“But the capitulation agreement says they will honor the terms of the Geneva Convention,” I heard someone say. “We’re supposed to have meals of comparable quality and quantity to the German soldiers. We’re supposed to be housed in safe and comfortable conditions.”
“Are you going to complain that our caviar is running late, or shall I?” I said sarcastically.
“But they have to treat us with dignity! We may be enemies, but we are still human.”
I ignored them after that, rolling over impatiently and trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. Beside me, Kacper asked quietly, “You saw active combat in the ghetto. I remember Needle saying so.”
“Yes.”
“You are Jewish?”
“It’s complicated,” I said heavily, too tired to explain.
“I heard it was bad in the ghetto.”
“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“Worse than the city uprising?”
“It was a different kind of hell.”
“Do you think they will kill us?”
“If they were going to, they would have already done so. They will want to use us for labor.” I wasn’t sure I believed this myself after everything I’d seen, but I remembered how those words from Samuel’s lips had once brought me comfort. There wasn’t much else I could do for the kid other than offer him hope, even if it was false hope.
“If we have to walk again tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll be able to go as far.” I noticed that in the last hour of our march, he had been stumbling with almost every step.
“I will help as much as I can,” I told him, but as tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep as I worried about my promise. I knew from painful experience how dangerous it was to assume the Germans would take pity on any one of us, and I hoped I could think quickly enough to help Kacper.
When we woke and were led straight to a nearby train station, I could feel Kacper’s relief, but I didn’t feel it for myself. The sight of those boxcars filled me with visceral dread, and as we waited our turn to board, I trembled from head to toe.
“Roman?” Kacper prompted when the line surged forward, but I didn’t move.
“I can’t get onto that train,” I whispered. Images played before my eyes. Samuel, pulling himself up onto the bed of the carriage, then helping Mother up, too. Dawidek, one hand in each of theirs. The train winding to Treblinka and the beautiful platform with the orchestra and the welcoming signage—all a facade hiding fields of death.
I felt a rough shove from behind, and I stumbled forward, my hands colliding with the edge of the carriage. I looked back in irritation to see Kacper behind me.
“Come on, soldier,” he said, with bravado I could see he didn’t feel, because his gaze was full of fear. “You haven’t come this far to give up now.”
It occurred to me that if I refused to board the train, I’d probably be shot, and this kid would be all on his own. He knew that just the same as I did, which was why he was so terrified.
I sighed and scrambled up onto the platform, then turned to help haul him up, too.
33
Emilia
March 1945
“Soviet troops have entered the outskirts of the city,” Mateusz announced. He set a basket of vegetables onto the counter, the goods from his trip to the market in Lodz. I’d been washing the dishes from breakfast and froze at his announcement, my hands stilling in the soapy dishwater. The click-clack of Truda’s knitting needles at the kitchen table slowed behind me, then stopped.
After our march from Warsaw, we had joined tens of thousands of other Varsovian civilians in cramped and crowded conditions at a transit camp at Pruszków, and we languished there for two very long weeks, searching unsuccessfully for Sara and Roman. We eventually discovered that Roman was likely taken to one of any number of POW camps, but we had no clue what Sara’s fate had been. We heard stories that some civilians were released into the countryside on strict instructions not to return to Warsaw, and others were sent to Germany for forced-labor assignments, and yet others were sent to concentration camps.
On the fifteenth day in the camp, Mateusz was finally called to a meeting with a German administrator to find out what our designation would be. He left that meeting without a single zloty to his name, but he managed to secure us release into the countryside.
The next day, we showed our papers at the gate, and then over the following three days we walked the hundred and twenty kilometers to the outskirts of Lodz. We found Uncle Piotr’s apartment occupied by a German commander and his wife, so Mateusz took us to Piotr’s factory. The vast space wasn’t remotely homey, but we commandeered the front office for our temporary home. Mateusz sold bits and pieces of what was left in the factory to buy essentials, including mattresses and blankets and wood for a fire, and we stretched the rest of the money for food. We suffered through a very uncomfortable winter like that—but we survived.
And now, this news. In some ways, it was the news we had been waiting for. It was also the news we had been dreading.
“There are Polish flags in the street,” Mateusz continued. “Some are celebrating.”
We were aware of the advancing Russian troops for some time. Change was in the air. It had begun when the Germans came to the factory in November and requisitioned all heavy equipment, packing it onto trains to be taken into Germany. Then at the start of January, German soldiers began fleeing the city like rats abandoning a sinking ship. When Mateusz heard the last of the Germans were gone, he raced to Uncle Piotr’s apartment, only to find it had already been looted. Even the windows had been stolen from their frames.
Just the previous week, we heard the Red Army had taken command of what was left of Warsaw. By all accounts, the entire city had been reduced to dust, but I struggled to imagine it, and because of that, I struggled to believe it.
I felt the instability of it all in my bones. So some were celebrating and waving Polish flags in the air, but I knew others would be cowering in their homes, well aware that the advance of Soviet troops meant that we were not yet liberated. It was unclear whether the Red Army’s presence was going to be a mercy or an even greater torture.
I withdrew my hands from the water and wiped them on my apron. Truda was crying. Mateusz watched us both, his expression guarded.
“Whatever comes next,” he said quietly, “we will manage.”
“How much more do you think we can take, Mateusz?” Truda whispered unevenly.
“God will not give us more than we can handle,” he said gently.
“Tell that to the Jews,” I muttered.