“We must not let the children out of our sight,” Grandmother said suddenly. “One thing we know for sure is that many children were taken today. If we are not with them, they will be taken without us, and I can’t bear the idea—”
“We won’t let them out of the apartment,” Judit said firmly. “Between us, one of us can stay home at all times. We will make it work.”
I sat beside Samuel, mirroring his posture. Our backs were to the wall, our knees tucked up close to our chins. Like my stepfather, I watched all of this, but I didn’t speak. His expression was completely blank, as if he were too shocked to contribute.
I just kept remembering how I had chosen to stay at the factory because it was the right thing to do. If I’d left, I would have let Sala down, and I would have lost my job. But staying was also the wrong thing to do because I had betrayed my own values: my family was all I had left, and I should have immediately gone to check on them.
I had to face the reality that I had absolutely no control over what came next, and that even if the exact same events unfolded the very next day, I would have to make the same tortured decision all over again.
When we finally said our good-nights and my family retreated to our own room, I was awake long after my parents. There was just enough light that I could watch them as they slept. I drank in the sight of the four of them, all too aware that I could no longer take for granted the simple peace of closing my eyes to rest, knowing they were safe.
* * *
“I’m so relieved that your family was okay,” Chaim said, when he met me at the corner the next morning. I nodded curtly. He fell into step beside me, and then he dropped his voice. “But yesterday was the beginning of this, not the end. Do you understand that, my friend?”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“But we do,” he argued quietly. “I do.”
I kept staring straight ahead, avoiding his gaze.
“Pigeon,” I said suddenly, “do you know of anything I could do to keep them safe?”
“Do you have any money?” he asked, without hesitation.
“No. Nothing. But I need to save my family. Whatever it takes, I will do it.”
“Roman,” he said, sighing.
“Please,” I whispered, voice thick. “I need to do something. I can’t bear this anymore.”
He hesitated.
“You’ve spoken about your brother, but you didn’t mention that there was a new baby in your family, too. Your mother looks ill.”
“It has been difficult to get enough food to keep her and the baby going,” I admitted unevenly. “That is why I check the trash. Every day it is a new struggle.”
“You know I sometimes go to the youth center. It is a huge facility, many hundreds of people there at any one time, but they have recently started a soup kitchen, too. I know one of the organizers, and he sometimes slips me a little extra food. Perhaps we can ask him if he can do the same for you.”
“Thank you. And...the deportations?”
“The only people who are escaping this prison are those with reserves of wealth or extensive resources on the other side of the wall. But...”
“But?”
“There may be something we can do to help. Leave it with me. Leave it all with me. I’ll see what I can find out.”
10
Emilia
Sara returned from her visit to the ghetto one day, hours earlier than expected, and she was obviously distressed. Her shoulders were slumped forward, and her gaze seemed fixed on the floor. She took her seat on her side of the desk and began to sort through paperwork, but I knew her routine well enough to know she wasn’t doing anything productive. She was mindlessly going through the motions, and I knew her mind was entirely elsewhere.
“Bad day?” I asked after a while. She looked at me as if I’d materialized out of nowhere.
“Sorry, Elz·bieta. I didn’t even greet you.”
“That’s okay. You look...tired.”
Tired was a polite word for how she looked. She was visibly wrecked, but she’d only share why when she was ready. To my surprise, her eyes filled with tears, and she looked back to the desk. I looked away, unsure of what I should do or say.
“I was going to evacuate a child last week,” she whispered. “He was four years old, and he had the cutest little smile you’ve ever seen. I sent his little brother out first. The little one was unwell, and I figured the older child could have some more time with his mama before...well, before. But today, I went back for the boy, and he was—” Sara broke off abruptly. She reached to retrieve a small handkerchief from her handbag, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then finished weakly, “I was too late.”
“He died?”
“He is gone.”
The familiar sound of Matylda’s heels against the hardwood floor in the hall grew louder, and I looked up to see her there, with a small folder in her arms.
“Those documents you asked for,” she said quietly, but then she closed the door behind herself, and her carefully neutral expression slipped into one of desperate grief. “Oh, God, Sara. You’ve heard?”
“Yes. The little boy on Dzielna Street was deported this morning,” Sara murmured.
After that, it was as if the two women forgot I was in the room. I sat in silence as they talked, shocked and bewildered by what I was hearing. Their words washed over me—words that should have made sense, but in context, they seemed impossible. Roundup. Umschlagplatz. Thousands upon thousands. Loaded onto trains and then gone.
“Andrzej said that it was mostly random today—anyone who appeared incapable of significant labor...those who don’t have a work permit, the sick, the weak or infirm or elderly or...” Matylda’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head fiercely. “The young. So many of those deported today were street children. They were easy to find and incapable of resistance.”
Those last words hung in the air, and I tried to imagine what it all meant. I still knew so little about the ghetto. But I could tell by the gravity in Matylda’s and Sara’s voices that whatever happened that day was horrifying on a new level.
“Where did the trains take them?” I asked uncertainly.
“No one knows for sure yet,” Matylda said abruptly. “But there have been rumors for some time that the Germans planned to deport all the Jews from the ghetto to execute them.”
“What?” I whispered, looking to Sara frantically, hoping she’d protest this, but she simply looked to the floor. “All of them? But...”