“We just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, son. When everything else has been taken from us, all we have left is each other, so we remain true to ourselves and look after one another.” He cleared his throat. “What else is there to do? The bitterness would kill us, otherwise.”
Bitterness. I tasted it on my tongue even as he said the word. That captured the toxic feelings in my gut perfectly, but the worst thing was Samuel was more correct than he knew.
The bitterness was killing me, and every day the poison became more potent.
* * *
My mother met Florian Abramczyk in a park on a hot summer’s day when she was nineteen, and the way she told the story, she laughed in his face when he asked her out on a date. She was certain her parents would kill her for dating a Catholic boy, but Florian was charming and persuasive, and by the time she and her friends left the park that day, she’d agreed to meet him the following weekend.
Their romance bloomed over summer, and by the time her parents found out about Florian in early autumn, Mother was already besotted. But my grandparents were every bit as horrified as she had feared they would be, and they threatened to throw Mother out of the family home. The story goes that she broke up with Florian but fell into such a black mood that after several weeks, her friends convinced her to reconnect with him. My father proposed the minute he saw her again. They married soon after, and I was born twelve months after that.
My grandparents were livid right up until they held me in their arms, at which point all was forgiven, even if it was never forgotten.
I was four years old when Florian died after a short bout with what was probably stomach tumors. My memories of him faded with time, but I always knew the legend of him—mostly because, for years after his death, my mother spoke about him so often I took the threads of those stories and stitched for myself new memories of our family life together. Florian was strong and brave and handsome and so clever: a lawyer and a self-made man who had risen above his circumstances as an orphan and supported himself with part-time jobs even as he studied at university. His commitment to the Catholic faith was absolute—sick or well, busy or free, he never missed Mass or confession or finding some way to volunteer in support of his congregation at St. Kazimierz each week. Mother used to tell me that the most important things in Florian’s life were her, me and anyone or anything associated with that church.
Florian died at twenty-five years old, just months after he had put a down payment on a house for us and just as his career began. It wasn’t long before my mother and I were in dire financial straits. My grandparents tried to help, but my mother was also from a humble background. There was only so much they could do.
The only person in our lives who had the means to help us was Samuel. Mother and Samuel had been friends since childhood, and he’d been on the periphery of our family for as long as I could remember. When Florian first fell ill, Samuel had promised him that whatever happened, Mother and I would be cared for.
Samuel was a man of his word.
At first, I was comforted by the reliability of his visits. If Mother was sad, Samuel knew how to cheer her up. If she was worried, he knew how to ease her fears. If the pantry was empty, he would often visit with a box of food, and he’d always include sweets for me.
I had a front-row seat to the shifting tone of their relationship over time. At first, I was confused when their gazes began to linger or when Samuel was suddenly giggling like a child when my mother made little jokes intended to amuse me. One evening I found them sitting on the couch together holding hands as they listened to the wireless radio. I climbed up onto Mother’s lap and pushed them apart so I could sit between them.
When I was six, my mother told me she and Samuel were going to marry. We moved into Samuel’s apartment in the Jewish Quarter, but I continued to attend a Catholic school, and she and Samuel went out of their way to ensure I was still active in my father’s congregation at St. Kazimierz, just as Florian had wanted.
Even once we were walled into the ghetto, I still periodically attended Mass—there were thousands of Jewish Catholics trapped within the walls, and many still worshipped in one of the three Catholic congregations that operated inside. And, back when we were allowed, my family would observe the Jewish holidays, and I’d join in those occasions, too. I liked the diversity of our family life. I loved that my mother and Samuel had chosen to honor Florian’s wishes to raise me in his faith’s tradition, but I loved the richness and the rhythms of Jewish culture and religion, too. I took Communion, but my Kennkarte identity card was yellow and stamped with a J to indicate that I was a Jewish man. I wore the compulsory Star of David armband on my arm with pride, not the shame the Germans would have had me feel.
Samuel was right that Mother wanted us all to run before the wall went up, and even once we were trapped, she argued fiercely for me to try to escape on my own. If a German soldier saw me walking down the street on the Aryan side of Warsaw, they might never have looked twice, and even if they did, their first likely action would be to check that I was circumcised. I wasn’t, simply because my mother and Florian had decided to raise me in his faith’s tradition, rather than hers.
But Samuel and I had been determined that I should stay with the family, and even as conditions worsened within the ghetto, I never regretted it. In one sense, I was a prisoner by choice, perhaps out of stubborn pride, perhaps out of loyalty to my family but, mostly, out of sheer terror at the thought of being separated from them.
At the end of the day, that was my worst nightmare—not the trials of the ghetto.
I would endure torture and starvation and even death if it meant I could stay with my family. There was nothing more important to me in the world.
8
Emilia
Sara invited Truda and Mateusz for coffee after supper one evening. My parents were exceedingly suspicious about this, even as we prepared to walk down the hallway to her apartment.
“I don’t understand why she wants to meet with us,” Truda muttered, shaking her head.
“She probably just wants to ease our minds about her friendship with Elz·bieta. I don’t think there is anything sinister about it.” Mateusz shrugged.
“I’m glad that you’re going to meet with her. She is a good friend to me,” I said as innocently as I could because I knew exactly the reason for the invitation.
Just as Sara and I had planned the night before, my parents were soon seated around her dining room table, with steaming cups of genuine coffee cradled in their palms. Much of what passed for coffee in those days was a poor substitute—ground acorns or chicory or, when things were really tight, plain old wheat grains. But Sara had asked Uncle Piotr to procure some quality coffee beans, determined to make an occasion of the gathering.
“I wanted to meet with you to clear the air and to get to know you a little better,” she began. “After all, Elz·bieta is so dear to all of us, so we have something important in common. Besides, in these difficult times, new friends are always a blessing,” Sara added quietly. Mateusz nodded and smiled, but Truda’s eyes narrowed.