“Who are you?” I demanded, and I looked around the room, eyes wild, my thoughts a torrent I could not slow or control. This woman found my sister and brother on the street and somehow made her way here, but I have lost my parents to a camp at Treblinka that they will never come back from. I can’t do this, Mother. I can’t do it without you, Samuel. What am I going to do?
The panic was immediate, and it quickly became vicious. If all I had left was my brother and my sister, I wanted this woman as far away from them as possible. I stormed across the room and snatched Eleonora out of the woman’s arms. I barely noticed the baby’s wail of protest. The stranger’s presence consumed my focus, and she instantly became an undeserving target for all my fear and rage. Two voices inside me were battling for supremacy. The monster in my gut wanted to tear her limb from limb, to take out all my terror on her, because she was here staring blankly at me, and she was in our home with my siblings.
But the stranger was staring up at me with huge green eyes full of terror. This registered somewhere in the recesses of my mind, and I tried to convince myself to calm down, to talk rationally about this and to find out what was really going on. The Germans deserved my rage, but they were not in the room with me. This woman was, and the beast inside me won the battle. I shouted at her, raging so fiercely that I was trembling from head to toe.
“How did they get separated from the children? Did you see them taken? Did you even try to help them, or did you just watch them go?”
The door to our tiny bedroom flew open, and Samuel and my mother were there, both wide-eyed with shock. Behind them stood another woman, who pushed her way past them to stand between me and the woman on the couch.
“Don’t you dare shout at her like that!” the older woman shouted right back at me, just as my mother crossed the room to take Eleonora from my arms. I scanned the room again, confused and trying to understand what was happening, trying to battle the flood of hot tears that threatened.
“Roman!” Samuel exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing?”
I didn’t know what I was doing, and that was the problem. The red heat of my rage was fading into other emotions—shame and embarrassment and a sheer, bewildering humiliation, all so much louder than the relief I also felt. These strangers were staring at me, and the door from the kitchen flew open, and there was Judit and Mrs. Kuklin´ski and even Mrs. Grobelny, and then from down near the bedrooms, my grandparents slowly came into view.
They were all still here. Every single one of them was still here.
My knees buckled. The relief was overwhelming.
“I... The... I...”
“What is going on with you?” my mother asked sharply, cradling Eleonora to her. As my rage began to ebb, I noticed new details: my mother had been crying—her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Eleonora was crying, too, now, her pitiful cry ratcheting up, obviously startled by the loudness of my voice. Dawidek was staring up at me with visible horror, clutching the doll to his chest, and the growing audience of my reluctant housemates looked every bit as scared and confused as the stranger on the couch.
I looked to Samuel, hoping that he could give me some guidance, but found he was leaning against the doorjamb, his eyes closed, utterly dejected. Because of me?
“I thought you were gone,” I said to my mother, and my voice broke. Mother’s gaze softened, and she stepped forward to gently touch my upper arm.
“We were just talking to the social worker. She has come for a visit to discuss Eleonora and Dawidek. She wants to help us, Roman.”
My gaze dropped to the woman on the couch, and now that I was calming down, I realized at last that she wasn’t so much a woman as a girl, and she was close to tears. The older woman reached down and hooked her hand into the girl’s elbow, pulling her to her feet. She addressed my mother with a firm, quiet tone.
“Think about it, Mr. and Mrs. Gorka. I’ll call in again to see if you want to discuss it further.”
As the older woman left, she shot me one last fierce look. The girl stared at the floor as she walked away. When the door closed behind them, I asked my parents, “Think about what? How are they trying to help?”
My mother looked to Dawidek, then forced a smile.
“It doesn’t matter now. We can discuss it later.”
13
Emilia
I was shaking as we left the Gorka apartment. Every trip into the ghetto was new and upsetting in some way, but I had never physically feared for my safety before, not in the way that I just had.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked me as we walked. We had been running so late that day, and I was hungry and tired, and all I wanted to do was go home to my bed and cry. I clenched my teeth and nodded.
“Are we evacuating those children?”
Sara shook her head.
“It is a common story.” She sighed heavily. “The mother was receptive, but the father wants to keep the family together. In that case, he seemed determined to convince himself that there is reason to hold on to hope here. Of all the places in the world, I never thought I would find an optimist in the Warsaw Ghetto.”
“The baby—she was sick.”
“The mother is not making enough milk, so the baby’s development is stunted. And of course, it is a miracle that she has survived this far. If the Germans knew of her, they might have killed her already.”
“What a wasted miracle,” I muttered under my breath. “What good is it for God to grant a miracle to save a baby like that, only for her to starve to death?”
“Elz·bieta, my darling, when one is standing in hell, it is best not to delve too deeply into theology,” Sara said wryly. I could see her point. Every new block brought some new abomination against goodness. Where was God in all of that? I hadn’t allowed myself to challenge my faith in this way, not since Tomasz had died. That day, I had promised myself I would never pray again. How could I believe in a loving God and the Blessed Mother if they would allow a good man like my brother to be killed for his kindness?
But the brief glimpse of a faithless life had terrified me. I felt like a ship without a rudder, and by the time the sun set that day, I was back to praying. Now, though, I wondered if that was foolish of me. If there was a God, could He not see what was happening in the ghetto? Or could He see but was powerless to intervene? Because the alternative was that He could see and He could intervene, but He was choosing inaction.
“Do you still pray?” I asked Sara uncertainly.
“I stopped praying when my son died. If there is a God, I want no part of His version of justice.”
“I need to pray,” I said, my voice small. I thought about my whispered prayers each night, and how certain I was that Tomasz and Father were with me in those moments.