Sometimes the deportations were random, and sometimes they were highly targeted. Only one thing remained consistent: the threat seemed closer with every passing sunrise. Chaim hunkered down at the youth center for his so-called business several nights in a row, only to return to the Little Ghetto to discover his entire building was empty. The children who begged in the gutter opposite my apartment were caught in a roundup while they were wandering the streets looking for food. Mother went to the street vendor on Zamenhofa Street to see if she was willing to barter food for some of Eleonora’s old clothes, only to find her gone.
Each night, when I returned to my apartment, I would stand at the door, and I would hold my breath until I heard a sound from inside. One day, I opened the door to find my parents and grandparents with Dawidek and the Kuklin´skis seated around the living room, visibly distressed.
“What is it?” I asked uneasily.
“The Grobelnys,” Mother whispered. “They were caught in a roundup at the market. I told her to leave Estera here with me, but you know how she was—so anxious to keep the little girl with her after losing her other children. Oh, God—that poor baby.”
“We don’t know where the trains lead. They might be fine,” Samuel said, but his reassurances now sounded weak, as if even he didn’t believe them.
I continued to visit Elz·bieta in her little classroom each day, a brief reprieve from the endless tension. I got to know Sara a little, too, and made an attempt at a strategic friendship. I intuited that Elz·bieta had little say in the order that children were evacuated, but it was evident that Sara had more power.
“Dawidek is still waiting to be evacuated,” I would remind her, whenever I saw her coming or going from dropping off Elz·bieta at the center.
“We are working as fast as we can, Roman. We are trying to find somewhere safe for him—but the longer the war drags on, the harder it is to find safe refuge, especially for a child with your brother’s coloring. I am sorry this is taking so long.”
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” I would say, and she would give me a sad smile and continue on her way.
* * *
Late in August, I noticed that Chaim’s easy smile came less and less often, and there were new lines of strain around his eyes. I wondered if I were imagining things, but when I heard him snap at one of the boys in the kitchen, I knew something was wrong.
“Let’s take a walk,” I suggested. He shrugged, then smiled reluctantly when I led him toward the rooftop. “Well, you are the Pigeon, after all. I thought you might be comforted by your natural habitat.”
We stretched out on the roof in the sunshine, side by side, looking up at the cloudless late-summer sky.
“I don’t know how to ask you what’s wrong,” I admitted.
“Once upon a time, you wouldn’t have even tried,” he remarked.
That much was true. Having at least made some attempt to prompt a discussion, I left it for a while but eventually asked quietly, “Is there anything I can do?”
“You could join us.” He hadn’t asked me so directly for a long time. My eyebrows lifted. “We are mobilizing, preparing to fight.”
“Who is this we you speak of?”
“Andrzej and I are members of the Jewish Combat Organization,” he said quietly. It was the first time he had shared the details with me, but I had heard of Z·ydowska Organizacja Bojowa and suspected he was organizing with them.
“Is this why you are so quiet?” I asked him. “Is an uprising coming?”
I held my breath while I waited for his answer. My heart raced at the thought of my friends attempting to take on the might of the German army—such a rebellion was doomed to fail.
“Will you fight with us?” Chaim asked me quietly.
“You know Samuel would never forgive me...”
“Roman,” he said, his voice strained, “do you believe that we will be deported?”
“It seems inevitable,” I said.
“Don’t you want to know what awaits us?”
“Do you know?” I turned to him in surprise. “Has someone come back to report?”
But I knew the minute I looked at him that whatever he had to tell me did not involve wide-open spaces or meaningful work or food and running water or comfortable accommodations. I sank back down, unable to face the grief and fear in his eyes.
“Do you want to know?” he asked again.
Mother had told me that even if the news was bad, she would prefer to know. Lying on that rooftop with Chaim, I was reminded that my mother was much more courageous than I could ever be. Even now that I had the chance to know what our fates were, I couldn’t bear to hear it said aloud.
“You don’t need to tell me,” I whispered, staring up at the bright blue sky. “I can see it in your eyes.”
When we finally returned downstairs, I walked into the back room, interrupting Elz·bieta as she worked with a group of children.
“Just give me a few moments,” she said quietly to the children and then approached me, concern in her gaze. “What has happened? What do you need?” I stared at her for a long, fraught moment, trying to absorb her goodness. Life is still good. Life is still worth living. See, there is still beauty and goodness in the world.
“I just wanted to see you before you left,” I admitted, and then I started to turn away, but she caught my hand. When I glanced back at her, she threw her arms around me, embracing me in the softest, sweetest hug I had ever had.
When Elz·bieta released me, she squeezed my forearm, then nodded, as if in that wordless interaction, she had said everything she needed to say.
17
Roman
20 September, 1942
Autumn was gradually taking hold, each day a little cooler than the one before. That afternoon, I ran the length of the block from the youth center to my home in pelting rain, thinking about the coming winter and all the desperate tactics we’d need to employ to survive the cold. I was shivering by the time I reached the apartment, so focused on the weather and my drenched coat and hair that I forgot to brace myself on the doorstep.
The apartment had been so crowded and so bustling with activity for so long. There were days when I thought I would go insane if I couldn’t find a moment of peace, when I thought the sheer stench of so many people living in that confined space was going to suffocate me. But then I threw our front door open, and instead of noise and smell and crowding, I found complete silence.
Often, when men face their doom, it is their mother they cry for. But that day, it wasn’t my mother I called for, it was my brother.