by Sue Gee
Within days, the ghetto was surrounded by German troops, and in the small hours of 19 April, Anna and Jerzy were woken once again by bursts of machine-gun fire. But this time there was something else, as well. They ran to the window: between the gunfire and the screams they could hear a dull patter of small explosions.
‘They’re fighting back!’ said Jerzy. ‘We knew they were going to – they’ve got tommy guns and filipinki.’
‘Filipinki? Hand grenades? Do they think they can stop the Germans with hand grenades?’
He was standing on tiptoe, craning to hear more. ‘What else can we give them? It’s something, isn’t it – look!’
The sky was suddenly lit by a billow of flame. Anna grabbed his arm. ‘They’re burning them out – no! They can’t, they can’t!’
‘Shut up! It might not be that – the Jews might be burning the workshops.’
There was a thunder of shelling, and they clung to each other. Then the door was flung open, and Teresa burst into the room, sobbing.
‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it …’
Anna ran to her. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, we’re here, we’ll look after you …’
Teresa held her close. ‘Look after me? Darling, I don’t need looking after – I came to look after you.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry … But those poor, poor people.’
‘But –’ Anna broke off, and buried her face in Teresa’s shoulder.
No one went back to sleep that night. Next day, Anna had to make her way to the hospital a long way round, past lines of troops guarding all the streets near the ghetto. No one could get near the walls, and everyone was talking about how at least one German armoured car had been destroyed in the battle last night. Today, it was Hitler’s birthday.
On Easter Monday, at six in the evening, whole batteries of German artillery were assembled, and to the stirring blare of a military band they marched inside the gates, and began shelling houses at close range. The walls of the hospital shook: down in the basement next day, Anna and the others could hear windows shattering on the upper floors. For days, the whole quarter reverberated with the sounds of gunfire and explosions: what was the point of being confined below ground in the hospital? All day and all night, the glow of burning houses lit up the sky, and great clouds of black smoke billowed from above the ghetto walls and out across the city. All day and all night, German planes circled the site of the massacre. Jerzy told Anna he’d heard that from the rooftops and windows of the houses still held by the desperate Jews, banners were flying: ‘We shall fight till the last.’
The last came on 16 May. Every house had been bombarded, every hide-out discovered. Petrol-brands had been flung down the entrances to the sewers, where the last emaciated survivors were crawling, led through the filth by AK men and women who had themselves crawled in from beyond the walls. A few, perhaps a hundred, escaped like this, and made it to the forests outside the city. For the rest, some sixty thousand – where before the ‘transports to the east’there had been four hundred and fifty thousand – men, women and children, it was over, and in the smoking ruins of the ghetto there was only silence.
When Anna’s ward, and the others, were finally allowed to return to the upper floors, and she dared to look out through the broken, blackened window panes, she could see only a grey, bleak moonscape of rubble, littering the streets between the gaping buildings.
Soon, this lifeless limb of the city was to be used by the Germans as a more convenient, secret place for the mass execution of Poles, rounded up at random on the streets outside the walls.
In the autumn the terror began a new wave: between October 1943 and August 1944 over eight thousand Poles, men and women, were shot or hanged.
They came out of the safety of the courtyard one at a time. First Andrzej, with the torch up his sleeve and the rolls of paper buttoned inside his jacket; he coughed very softly, and Jerzy came, the old stiff brushes thrust uncomfortably into his trouser pockets. He snapped his fingers and Wilk was behind him, holding two pots of glue and paint. Outside the wrought-iron gateway, on the dark street, they pressed up against the wall, and looked quickly to right and left.
‘Okay,’ whispered Andrzej, and they crept along to where the posters were thickest, and peered up at them. Carefully, Wilk put the pots down on the pavement, and stood with his back to the others, watching the deserted street. The clock of the nearby church chimed twice.
‘Quick!’ Andrzej thrust the torch at Wilk and he clicked it on, pointing it downwards so that only a small circle of light rested on the pavement, just enough for Andrzej and Jerzy to see by as they quickly separated the paper into posters and blank sheets. The rustling was louder than he could ever have imagined. They pinned down the posters with the glue pot, and then Andrzej held the blank sheets as Jerzy dipped a brush in the black paint and with a steady hand sketched out a gallows in the torchlight. Hanging from it, he painted the outline of a swastika. Andrzej swiftly slid the paper away, and he did another, then a sketch of a city lamp post, with a little dummy of Hitler, swinging from it on a broken neck.
‘Okay, come on,’ Andrzej hissed, and bent so that Jerzy could clamber on to his shoulders and paste the sheets up quickly in the torch beam Wilk directed, over the hateful German slogans, Bekanntmachung! and fists of punishments. He dropped down and changed places with Wilk, watching the street, his heart thudding until his chest hurt. The other two were breathing heavily as they slapped glue on to the posters and then Wilk was on Andrzej’s shoulders and as Jerzy pointed the torch he plastered them up: circles of bayonets, pointing at the swastika imprisoned in their midst.
The church clock chimed the quarter hour. Wilk jumped down. He looked swiftly up and down the street again, and then they each, in the last moments allowed, grabbed a brush and daubed, over and over again, in every blank space or corner on the German posters, the symbolpof resistance which everyone knew now: PW, forming an anchor: w: Polska Walcząca: Fighting Poland. Fighting Poland. Fighting Poland.
Then they ran.
A warm golden evening in early July, sun in the leaves of the trees all along the avenues. The meeting tonight was to be held in Wilk’s family apartment, in a street running off the broad and beautiful·Krakowskie Przedmieście: walking through the market stalls in Zelazna Brama, through the Iron Gate and into the Saxon Gardens, Jerzy might have been out on almost any summer evening. On the long path through the Gardens families pushed prams, lovers held hands: the patrols were not usually much in evidence here, until the approach of curfew.
As soon as he left the Gardens, of course, the brief illusion of freedom and safety disappeared: as always, on the way to any meeting, he felt as though his every step were being watched. And yet, strangely, since they had learned of Tata’s death he also felt in some obscure way protected. Before, when they had waited and waited for him to come home, not knowing where he could be, Jerzy had felt alone, adrift, exposed. Now, it was as if his father’s spirit were watching over him, standing between him and danger.
The apartment was lit by the evening sun: at last there was no need for candles, or to sit shivering in their coats. Wilk’s mother had baked pastries – they stood on the table in the drawing room, where she poured out glasses of weak barley coffee. Pani Wilk, Jerzy found himself thinking of her, not knowing her real name. Pani Wolf. She had taken the oath last year. Her husband, taken prisoner by the Russians in 1939, like Tata, had been released under the amnesty of 1941 – they hoped he was in Palestine now, serving under General Anders with the British troops.
‘Antylopa …’ Pani Wilk was smiling, leading him towards the table. ‘No problems getting here? Good, good. The Captain is late this evening, but I’m sure he won’t mind if we eat while we’re waiting. Help yourself.’
‘Thank you, Pani.’
He stood with the others, all a little subdued. Why was the Captain not here? He was almost always the first.
‘How’s Anna?’ Andrzej asked.
Jerzy
hesitated. ‘Low,’ he said. ‘Very low.’
‘Because of your father.’
‘Yes. My stepmother, too – well, all of us. I mean, I know it’s been a few months, now, but…’
Andrzej shuffled his feet. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘I know. Thanks. It’s the same for Natalia – Anna’s friend, d’you remember her? Her father’s name was on the list, as well.’
Two quick taps came on the apartment door. ‘That’s him!’ Pani Wilk hurried to open it.
When the Captain came into the drawing room, they all knew at once that something was wrong. He stood for a moment, shaking his head, as Pani Wilk took his jacket, then followed her across the room to the boys. They looked at him awkwardly.
‘Something has happened,’ said Pani Wilk. ‘You were followed here?’
‘No, no. I’m afraid that what has happened is to someone far more important.’ He looked at the waiting boys. ‘You are all aware that the whole AK is under the secret command of “Grot”.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Before I came here tonight,’ the Captain said slowly, ‘I was contacted with the information that Grot has been arrested.’
‘No!’ Pani Wilk’s hands flew to her mouth. The boys looked at each other in silence. ‘It’s absolutely certain?’ she asked.
The Captain nodded. ‘Yes – he was seized four days ago, here in Warsaw. They’ve been looking for him for years, of course – he was on the way to a meeting, and must have been recognized. Apparently he’d hardly got inside the house when the Gestapo sealed off the street and … and got him.’
He looked at the silent boys. ‘Sit down, sit down.’ He pulled out a chair for himself, and stretched out his long legs. ‘Grot has been our inspiration,’ he said simply. ‘He’s a man of immense courage and vision. And of course … of course he holds secrets which they will do anything to get out of him. You will remember the words of your oath – “to keep the secret whatever the cost may be”. Grot will reveal nothing.’
‘But –’ Pani Wilk said hesitantly. ‘But … imagine what they’ll do to him.’
The Captain looked down at his hands. ‘Exactly.’
Through the open window came the sound of voices in the street below, the intermittent hum of passing trams, the evening breeze in the chestnut trees. Inside the room, no one spoke.
At last Jerzy said nervously: ‘Sir? Excuse me, but … who’s going to lead us now?’
The Captain raised his head. ‘General “Bór”,’ he said. ‘You’ll remember that he has been Grot’s deputy – I imagine it’s fairly certain that London will appoint him Commander-in-Chief.’
‘What do you know of him?’ asked Pani Wilk.
‘I’ve met him once, here in Warsaw. He’s a fine man – very quiet, gentlemanly, but impressive. He’s strong. I shouldn’t think there could be a better replacement, but – what a sad way to succeed.’
By the next day, the news of Grot’s arrest had spread in whispers, bulletins and low voices throughout the city. Within days, crowds were gathering, weeping, by the German loudspeakers, as they crackled and spat with fresh news: returning to London via Gibraltar, from a visit to the Middle East, General Sikorski, Prime Minister and Commander of the Polish Armed Forces, had been killed in an air crash.
Clouds of cigarette smoke wafted from the front of the tram. At the back, Jerzy and Andrzej coughed, with the other passengers, as they swayed along Marszałkpwska and slowed down to stop at the intersection with·Jerozolimskie Avenue. They were going to visit Wiktoria, but Hoza was another two or three stops away, and it was drizzling, an early autumn morning with the trees just turning and the weather damp. Jerzy watched a trickle of water thread through the dirt on the window, and wondered what Wiktoria might have to eat. He was ravenous.
The tram stopped, and the doors swung open, but then they quickly closed again. He felt Andrzej nudge him sharply.
‘What?’
‘Trouble,’ Andrzej muttered.
There were German voices at the front, he was suddenly aware of a wave of panic rippling through every passenger, and it reached him quickly as he looked from one white face to another, and heard the whispered word: ‘Łapanka! Round-up!’ Then the barrier dividing the tram was flung up, and two German soldiers pushed their way through, shouting; ‘Papers! Papers!’ People were fumbling in pockets and purses, but the soldiers barely glanced at the cards they produced. Instinctively, Jerzy pressed away, towards the centre doors, and at once saw a whole group of soldiers outside on the pavement, and a lorry just in front of the tram. There was a sudden scuffle and he turned back to see a young man in a jacket and peaked cap thrust angrily towards the front.
‘Rous! Raus!‘
Two more soldiers – he could see now, as the passengers fell back – were waiting up there with rifles.
‘And this one,’ said one of the Germans, pushing the shoulders of another man. Then he was scanning every face, eyes flicking like a lizard’s across the trapped passengers.
Beside him, Andrzej was staring at the floor. Jerzy felt a great pool of fear spread through his stomach, his back and limbs, until the whole of his body was filled with it, and he couldn’t move. When the German grabbed him, shouting: ‘This one, too,’ he knew that the whole of his life had led to this one, pure moment of terror, with nothing to protect him. No father, no God. Then he was stumbling down towards the doors with a rifle pressed into his back, out to where the lorry was waiting.
Anna walked quickly along Senatorska, shivering in the evening chill, her feet already cold. No one had proper new shoes any more: the brown lace-ups had had to last her for two winters, day in and day out, mended and reheeled four or five times until now they were almost beyond repair.
At the opening to the courtyard of their apartment block she stopped for a moment, wondering if she might meet Jerzy on his way home, as she sometimes did. But she couldn’t see him, and even in broad daylight people did not stand about in the streets. In the frightening dusk she hurried into the courtyard, and across, and climbed the stone steps, her feet echoing faintly as she went higher and the stairway became enclosed. Still, over eighteen months since they were moved, she found it hard to come back here at the end of each day.
She turned the key in the door and pushed it open.
‘Teresa?’
‘In here.’
She was in the kitchen, writing at the table; a pan simmered on the stove. Anna went over and lifted the lid. Fat dumplings floated in a broth, nudging slices of carrot and onion. ‘Smells good,’ she said, and still in her coat and scarf dipped in the wooden ladle and blew on it, taking a burning sip.
‘How was today?’ Teresa asked, putting away her notebook.
‘Very busy – we had four new patients in.’ She took another sip, and put down the ladle. ‘What were you writing?’
Teresa shrugged. ‘Just a journal.’
‘Oh? I didn’t know you kept a journal.’
‘I only really started it in the spring.’
‘When we heard about Tata?’
‘Yes.’
Anna went across and put her arm across Teresa’s shoulders, thin under the green cardigan she’d reknitted from an old jumper last winter.
‘Are you all right?’
Teresa reached up and took her hand; she nodded but did not answer.
Anna leaned her head against hers and they stayed like that, heads touching, neither speaking. At last Anna said:
‘Where’s Jerzy?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Teresa. ‘I never know.’
She parted Anna’s hand, got up, and began to lay the table. Anna sat on the rickety chair and watched her. Since they’d come here, despite all the shortages, and price rises, despite having to sell piece after piece of china, and utensils, and clothes on the black market; despite all of it, Teresa had managed to make this horrible place a sort of home. Mama’s tapestry kilims hung on the walls, just as they had in Praga, and
in the spring and summer there were always a few flowers – the street flower-sellers hadn’t disappeared.
Teresa set out plates, black bread, cracked dishes and the worn cutlery they’d bought in·Zelaznej Bramy, after selling the last of the silver plate. Wiktoria had helped them to do that – she knew someone who knew someone. Wiktoria always knew someone.
‘Does Jerzy talk to you?’ Teresa asked. ‘I mean about how he spends his time.’
‘Teresa …’ Anna twiddled a tin fork. ‘You know how he spends his time. A lot of it, anyway. Don’t you?’
Teresa pulled out her chair and sat down again. ‘You mean he’s joined.’
‘Of course.’
‘Through Andrzej.’
‘Well, yes. Through the Grey Ranks, that’s what they call the underground Scouts, isn’t it? That’s how they recruit a lot of boys, through the Grey Ranks.’ She hesitated. ‘I should’ve kept on going to Guides, too, I wish you hadn’t stopped me.’
Teresa looked at her. ‘You mean you wish you could join, too.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Anna …’ She looked stricken. ‘Do you realize what you’re saying? Aren’t we all in enough danger already? There are round-ups and executions almost every day – every time you or Jerzy are late home, I worry. It’s bad enough knowing that Jerzy is in real danger now. I couldn’t bear it if I had to fear for you like that, too.’
‘But –’ Anna felt a wave of irritation. ‘But there are whole families joining. Other … mothers seem to manage.’
Teresa flushed. ‘Perhaps it’s easier for them, if they are real mothers.’
‘Why? Why should it be?’ Anna demanded. ‘I don’t think …’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t think my real mother would have stopped us. I think she’d have wanted us to join. To do something!’
