The Lost Boy

by Kate Moira Ryan

  “Yes, Mama,” the girl said, curtseying in front of the guests, then left.

  Slim watched the girl walk out. She said, “She’s wonderful, Countess Zamoyska. I hope my daughter grows up to have her grace.”

  “How old is your daughter?” The Countess asked as she wiped her eyes.

  “Still an infant,” Slim replied, glancing to see if the Countess was shocked by her apparent abandonment of a young child. “She’s with my grandmother and a nanny in London. I did not think it wise to bring her to Poland since it is still in the process of being rebuilt.”

  “So, how can I help you?” The Countess asked Slim.

  “I am trying to find this boy,” Slim said, as she held up a picture of Karol. “I was hired by his mother Lena and, well, her father said Lena was his nanny. Still, she would like to find him and emigrate to America. Her father said she worked for you.”

  “I thought Lena was dead. She was sent to Auschwitz,” the Countess said, amazed.

  “She’s very much alive and wants to find this boy. I guess she feels an enormous attachment to him as his nanny.”

  “Lena wasn’t his nanny. She was his mother,” the Countess said as she looked at the photo of the boy.

  “What?” Slim asked, confused.

  “Lena was his mother and his uncle, Emil, was his father. The Morgensterns adopted the boy and raised him as their own after their older boys died from hemophilia,” the Countess said. “Lena and Emil had an affair while she worked for the Morgensterns.”

  “But how did her father not find out?” Slim asked, confused. Inevitably, her father would know if his daughter had had a child.

  “She hid the pregnancy. Finally, when she could not hide it anymore, she and Emil went to the Morgensterns and confessed what had happened. Mrs. Morgenstern said she would take the child and raise it, provided that Emil emigrated to America. Lena could stay as the baby’s nanny and help bring up the child. So she gave birth and the Morgensterns pretended the child was their own.”

  Slim did not know who to believe. “You are certain of this?” Slim asked, stunned by this turn of events.

  “I am certain. Lena stayed at our castle in Klamensow until she gave birth and Emil was sent to a relative in Chicago. The Morgensterns treated the child as their own and Lena helped raise him. When the Germans rounded up our Jewish neighbors in the town square, Lena brought the child to her father’s farm. And they were safe until the night the expulsion happened.”

  ✽✽✽

  1942 — Zwierzyniec

  Hearing the shouting, Roza woke with a start. She reached for Jan, but he was not there in the room. Throwing on her dressing gown, she rushed to the adjoining nursery where four-year-old Elzbieta lay with her arms around one-year-old Maria, who had climbed out of her crib into her sister’s bed. It had been less than three years ago when Jan had succeeded his father as the 16th Count of Zamoyska, making them one of the wealthiest families in Poland. Along with a castle in Klamensow and a palace in Warsaw, they had over 500,000 acres in Zamość county — most of it situated in Zwierzyniec. They thought it wise to stay in Klamensow, but after they had been expelled from Jan’s childhood home, they had moved back to the Ordinance in Zwierzyniec so Jan could manage his vast land holdings and provide the German Army with food.

  Unbeknownst to their Nazi occupiers, Jan was playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse as he worked to help the underground army of the Polish resistance. Roza spent her days working with a welfare committee she had organized trying to help the multitude of war victims, while her mother and their housemaid looked after the small girls.

  Roza came back into her bedroom and saw Jan put his fingers to his lips.

  “What is it?” Roza whispered.

  “Stanislaw woke me and told me that the SS are expelling the farmers from their land,” Jan said. Stanislaw was their estate manager, who lived in the small cottage on the edge of the forest.

  “What do you mean they’re expelling the farmers from their land? Who will farm it?” Roza asked.

  “They’re bringing in ethnic Germans to farm it.” Jan pulled on his leather boots.

  “What’s going to happen to the Polish families?” Roza asked thinking about the multitudes of farmers in the county of Zamość who populated the land.

  “This may be just a rumor, but they’re rounding up the men and sending them to work camps.”

  “What about the women and children?”

  “I don’t know what will happen to them.”

  “You have to find out,” Roza said, trying not to sound hysterical. The Jews of Zwierzyniec who hadn’t been shot in the square had been sent to work camps, but she was hearing from her contacts in the Red Cross that something was happening to them there. They were disappearing. Jan had saved some of them, but not nearly enough. There hadn’t been time. He tried to take as many as he could, pleading that he needed the workers. He then hid them in the countryside.

  “This expulsion order is from Heinrich Himmler. It’s called Generalplan Ost — Germany is expanding into the East and is going to use Poland as a slave state,” Jan said as he stroked his mustache. It was a nervous habit acquired when he was studying music in a conservatory in Paris. “God, what is going to become of Poland? I should have sent you and the children to London when there was still time.”

  When there was still time... How often had she had heard that phrase? She thought back to when there was still time. Her life had been different before 1938. The girls had not been born yet. They were one of the wealthiest families in Poland when there was still time. And now they were here, their world gone. The Jews had been murdered in the street and then forced into cattle cars sent to God knows where. Jan knew, but he would not tell her. She had heard that the Morgensterns were dead, shot in the street. Lena had Itzhak, but how long could she protect him? Her mind flooded; she tried not to panic. The girls must be kept safe. Roza looked around stifling the urge to cry. The past was the past, she thought. Somehow, some way, she had to get through this.

  “Our place is with you Jan,” Roza said.

  The truth is they should have left, but Jan would not leave. The county of Zamość was his family’s protectorate. He felt a responsibility to its people. ‘I was given great wealth and this title for a purpose. I am not some aristocratic cad like my Russian counterparts.’ So they had stayed, and now they were in the midst of a never-ending cycle of horror. Roza had married Jan, for better or for worse. Once she had a magical life, a life people would kill for, but its magic was proving as ephemeral as a butterfly.

  “Should I come with you?” Roza asked.

  “Stay with the children. Whatever you do, do not let them out of your sight,” Jan said, throwing his coat over his shoulders and left.

  ✽✽✽

  1950 — Klarysew, Poland

  Pasha smiled as he delicately sipped from a porcelain cup of tea. “Countess, although I admit I was a cad in Russia, I promise I did do my part in the Second World War.”

  The Countess smiled. “I’m thrilled to hear that, Your Highness.”

  “So you and your husband stayed at the Ordinance in Zwierzyniec?” Slim asked.

  “We went with our children. The Germans turned Zwierzyniec into a retreat for high-ranking military officers and for visiting Nazi elite. Our hunting lodge became an officer’s club. We had 550,000 acres to farm. Some buildings on the estate were used for a German hospital and medical clinic. The Governor General of Poland, Dr. Hans Frank, occasionally came to hunt rare pheasants and other birds at the preserve. We insisted that we keep as many Polish workers as we could. So we were able to save some of the men.”

  “What happened to the women and children?”

  “Children above the age of seven and their mothers were separated and placed in a camp off Zamojska Street. I organized a group of Polish relief workers who took care of the children. Every day, I visited the camp to bring food. I had to bribe my way into the camp. The guards were just as vile, but duri
ng summer of 1943, I was able to bring in 6,200 liters of milk, 12,500 kilograms of bread, and 95,000 liters of soup. We had the kitchens going night and day.”

  “You must have been exhausted,” Slim said.

  “When you’re in the situation I was in, adrenaline takes over. Either you do what needs to be done, or you don’t do anything. But, no matter what I did it still wasn’t enough. The camp was overcrowded, there were limited sanitary facilities, and disease began to break out. The children were dying.”

  “What did you do? Could you do anything?”

  “Jan went to talk to the head of the SS in Lublin, Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik.”

  “Globocnik? Who was he?” Slim asked.

  “He was the director of Aktion Reinhard. He was responsible for the liquidation of the Jews and for establishing the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. After the war, he was captured by the British and committed suicide by cyanide capsule,” Pasha said.

  “What happened when Jan met with Odilo Globocnik?” Slim asked.

  “He was a complete and total bastard — and yet he allowed us to save some of the children.”

  ✽✽✽

  1943 — Zwierzyniec

  When Jan came back from Lublin, he looked strained and tired.

  “Did you see Gruppenführer Globocnik?” Roza asked as she climbed up the ornate staircase to their wing of the palace.

  “After the girls are in bed, we will talk,” Jan said, walking into his study. Roza shut the door behind him and scooped up her eldest daughter, kissing her tousled locks.

  “Come to bed, Elzbieta. Let’s leave Papa alone. Shall we put Maria to bed? Would you like to read her a story?”

  “Yes. Mama,” Elzbieta said, grabbing her mother’s arm and tickling it. “I’m a caterpillar, Mama. I’m crawling up your arm, Mama.”

  “Are you sure? You look like a bumblebee buzzing about,” Roza said. She had made a promise to herself; she would maintain a happy, carefree life for the children as long as she could.

  An hour later, after baths and a story, Roza entered Jan’s study and found him sitting there with his head in his hands rocking back and forth. At first, she thought he was sobbing, but then she realized he was shaking.

  “What is it Jan?” She ran over and kneeled by him.

  “Globocnik has set up camps,” he began.

  “The work camps. Everyone knows that” Roza said, confused.

  “There are three secret camps — Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor,” he took a deep breath. “What I am about to tell you, Roza, you cannot tell anyone. If you tell someone, they will not only kill us; they will kill our girls.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me,” Roza said. For her safety, she only knew half of what Jan did for the Resistance.

  “You have to know this. I cannot bear this secret alone. Do you give your promise that you will not say anything to anyone?” Jan asked.

  “Yes, Jan, what is it?” Roza asked with dread.

  “They are emptying out all of the ghettos. Treblinka is being disguised as a transport camp. When the trains arrive, the people get out and see a station with a fake clock with the time painted on it, train schedules posted, and even a ticket window. They are told they need to take showers and to be deloused before heading further east. They separate the men and the women. They’re told to check in their jewelry and valuables at a cashier’s window for safekeeping. They lead them into barracks so they can undress. Their hair is shorn. They take the sick, the elderly, anyone who is a problem. They lead them to a pit outside the barracks and shoot them at point-blank range,” Jan said.

  “Mother of God, help us. What happens to the others?” Roza asked.

  “They take the men and lead down a forested path into a concrete building, and they gas them.”

  “What do you mean ‘gas them’?”

  “The Nazis tell them they are taking showers, then they kill all of them. They are wiping out the Jews in Poland in those three camps.”

  “How did you find that out?” Roza said standing up.

  “The bastard bragged about it.” Jan stood up. Roza looked at him. It was as if he had aged ten years in a day.

  “You mean Globocnik?”

  “Yes, and he said he had already shot two people this week for talking. He said he was perfectly comfortable shooting me.”

  “Why was he telling you this? Was he simply bragging?” Roza had a sickening feeling in her stomach. Globocnik would not tell Jan this to brag; there was another reason.

  “He wanted me to know what would happen to us if I told anyone. He doesn’t want the Red Cross to find out,” Jan said. “I told him the children in the Zwierzyniec camp were sick and that they had been separated from their mothers; they needed medical care desperately. I told him I wanted to set up some hospitals.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He took a special interest in the children. He said he would help the ones who were eight and under.”

  “What about the rest? What about their mothers?” Roza did not attempt to hide the panic in her voice.

  “Their mothers are going to be shipped to Auschwitz, where they will work.”

  “What about the children older than eight? What about them?” Roza asked.

  “The elderly and the children over eight will be sent to Auschwitz to be gassed.” Jan tugged on his mustache. “We’ve got to figure out how to save the children. I will try to employ some of the men and women to work the farmlands, but we will have to sneak the children older than eight out. We can also bribe people. We can trade our art, our jewels — whatever belongings we have that are valuable. If we do this it will mean we are all at risk, even the girls,” Jan said.

  “I know, but I cannot look my fellow countrymen in the eyes and tell them we did nothing. Why is no one helping Poland?” Roza asked.

  “I don’t think the outside world knows,” Jan said.

  “They know what’s happening, but they just won’t do anything,” Roza said with disgust.

  ✽✽✽

  1950 — Klarysew

  Slim looked at the Countess. They were both probably the same age, but the Countess seemed much older.

  “How many children did you save?” Slim asked.

  “We saved almost five hundred children and moved fifteen hundred more to hospitals we set up around the countryside. I would go every day begging for them to release the children. I used everything I owned to get them out of that transport camp.”

  “Was one of them Karol?”

  “You mean Itzhak?”

  The Countess’ eyes welled up with tears. Pasha took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. The Countess began to pull at the monogrammed handkerchief Pasha had given her and cleared her throat.

  ✽✽✽

  1943 — Zwierzyniec

  Roza was walking out of the gate of the transport camp. She saw Lena standing there, trying to pull Itzhak away from an SS guard.

  “Lena? What’s going on?” Roza asked. She had gotten Lena a job in the kitchens of the palace, which so far had prevented her deportation to Auschwitz.

  “They want to take Karol from me,” Lena said as the guard smacked her hard.

  “Mama!” Itzhak cried as he tried to kick the guard, who lifted the boy up and was about to smash him onto the sidewalk.

  “Put that boy down!” Roza said in her most imperious voice.

  The guard narrowed his eyes and took his out his baton. He whacked Roza so hard on the back she fell to her knees. What could she do to save Lena and the boy? Should she be the imperious Countess, or just beg for the boy? She had done it before.

  “Please let her have her boy. She works in the kitchen for me. I am Countess Zamoyska,” Roza said quietly deciding on humility.

  The guard put the boy down. His manner changed slightly. He was still cocky, but a bit uncertain because he knew he should not have struck the Countess.

  “The boy cannot go with her,” the guard said.
/>
  “Why not? I will look after them both.”

  “The boy is due to be on a transport tomorrow,” he said. “He is not going to a camp. That’s all I can tell you. Come,” he said to the boy and pulled him away.

  Lena sat weeping on the ground. The Countess pulled Lena into her arms. “Maybe there is something I can do,” she said.

  “There is nothing anyone can do,” Lena said, weeping. “There’s a doctor and a nurse inside the camp. They’re giving the children exams. I bribed the woman organizing the children with the watch Emil gave me. She said the suitable children are being taken to Germany to be adopted.”

  ✽✽✽

  1950 — Klarysew

  “The next day Itzhak was gone, and Lena had been sent to Auschwitz,” the Countess said.

  “Did you find out where in Germany they took Itzhak?” Slim asked.

  “No, but I remember the name of the woman who took him because I saw her a couple of days later and I asked her where the children were going. She said to a Lebensborn Home in Laakirchen. That’s a town in Bavaria.”

  “Why did she tell you this?” Slim asked. Undoubtedly, the woman who took the boy would not give that information willingly.

  “I traded her my pearls.” The Countess nodded to the oil painting on the wall and then touched her neck where the long strand had once hung. “The name of the woman who took him was Jansky.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar to Slim.

  “May I ask you a question?” Slim said.

  “If I can answer it, I will,” the Countess smiled.

  “Why didn’t you leave? Surely, as one of the wealthiest families in Poland, you could have left before the invasion?”

  The Countess looked at her portrait hanging on the wall and then turned to Slim. “I’ve often wondered that myself. But if I had left, those children would not have been saved.”

  “Did your husband ever want to leave?” Slim persisted, so curious as to why this young mother would sacrifice everything to stay in Poland.

  “No. He’s always felt his place is in Poland, no matter what condition the country is in.”