The Girl from Krakow

by Alex Rosenberg

  After Erich left an older man poked his head in, shrugged his shoulders, and took possession of a corner. His hair was white, short but still thick, brushed carelessly to the right. The matching white beard was not of the religious variety. Rows of wrinkles on his brow gave way to crow’s feet that deepened so they almost hid his eyes when he smiled, as now he did. Once he had been heavy, and he still had the round cheeks of a well-fed Father Christmas.

  He introduced himself, in a thick German accent. “Friedrich Kaltenbrunner. Excuse the poor Polish. I was raised in Germany, and only moved back to Poland in ’38. Or rather was moved there . . .” He said this last more to himself than Rita.

  “You’re quite welcome.” Rita smiled a little. “Still plenty of room. There are only three of us so far, if you count my child. Don’t understand why we are so lucky.”

  “Don’t you? That person you are with—no man wants to be in a room with him. He’s a pederast. They are all saying so downstairs. Didn’t you know?”

  Rita said nothing, her welcome to the old man immediately wearing out.

  Kaltenbrunner went on. “Doesn’t bother me, though. I’m more broad-minded than the next man. Seen it all in Berlin anyway, before the Brownshirts cleaned up the place—not that there weren’t a lot of queers in the SA anyway.”

  “If you are broad-minded, then be respectful of Herr Klein.” She deliberately invoked the German. “He’s my friend.”

  “Mine too,” Stefan chimed in, unafraid to approach the old man.

  “You are quite right, my dears. Besides, I’m too old to raise any interest in a young man. We’ll be the best of friends! So will we.” He looked down, reached out to Stefan’s dog, and began moving it across the floor, making barking sounds. The boy was immediately won over.

  Perhaps Kaltenbrunner would be all right. It’s not as if we have the luxury of choosing our bedfellows, Rita thought.

  “Stefan, stay in the room and play with your doggie.” She looked up at Kaltenbrunner. “Can I leave him for a few minutes?” she asked. The old man smiled reassuringly and reached for the stuffed animal again. Instinctively she knew she could trust him. Were the eyes really the mirror of the soul? Of course not, but Kaltenbrunner’s sought hers out and twinkled reassuringly. He was a schoolteacher, one with the best teachers’ knack for putting pupils at their ease, and he was using it now on both of them.

  Rita went down the stairs and into the street. It was not something she had done without great risk for a long time. It was silly, now imprisoned in a ghetto, but for a moment she felt free. A convict, liberated from solitary confinement, finally allowed to roam the prison yard with the other inmates. The feeling would soon wear off.

  When Rita returned, the older man was unpacking his case. What was his name, she wondered. I can’t be so rude as to ask again . . . Stefan came to the rescue. “Pan Kaltenbrunner says I can call him ‘Freddy.’ ”

  “That’s not respectful, Stefan.”

  “We’ll be living a little too close for the niceties, ma’am.” Kaltenbrunner was taking two large books from the jumble of clothing in his case. Rita’s jaw dropped perceptibly. Books! Did he think he was coming to the university? He put them at the head of his mattress. Noticing her widened eyes, he explained. “My pillows.”

  That evening they exchanged brief autobiographies. The older man’s was wrapped in history. “I was born in Warsaw, but taken to Germany as a child, 1872.” Erich and Rita started making the same calculation in their heads. He’s seventy, they thought. “I was a student in Göttingen, and then a teacher in Stuttgart for thirty-three years—science—with time out for the Great War. I was in the west when we nearly captured Verdun.” There was a twinge of patriotism in his voice, but the name Verdun meant little to his listeners.

  “How did you manage to get out of Germany?” Rita asked.

  “I was pushed. The Nazis were working to a deadline. Early in ’38 the Polish government announced it wouldn’t admit anyone from Germany without valid Polish passports after October that year. So the German government revoked residence for every Jew with Polish nationality, to force them out before the deadline. My Iron Cross second class didn’t matter.”

  Trade was the way of the world. Once an institution like the ghetto was established, a whole economy spontaneously arose to make it pay.

  But first the Judenrat had to establish its police, the Ordnungsdienst—order service. This ghetto Judenpolizei—the Jupo—soon began to fulfill its function: ensuring the high prices of a thriving black market. Once ghetto rations were fixed at less than two hundred calories per person per day, service with the Polizei became a magnet. The opportunity to stand at the gates, charged to prevent smuggling, attracted men with ingenuity as well as a broad streak of sadism. Sharper than the German or Ukrainian guards just outside the gate, the Jewish police were not above finding the most intimate hiding places, stripping whatever food that workers had managed to get past the Germans.

  A market in survival sprang up and flourished beneath, over, and through the ghetto walls. Gentile urchins could be called from the shadows beyond the wall simply by standing near it long enough to be noticed on the other side. They would scratch or rap on the wood to let you know they were there and ready to trade. Most anything was available for a price, if it was small enough to be tossed over or passed through, and if the price was right. Some of the Polish traders developed a reputation for honesty that earned them the ability to charge the highest prices. As long as there was the prospect of continued business, even the less well-established “firms” could be relied on.

  Within a few weeks, a reliable postal service was established, though the rates to mail a letter were always transatlantic, and whatever came from elsewhere arrived postage due. It was through these mails that Rita learned of her parents’ relative good fortune. Unlike Karpatyn, their small town in the west of what had been Poland was now the Reich. The district was governed by a civilian Gauleiter, and none of the draconian measures of the Generalgouvernement had been imposed—no ghetto, no food restriction, nothing but the yellow star. Her parents were surviving, slowly trading away what they had.

  Each morning the two men left for work—Erich to the factory and Kaltenbrunner to the school established by the Judenrat. Once they left, a morbid fascination would draw Rita to the windows. Day by day she watched the first month’s triage eliminate the weakest—the ill, aged, and infirm—from the ghetto. Those who came without money or tradable goods immediately began to perish. From her window Rita could track the fate of a victim, from selling pencil stubs to begging, to listlessly sitting at the curb, finally to collapse, self-befoulment, and then death by a combination of starvation, the elements, typhus, and the implacable will to die.

  The morning came that she could not bring herself to the window nor to venture outside. Her eye fell on the two volumes that really did serve Kaltenbrunner for a pillow. Reaching down, Rita broke the unspoken rule that no one’s things were to be touched. She picked one up: Darwin, The Descent of Man, and then the other, Darwin, On the Origin of Species, both in German, well-read, annotated, dog-eared, both almost as old as Kaltenbrunner himself. She had heard of the more famous of these, and it held no interest. The other was unfamiliar to her. She slid her back down the wall, opened the volume, and read the subtitle, “Selection in relation to sex.” She turned the page and began reading. The Fraktur print posed no problem, and the German was clear. All the rest of that morning she read, occasionally monitoring Stefan, who was content to play with wooden blocks and a few broken lead soldiers. She only needed to be sure he did not chew them.

  As the afternoon ended, she realized that she had ignored Stefan, who had fallen asleep at his naptime, and she had neglected any preparation for the evening meal. Worst of all, she had violated the invisible barrier surrounding another’s scant possessions. Carefully she put the book down, laid its more famous predecessor on top, and went about her business.

  That evening, after a supper of
gruel, Kaltenbrunner pulled Stefan into his lap. The boy was content to remain there with his stuffed dog. “So, how far did you get in The Descent of Man, my dear?”

  Rita was mortified. “Freddy, I am so sorry . . .”

  Kaltenbrunner waved her apology away. “I only know because you put them back in the wrong order. On the Origin of Species always goes on the bottom.” Rita looked at him quizzically. Again he seemed to read her mind. “No, I’m not superstitious . . . that just brings bad luck.” He smiled, and this time both Rita and Erich laughed out loud. Now Kaltenbrunner became serious. “The Origin on the bottom because it’s the foundation. You have to read it first. Holds the explanation of the world, makes sense of everything, even the fate of the Jews.”

  “But you can’t buy that stuff. Darwin is what the Nazis believe.” There was heat in Erich’s voice.

  “Yes, and they also believe the earth is round. Does that make it false? Anyway, Nazis don’t understand Darwin at all.”

  “You do?” Erich was still contemptuous.

  “I’ve spent the last forty years on the subject, written a few books, corresponded with the leading evolutionists . . .” He paused to gauge the effect on Klein, who did not reply.

  Here Rita intervened. “So, how does Darwin explain the world, never mind the fate of the Jews?”

  Erich joined in. “Then you can get on to how the Germans get him wrong.”

  “That’s easy . . . What Darwin discovered was the completely mindless, mechanical process that, repeated a million times, produced life, then human life, thought, language, everything people used to think needed a God to design and create. What looks like purpose, meaning, means and ends—it’s all just blind variation and an environment passively filtering out the losers in the latest heat of a race that never ends.”

  It was now dark in the room. “We don’t need another argument for atheism, Freddy. We have enough already. Just look around,” Erich said.

  “So, where did the Nazis get Darwin wrong?” Rita’s question was earnest.

  “They got almost everything Darwin taught wrong. To begin with, evolution has no room for higher purpose, still less, Nazism as fulfilling one. And there is no such thing as a master race. There are just temporary local winners and losers. The Third Reich is the transitory outcome of a vast process heading nowhere. Today’s winners are sure to be tomorrow’s losers when environments change. Think of the dinosaurs.”

  Rita’s laugh was grim. “How many millions of years were dinosaurs around? Hitler’s thousand-year Reich might as well be a million years as far as you and I are concerned. Anyway, how does your Darwin make sense of the fate of the Jew?”

  Erich was silent. He knew that the Reich could not last more than a few years more, but why that was was too dangerous to reveal, even to his fellow inmates condemned to death.

  Kaltenbrunner replied, “I’ll tell you some night . . . when you’re ready to listen.”

  The next morning Rita began reading On the Origin of Species. When she finished a week later, she turned back to the first page and started to read it again.

  A few minutes after ten o’clock on a gray morning a week later, Erich burst through the door. “Grab your coat; let’s go.” He swept Stefan off the floor too quickly for the boy to grab his stuffed dog. Erich’s urgency brooked no hesitation. Rita pulled on her coat and followed him down the stairs. Erich turned at the bottom and made for the back door that led to the outhouse and the ghetto wall. Three boards were akimbo. Still carrying Stefan, he pushed Rita through them. Straightening the slats, he yanked Rita’s yellow star armband off, took the arm, and began walking down the street directly away from the ghetto wall. At the end of the first block, he finally spoke. “We’re just a nice Aryan family out for a stroll.” Then she became aware of the noise rising from behind the receding wall.

  Erich spoke under his breath. “Ghetto clearing Aktion. Just keep walking. You’re not involved. You don’t hear anything.”

  “What if we’re caught out here without the armbands?”

  “Stay inside today, and you’re certain to be ‘caught.’ There is a double-reinforced German Polizei unit in there, along with the Ukrainians and the Jupo thugs, taking everyone without a work permit to . . . to wherever they have been taking them.”

  “Where are we going, then? We can’t walk around outside all day.”

  “We’re going to visit family friends, my dear.” He patted her arm. Raising Stefan to ride on his shoulders, Erich led them through the town square, where a desultory farmers’ market was in progress. Then they turned down the tramway toward the factory district.

  The streets were deserted, sinister, bathed in gray halftones. Dazed, Rita asked, almost to herself, “Couldn’t we just keep walking right out of town?”

  Erich’s reply brought her back. “To where would we just walk, without papers or money? We’re a hundred fifty kilometers from the nearest city large enough to hide in, and even there we probably wouldn’t last a week.”

  Twenty minutes later they walked past a large building with a peeling sign, Terakowski Ready-to-Wear, and came to a high wall with a gate. Turning in at the entrance, they saw a large villa. Rita felt the immediate relief of no longer being exposed on the street. They came up to the stairs to the entry. Erich dismounted Stefan from his shoulders and rang the bell.

  An elderly woman invited them in. With some formality, Erich spoke. “Pani Terakowski, permit me to introduce Pani Doctor Guildenstern and”—here he turned to the boy—“Stefan.” Turning to Rita he explained, “The Terakowskis own the factory. Pani Terakowski’s daughter is in charge, now that her father is . . . gone.”

  “So pleased to meet you, my dear.” The elderly woman led them to a sitting room. “May I offer you some tea?” Every seat seemed covered by antimacassars. The lady herself looked out of the last century: her posture was upright, gray hair swept to wide flat promontory above her forehead, held at the back by a pearl comb. Her black dress swished across the floor, lifting the fringe from the carpet as she moved across the room to a bellpull by the fireplace.

  Rita found herself on another planet. “Very pleased to meet you. Yes, tea would be lovely.” Lovely? Heavenly! Then she thought, The ghetto is being brutalized, and I am sitting here preparing to balance a teacup on my lap?

  As she sat, Stefan came over to her and whispered.

  “Excuse me,” Rita said, embarrassed. “The child needs the toilet.”

  “How silly of me.” Pani Terakowski put her at ease. “Yes, you both need to freshen up. It’s just at the top of the stairs.” Rita looked beyond the open double doors to the foyer. Up the stairs? She had nearly forgotten about indoor plumbing. By the time she returned, a servant girl was setting out the tea.

  After a half hour of inconsequential conversation, a younger woman entered, brightened as she saw Erich, kissed him on both cheeks as though he were family, and introduced herself. “I’m Lydia. Excuse me, Erich, we need you on the shop floor.” Evidently he was more than a bookkeeper. She turned to Rita. “Would you care to come too?” Rita caught the hint of something more than an invitation in her voice.

  “Of course.” She took Stefan by the hand and followed.

  They went through the kitchen and out the back door to a cobblestoned alley separating the residence from a complex of storage sheds and factory buildings. Inside the largest of these buildings, a short flight of stairs led to an office with a large window overlooking the shop floor. Holding Stefan’s hand Rita struggled to keep up with Lydia and Erich as they mounted the stair. There she turned to observe the factory floor itself through the window.

  The workbenches were covered with field-gray German military coats, interspersed with sewing machines, large boxes of metal buttons, and bags from which cloth military insignia were spread out across the tables. The workers—men and women, some very young—were not at the benches. They were gathered in small groups, some sobbing, others rending their clothes. A dozen were shrieking as others s
ought to calm them. A few were at the doors of the building, physically being prevented from leaving by their coworkers.

  Erich looked at Lydia, who began, “People have been coming in all morning, with more and more horrible stories.”

  “I see.” He nodded, turned, and went down to the shop floor.

  Looking down through the office windows, they could see him moving toward the other end of the building, where the largest group of workers was gathered. Rita could not hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, after a few minutes, his words seemed to be having an effect. Some went back to their workbenches; others began again to shift stock from place to place. A forlorn few remained where they had been.

  Erich returned to the office.

  “What did you tell them?” Rita asked.

  “Most of them left kids in the ghetto this morning. I told them that we’d gotten word back, and the children had been hidden. Then I told them we had a quota to maintain, and lives depended on it.” Erich sat down at a desk and pulled a ledger toward him. Then he dropped a piece of paper and three colored pencils to Stefan, who began entertaining himself on the floor. Lydia too busied herself with correspondence. Left alone, Rita walked down the steps and moved along the shop floor. She could see that at least some of what was being done did not require any skill and it would occupy her mind. She found a space at one of the workbenches and began sorting buttons.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That night after curfew, they slipped back into the ghetto the way they had come. Upstairs in their room, they found Kaltenbrunner, trembling. They said nothing. Kaltenbrunner couldn’t deal with the silence.

  “You don’t want to hear? Look out the window tomorrow morning. The bodies will still be there. They must have beaten a few thousand out of the ghetto by the afternoon. Anyone who didn’t jump was shot, anyone who fell out of line was shot, anyone carrying anything was shot, until the Feldwebel told the goons to stop. Killing too many was going to prevent them from meeting their quota at the railroad sidings, he said.”