Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  She had believed him then, but now it seemed like a fairy tale. She thought of his kind face, so unlike her mother’s critical glances which pierced her like hooks. Whenever she was upset, Father took his small mouth organ out of his pocket and played jolly tunes to cheer her up. If only he was here now.

  The sound of guttural voices outside made Krysia glance nervously towards the door, but the door stayed shut. Her shoulders sagged. Thinking back over the past few years, it seemed as if someone was playing a deadly game with her, waiting just long enough till she felt safe, only to hunt her down again. Why did God allow that to happen? She hadn’t done anything really bad, except to wish sometimes that her little brother had never been born. What was going to happen to her now? She was exhausted and wanted to sink down onto the floor, but remembering the soldier’s warning, she shifted from foot to foot. Her legs felt like lead. She wanted to be brave but knew she wasn’t. It would almost be a relief when the soldier came back, although the thought of what would happen next made her throat close up so that she could hardly swallow. How long were they going to keep her here? She wondered whether her mother and brother were still in the waiting room. What if the train arrived and they got on? How would she ever find them again? Her mother wouldn’t just sit around, she’d know what to do.

  Her mind drifted back to their life in Lwow. She remembered when her father’s Russian boss in Lwow had urged him to leave the city. ‘The Germans are coming. We’re pulling out tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You’re a Jew, you shouldn’t stay. Come with us. We’ll give you a truck, you’ll be our driver. You can bring your family to Russia.’

  Zygmunt thought it was a good idea. ‘We should listen to him, Anechka,’ he said. ‘Hitler won’t rest till he’s killed every Jew in Europe.’ But Andzia didn’t want to hear about going to Russia. ‘The Russians are savages. How can you suggest living among such primitive people? You must be mad!’ Krysia’s heart sank when she heard them quarrel. Her father’s patient reasoning had no chance against her mother’s vicious tongue. ‘Go on, then, run away to Russia with your cronies,’ she taunted him, adding, ‘Go, but I’m not going with you.’

  Andzia had got her way, but it wasn’t long before she’d found out that the Russians hadn’t exaggerated the cruelty of the Nazi regime. The terrifying screams of Jewish neighbours dragged out of their homes, loaded onto waiting trucks and later shot in nearby woods were testament to that.

  In the midst of the horrors taking place around them, and the daily risk of deportation and death, Krysia had become ill. In her fevered state, bombs exploded, the earth shook, soldiers pointed rifles at her head, and demons leapt around her bed. The doctor said that only a blood transfusion could save her, but she had a rare blood group that was incompatible with either of her parents’. The chance of finding someone whose blood was compatible, and who would be willing to donate blood at a time when people were dying of hunger and needed all their strength, seemed very remote.

  As Krysia’s temperature rose and she lapsed into unconsciousness, they almost lost hope. There were no medicines, and hospitals were forbidden to admit Jewish patients. Andzia and Zygmunt were hovering around her bed, watching for any sign of life, when there was a knock on the door. In the entrance stood a young woman they’d never seen before. ‘I’ve heard that you have a sick child in here,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to give her my blood.’

  She had a round smiling face and wavy brown hair that cascaded onto her shoulders. While Andzia and Zygmunt stared at this apparition, hardly able to believe their ears, the doctor warned the young woman of the risks. In reply, the lovely stranger waved an impatient hand. ‘Doctor, please stop wasting time, there’s a dying child in there,’ she said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Andzia and Zygmunt held their breath while the doctor took a drop of blood for analysis to see if her blood matched Krysia’s. His shining eyes told them that they’d been granted the miracle they hadn’t dared to hope for. The woman who had materialised out of thin air had the same rare blood group as their dying daughter.

  When Krysia drifted out of her unconscious state and opened her heavy eyelids, she saw that she was connected by thin rubber tubes to a young woman she didn’t know. They were linked by a slender thread of vermilion coursing between them. As she grew stronger, the doctor was jubilant. ‘This is a child who came back from the other world,’ he kept saying. On the eve of the annihilation of millions, everyone rejoiced at the survival of one little girl. But when Krysia had recovered, they discovered that the mysterious stranger had vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. ‘I can still see her before me,’ says my cousin Krysia fifty years later. ‘She was about twenty-five, medium height, quite plump, with a lovely face and long wavy hair. To my everlasting regret, I can’t remember her name.’

  Now, trembling at Gestapo headquarters, Krysia wished fervently that some guardian angel would come to her rescue once again. Looking back, it seemed as if over the past year she’d lurched from one terrifying incident to another. After she’d recovered from her illness, there had been that terrifying incident with the Ukrainian guards. Her father had gone into hiding that day, and her mother had gone with him because the Germans were scouring every corner looking for Jewish men and women. ‘You stay here and look after Fredzio. Don’t let anyone in,’ her mother had said.

  Before Krysia had time to read Fredzio his favourite story, someone had banged on the door and a man’s voice had yelled, ‘Open up!’ Krysia put her finger to her lips, took her little brother’s hand and together they crept behind the door. The shouts and curses grew louder, then suddenly the door was flung open and two Ukrainian guards burst in, sinister in their navy uniforms with the yellow and blue circle. As the terrified children watched, one of the guards said, ‘I know there’s a gun in here somewhere.’ He rummaged through their bedding and even poked his arm inside the tiled stove. They were about to leave when one of them paused on the doorstep and turned round to have another look. In that instant he lunged towards the table with a triumphant shout. He’d finally found what he was seeking. Lying under the table was a revolver. Krysia held her breath as she clung to her little brother. The guard pounced on the weapon, examined it and, a moment later, with a look of murderous rage on his face, hurled it across the room. It was one of Fredzio’s toys. Now the guards would kill them both out of spite. But the men stomped out, slamming the door so hard that it almost fell off its hinges.

  Not long after this they’d gone to live inside the ghetto, where there’d been that business with the Menashes. They were friends of her parents, a stiff couple with white faces and tight, unsmiling lips, who’d arrived breathless one morning and kept looking at the door. ‘The Gestapo! They’ve just ransacked our flat! Oh my God, what are we going to do now?’ Mrs Menashe lamented, her little letterbox mouth stretched into a straight line. ‘Our documents and passports are still inside. Without them we’re done for, but if we go back, we’ll be caught.’ Suddenly everyone was looking at Krysia.

  To this day Krysia still doesn’t know why her mother allowed her to go out and retrieve the Menashes’ valuables. Probably they thought that no-one would suspect a child with such an angelic face. She pulled on the gloves which her father had given her a few weeks before. At a time when it was a struggle to obtain food, flour or fat, these gloves represented princely indulgence. Nobody had ever seen such gloves. They were fur-lined, smooth as butter outside, a lovely honey brown, and they came almost up to her elbow.

  Even now, sitting inside the Gestapo station in Lwow, expecting a terrible fate to befall her, Krysia still felt a pang of regret when she remembered those gloves. Thrilled with herself in her new gauntlets, she had crept into the Menashes’ flat and started opening drawers, exactly where she’d been told to look for their passports. Engrossed in her search, she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, until someone grabbed her shoulder and she spun around to see a soldier in a long grey-green coat with shiny gold buttons and military emblems. Then she s
aw the death’s head on his stiff cap and knew she was looking into the face of an SS officer.

  Without letting go of her, the officer said something which she didn’t understand. Then, without any warning, he leaned towards her and pulled the precious gloves off her hands. Then he waved his arm. ‘Go on, raus, get out of here, quick!’ he ordered. Krysia had sobbed all the way home. She’d never have such gloves again.

  Andzia had taken one look at her daughter’s puffy eyes and mournful expression, pulled on her overcoat, taken Krysia’s hand, and led her back towards the Menashes’ flat. ‘Have a good look around and show me who took your gloves,’ she fumed. Outside the Menashes’ building stood the familiar figure in his long grey-green coat. ‘That’s him!’ Krysia pointed, triumph overcoming terror.

  Andzia planted herself in front of the SS officer. ‘I believe you have my daughter’s gloves,’ she said. ‘Please give them back to her.’

  Fixing her with a cool gaze, the German replied in a polite tone. ‘Unfortunately, Gnadige Frau, I am not able to do as you wish. My superior officer has taken the gloves and I no longer have them on me.’

  While he spoke, Krysia’s eyes were glued to the bulging pocket of his overcoat, where a bit of soft brown fur peeped out. She wanted to shout, ‘Those are my gloves!’ She longed to reach forward and pull them out, but Andzia was tugging at her sleeve. The officer was surveying them with narrowed eyes and her legs had begun trembling. Trying to appear calm, they walked away, trying not to quicken their step until they were out of sight. That’s when it had hit them that they’d risked their lives for a pair of gloves.

  Life inside the ghetto became tougher all the time. Krysia heard that in some houses so many people were crammed into one room that they didn’t have enough space to lie down at night. Almost every day the Germans rounded up thousands of people and drove them away in covered trucks. Someone who managed to escape came back and told them that there was a place called Belzec where thousands of people were gassed in special chambers and then incinerated. No-one could believe him. Even now, with everything they had seen and suffered, people still refused to believe that the Nazis had designed a blueprint for genocide on a scale never seen before in the history of the world.

  As Krysia’s father had worked for a German car repair firm, he’d earned a little money and sometimes when he travelled on business to nearby villages, he occasionally managed to obtain an onion or some grain. Like that horrible millet flour which reminded Krysia of mud and tasted almost as bad. With her typical resourcefulness, Andzia had made a concoction by browning the flour on a pan then pouring water over it till it plopped and became like glue. Krysia hated the gooey stuff with its strange musty taste but there was little else to eat. Andzia had turned some of her flour into pancakes which she arranged appetisingly on a metal tray and sold for a few coins.

  At least they hadn’t been dying of hunger like some of the people with huge staring eyes and distended bellies who tottered around and dropped onto the street, too weak to move.

  Not long before they’d decided to leave Lwow, there had been a rumour that the Nazis were going to hunt down and kill every Jewish child still alive. No hiding place in the ghetto would be safe. Krysia saw anxiety carved into her parents’ faces. Where could they hide the children? Zygmunt’s German boss came to the rescue. While the streets of the ghetto resounded with the despairing screams of mothers whose children were being torn out of their arms, and as lines of terrified boys and girls were herded at gunpoint and hurled into waiting trucks like slabs of meat, Krysia and Fredzio spent the entire day shivering in the trench where the mechanics stood when they repaired car chassis. It didn’t occur to the Nazis to search for Jewish children in a German workshop.

  In the past there had always been some way of averting disaster, but alone in this Gestapo station, Krysia racked her brains in vain for some way out. If she tried to escape, the only place she could go was the railway waiting room, but they’d find her there and probably kill her mother and brother too. This was like the nightmares she’d had during her illness when demons had danced all around her, wanting her dead.

  Death had been on everyone’s mind for the past weeks. ‘They’re about to liquidate the ghetto,’ she’d heard Uncle Henek tell her mother in a sombre voice. ‘Time’s running out. You must get Aryan papers, Andzia. Another week or two and there won’t be a single Jew left alive in Lwow. Don’t put it off any longer,’ he’d urged in his quiet, forceful way.

  After Andzia had obtained false papers, Krysia had overheard her father saying, ‘Aryan papers will be enough for you, but a man has to have army papers and work cards as well. I’ll get all the documents and join you later, but you’ve got to get the children out of here now. There’s not a moment to lose.’ Remembering how sad she’d felt saying goodbye to her beloved father, Krysia’s eyes now filled with tears. Would she ever see him again?

  She jumped with fright when the door opened and a German soldier with a triangular face entered the room. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, seeing the girl. Her heart hammered under her blue knitted dress.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

  ‘Are you Jewish?’ he asked. She shook her head.

  ‘Is your mother Jewish?’ he asked. Again she shook her head.

  ‘You’d better not lie to me,’ he snapped. Then he leaned towards her and spoke in a softer tone. ‘But if you tell the truth I won’t hurt you.’ Instinct warned her not to fall for this.

  ‘Honestly, I’m Catholic,’ she insisted.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because I was born that way,’ she retorted, fiddling with her chain.

  Peering at the cross around her neck, he asked, ‘So how come you’ve got a brand new cross?’

  ‘I’ve had it for years,’ she argued, and thought in panic, Don’t let him ask me to recite Our Father, because I’ll get it mixed up and then he’ll know I’m not Catholic.

  Just then another German entered, and the two men spoke together, pointing at her and shrugging. No-one seemed to know why she was there. Finally the one with the angular face walked back to her. ‘Go on, get out of here, I don’t want to see you again. Los! Quick!’

  Krysia raced back to the waiting room where her mother sat, a stricken look on her face. She seemed to have aged ten years in the past thirty minutes. She looked at Krysia and closed her eyes, unable to speak.

  Finally their wait was over. The platform vibrated, a whistle shrilled, and behind thick funnels of black smoke and squealing pistons a pug-nosed train rumbled into the station. As Andzia hauled her bundles over her shoulder and lifted Fredzio into the carriage, she caught the eye of the soldier who’d grabbed him in the waiting room. He was looking at her with a mocking smile. ‘Okay,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘this time you win. But next time…’

  Inside the grimy compartment, Andzia wiped the worn seat so that their clothes wouldn’t be smeared with soot. Exhausted, Krysia sank down and listened to the sound of the train. Unlike the trains she’d heard before the war, which went ‘clackety-clack’, this one made a sound that sent shivers down her spine. ‘Watch out!’ it seemed to be saying. ‘Watch out!’

  CHAPTER 20

  Bitter winds had blown that March in 1942 when the Nazis had ordered all the Jews of Lwow to abandon their homes and move into a small area of town set aside for them near the railway line. My father had no illusions as to why they planned to squash the remaining Jewish population into an area so tiny that, in some cases, several families had to live in one room. People were only allowed to bring what they could carry or fit into a pram, and often even those few belongings were wrenched from them along the way.

  ‘The Germans didn’t care where people would go or what they would eat,’ he wrote in his memoirs. ‘In their opinion, Jews were only temporary citizens of this vale of tears.’

  My father had managed to obtain permission for us to stay where we were in Lwow for the time being, but when the Germans began hunting
down Jewish children with relentless savagery, he realised that we had to escape as soon as possible. The problem of where to go preoccupied him day and night. It was as hard for a Jew to find a hiding place in Poland in 1942 as for a deer to hide from a pack of wolves on a treeless plain. Our only hope of survival was to pose as Catholics, and while he was figuring out where we could possibly go without arousing suspicion, he arranged for my mother and me to travel to a small town near Krakow and wait there until he let us know where to join him.

  My mother never spoke to me about her last days in Lwow, or about parting with her family. Her mother Toni, along with Hania and her family, had left for a nearby village where Hania’s husband Dolek had found someone prepared to hide them in return for money. I wonder whether my mother had a premonition as she kissed them goodbye that she would never see any of them again. After the war all my mother was ever able to discover was that her mother, Hania, Dolek and their baby had all been killed in that village, after being turned in to the Germans by one of the villagers.

  Several days after our departure, my father obtained false papers stating that he was Henryk Boguslawski, a Catholic dentist. In an attempt to alter his appearance, he’d cut his hair very short, parted it on the side and grown a clipped military moustache. For his ID photograph, instead of his usual affable expression, he’d assumed a cold, hard look.

  Now that his new papers were ready, he needed to register with the Dental Board as all dentists were required to do. The only dentists exempt from this regulation were Jews, who had no right to practise dentistry or any other profession. Henek knew that he couldn’t register in a false name in Lwow where he was known, so he decided to do so in Warsaw where nobody knew him.

  The train to Warsaw was so crowded that there was only enough room to stand on one leg at a time. The train spent more time standing between stations than moving because the line was being used by army trains jammed full of German troops on their way to the Russian front. During the interminable stops, Henek tried to cheer himself up by thinking that even though the trains stood still, time was still moving on and every minute brought him closer to the end of the war. For a Jew to take off the armband and live on the Aryan side would be difficult and risky. He’d have to watch every single word for fear of giving himself away. But there was no choice. Staying in Lwow meant certain death and, no matter what happened, Danusia must survive.