by Irma Joubert
“Stay calm, focus on your task,” Jakób said calmly. Taking the stairs three at a time, he raced up to the roof with Waldus on his heels.
The planes were heading for the city center. Jakób followed them with his eyes, saw them release their bombs, saw building after building explode in a mass of flames. Thick, black smoke billowed and became one with the gray rain clouds. He felt an enormous rage bordering on hatred. Through his field glasses he watched the wall of German vehicles approach.
A boy sat against the rear wall, a row of empty bottles lined up in front of him. He was meticulously filling each bottle exactly halfway with petrol. His hands were trembling. He wiped up the drops he had spilled with a cloth, pushed the cloth into the neck of the bottle with the end protruding, and carefully sealed it with a cork stopper, then set it alongside the other finished bottles. “We don’t have much petrol, Corporal,” he said.
Jakób suppressed the sudden wave of affection that washed over him. “How many Molotovs have you made?” he asked.
“Thirteen, Corporal.”
“Fine. Save the rest of the petrol for tomorrow. It looks as if the Germans are heading straight for us. You five without rifles will take up your positions at the windows and pelt them with the Molotovs and the hand grenades. One bomb per vehicle. Target the armored troop carriers, they’re open at the top. Or the open trucks, or aim for the hatch of a tank. We can’t afford to waste our chances, so you’ll have to take good aim.”
“Yes, Corporal,” replied a chorus of voices.
They were facing the mighty German Wehrmacht with an army of children—what lay ahead?
At noon Józef signaled to headquarters: “Under heavy fire. Enemy still out of reach. At least twenty tanks, thirty armored vehicles. Send reinforcements. Radio still out of order.”
Almost an hour later a message came back: “Under attack from the north and southwest. No reinforcements available. Order: Stop Germans at all costs.”
The German tanks and troop carriers kept rolling in. The Poles stacked sandbags and used building rubble to build barricades until their muscles ached and their hands were blistered and raw. They threw Molotovs, sometimes hitting the mark, so that German soldiers tumbled from their vehicles, burning. They threw hand grenades. Two tanks veered sideways and soldiers spilled out, covered with blood. Jakób aimed the bazooka and blasted a tongue of fire in the direction of a tank.
German snipers picked off the men in their observation posts. German guns and machine guns blew apart their barricades.
A mortar bomb struck the top of their building. The roof caved in with an enormous crash, covering the staircase with debris. The second story collapsed, burying two boys from Stan’s section under the concrete. “Abandon the building!” Jakób shouted. “Retreat!”
By evening row upon row of buildings were on fire. Overpowering smoke hung over their heads. The flames colored the clouds a dirty orange. But the gunfire had stopped for the moment.
Stan’s and Jerzy’s sections had taken up position in neighboring buildings. Jakób’s men were gathered around him. They ate bread and tinned fish and drank hot black coffee. Only Haneczka was possibly older than he was; the rest of his men’s soft cheeks were covered with acne instead of beards.
“This coffee is horrible without sugar,” said Józef. “I can’t wait to put four spoonfuls in again.”
“Bitter coffee is better for your teeth,” said Haneczka. “Go slow with the water, the taps don’t work anymore.”
Jakób said, “Tomorrow will be no better than today, everyone. Try and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll change the watch every two hours.”
“Right, Corporal,” said Haneczka.
“Before we go to bed, we must make some more Molotovs,” he said. “And let’s try and make some limpet mines.”
“How, Corporal?” asked Waldus.
“Use your socks,” said Jakób. “Put dynamite inside, with the fuse protruding slightly. Then cover the sock with grease. It should stick to a tank.”
Day seven broke gray, the rain falling in sheets, and soon became a protracted nightmare. They retreated through dense clouds of smoke, through driving rain. Crouching, they ran through black mud and dived for cover behind the rubble that had once been Warsaw. They clambered up buildings to throw their Molotovs and hand grenades. They waited in ditches to ignite the short fuses of limpet mines and attach them to the bulldozer wheels that traveled in above their heads.
Row upon row of German tanks rolled in, climbed over rubble, broke through wire barricades.
Haneczka had stopped fighting. She was applying pressure to wounds, bandaging, injecting morphine. And she was running low on supplies.
They fell back and hurriedly erected new obstacles, laid sandbags, built a barricade of rubble, and lay behind it in a line, waiting for the next wave of Nazis. The German troop carriers and infantry pushed forward. Officers rode in motorcycle sidecars, the tanks rolling along behind them.
Jakób’s and Stan’s sections climbed into stinking sewers and pushed open manholes behind the German lines, attacked hastily, disappeared again. They planted landmines and cut communication cables, but their petrol was finished, and their hand grenades as well.
“I can’t understand what’s keeping the Red Army,” said Stan. “Without them we’re not going to survive.”
A squadron of airplanes swooped low overhead. Jakób saw the bombs being released from their bellies. Black smoke billowed thickly from buildings. The nightmare closed in around him.
More planes thundered in; deafening gunfire blazed overhead.
From the corner of his eye Jakób saw Józef trying to draw his head even farther into his body. Then a rain of bullets struck the boy, his body jerked back, his eyes froze, and his chest split open.
Shock held Jakób’s body in an iron grip. A hot rush of nausea and revulsion pushed up in his throat. Józef would never put four spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee again.
One afternoon when Gretl got home after school, she learned that Monicka had had her baby. Only one, thank heaven. It was very small, with tiny feet.
“He looks more like a baby pig than a baby goat,” Gretl told Bruni that afternoon, “because he’s very pink and has no hair. But luckily he doesn’t scream. Well, not too much anyway.”
She was eating at the table now, sitting in Jakób’s chair. That night Monicka didn’t join them at the table. She was in bed.
“The news from Warsaw isn’t good,” said Turek, glowering from under his dense eyebrows. Gretl felt the lump in her tummy tighten.
“I’m not surprised,” said Uncle Janusz. “What was the Home Army thinking, taking on the Deutsche Wehrmacht?”
“The Black Madonna will watch over them,” said Aunt Anastarja.
“Who’s the Black Madonna?” Gretl asked.
All eyes turned to her. They seemed surprised that she didn’t know. Or maybe they had simply forgotten she was there.
Aunt Anastarja answered, “It’s a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her face is black. She watches over the people of Częstochowa.”
Gretl wanted to ask more, but the conversation had already moved on.
That night she lay in bed, wondering. Should she pray to the Black Madonna? In the end she decided to stick to Lieber Herr Jesus. Her prayers were in German, and she wasn’t sure whether the Black Madonna would understand. Maybe she could ask Sister Zofia, who knew everything about God.
She heard the baby softly crying but it didn’t bother her.
It was good that Jakób was fighting the Nazis, the Gestapo, who could smell Jewish blood. But it was hard to understand. Her father had also been a
Nazi, a good Nazi, Jakób had said.
If something happened to Jakób, what would become of her?
She would think about other things: Switzerland, where Oma and Mutti would be waiting with Onkel Hans. It was going to be so wonderful, maybe Jakób would agree to live there too.
When at last she fell asleep, she dreamed of the Gestapo and the bombs and Jakób in the ghetto. When a bomb struck the house, she sat up in bed.
Complete silence reigned. The moon shone through a chink in the curtain.
It was just a dream, she told herself. I’m not afraid.
She lay quietly, waiting for sleep to come.
4
Within a week the Germans had confined the Home Army to an area near the city center. They were an island surrounded by a sea of Nazi tanks. The Poles fought valiantly, desperately, defended street after street—and gave up street after street. Their rations had been reduced to almost nothing, their medical supplies exhausted, their ammunition finished. Jakób and Stan were finding it hard to motivate their troops. Jerzy spoke openly about going home. He had a farm, a wife, young children.
“Paris has been liberated,” said Captain Ryszard early one morning. “The German tanks are retreating; the Allied Forces have pulled down every Nazi banner; the people are dancing in the streets. Tell the men, it will give them hope.”
“Paris is far away, Captain,” said Jerzy.
Ryszard continued, “It’s our company’s turn to pick up supplies. Pilots of the South African Air Force are flying in tonight. They’ll come in low so we’ll have a better chance of recovering the cargo they’ll be dropping.”
“My section will go, Captain,” said Jakób immediately. “I might need a truck driver.”
Haneczka said, “I can drive, Corporal. My dad is a truck driver. I’ve been driving trucks since childhood.”
Jakób nodded. “Waldus, get another two or three men to help load.”
At midnight they were waiting in a clearing Jakób had carefully selected. If their mission was successful and they could get their hands on a decent stash of ammunition and medical supplies, it would boost everyone’s morale.
The planes came from the south, following the course of the Vistula. Jakób looked at his three assistants. They were mere boys, no more than fifteen years old, with children’s underfed bodies and the eyes of old men. Judging from the noise of the engines, the planes couldn’t be flying at more than two hundred feet. They made a left turn over the cathedral and came in even lower.
An unexpected burst of machine-gun fire erupted. Jakób swung his field glasses in that direction.
“Bloody Germans are on top of us,” said Haneczka.
“You’ll have to load quickly, men,” said Jakób. To Haneczka he said, “Don’t cut the engine. As soon as we’ve got everything, jump in and put your foot down.”
She nodded. “I’ll help load,” she said.
The next moment the planes were overhead. Jakób flashed their signal steadfastly: quick-quick-quick, wait, quick-quick-quick.
The cargo was dropped, the parachutes opened simultaneously against the red night sky, and the crates drifted down. But the wind pushed them toward the gunfire, which intensified.
“Drive toward the crates,” Jakób shouted over the noise, but Haneczka was already on her way.
A volley of bullets struck one of the planes. At once thick, black smoke billowed from the tail. A second plane exploded and fell from the sky in a torrent of flames.
“Drive!” Jakób shouted.
They sped toward the crates with the precious, long-awaited cargo of ammunition, hand grenades and radio equipment, vital rations and medical supplies. But as they approached, they saw the burning wreckage land among the crates. The first crate exploded, setting in motion a chain reaction, creating a wall of flames between the Germans and themselves. Only two crates escaped unscathed. Jakób ran his hand over his face and got out of the truck. “Let’s load, men,” he told the dismayed boys.
After the Bible story, Sister Zofia told Gretl to take five of the girls outside to read. They found the reading hard, because they read the letters instead of the words. They didn’t like reading either. “If you read to me, I’ll tell you a story,” Gretl said.
“What do you know about stories?” Starika sneered.
“I know a lot of stories, because I can read,” Gretl explained.
“Like what?” one of the other girls piped up.
“I’ll tell you, but first you must read,” said Gretl firmly.
They looked at the book they all shared. “Look at the whole word,” said Gretl, “or it will take very long. Look, it says u-n-c-l-e.”
“We know that,” said Starika.
“Well, look for others that also say u-n-c-l-e,” Gretl explained.
After a while they got tired of reading. “Tell us the story you promised,” said Anya.
She couldn’t tell them the story about Siegfried and the Nibelungen, Gretl thought, because she didn’t know the Polish word for Nibelungen. And the story about the Mouse Tower was too awful. She decided to tell them about the Lorelei, who sat on a rock, singing and combing her golden hair. “It’s not a proper story,” Starika complained.
“I’ll finish the story tomorrow,” said Gretl. “Look, Sister Zofia is calling us back to class.”
That afternoon she told Bruni, “Starika is right, you know, it’s not a proper story. But luckily the Lorelei has golden hair and she can sing, so tomorrow I’ll make up my own story.”
When she stood at the table the next day, waiting to have her sums marked, she asked, “Sister Zofia, can the Black Madonna . . .” She almost said “understand German,” but she remembered just in time.
“Can the Black Madonna do what, Gretz?”
“Can she protect people?”
Sister Zofia put down Gretl’s slate and folded her hands. “The Black Madonna is just a picture in our chapel, Gretz. It’s a very old picture, much more than a thousand years old, and the Poles attach a lot of value to it. But it’s not the picture that protects us, it’s the Holy Virgin herself, the Mother of God.”
“Oh,” said Gretl. “Why is the picture in our chapel?”
“I’ll bring you a book tomorrow,” Sister Zofia said, checking Gretl’s sums. “Then you can read about it yourself.”
“Okay,” said Gretl. “Where is Warsaw?”
“I’ll show you in another book. Go back to your desk, your sums are all correct. Ewunia, come show me your work.”
Every day Gretl was sent outside with groups of children to teach them to read. And to tell them stories. She soon learned that the children wouldn’t listen if her story wasn’t very good. At night she lay in bed making up stories that would keep the children quiet when the teacher had to leave the classroom.
“My dad also tells stories,” said Anya, “but your stories are better.”
Almost every morning Anya wanted to tell them something her dad had said. Sometimes Gretl could tell that Anya was lying. But one morning Anya had a secret to tell: “Listen, everybody.”
They all gathered around her. She spoke in a whisper. “My dad says the Gestapo are catching all the Jews and sending them to a camp.”
“What kind of camp?” Starika asked.
“Just a camp. Then they put them all into an oven and burn them. Like when Daniel had to go into the oven. But the Jews burn, because the angel of God doesn’t help them.”
“You’re lying,” Gretl said firmly. “And Daniel didn’t go into the oven, his friends did. And they were also Jews. And God sent His angel because
they were Jews. God wouldn’t let the Gestapo burn the Jews.”
“Do you think you know more than my dad?” Anya asked crossly. “You think you’re so clever, just because you can read stories. My dad says you’re so pale, you look like a German!”
All day long Gretl could think of nothing else. She tried to think about her stories, but all she could see in her mind was the picture of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that Sister Zofia had shown them when she told them the story. And no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t picture the angel that had been supposed to protect Oma and Mutti.
The next afternoon when she came home from school, Aunt Anastarja was taking a large loaf of bread from the oven. When she felt the heat on her skin, Gretl fled outside, to the goats.
She wished with all her heart that Jakób would come home. He would make everything right, she knew.
It was a short bridge, no more than thirty yards long, with a wide, tarred road leading across it and a tall, steel arch spanning it from end to end. The bridge was unimpressive, but they could cut off the Germans here, maybe even hold them off until reinforcements arrived. Still there was no sign of help from the Red Army, nor from the American or British liberators.
“I’ve lost track of what day it is,” Jakób said. It was long before winter, but he felt cold to the bone, as if he would never be warm again.
“It’s August 13,” said Ryszard. Jakób noticed that the captain’s hands were trembling. His house had been razed to the ground, and there was no sign of his wife and children. Jakób feared the man was losing hope.
“What will our strategy be, Captain?” he asked.
Ryszard looked up, making an obvious attempt to focus. “We’ll position ourselves west of the bridge,” he said. “We’ll try to stop the Germans before they reach it. If we don’t succeed, we’ll withdraw and blow up the bridge before they can cross. Jakób, dig in on the left side of the road, where the bridge begins. Stan, you on the right,” said Ryszard. “If we have to retreat, you’ll be the last to leave before we blow up the bridge.”
