by Sue Gee
At the gate stood armed Nazi and Polish police, and they could also see Jewish police, in a different uniform, wearing armbands; their belts bulged with truncheons. At intervals along the wall there were wooden watchtowers: craning her neck up at the nearest, Anna could see two Nazi-uniformed guards inside. Both had machine guns, trained on the slowly moving crowd.
Through the open gate she could see that the great mass of people already inside was simply milling about, still carrying their few possessions, their bundles of clothes or rolls of bedding, their chairs – walking up and down the narrow streets, lined with tenements, looking, it was obvious, for somewhere to stay. But the ghetto was no size at all! And there were hundreds still moving through the gate, hundreds more behind them, there must be thousand upon thousand, hundreds of thousands … What were they all going to do in there? How were they going to be fed? Among the crowd pacing up and down, looking into doorways, she could see that some were quite well dressed, carrying suitcases, women in furs and high heels, men in good suits and soft hats. It wasn’t just the Hassidic Jews from the old quarter, then, it really was every Jew in Warsaw, it must be, from professors to cleaners, every single one swept up like dirt, and pushed inside the walls.
‘Look down there!’ Jerzy hissed, and he pointed to a corner of a side street. A uniformed Nazi was crouched behind a movie camera.
‘I’m frightened,’ said Anna. ‘I’m frightened! For God’s sake let’s go.’
They turned and made their way back, pushing their way through the crowd, past the rattling carts, the silent families.
Throughout the spring of the following year, 1941, there was a continuous stream of German traffic across southern Poland, and some through the streets and stations of Warsaw. Tanks, troops, armoured vehicles all moved across the bridges over the Vistula, making their way east, towards the river Bug, the border with Russia agreed under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. In Praga, from their sitting room windows, Jerzy, Teresa and Anna watched and speculated.
Then, in late summer, every newsboy was suddenly calling out that in June the Germans had crossed the river Bug, and attacked Russia. The Pact was broken; the headlines in the Nowy Kurier were triumphant. Now, new posters appeared: anti-Soviet slogans plastered the walls.
‘But what’s going to happen to all the Polish prisoners?’ Anna asked in komplety. ‘All those officers taken by the Russians? What’s going to happen to my father?’
‘And mine,’ said Natalia, twisting her hands.
‘And my husband,’ said Pani Sokołowa, whose bedroom now held a cot for baby Adela. She sat at the table with her glass of tea and shook her head. ‘We can only keep hoping. No one has heard any more? Not a single card?’
‘Nothing,’ said Natalia.
‘Nothing,’ said Anna, remembering retour – parti stamped on each of the bundle of letters sent back from Kozielsk. Natalia’s mother had had a bundle like that, too. Parti … parti … Where had they all gone?
‘I believe there are a quarter of a million missing prisoners,’ said Pani Sokołowa. ‘That’s what Pani Jawicz tells me, from the latest bulletins …’
On a darkening afternoon, early in December, Anna and Jerzy were struggling to get the kitchen stove alight with a new firebrick. Teresa had been out since the morning, queueing across the river for cooking oil.
‘I think that’s it,’ Anna said at last, and they both coughed as threads of acrid smoke escaped through a gap in the tiles.
‘Damn thing,’ Jerzy said irritably, and went to wring out a cloth in the sink. He pressed it over the gap, and there was a hissing from inside the stove.
‘If you put it out now,’ said Anna, ‘I’ll scream.’
‘Oh, shut up.’
The door of the apartment banged, and Teresa came running down the corridor. ‘They’re being released! There’s an amnesty – they’re being released!’
‘What?’ They swung round, and Teresa danced in to the kitchen.
‘The prisoners in Russia! Everyone’s been whispering about it in the queue. The Poles are being released to fight the Nazis!’
‘Oh, my God,’ said Anna. ‘Are they coming home? Is Tata coming home?’
‘I don’t know – no one seems to know yet. But at least we should hear something from him, shouldn’t we?’
‘If he’s home for Christmas …’ said Jerzy.
‘For Christmas!’ said Anna. ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful?’
They hugged each other, they hugged Teresa, jumping up and down until a loose floorboard cracked. Jerzy spent the whole evening mending it, and then every cracked or broken window frame in the apartment, humming.
By Christmas, hundreds of thousands had been released under Stalin’s amnesty. They were formed into an army under the command of General Anders, himself released from solitary confinement. In prison, he had been flogged and half-starved; now he formed his men into the Polish Second Corps, responsible to the Polish Government in London. Since their capture in 1939, these men had been held in freezing labour camps, taken out to work as roadbuilders in the snow. Their fingers and toes dropped off from frostbite; they had seen thousands of their fellow prisoners die in these camps. Now they, the survivors, began the long icy trek out of Russia, towards the Middle East. Thousands more perished on the journey. Those who struggled through eventually formed the Polish forces in Palestine, and later, under British command, took part in Allied Forces fighting in Egypt and Italy.
By Christmas, the Polish underground press had still not a word to report on what had happened to any of the men in the three particular Russian camps where thousands of Reserve Officers and priests had been held: 4,500 in Kozielsk, 3,900 in Starobielsk, almost 6,500 in Ostaszków.
As the new year opened, Anna and Jerzy had still heard nothing from their father. The underground bulletins, so Pani Sokołowa told the girls in December, did report that General Sikorski had flown from London to Moscow, and in a meeting with Stalin had demanded that he explain where the missing men were now held. He was given no answer. Perhaps, Stalin suggested, the fifteen thousand had escaped, and walked the thousands of miles to Manchuria. Why should they do that? He didn’t know. How could they do that? He shrugged. Other than that, he had no idea, though inquiries would certainly be made.
The burka hung on the back of the surgery door. It was heavy and very warm, a thick, rough brown fabric with a soft woollen lining; Tomasz had had it for years, always wore it to visit his country patients in the winter. Teresa pressed her face against it for a moment, then carefully lifted it from the hanger and went out, closing the door behind her. She did not like to stay in the surgery for long.
In the sitting room she spread the coat over the table, examining the seams, and with difficulty, because of the weight, turned it inside out and examined them again. She had been right: it would make two coats quite adequately, even elegantly, the heavy outer fabric for Jerzy, the beige lining for Anna, who had left for komplety shivering in her worn school coat, now much too small.
Could she do it herself? It was really a job for a professional dressmaker, but she had been sewing clothes for the children for years, she should be able to manage. She went into the ice-cold bedroom, where her needlework box stood on the chest of drawers; an oblong of light, caught between two boarded window panes, lay across the bed; she sank down suddenly and put her head in her hands. Was he thinking about her, now? Was he able to think? Had he loved her at all? Was it an act of apostasy not to keep the coat for his return?
It was bitter in here; Teresa shivered, coughing. Then she got up, and took her sewing box into the kitchen. She took out her scissors, made the first cuts in the coat, and ripped the seams apart.
4. Warsaw, 1942–1944
In the spring of 1942, two German officers came to visit the apartment. They were formal, remote, barely looking Teresa in the eye as they asked to be conducted round, and although the family had known for a week that they were coming, and why, it felt quite shocking to have the
m there. They went without comment from room to room, indifferent eyes glancing at pictures, at bookshelves, into bedrooms. At the end of the corridor one of the men clicked open the door to the surgery. Anna watched him appraise its size, the generous oak desk and the couch, the fresh green leaves of the chestnut tree at the window, and then he nodded to his companion and she knew that they had lost their home.
They were to be moved, like many other families from the better residential areas, to the old Jewish quarter bordering Stare Miasto. The letter of relocation gave an address near Senatorska, one of the main streets, just outside the ghetto wall.
On the day of the move, they carried heavy suitcases along their own street to the tram stop. It was a bright, cold morning; they stood at the stop and waited, not talking. Anna imagined the German officers whose quarters their apartment was to be, choosing rooms, opening the windows on to the courtyard, with plenty of money to do the repairs, and make it all nice again. Except that it wouldn’t be nice, because They were living there. When the tram which would take them across the river arrived, she began to cry.
‘I don’t want to go, I don’t want to. How will Tata ever find us now?’
‘Sssh,’ said Teresa, pushed along by the queue behind her. ‘Get on, quickly.’
‘He’ll go to Wiktoria, won’t he?’ said Jerzy, taking her bag.
‘Oh. Yes, yes, of course he will.’ She climbed on, and they swung across the Vistula, the water sparkling in the spring sunshine. They had to take another tram, through Teatralny Square; then they got off, and crossed into Senatorska. Teresa held the letter; they walked slowly along, searching for the address. In cobbled squares off the main street they glimpsed a few trees, just in leaf. Here, towering tenements rose above them; there were endless rows of dark, closed casement windows. Anna remembered the few occasions she had travelled through the quarter, on streets like this one – not on the dreadful day when Jerzy showed her the families pouring into the newly-created ghetto, but before the war. It had been so crowded, then, and everything had looked so foreign: the faces, the clothes, the shops and shop signs. There were a great many people here now, but none of them were Jews, they were just ordinary Polish families like them, weren’t they? Forced out of their homes and shunted across the city. The shops were boarded up, the ground-floor windows shuttered; old Yiddish shop signs creaked in the wind above them: there were peeling pictures of umbrellas, of jackets above the tailors’, shoes above the shoemakers’. All those shopkeepers and craftsmen were inside the ghetto, now, working in the German slave shop’s and factories, turning out uniforms, saddlery, mattresses and machinery. People said their ration allowance was two hundred calories a day.
Litter blew along the pavement and across the cobbles. It wasn’t hard to imagine rats, scurrying through the gaps and broken shutters of the doorways. Many of the pasted-up notices flapped torn corners; others, put up months ago, were wrinkled from winter snow and rain. A Proclamation in heavy black capitals seemed to appear on every block: Anna slowed still further, seeing the words ‘Jewish’ and ‘Death’. Jerzy and Teresa were ahead; she stood by herself, reading the warning.
PROCLAMATION Concerning the death penalty for illegally leaving Jewish residential districts.
In recent times Jews who left the residential district assigned to them have in many cases proved to be carriers of typhus. In order to avert the danger that hangs over the population, the Governor General hereby decrees that a Jew who in the future illegally leaves the designated residential district will be punished by death.
He who deliberately offers refuge to such Jews or who aids them in any other manner (i. e. offering a night’s lodging, food or by taking them into vehicles of any kind, etc.) will also be subject to the same punishment.
Judgement will be passed by a Special Court in Warsaw.
I draw the attention of the entire population of Warsaw District to the new statutory decision because it shall be henceforth applied with pitiless severity.
Warsaw
10 November 1941
Dr Fischer
Governor
‘Anna? Anna! We’ve found it – come on!’ Jerzy had left his case with Teresa and was walking back towards her. ‘What are you doing?’
Anna turned to him. ‘Are you in such a hurry?’
He picked up her bag. ‘No, but Teresa’s tired and jumpy. I just want to get in there and get it over with. What are you reading?’ He looked up at the notice. ‘That. It’s months old, it’s been everywhere. You haven’t seen it before?’
‘Somehow I haven’t. And you didn’t tell me.’
‘Anna … you knew, anyway. Everyone knows.’
A gust of the cold April wind sent more rubbish scattering past them along the cracked, uneven pavement; he turned up the collar of the burka and shivered. Under his cap, his face was very thin.
‘Come on.’
Anna could see Teresa, a hundred yards or so ahead, waiting for them. She, too, was so thin now that her coat was hanging off her – Anna supposed that she must look like that, as well. Had Teresa read the notice?
‘Jerzy? What’s it like, the place?’
‘It looks horrible.’ He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, with a wry smile. ‘I’m here.’
She smiled thinly.
The entrance to the tenement courtyard where Teresa stood waiting was tall and narrow. A single iron gate, rusted, was pushed open and looked as if it could never close again without losing its hinges. Inside, as they crossed the courtyard, searching for their stairwell, they passed two lavatories, like sheds, with hanging doors, and they stank. The windowless flight of stone stairs was worn and dirty and frightening – unlit, with peeling doors to other, unknown apartments. Theirs was on the third floor, with two more floors above, and had been shut up since the evacuation of its occupants to the ghetto; it was dark, and smelt of damp and emptiness. They put down their cases inside the door and looked into the two small bedrooms, the kitchen-living room. Furniture from the apartment in Praga would be coming on a cart, tomorrow. Here, there were bed frames but no mattresses, a table in the kitchen but no chairs. The plaster on the walls crumbled to the touch, and the floors were thick with dust.
‘How many people do you think lived here?’ Anna asked, and was chilled by the sound of her own voice.
Teresa shook her head. ‘Six? Eight? Too many, anyway.’ She crossed the kitchen, and with difficulty pushed open the filthy windows on to a tiny balcony. They stood leaning on the rail, with barely room for the three of them, and looked down on to the courtyard, barred with heavy shadow and motionless slabs of sunlight. Above, the sky had been trapped by the four sides of the block into a square without prospect or horizon.
Jerzy went back inside, and they could hear him move the cases, two into the room he and Anna would share, the heaviest, crammed with everything she could bring, into Teresa’s. When they went in they found him in the corridor, holding something.
‘This was under one of the beds.’
Teresa and Anna looked at the limbless body of a small cheap doll, its mouth open in a smile, its eyes rolled up into the head. Teresa took it, and gently tilted it upwards, but the eyes wouldn’t open any more.
The newspaper boy stood on the corner, waving the Nowy Kurier at a passing German patrol. ‘Come on, you lot, buy your rag – no one else is going to!’ In the bread queue, where he stood each morning, Jerzy heard it with the others, and grinned. It was early, the narrow street thronged with people queueing, or on their way to work; suddenly, crossing it at the far end, a buda appeared, a covered German lorry. It stopped, blocking the exit.
There was a ripple, and then heads turned at the sound of another, at the near end, which screeched to a halt, so that the street was sealed. ‘Buda! Lapanka! Round-up!’ yelled the newspaper boy, and vanished. There was a surge towards the open shop doors: with a dozen others Jerzy managed to shove through into the baker’s just before it slammed shut. Kneeling, he raise
d his head and peered over the bottom of the window sill.
The street was full of German soldiers, pushing their way through the terrified people who remained, seizing first one man, then another, then another, until they had six, lined up with their faces pressed against the wall on the other side. Forced by rifle butts to stand opposite them, and watch, the crowd fell back, and the officer gave the order to fire. The soldiers raised machine guns; in seconds, the street existed only as a roar of sound: shouts, gunfire, screaming. Six bodies slumped to the ground, and dark pools of blood crept along the pavement.
An utter silence. Then two women ran forward wildly across the cobbles and sank by one of the bodies. What followed happened so fast that for a moment Jerzy didn’t know if he could have seen it: the officer gave the order to fire again, and the two women barely had time to raise their heads before they also fell.
Slowly the officer walked over to their sprawled bodies, lifted their heads by the hair, and let them drop with a crack on to the stone. Then he turned to the frozen onlookers.
‘A rail transport of supplies vital to the German Reich was sabotaged last night,’ he said in broken Polish. ‘Let this punishment be a warning to all of you.’
He nodded to his men, and they ran to the waiting lorries and drove off.
Behind him, Jerzy heard someone being sick. He dragged himself up by the window sill as the shopkeeper, his fingers trembling, scraped back the bolts on the door; reaching for hands, sleeves, anything human to touch, and hold on to, they all stumbled out on to the pavement. Already, the bodies were partly hidden by a press of people, bending, lifting, slowly carrying them one by one through a doorway. A woman came out from a shop with a bucket of water. She was about to throw it on the stones, to wash away the blood, but another woman stopped her.
‘No, don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘Leave it – let everyone see.’
The woman with the bucket hesitated, then nodded and took the bucket back indoors. Just a little slopped over the sides.
