curtains and Misha lights the oil lamp, covering the room with a subdued golden light.

  ‘I’ll sleep on the floor,’ says Misha.

  Sophia looks at the bare boards. They need a good scrub. ‘There’s no point getting cold and sick.’ She sits down on the bed, the iron springs creaking. ‘We’re both tired. Sit down by me.’

  Misha joins her. The bed groans again. He sits with his head bowed, weighted by responsibility. He turns to her and takes both her hands. She’s cold and shivering.

  ‘No matter what happens, I’ll always look after you.’

  Hollowed out, too exhausted to move, they lie close together, saved by each other’s warmth, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the city. This far up on the fourth floor it feels as if they are nothing but a small island, adrift on the cold air above a city of strangers.

  ‘We’ll both sleep here. Anything else is ridiculous. We’re almost married anyway,’ she whispers. ‘I love you so much.’

  There’s no response from Misha, out cold. She gets up and pulls a cover over him. She goes to the window and lifts the curtain material. It’s so dark outside. The only light comes from the snow that has started to fall out of the black sky. It covers the cobbled pavements with a white scrim, the cut-outs of dark figures hurrying past.

  She takes off her coat and dress and gets under the cover next to Misha’s sleeping form, pulls his heavy arm across her shoulders.

  She lies awake, wondering what is happening in Warsaw.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WARSAW, DECEMBER 1940

  The Jews must adjust to all conditions and we’ll do our best to make it very difficult for them . . . The Jews will perish from hunger and poverty and only a graveyard will remain of the Jewish question.

  Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District

  After two months crowded into a freezing cell with thirty other men listening to the gunfire in the prison yard each day, the cell door opens and Korczak is called out.

  So his time has come to be marched out into the yard, or down to the torture cells.

  He’s shown into a clean bright office.


  ‘Undress over there,’ says a tall German in a white coat.

  Korczak stands stiffly by the door as if he has not heard or does not understand German.

  ‘Dr Korczak, please, I have heard your lectures in Germany as a student and your German is excellent. Please, I need to examine you for your release. You have a friend, I think. Harry Kaliszer?’

  Korczak’s eyes flicker towards the German doctor. Harry is one of Korczak’s past pupils, grown up now with a boy of his own. Has Harry managed to pay the Gestapo a bribe to get him certified as medically unfit for prison – the Holy Grail that means release rather than death?

  Korczak grudgingly lets the doctor place a metal stethoscope over his heart, his lungs, his back. The doctor folds away the rubber tube and looks grave.

  ‘You do realize that you have a serious heart condition?’

  ‘Nothing that’s enough to stop me going about my business as usual,’ Korczak answers curtly in Polish as he buttons up his grubby shirt.

  ‘You need to take better care of yourself, Doctor. I have read your book in Germany, The Child’s Right to Respect. Excellent. You have many friends here who value you greatly. You shouldn’t be here in the ghetto. Really, there’s no need.’

  He hands the certificate to Korczak and moves to shake his hand. But outside, the sharp crack of gunfire cuts across the courtyard and Korczak’s hand draws back instinctively.

  The German doctor looks down, embarrassed. He has seen the bruises, new and old, across Korczak’s body.

  *

  Korczak can see in Harry’s face that he barely recognizes this gaunt, elderly-looking man with a bluish nose who has come out of the prison gates. The battered major’s uniform with its ripped collar is filthy. Korczak has to lean on Harry’s arm for support as they walk to the tram stop slowly, barely enough breath to thank him.