“I have seen the cruelty of the Germans with my own eyes,” I said bitterly. “Nothing you could show me would surprise me.”
“Darling child, I am sure your journey has not been easy, but there is a depth of suffering in the ghetto that even I did not realize was possible.”
“Isn’t that all the more reason that you should let me help?”
I could tell that Sara was still deeply disquieted by the idea, but in the end, she agreed to take me in with her. That afternoon, I received my first dose of the typhus vaccine, and Matylda contacted her friend to arrange my pass.
* * *
A week later, I left home at seven with Sara as I always did. We made our journey across Warsaw in silence, and then when we arrived at the offices, I followed her into Matylda’s office.
As I often did, I wore my hair in a braid that day, but the first thing the women did was unwind the braid, leaving my long hair wavy. Matylda teased the hair at the front of my head and pinned it high above my crown, fanning the rest out around my shoulders. I had never worn makeup before and was so excited I could barely sit still as she drew around my eyes with a dark pencil and then filled in my eyebrows with a lighter shade. Finally, she painted my lips with a soft red lipstick, and Sara handed me a bag.
“Get changed in the bathroom,” she said heavily. “And then we will go.”
The outfit Sara had found for me was more grown-up than any of my clothing. There was a brassiere, with thick padding sewn into the cups, and a black-and-white polka-dotted shirt with large buttons down the front, paired with a neat gray skirt that fell to my knees, and a pair of flat leather shoes. I could barely believe the woman looking back at me in the mirror was really me. I looked several years older, but that wasn’t the only transformation. I looked like a proper professional woman, like Sara or Matylda or any of the other social workers in the department. When I walked back into Matylda’s office, she nodded in satisfaction.
“Perfect. You could easily pass for seventeen or eighteen. If anyone asks, you explain that you are Sara’s apprentice. Understand?”
Sara stood reluctantly and slipped her bag over her shoulder, then took a step toward the door.
“Is there anything else I should know?” I asked them frantically. “Are you going to tell me what to say or do?”
“The main thing to remember is that when we are walking to and from the youth center, do not leave my side. Hold on to me if you must,” Sara said and sighed. “It is very crowded in there—incredibly crowded. If you lose me, you will never find me again, so make sure you do not lose me.”
“That’s it?”
“When you get to the checkpoint, hold yourself with confidence,” Matylda murmured. “The guards will check your papers and your permit. If you are confident, they will wave you through. You mustn’t look nervous, and you must be very careful not to panic.”
“Don’t panic,” I repeated, suddenly aware that my palms were beginning to sweat. I wiped them on the skirt Sara had given me. “Okay. What else?”
“Everything else you will have to see with your own eyes,” Sara said flatly, then she glanced at Matylda one more time. “I hope to God you know what you’re doing.”
* * *
As we walked toward the checkpoint, I fixed my gaze on the sign above it. Typhus Infection Area. Authorized Passage Only. I had been nervous as Sara and I made our way there from the office, but it was quite a pleasant kind of anxiety; a mild adrenaline rush, combined with curiosity and excitement that I was finally—finally—about to do something brave. I wondered if my father and brother were looking down on me, chatting with the saints about the extraordinary young woman I had become. I wondered how Alina would react when I one day traveled to England to find her and told her about my courage.
“Get your pass ready,” Sara said, dropping her voice. “And your papers.”
My papers. I had them with me as I always did, but I so rarely left the apartment and I’d never had to show them. But in all of the excitement about my epidemic-control pass and this trip to the ghetto, I had completely forgotten that I was living under a false name, and that my identity papers were false identity papers. They looked realistic enough, but would they pass intense scrutiny? The worst thing was I had honored my parents’ insistence that I not trust Sara with this information, and she had no idea that we were about to pass through a German checkpoint with false paperwork. I made a sound of pure panic in the back of my throat, and without breaking stride, Sara whispered under her breath, “Head high. Be confident. You insisted you could do this, and if you panic now, I swear to God I will throttle you.”
I sent up a series of increasingly frantic prayers as I walked, but by the time we reached the checkpoint, my hand was shaking violently.
“Sara,” one of the guards said, his voice warm in a way that made my stomach flip over unpleasantly. “You have brought a friend today.”
“Good morning, Captain Fischer. This is my apprentice, Elz·bieta,” Sara said. She was polite but firm and surprisingly cool with the guard. “Elz·bieta, show Captain Fischer your pass, please.”
I moved to extend my hand, but then Sara snatched the pass and my papers from it and handed them to the guard.
“She looks nervous,” he said mildly, glancing between my paperwork and my face. At this, my stomach dropped, and I felt the blood drain from my face. I couldn’t believe I had already aroused suspicion. Suddenly, the guard barked out a laugh. “I’d be nervous, too, going in there with those filthy animals.”
He handed the papers directly back to me, then turned his attention to Sara.
“Let me check your bag, Mrs. Wieczorek,” he said, and Sara fixed a tight smile on her face and handed him her medical bag. He seemed to delight in delaying us, shifting through the contents of her bag piece by piece, checking every item, regardless of how innocuous it was. This whole process could have been completed in seconds—her bag was mostly empty—but somehow, Fischer drew it out, and given that my anxiety was already bending time, I soon felt as though we had been standing there for hours. Sara waited patiently, not so much as breaking a sweat. When he finally returned the bag, he turned his attention back to me.
“Will you be visiting us again?”
“She will,” Sara answered for me.
“Let her speak, Sara,” he said, taunting her almost playfully without breaking eye contact with me.
“I—” My voice was so hoarse that the word escaped as a squeak. I cleared my throat, then remembered Matylda’s words. I raised my chin and squared my shoulders. “Yes, I will be, sir.”
He waved us through, without another word. We walked a few feet past the checkpoint, and a sensory wave crashed over me. The scent of human waste and body odor and rotting flesh was so thick I could barely believe anyone could breathe it and survive. On the other side of the road, an elderly woman lay flat on her back. Her skin was yellow and gray, her mouth slack, her eyes closed. People stepped over her body as if it wasn’t there.