Uncle Piotr rose silently, took my arm, and all but dragged me to the door. The tram pulled to a stop, and we stepped off. As the tram continued on its journey, Uncle Piotr gave a frustrated sigh.
“I don’t need to tell you how stupid what you just did—”
“I know,” I snapped, shaking his hand off my arm. “I know. But did you hear what they were saying? How could you stand that?”
“It achieves nothing to speak up. Do you really think anything you said will make them question their beliefs? It changed nothing, and you put yourself and me in grave danger.”
“So you sit in silence and let them speak that nonsense about innocent people,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Yes,” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration, but then he paused. “You seem awfully sure about the conditions in the walled district for one who has never been there.”
“I’ve heard things,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze.
“Elz·bieta, you only ever speak to the four of us. It wasn’t your parents or me filling your head with this nonsense.” His frown grew deeper, but then his eyes widened. “Wait. Sara didn’t tell you these things?”
“What would Sara know about the Jewish area?” I said lightly, aware that not even Piotr knew about her epidemic-control pass.
“So where did this come from, then?”
“I found an underground newspaper in the courtyard one day,” I lied. “I threw it away as soon as I read it, but it made perfect sense.”
“You can only look out for yourself in a time like this,” Uncle Piotr said quietly. “Find ways to survive...find ways to thrive. You can do nothing for the people in the Jewish area, and you can do nothing to change the minds of those who aren’t sympathetic to whatever the Jews’ plight truly is. Worry about yourself—your family. That’s the best thing you can do.”
“Have you given this lecture to Sara?” I asked him.
He sighed, then muttered, “I’ve tried to. It doesn’t go down well.”
That night, with the sound of gunfire still echoing in the distance, I sat alone with Sara in her apartment and told her about the conversation on the tram and Uncle Piotr’s comments.
“It was foolish of me, I know,” I said. “I lost my temper. I just couldn’t bear it, after the things I’ve seen and the stories we heard.”
“I know, Elz·bieta,” she said quietly. “There is a whole city who would much rather turn a blind eye to the suffering behind the wall, and sometimes that is very difficult to bear. I tell myself that it is enough that history will harshly judge those who did not act, but I know in my heart that it is not enough. I wish I could drag some of these people into the ghetto and force them to look into the eyes of the people we have seen. You understand the problem, don’t you? Bystanders have allowed themselves to be convinced that the Jews are not like us, and as soon as you convince someone that a group of people is not human, they will allow you to treat them as badly as you wish. If those men on the tram or your uncle had the chance to see the humanity of those caught behind the wall, they would never stand for it.”
“Uncle Piotr disappoints me maybe most of all,” I admitted.
“He is a complicated man with complicated principles, that’s for sure,” Sara muttered. I peered at her thoughtfully, then finally gave voice to a question I’d been pondering for some time.
“Do you love him?”
“I could,” she said, after a pause. “But I, too, am a complicated woman with complicated principles, and unfortunately, our principles make us incompatible. That’s why we are only friends.”
We both jumped in fright as the windows rattled with an explosion in the distance.
“What do you think will happen to the partisans in the ghetto?” I asked her, my voice small as I thought of Andrzej and Roman.
“It will be a bloodbath.” Sara’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ll be surprised if they last another day. But they will go down with dignity and with honor. I am proud of them for that, and you should be, too.”
21
Roman
For days, the Germans tried to gain a foothold in the ghetto. With every new sunrise, I told myself that I had finally reached the day I would die. This ever-present reminder of my imminent mortality was enough to drive me through some sleepless nights and shifts in the incendiary-bottle factory that sometimes lasted more than twenty-four hours. If I wasn’t packing bottles with chemicals, I was with my unit, skipping along rooftops and defending homes or shepherding families between the basement bunkers. Only when I was too exhausted to continue would I finally retreat to a bunker to sleep the deep, dreamless sleep of those who are too tired to play in their rest.
I could not keep the days straight. Sleep deprivation and the constant, adrenaline-fueled panic of combat played games with my mind. When Andrzej pointed out that two weeks had passed since Passover, I protested.
“Surely not.”
Chaim was sitting beside me cleaning his rifle. He flashed a tired grin.
“Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?”
The Ghetto Uprising may have been more successful than we’d anticipated, but it didn’t feel glorious or triumphant. For the first few days, it was satisfying to push back, and I certainly enjoyed knowing how humiliating our success was for the Germans. There were moments when I was fighting with my unit or scouting with Chaim when I felt freedom was almost within my grasp, but I couldn’t quite reach it. I expected to reach a distinct point when I would feel I avenged my people, but as the body count grew, peace continued to elude me. What would it take? Did I need to kill a particular number of men? Or did I need to kill in a particular way?
Chaim and I led dozens of families into the massive basement bunkers we had built, and with each new group, I stared into the eyes of mothers and fathers and children and grandparents who had suffered unbearable trauma and who had been treated with unfathomable hatred. Worse still, these innocent people were living out the last days of their lives. And as we managed to rally and hold the Germans at bay for more hours or more days or even weeks, the ghetto was now cut off from the outside world. We had been starving before, but now, even the trickle of smuggled food that kept us alive was gone. We had no long-term plan, no endgame in mind. We knew from the outset that we didn’t need one.
“You’re a surly bastard, Gorka, but you’re one of the smartest men I’ve ever met. I don’t know how I would have survived the last year without you,” Chaim said one night. We were lying in the darkness of a bunker, both too wound up to sleep.
“Same,” I said gruffly. He chuckled and rolled toward me.