They were walking to the Umschlagplatz.
Hundreds of children, marching happily toward their deaths. A burst of adrenaline overtook me, and I moved to run toward the children, but I took only a few steps before a man stepped in my way.
“Kid, don’t do it,” the stranger warned me, his voice low, desperate and hoarse. How quickly I had shifted from quiet amusement to this...burning, seething shock and horror and fury. It raced through my veins, urgent and determined, until I was vibrating with the force of it.
“I have to warn them,” I said, pushing the man back so I could see the line of children. I considered the direction they were walking from and realized that this was probably the Korczak Orphanage, the largest orphanage in the ghetto, famous for its generous care and its immense size. There was still time... Maybe if I caused a scene I could—
“Kid,” the man said, more urgently this time. “There is nothing we can do. Think this through, will you? So I let you run over there—you’ll be shot, and the children will see you shot. They aren’t scared right now. They don’t know...” His voice broke. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were shiny, despite the stubbornly high set of his chin. “Look how calm they are. Maybe they’ve been told they are going for a grand adventure. It’s a mercy to let them walk out of this place in peace. No one benefits if they are scared.”
“But it’s not right,” I said choking, looking back at the seemingly endless line of children.
“None of this is right, kid,” the man said, and he pushed me abruptly back and shook his head. “Don’t get shot in front of them. Don’t let that be the last thing they see here.”
I leaned back into the wall again, and this time, I counted the SS soldiers, supervising the Jewish police as they supervised the children, layer upon layer of oppression, as if children had any hope at all of resistance. And at the back, I saw the orphanage director, walking between two children, holding each child’s hand tightly in his. His chin was high, his eyes clear and wide.
I hated the moment, and I hated the world, and most of all I hated those German bastards who would take hundreds of children and march them through the streets of a prison to load them onto a cattle car and—if Chaim was right—to execute them. Imprisoning us was one thing, starving us to death was another, torturing us day by day for years... Maybe I had almost grown numb to those things. But the wholesale murder of hundreds of children, in one monstrous act? I knew in theory that this had been happening and that children had been rounded up every single day. But I hadn’t seen it. On some level, I hadn’t believed it.
I suddenly realized that the street around me had cleared and that the only people left outside were those who were being marched away under armed guard. I swore under my breath and pushed at several doors at street level, only to find them all locked. Now my heart was racing with panic. I tried to clear my head so that I could consider my options. The youth center wasn’t far, just ahead, the entrance on the opposite corner, but to cross the road would be to draw too much attention to myself.
I ran to the next door and pushed at it frantically. It was locked, too, but the latch was weak. I pulled back, and with all my strength rammed my shoulder into it. The door gave, and I ran inside, then pressed an armchair up against the door to close it.
The apartment was empty, and I tried not to think too much about who might have owned the furniture and clothing I saw scattered around, and I told myself to not even think about looting it...but, of course, that’s where my thoughts went. I could get several days’ food for some of these items, even if they weren’t mine.
Not now, Roman. Think of it later.
I felt a bizarre need to watch those children for as long as I could, to try to catalog them so that someone—anyone—remembered after they were gone that they had been here. I ran up a set of stairs and found an empty bedroom which faced the crossroad. Hiding behind a curtain in a stranger’s abandoned apartment, I wept, sobs racking my body in a way that I hadn’t wept since I was a child.
When the last child had walked out of view, I wiped my eyes on the curtain and looked out to the street, trying to assess whether it was safe for me to return to the youth center. I could see it from my vantage point. The doors were closed, and the usual groups of people waiting outside for food were nowhere to be seen.
I looked toward the roof, thinking about the times I had sat up there with Chaim, chatting and even laughing, as if we were normal teenagers enjoying a normal night in our normal lives.
My gaze dropped, and I suddenly found myself staring into the apartment above the youth center—Andrzej’s home. There were people standing at the window staring out at the cross street just as I had been doing.
Among the crowd of unfamiliar faces I saw her—the girl I had found sitting with Dawidek and Eleonora when I came home from work that day. She was looking down at the street, tears rolling down her cheeks, her red-rimmed eyes full of fear and fury, just as I was certain mine were.
But that expression on her face was familiar to me because I’d seen it before. I’d caused it. This realization hit me like a punch to the gut, and I suddenly understood that Samuel was right. My actions mattered, big and small. If something I did had put that same fear and sadness into that girl’s eyes as this monstrous scene, I needed to make things right.
* * *
At the youth center that afternoon, I found a scrap of paper in a bookshelf, and I sat alone at a table to write a note. It took me several attempts, and I was tearing at the paper between each one, so that the remnant became smaller and smaller.
Sorry didn’t seem enough. I had to rip myself open, to make myself vulnerable. It was the only way she would understand that I meant the apology.
I know I frightened you last week, and I would like to ask your forgiveness. It is no excuse, but I thought for a moment that my family had been taken, and I lost my head. The truth is, I have been doing that a lot lately. I don’t know how to cope with everything that is happening around me, but I do not want to be the kind of man who would put fear in the eyes of a woman the way I did to you that day, even while the world is this out of control.
I am very sorry. Thank you for trying to help my family. I have decided to try to convince my parents that they should have another conversation with you and your friend. If you visit our home again, I will be grateful for the opportunity to apologize to you in person.
I folded the paper and approached Andrzej. Maybe the girl was still upstairs in his apartment; maybe she was somewhere in the building. It was such a chaotic space, it was entirely possible I’d missed her leaving. In any case, I was too ashamed to look her in the eye so I didn’t ask for her.
“Did you organize for the social workers to visit my house?”
“Yes,” he said cautiously. “I understood that your family wanted help. I know that you declined the offer, but—”