“Dawidek?” I whispered hoarsely. The rain was still bucketing down, but I could not bring myself to step inside. To do so was to confirm that my very worst fears had come to pass. To search each room and to find only emptiness would break me altogether.
No, better to stay in the cold and the rain.
“Dawidek?” I called again, my voice shaking. I held on to the doorframe, craning my neck to look inside, unable to convince myself to step across the threshold into the apartment. My voice echoed back at me. I waited, holding my breath in case my brother called back, in case his voice was quiet because he was hiding. I called him again, then again, then I sat on the front step, my feet flat against the floor, my elbows resting against my knees. I sat slumped, barely able to hold myself up.
I thought about taking myself to the Umschlagplatz. People sat there for hours sometimes. Maybe my family was still there, at the very first stop in their journey. If so, I could join them. And even if I failed to find them, I might be executed just wandering the streets after curfew. I had feared that possibility for so long, but that day, I was sure death would be a mercy.
I just couldn’t risk it until I was sure, and I couldn’t be sure until I moved into the apartment. The rain came down harder as darkness replaced the late-evening light. I was in such a sharp state of shock that time somehow both stretched and condensed.
“Roman?”
A warm hand descended on my shoulder, and I turned back toward the street to find Chaim behind me.
“They aren’t answering,” I said numbly. “I’ve called out to them, but they aren’t answering. Why aren’t they answering?”
“My friend, let’s go inside. The curfew passed some time ago. If you’re found out here...”
“Why are you here?”
“Andrzej just heard some of the buildings in this street were cleared this afternoon. We thought we should check on you.”
I was too shocked to feel the pain, too confused to grasp the magnitude of my loss. All I could think about was Dawidek.
“Tell me the truth,” I said stiffly, resisting Chaim’s attempts to shift me into the apartment. I scrambled to my feet and pushed him away, fiercely and furiously as if all of this were his fault, and on the slippery concrete he stumbled. He landed hard against the balustrade and gripped it with his hands twisted behind his hips, but his gaze did not leave mine. I raised my voice at him.
“I should have let you tell me on the rooftop, but I am a coward. Tell me now. What comes after the Umschlagplatz?”
He grasped my shoulder in his hand and turned me toward the door.
“I have never lied to you, and I never will. But I am not going to stand here and watch you get shot, so go inside.”
Chaim insisted I change out of my wet clothes before we talked. By now, perhaps some of the shock was wearing off, because I was becoming aware of the cold. I was shaking so hard that my teeth chattered, and I couldn’t feel my toes.
It took several attempts to get undressed, not just because of the cold and my shaking hands but because I couldn’t bring myself to look at the closet where my family’s clothes hung. If they were untouched, then my family had been taken without warning. But if they were disturbed, they knew that they were about to be taken and they might have even packed, which was somehow more brutal. I wondered how my mother must have felt. I wondered if Samuel had forced his unlikely positivity upon them, even as he was forced from his home. Then I started to think about Dawidek, and my composure completely crumbled.
By the time I left the bedroom, I was weeping. I ran through the apartment, a man possessed, and found Chaim in the kitchen. He sat at the table, the lamp lit in front of him.
“Tell me what you know,” I said. He hesitated, and I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, then I slammed my fist into the doorjamb. “Tell me!”
“Roman, you didn’t want to know,” he reminded me gently.
I choked on a sob, then through my tears tried to explain.
“I need to know now. Tell me, please.”
“What good can come of me telling you this?”
“I need to be able to picture it,” I choked. Chaim sighed heavily and pushed the plate of our oatmeal rations toward me. I looked in disbelief—I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to eat again, but especially not this food. It belonged to my family and our roommates. If I ate our food and they returned home, they would go hungry.
“Eat,” he said flatly. “Eat, and I will tell you.”
I sat at the table and picked up a spoon, then shoveled some of the sludge into my mouth. My stomach revolted at the taste and the texture, but I forced myself to swallow. Satisfied, Chaim nodded.
“A young man escaped last month and brought news back to us at the Z·OB,” he said. “The trains go first to Małkinia, and from there divert on a track to a platform that has been built in the forest. An orchestra plays on the platform to welcome the trains—they play beautiful Yiddish songs, and some of the people sing at the top of their lungs as they depart the trains. There is a sign there welcoming the travelers, advising them that they have arrived at a transit camp, telling them to hand over their goods for disinfection. They swap their belongings for a receipt, and then they are led to a bathhouse, where the women and children are separated from the men. Everything is clean and organized. There is nice soap, lots of towels. Your family surely felt very safe, probably even relieved to have such a nice facility for bathing after the filth of the ghetto.”
As he spoke, I closed my eyes and pictured the scene laid out before me. I wanted to draw comfort from his story, but his tone did not match his words. The picture he painted was not menacing, and it certainly wasn’t sad. But Chaim spoke like a man delivering the worst possible news. I opened my eyes to find his gaze had dropped, and he was staring at the plate of food between us.
“And then?”
“There are two mercies in this. The first is that right until the very last minute, the travelers likely believe they are at a transit camp. The signage, the orchestra, the clean bathhouse—it is so much more than people are expecting, so most of the deportees are calm and relieved. And the other mercy is that when...when it happens, it happens fast, my friend. Within an hour or two of arriving.”
“It? Say it. What is it that happens fast? Are they shot inside the bathhouse?” I was crying again, tears rolling down my cheeks, too distressed and distraught to even be embarrassed.
“There are tanks,” he whispered thickly. “When our man escaped into the forest, he heard tank engines running, but the tanks weren’t moving. He hid in the forest, then later saw prisoners dragging bodies from the bathhouse. We believe the Jews are being suffocated by the tank exhaust fumes in the bathhouse and then buried in mass graves in the forest.”