“A camp, supposedly.”
There was a dryness to the way that Chaim said camp. I remembered the rumor he had shared with me only a month or two before about mass executions at the camp at Chełmno. Panicking, I looked at the clock. I had hours left in my shift, but for a moment I thought about leaving my desk and running from the workshop. Perhaps I could sneak through the streets to check on my family.
“Roman,” Sala called from the other side of the workshop. The machines fell quiet, but the clatter of panic in my mind was deafening. I realized that I was standing and had taken a step away from my desk. The entire workshop was staring at me. “Don’t you leave, son. I know you’re scared—we’re all scared. But if you leave to check on your family, you’ll probably get caught up in the deportation. Besides, if we don’t meet this quota today, none of us will have jobs to come back to tomorrow. I need you to sit back down and get back to work.”
I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I sat back down at my desk, and even as my head spun and my hands shook, I got back to work.
* * *
That day, I did not amble home lazily with Chaim after my shift at the workshop. Instead, I ran. Most of my coworkers at the workshop did the same. We burst into the streets and scattered to sprint toward our homes. I gradually became aware that Chaim was right on my heels.
“You don’t have to come,” I panted. Chaim only shrugged. For once, he was the silent one.
When we finally reached my family’s apartment, I hesitated on the doorstep and looked around the street for some sign that my family had survived the roundup. All I saw was incontrovertible evidence that even if the Germans really had taken thousands of us, hundreds of thousands more remained. The street was as busy as always. The usual collective of hungry children was begging across the road, a cluster of them sitting together wearing little more than rags, extending their cupped hands toward anyone hurrying past. Groups of people stood whispering in every conceivable space, and a few doors down an elderly woman was wailing and rocking on her doorstep. A middle-aged man sat at a makeshift table on the sidewalk opposite us, the table covered with kitchen utensils, and when people passed, he would lift a spoon and plead with them to buy it.
So only the usual horrors on Miła Street, but that meant nothing about what I would find inside my house. A wave of nausea crashed over me, and I leaned against the doorframe for a moment, too terrified to open the door in case I found the house empty—or, perhaps worse, still full except for the room I shared with Samuel and Mother and Dawidek and Eleonora. A heavy hand descended on my shoulder, and I looked back to Chaim, who offered me a sad smile.
“Do you want me to go in first?”
My first instinct was to refuse his offer. My family didn’t know him, neither did our reluctant roommates. What would they make of this strange young man stepping into our living space? And yet the very thought of going inside alone was sickening, and so after a brief hesitation, I nodded. Chaim opened the door, and as soon as he did, I saw Dawidek. He was sitting on the floor with Judit and Laszlo’s little girl, Anna. They were rolling a ball between them. From the doorstep, I stared at Dawidek until my vision blurred with unshed tears.
Even if the rest are gone, I can survive for him.
Because Dawidek had been spared, I could face whatever else waited for me in that apartment—maybe because for him I could be brave. As I followed Chaim into the apartment, he glanced back to ask, “Shall I go home?”
My mother came into view before I could answer. She was holding Eleonora and standing with Grandmother and Judit. When Mother saw me, she ran across the room and threw her spare arm around me as she wept into my shoulder.
“My baby. You are okay! We were so scared. They were letting those with work permits go, but you never know, do you?”
“Hush, Mother. I am okay. Is everyone okay here, too?” I looked around, then asked hesitantly, “Mrs. Kuklin´ski...”
“She went to visit her cousin to see if he has news. We are all fine,” she said unevenly, as she pressed her palm onto my cheek. “For now, we are fine. But what are we going to do? They say the deportations will continue.”
“We will find a way,” I told her, even though I didn’t believe it. I glanced over my mother’s shoulder and saw that Chaim had removed his hat and was now fumbling awkwardly with it in front of his chest. I extracted myself from my mother’s embrace and extended my hand to shake his.
“Thank you, my friend” were the only words I could push past the lump in my throat, but I hoped that as Chaim looked into my eyes, he saw all the words I couldn’t figure out how to say. Thank you for being here. I don’t know if I could have faced this alone. I’m so glad you are my friend.
* * *
That night, Mother put Eleonora and Dawidek to bed, then came to join the rest of the adults in the living room, which had become a market for gossip. We were all hungry for information, but we were starving for hope.
“There were soldiers on the rooftops,” Laszlo murmured. “They had their rifles pointed down at the street. I heard that they sealed the checkpoints to make sure that no one could escape. The Kapo were plucking people at random from the street at first, but the quota is very high—thousands per day, they say. My friend who lives on Stawki Street said that by lunchtime, Kapo were just pushing groups of people toward the platform. Some managed to talk their way out, but not many.”
“All of this fuss for nothing,” Mrs. Grobelny said suddenly. She spoke with the confidence of someone with an inside source. She had a cousin on the Jewish Council, and he provided her a constant supply of information, both correct and otherwise. I had come to realize that Mrs. Grobelny survived by believing what she wanted to believe. “They are only taking the very young orphans and the very old, and besides which, they are taking them to another work camp. It can’t be any worse than here, so we have nothing to fear.”
“If our ultimate end is a work camp, why would they take the very young and the very old first?” Grandfather asked her gruffly.
That gave Mrs. Grobelny pause, and for a moment her mouth hung open, but no sound came out. Then she raised her chin stubbornly. “Perhaps they are the easiest to move,” she said.
Mr. Kuklin´ski had spent the last of his family savings that day buying a German-issued work permit so that he could begin work in one of their factories. The cost of these permits had more than tripled overnight, but he was adamant that this was a good investment.
“My friend’s brother said he heard that anyone with a job is exempt. Their families, too.” He turned to his wife and took her hands in his. “You see? It is worth the cost, even if it means I have to move into the lodgings at the Schultz factory while you stay here.”
He seemed to be determined to convince himself of this, and maybe that’s why none of us pointed out the flaw in his logic. Families couldn’t possibly be exempt because the family was separated from the worker, and if the work permit was the one thing that would save them all, it would be with the worker. If families were exempt, the Germans must be trusting everyone’s word, and if that were the case, Mr. Kuklin´ski need not have parted with his entire savings to buy a work permit because he could have just lied about having one in the first place.