The Good Doctor of Warsaw

by Elisabeth Gifford

  She turns to Sophia.

  ‘But what’s going to happen to Korczak and the children?’

  Back at the home late that afternoon, Korczak assures Misha that the orphanage will be exempt.

  ‘After all, what use would it be to the Germans to take children away to a labour camp? It would make no sense. No sense at all. And if we need it, I’ll register us all as seamstresses and little tailors. After Stefa’s lessons, even I can mend a sock.’

  At five o’clock that evening the chief of police sends a message to Czerniakow in his office to say they have the required six thousand people waiting at the Umschlagplatz. Czerniakow hears the familiar sound of boots on the stairs. Hofle arrives to say that since the quota has been filled, Czerniakow’s wife will not be shot.

  But tomorrow is another matter. The quota will be higher: nine thousand people must report to the train sidings.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - FOUR

  WARSAW, 23 JULY 1942

  The next day Czerniakow wakes with an inrush of anxiety to the terrible realities of another morning, wondering what he can do to protect as many of his people as he can from this vast labour round-up.

  He hurries down to his chauffeured car – the only Jewish-owned car in the ghetto – but it’s gone.

  ‘Sir, the Gestapo took it,’ says his driver. ‘Can I get you a rickshaw?’

  Czerniakow heaves his heavy bulk into the narrow bench at the front of the tricycle and directs the rickshaw driver to 103 Zelazna Street, a modern apartment block commandeered by the Lublin Gestapo the day before as their headquarters.

  Czerniakow hurries inside, hoping to get an interview with Hofle.

  He is shown into a room and then left. Along the corridor he can hear Gestapo officers talking as they have a shave in the barber’s room, the clink of a razor being rinsed in a metal bowl. Someone else is having their shoes shone, the brushes swishing rhythmically. A dog is barking in the yard behind.

  At last, a German lieutenant enters, calm, polite. ‘Sturmbannführer Hofle does not have time to see you,’ he informs Czerniakow.

  ‘But has there been a decision about the children? Has the exemption been agreed?’

  ‘You must take that matter up with Sturmbannführer Hofle himself.’

  ‘But if he won’t see me . . .’

  Czerniakow finds himself out on the street, a soldier with a rifle guarding the entrance.

  ‘It’s bedlam out there,’ Lutek says, picking up his son and holding him close. ‘No one knows where the next round-up will be. Half the Jewish police have deserted now that they understand what they are supposed to do, and the half that are left are going insane, beating people to force them to come down to the courtyards. And they’re not just taking beggars and emptying the shelters now. They’re cordoning off ordinary apartment blocks, emptying out families. Sophia, listen. Don’t go out. Don’t take Marianek out. Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I promise.’

  ‘I have to get back to my workplace before I’m missed. I’ll bring more food tomorrow. And Misha will come later?’

  Sophia watches Lutek running along the road towards the houses that are now a German boot factory.

  Groups of families are walking along the road with their bags, volunteering to go to the Umschlagplatz. Better to go and stay together than stay and be split up, people reason. And who knows if, after all, they are right?

  In his office, Czerniakow is facing an avalanche of problems. Yesterday, the people cleared from shelters and from the streets had not resisted. Their conditions were so dire that they considered the deportations could be no worse and possibly an improvement. But today the ordinary families being evicted from their apartments are doing all they can to escape, screaming and hiding rather than let the guards split them up and deport any members without a work permit.

  By three o’clock, Czerniakow is told that there are only three thousand people waiting to be loaded onto the trains in the Umschlagplatz. But the new quota is nine thousand and the deadline is only an hour away. His hand shaking, Czerniakow rings Hofle to ask for a reduction in the quota or for an extension in the deadline.

  But before he can get through, the secretary rushes in, looking stricken. The Gestapo have sent in teams of Ukrainians and Lithuanians to carry out the deportations, men hardened to use any amount of brutality. They have opened fire with machine guns and herded the people, men, women and children, into the Umschlagplatz, everyone screaming and weeping. Work permits are torn up and thrown to the ground.

  The news falls like a thunderclap. Czerniakow sinks into his chair, white as a sheet. He understands what this means. He’s redundant now, a puppet head to catastrophic events.

  He goes home at five o’clock, passing beneath the white cherubs above the portico of his apartment entrance. He climbs the steps to his door in a state of despair.

  But he’s still continuing to cling on to the hope that he’ll hear from Hofle any time now about an exemption for the children. What kind of monster would deport the children?

  Back in his apartment at last, Felicja has just put their meal on the table when the telephone rings. Czerniakow lays down his napkin and hurries to answer. It must be Hofle about the children.

  The phone call is brief. He turns to Felicja, his face drained and grey.

  ‘I have to go back to the Judenrat offices to meet with Gestapo officers.’

  ‘But what are they doing, still in the ghetto at this time of night? What do they want?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s no need for concern. This may be news I have been waiting for. I’ll eat this delicious supper as soon as I’m back home.’ He kisses her cheek and returns to the rickshaw stand.

  Felicja covers the plates of potato and herring and sits down to wait so they can finish the meal together when he returns.

  Two SS officers are standing in his office, Hofle and his deputy. All pretence at civility gone, Hofle berates the chairman, shouting in fury. ‘Because of your failure to carry out the deportations as instructed, there will be a new quota of ten thousand for tomorrow.’

  ‘But how many days a week will these deportations take place?’

  ‘Seven,’ says the officer curtly.

  ‘But the children. You haven’t given me an answer about the children.’

  Hofle is livid, screaming out his reply. ‘There will be no exemptions for any children. Do I make myself clear?’

  They leave before Czerniakow can raise an objection, their heels hammering down the stairs. A car engine starts up in the street and they drive away.

  Breathing heavily, Czerniakow sits in the semi-dark in his office, staring at the order on his desk, the colours in the stained-glass window gone to night. What sort of work camp needs thousands of children? Only one where people die. These, he realizes, are trains to death.

  He’s always hoped to bring most of his people through these times, even though there would be deaths. But ten thousand people seven days a week. There’s no hiding the Nazis’ intentions now. Such numbers can only mean the death of the ghetto.

  He is nothing now but an instrument to carry out the Nazis’ death plan. He has nothing left but to comply with their orders.

  It’s been cold all day and now there’s a wind getting up. Outside, the ghetto is in total blackness. No one he can turn to. The ghetto stands isolated and entirely without help.

  He thinks of Felicja waiting for him to come home, waiting for news about the orphans she oversees in a shelter nearby.

  In front of him is the deportation order that Hofle left for him to sign. He must sign it or be shot. No other choice.

  But he can still protest. He can still refuse. In his desk drawer there’s a small box with the cyanide capsule that he has always kept in case the Nazis forced him to act against his conscience.

  He takes a pen from his desk and a clean sheet of paper and begins a letter to his wife, his darling Felicja.

  I am powerless. My heart trembles in sorrow and compassion. I can
no longer bear all this. They are demanding that I kill my people’s children with my own hands.

  He slides open the drawer in the large oak desk and looks at the rectangular zinc box inside. He clicks open the lid. A small innocuous-looking capsule. It’s time. Not trusting his legs to go down the stairs, he rings for the night clerk.

  ‘Would you bring up a glass of water when you have a moment?’

  He can see she notices how much he trembles as he takes the glass and tries to smile as he thanks her. She closes the door and soon he hears the even tapping of her typing down below. He can see Felicja the day he met her. He can see the children in the playground.

  A little while later, the cashier in a room nearby wonders why the phone in Czerniakow’s office won’t stop ringing. She thought the chairman was there, working late. She goes to the office, listens at the door, then goes in.

  Czerniakow seems to be sleeping, his head on his desk. He’s fallen asleep at his desk before, his nights given up to insomnia and worry. She puts her hand on his broad back to rouse him but there’s not the slightest movement.

  A moment later, she takes a step back with a small cry. Chairman Czerniakow is dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - FIVE

  WARSAW, 24 JULY 1942

  Early the following morning, Korczak and a small group of people gather in Gesia cemetery under a cold, overcast sky. It feels more like autumn than summer. Czerniakow’s family plot is among the lines of well-ordered stone slabs, but the wind blows a smell of caustic lime towards them from the communal pits where thousands of naked bodies lie buried in layers.

  Korczak gives a short address commemorating all that Czerniakow did and all he tried to do for his people and then walks heavily back to the small ghetto. The day is already beset with problems. Some of the staff at the children’s shelter are still determined to get him out so they can carry on stealing the children’s provisions. They’ve reported Korczak to the Gestapo for failing to register a case of typhus – and the penalty for such an infringement is death.

  He hurries to the Judenrat to get it sorted out. No matter how crafty those crooks are, he will outwit them.

  No one has shown him Czerniakow’s suicide note.

  Throughout the ghetto, the news of Czerniakow’s suicide has left everyone panicked. Does it mean the ghetto really is doomed? But surely only the unproductive should be afraid?

  No one knows what to believe. Everyone concentrates their energies on getting hold of a work certificate in the hope that they and their family will be spared. Terrified, hungry and disorientated, people dash around the windy streets looking for someone to issue a piece of paper, queuing for hours outside factories and offices.

  No one has time to look at the wider picture or to think about refusing en masse to comply with the Nazis’ orders. Besides, such a move would mean certain death. No one in occupied Europe has ever staged a mass resistance in the face of Nazi power.

  Just before four o’clock, Misha’s unit returns to the ghetto. He hurries to Sophia’s flat after work with some badly needed bread. The streets echo with the sound of trucks rumbling towards the Umschlagplatz, each one filled with people. He flattens himself against the wall as a lorry rattles by, the guard shooting into the crowd at random as they pass, then carries on as fast as he can. Has there been a raid in Sophia’s street?

  Since the arrival of the Gestapo officers and the Ukrainian and Latvian soldiers from Lublin, a level of terror has entered the ghetto not seen before. Casual shootings and savage beatings have become commonplace. It’s clear now that all the terrible stories from Lublin were true. These are men hardened by their experience of clearing the Lublin ghetto with great violence.

  In the Ogrodowa apartment he finds the girls and their mother safe but beside themselves with worry.

  With so little left to eat, their father has gone out to stand in line at the soup kitchen still operating from a window in a courtyard further along the street. But just being out on the street is a risk since no one knows which apartment block will be sealed off next with cordons of Jewish police and Ukrainian guards.

  ‘Three hours ago,’ says Sophia. ‘Three hours and he’s still not back. If there’s been a round-up . . . I should . . .’

  ‘No. Stay here.’

  Misha hurries back out, down the stairs, and pounds along the street. A Jewish policeman stands at the entrance of the building where the soup kitchen operates from a ground floor window. The courtyard’s empty, the courtyard scattered with broken furniture, burst suitcases and single shoes, the wind swirling dust and paper. There are dark patches on the ground, red streaks on one of the walls. Blood.

  He shakes the Jewish policeman who is standing in the yard in a daze.

  ‘Have you seen Mr Rozental – slight, dark hair greying? He was queueing for soup.’

  The policeman looks at him – furtive, haunted, a wooden puppet in his made-up uniform. ‘Everyone in the building has been sent to the Umschlagplatz. So if he was here at the soup queue . . . I didn’t know what we had to do . . .’

  Misha can’t waste any time on words now. If he runs, perhaps he can stop Mr Rozental from getting on the train. Sophia’s father is too frail to cope with a work camp in Russia or who knows where.

  Misha runs through the streets towards the walls of the Umschlagplatz but German guards with rifles block the wooden gates strung with barbed wire that lead through into the freight yard. There’s another gate beyond that and Misha can’t see inside.

  The guards make it clear that Misha must leave or they’ll use their guns on him.

  If Mr Rozental is in there, there’s nothing more he can do.

  Turning his back on the freight yard where cattle from the countryside used to be unloaded, turning his back on Mr Rozental, Misha walks away, the ground rising and falling beneath his feet as he returns to Ogrodowa Street with the load of his terrible news.

  That same afternoon, Esterka, who ten days before organized the play for the children, sets out to fetch medicines from the hospital nearby.

  As she nears the hospital building the street bursts into a chaos of running feet as cordons of police and guards in black uniforms begin herding people out of the archways of the nearby apartment blocks, lining them up four across in the middle of the road. Esterka is caught up in the panicked crowds, corralled into the middle of the street and made to crouch with the others in a cowed block while armed guards line the pavements. There are screams and shots from inside the apartment blocks and with each shot she flinches. The woman next to her is crying, holding her teenage daughter close. Everyone is terrified, with no idea of what will happen next.

  They crouch there for almost an hour while the guards search the blocks with gunfire, screams and barking dogs. Suddenly they are made to stand, a column of hundreds of people, and told to march north.

  ‘But where are they taking us?’ says the woman, holding on to her daughter’s hand. ‘We’ve only got summer dresses on. Sandals. If they’re sending us to a Russian work camp, how can we live through the winter with just summer dresses and sandals?’

  As they near the Umschlagplatz, anyone on the pavements has been ordered to stand still as they pass. Behind a guard, Esterka sees a familiar face now stricken and open-mouthed with shock. It’s Erwin. She manages to shout out to him to get a message to Korczak.

  As soon as Erwin runs back to the home with the message, Korczak hurries to the Umschlagplatz, determined to get her released. He pushes his way through the crowd at the gate to where the guards bar the way into the main area. From here he can see hundreds of people sitting on the baked dirt of the old cattle-yard square, but he can’t see Esterka. He pleads with the guard, cajoles, shouts at him to send someone to find Esterka.

  Out of patience, the guard brings his rifle butt down on Korczak’s shoulder and drives him through the gates into the freight yard.

  Korczak looks around the crowds in a daze. An arm grabs him. A Jewish policeman marches him to the side, shouti
ng and gesticulating at him.

  As soon as they are out of earshot, he lets go of Korczak’s arm. ‘Pan Doctor, I’m sorry. I had to make it look like you were in trouble for something. Now leave. Go through that gate. Now.’

  ‘But, Dr Winogron. She has glasses. She’s here somewhere.’

  The policeman looks behind him anxiously. ‘Dr Korczak, you must go now or I can’t help you any more.’ He gives him a shove out of the side gate, closes it behind him.

  Tears running down his lined cheeks, Korczak wanders home past empty houses and streets strewn with shoes and cases. A book, its pages fluttering back and forth in the heat. An empty baby pushchair.

  In Ogrodowa Street, Sophia, Krystyna and her mother listen to Misha’s news in stunned silence. Lutek sits with Marianek, cradling him on his lap.

  ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no hope of getting him out now.’

  ‘Mother, stay home tomorrow with Sophia and Marianek,’ says Krystyna. ‘If there’s a selection at the brushworks you might be picked out to go to the trains.’

  Her mother is still as stone, her worn cardigan pulled tight around her shoulders. She speaks from a faraway place. ‘The brushworks supplies the army. Why would they take the workers away? We need my permit.’

  ‘Your mother is right,’ says Misha. ‘The factories are the safest place right now.’

  Lutek gets up and reluctantly hands Marianek to Sophia, not wanting to part with him.

  ‘I must get back before they close the factory gates. It’s getting more and more like a prison, keeping people working through the night to supply the Germans.’

  Misha too has to leave in order to get back to his registered residence before curfew.

  ‘Be careful,’ he murmurs to Sophia as they embrace for a long moment. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘I wish you could stay here.’ They both know that the food that he and the boys bring in is more vital than ever. The only food entering the ghetto now comes from the labour gangs able to go outside.