“Do you know how many children we have rescued, Elz·bieta?”
“No,” I said hesitantly.
“I haven’t counted for some time, but the last time I sat down and tallied the names, it was over two thousand.”
“That is amazing.”
“It is. But you need to understand that we have moved those thousands of children out of the ghetto only to move them into our care. We are still supporting most of them financially, still helping their new families hide when necessary. Sometimes we provide them with food or other essential supplies. You have seen one part of the operation, but the broader picture is an immense machine, and the reason we have been able to coordinate on this scale is that, while we take risks, we do not take foolish risks. Allowing you to visit the ghetto would be a foolish risk. Sara...myself...all of the other social workers who visit the ghetto have genuine identity cards and blemish-free histories. If anyone becomes suspicious and they try to dig into our pasts, they won’t see any red flags. But it would take very little time to realize that your identity card does not match a baptismal record or even a birth certificate. That would raise questions which could expose us all.”
“But, Matylda—”
“Do you still want to help?”
“I do. Of course I do! Now more than ever,” I said vehemently.
“And you will do whatever it takes?”
“Anything you ask of me, I promise.”
“Good,” she said, nodding curtly. “Then, go home to your family, and let us get back to work.”
I tried so hard to change their minds, but it was quickly obvious that neither Matylda nor Sara was willing to allow me to continue to work with the operation. Sara took me home on the tram.
“What will I tell Truda and Mateusz?”
“I’m going to handle that for you,” she said quietly. “I’m going to tell Truda that the City Council is laying off staff and that we no longer have the resources to supervise you.”
While she sat at the kitchen table to deliver the news to Truda, I went to my room and opened the top drawer of my bedside table. I riffled through the scraps of paper until I found one I had drawn weeks earlier.
I stared down at the sketch of baby Eleonora. I had thought about giving this to Roman or to Maja and Samuel, but the image was imperfect. I had drawn it in such a state of distress that it was far from my best work. At the time, I had stuffed it into my drawer, unable to bear looking at it. Now, though, looking at the sketch with fresh eyes, those minor imperfections were difficult to spot.
When Sara was preparing to leave, I walked her to the door and handed her the sketch.
“Please explain to him why I’m not there?” I asked her.
She gave me a sad look, then pulled me into a hug.
After Sara was gone, it struck me that I would never see the inside of the ghetto walls again. I felt a confused sense of relief. I would not miss how sick with fear I felt every time I passed through the checkpoints or miss coming face-to-face with the undeniable horrors of the ghetto environment.
But I was also struck by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I’d grown so fond of Roman Gorka. The thought of never seeing him again—of never even having the chance to say goodbye—was heartbreaking.
19
Roman
18 April, 1943
In the seven months since I lost my family, I had gained a whole network of brothers and sisters with one goal in common: a dignified death.
Nobody knew why the deportations stopped the previous September. The day after my parents were taken, the Jewish police and their families were deported, and then, for a while, the roundups just stopped. Those months of sudden quiet were eerie for us left behind, and they were a serious tactical error for the Germans. Those of us left behind all knew exactly where the trains led, and when the Germans announced another round of deportations in January, their calls for voluntary resettlement, as they called it, were ignored. They attempted a forced roundup, but a small group of Z·OB fighters mounted an offensive. This caught the Germans off guard, and within a few days, they abandoned attempts to deport us. They also stopped providing our rations.
I couldn’t bear to think about how close my family had come to escaping the last deportation. Sometimes that seemed brutally unfair; at other times, as food became even scarcer, it seemed like a mercy. Even Sara and her team could no longer gain access, the Germans now being past the point of pretending they were interested in keeping us healthy.
But instead of accepting our lot, those of us left behind had been encouraged by the Z·OB’s ability to stun the Germans in January, and we mobilized, turning the inevitability of our deaths into action, turning our rage and our pain into organization.
I joined Chaim and Andrzej in the Z·OB, and I spent every waking minute of the previous seven months preparing to take some measure of revenge. Chaim and I now lived in the apartment opposite the youth center, in the same place I had sheltered on the day the orphans left. We spent little time there other than to sleep because we worked day and night to prepare ourselves, and the ghetto, for all-out war.
We built bunkers and dug tunnels beneath buildings and constructed barricades on rooftops. With a little help from the Polish Home Army, we smuggled weapons into the ghetto through the sewers and stockpiled them at strategic points, ready for when conflict began. I discovered my job in Sala’s workshop had given me a particular tolerance for repetitive tasks, and I’d put this to good use in a makeshift factory, developing crude incendiary devices. Others in my unit struggled with the smell of the chemicals, complaining of headaches and burning eyes, but I relished the discomfort. Every time I packed a bottle for use against the Germans, I focused on my mother’s face or on particular memories of Samuel or Dawidek. I poured my longing and my rage into each and every bottle.
For two years before their deaths, I had been terrified of my anger—but once they were gone, I reveled in it. I taped two images to the wall beside my bed. One was the clenched fist Elz·bieta had drawn for me—the words beneath it now my driving mantra: There are many ways to fight, but striving for justice is always worth the battle. The other image was the extraordinary sketch Sara had given me the day she told me that Elz·bieta was unable to return to the ghetto.
Eleonora. The last piece of our family, out there in the world but lost to me, other than the sketch.
“But why can’t Elz·bieta visit anymore?” I’d said, feeling this new blow land hard, even as I was still submerged in the foggy depths of grief.
“Her family situation has become complicated” was all Sara would tell me.
“Could you take her a note from me?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”