My hands curled into fists at my side.
“You don’t understand,” I snapped. “If your family were here, you would understand that all we can do is stay together.”
“You are a fool if you think it is better for your family to die together than for the children to be saved.”
I grabbed Chaim’s lapel and twisted it hard. Our faces were only inches apart, but he met my gaze unblinkingly.
“Who could protect the children better than we can?” I demanded. The red mist of rage was clouding my vision, and I could feel the anger rising throughout my body. My hands shook, my stomach churned. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could control myself.
But this was Chaim. My friend. One of the only people I trusted. At this thought, I finally understood why his betrayal stung so much.
“Literally anyone on the other side of that wall can protect those children better than you,” Chaim said, his voice low. “Here, you are powerless. Our days are numbered, Roman.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know that,” he said, and he pushed me away impatiently. “We have heard nothing from the tens of thousands who have gone to Treblinka. No one has escaped to tell us it is safe, and there are those who went willingly for the Resistance, purely so that they could report back. Everyone who has stepped onto those trains is dead, Roman. Do you hear me? They are dead! Every last one of them!” My hands fell to my sides, and I stared at him in shock. His conviction was undeniable. “You and I? We are doomed. We will die at the hands of the Germans, if not in here, then at Treblinka. But the children...?” He shook his head at me, frustration flaring his nostrils. “Those children could survive if you and your parents would allow them to.”
He shook himself off then and walked away from me, leaving me standing dumbfounded by the side of the road. But after only a few minutes, I continued toward the youth center for my shift in the kitchen.
Chaim was wrong. He simply had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.
* * *
Chaim and I continued to sit opposite one another all day, every day, but we no longer spoke. He attempted to start a conversation a few times, but I would only look at him sharply and continue with my work. No longer did he wait for me at the corner as we walked into the workshop, and although we both still walked to the youth center after our shifts sometimes, we no longer walked side by side, and the days of me staying out late with him were over.
“Are you okay?” Andrzej asked one evening. He was hovering beside me with his hands in his pockets, obviously open to the idea of a conversation. But I didn’t want to vent, and I wasn’t yet ready to feel better. Besides, Andrzej had sent the social workers. I needed him, and I needed his favor, but if he was willing to split my family up, I could no longer trust him.
“I’m fine,” I snapped and went back to washing the pots and pans.
The next day, I was walking to my shift in the workshop when I noticed Chaim standing in our usual spot on the corner at the edge of the block. I intended to push past him and continue to our desk, but he reached out a hand to stop me.
“Don’t—” I started to say, but he shook his head, and that’s when I saw the expression in his eyes. “What is it?”
“Sala,” he said, and his voice broke. His hand fell to his side, and he exhaled shakily. “Yesterday, after we left. He and his family were deported. The workshop is closed.”
* * *
“When are you going to tell your family that you no longer have a job?” Chaim asked later that day as we stood in the kitchen at the youth center, side by side washing dishes. We’d been there all day, helping where we could to keep ourselves busy as we tried to digest the news that our boss and his family were gone.
“I won’t tell them. They will only worry,” I admitted. “What will you do for food?”
“The same as you,” Chaim said, and he gave me a cheeky smile. “I’ll beg what I can from Andrzej and supplement that with as many delicious scraps from the trash as I can find.”
“We are a miserable pair,” I said and sighed, handing him a pot to wipe.
“Hey, at least you’re speaking to me again. Things aren’t all bad.”
The next day, I left my apartment at the usual time, determined that my parents would not know I no longer had a job. Chaim and I agreed to meet at the youth center, where we would try to speak to Andrzej and see if he could help us earn more food. I was daydreaming as I walked, until I looked up at a crossroad and saw Dawidek, walking right past me, sauntering in that jaunty way I was so familiar with, carrying the little doll the girl had given him when she came to try to take him away.
But Dawidek wasn’t with his work crew, and he wasn’t dressed in his own clothes. I had never before seen the outfit he was wearing. The trousers were pressed and clean, the shirt spotless, the ensemble far too nice for him to wear to his job. He was walking in a large group of children, but none of them were familiar to me, and that’s when I finally realized that although that child looked just like my brother, it was just a coincidence. This was a group from one of the orphanages, maybe out for a morning walk.
Each child held a little bundle, tightly wrapped in cloth, and as the line of children stretched and stretched, I noticed that, every now and again, I would see one carrying a doll just like Dawidek’s. Some of the children could not have been more than three or four years old, and these were usually walking with older children, their hands linked and swinging as they went.
I smiled to myself, and I stopped walking then, a few dozen feet back from the intersection. I leaned against the cold sandstone wall of the building and watched. The children walked in obedient silence, but it wasn’t a strained silence. I wondered where they were going. It wasn’t as though the ghetto offered much in the way of amusement for young people. Once upon a time the sight of children in such finery would have suggested a trip to the synagogue, but, of course, those days were long past. But this was a sweet scene. A refreshing scene. I breathed in deeply, and I focused on the coolness of the morning air rather than the oppressive smell that always lingered.
I felt almost hopeful at the sight. There was something so pure about the way they looked around as they walked, taking in the streetscape of the ghetto as if they might spot something worthy of their interest. No wonder that one boy had reminded me of Dawidek. He wore the same expression of wonder sometimes, despite everything he had seen and done.
I must have only watched the children for seconds before a group of Kapo and some Germans also passed, and the true context of the march became apparent. These children weren’t just being taken on an outing for their amusement. They weren’t flanked only by nurses and older children. They were under armed guard, and when I considered where they were coming from and where they were headed, a jolt of shock ran through my body.