Esther lifted her head. “Are you awake?”
“I am.”
“My sister will never return to Warsaw, you know. She’s here permanently.”
“I know.”
“God only knows where Bonita is. People who are sent away never come back. Are we next, Eli? Can we afford to sit here and wait? It’s our responsibility to protect Izaak.”
“I think about that every day, but right now I don’t see a solution, one that would justify the risk of fleeing into the countryside, maybe directly into a battlefield. Our home, our business, our daily lives are still intact. Oppressed to be sure, but manageable. Maybe that’s how we survive. We lived through the Great War. Millions of soldiers were killed, but Lublin survived. It was never necessary to leave.”
“I’m sorry, my husband, but that is so naïve. You cannot compare the two wars. First of all, we were children twenty years ago. What do you really know? We have little memory of that war. My uncle was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, and he came back injured. Secondly, there was no Hitler, no madman, no war against the Jews. Look at Lublin today, only four months into the war. It was never like this.”
“I understand, but whether it’s Maximilian or whether the Nazis have achieved their purpose in occupying our city and have now stopped inflicting new punitive measures, Lublin seems to be in a relatively static position.”
“Achieved their purpose? Are you wearing your armband, Eli? Do you walk down the street and avert your eyes? Have you seen the Jews being marched to the train stations by armed soldiers? Is it happening every day? Are we so simpleminded that we would put our faith in a worm like Maximilian? No, Eli, it is more than just the occupation of Lublin. It is their war against the Jews. Ask yourself, why are they doing this? What sense does it make for Germany to single out Polish Jews? We have no army. We have no weapons. We pose no threat.”
“Because they want slave labor.”
“It’s more than that, Eli. Far more. It’s a hatred. In Germany they have been resentful of successful Jews for years. Now the Nazi leaders have whipped their followers into a state of hatefulness that they carry everywhere they go. They make vile cartoons of us in their magazines. They write lies about us in their newspapers. They despise us. They won’t be satisfied with slave labor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think they mean to kill us.”
“Esther…”
“You said it yourself. They planned a reservation with five hundred thousand Jews. Klara said a hundred thousand have been brought into Warsaw and that they were building a ghetto to imprison them. Women and children, too. Do they collect children for slave labor? It doesn’t sound to me like they are building a labor force. If that was their intention, they would take healthy Catholics and Protestants as well.”
“Esther, they’re not eliminating the Jews in Lublin. In fact, they’re bringing in more and more Jews every day. The Lublin Jewish community is larger than ever. I am still working at the brickyard every day. We’re still billing our customers. We’re still living as before.”
“Not as before. There are areas of our city that are Juden verboten. They took your business away from you. You work for Maximilian now. The Nazis are taking away businesses all over the city. They are forcing people out of their homes and into the poorest Jewish neighborhoods. Now they force us to wear armbands. There’s only one reason for that. They will identify us, they will collect us and concentrate us and then they will eliminate us.”
“Esther, Esther, I think you are getting carried away. What would it gain them? What possible purpose is served?”
“Maybe to have a banner to march beneath. Maybe it unifies them.”
“They’re at war! What could be more unifying than that? They’re unified against their enemies—Britain, France, Poland.”
“All I know is what I see. They look at us as though we are vermin, and people exterminate vermin. Even Maximilian has assumed a superior mantle. He patronizes us. You think he will protect us? Bah. The King of Denunciation. If push comes to shove, he will turn his back on us and denounce our family as well.”
“What would you have me do, Esther?”
“I defer to you, Eli. I always have. But I would encourage you to think about moving. We have a child and he must grow up in a land where he is loved, not despised.”
Eli nodded. “I can’t argue with that. It won’t be easy. We’ll have to go on foot, but we will do it. I will make plans. When the winter ends and the snow melts, we will go. I promise.”
“Then we will wait until the snow melts. Together we will find a safe place for our son. What about your father and Louis?”
“My father will never leave his brickyard, and he’s not strong enough to make the journey. I will talk to Louis, but I’m certain he will decline. He is deeply involved with the Judenrat. He believes that Lublin needs him to weather the occupation.”
“If it can be weathered.”
Eli rolled over, wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her close to him. He inhaled the sweet scent of her hair. He bathed in the warm softness of her body. He lifted her chin and kissed her lips. “How did I get such a wise and beautiful woman to marry me?”
“Because I had my eyes on you, Eli Rosen, and I willed it to be so.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LUBLIN, POLAND
APRIL 1940
MONTH 7 OF THE NAZI OCCUPATION
It was nippy for an April Sunday, and Izaak needed a jacket when he and Eli left the house. A smattering of daffodils and tulips had poked their heads out of Esther’s flower garden. Patches of green were replacing the winter browns. Spring had finally arrived, and Eli was making mental preparations to take the family out of Lublin and flee into the southern foothills. The snow had melted and it was time to go.
Over the winter, life had settled into a fragile and precarious routine in occupied Lublin. No new edicts had come down in several weeks, but the cruelty of the oppressors continued unabated. Random arrests and disappearances occurred almost daily. As Klara would say, they were “probably taken.”
Jewish families from other Polish towns were arriving by the trainload. Many were sent on to other locations, but a substantial portion was always left behind to fend for themselves in the overcrowded Jewish quarter. The Judenrat struggled to find them housing and a way to coalesce, but accommodations were scarce. The Jewish economy had all but ground to a halt.
With Eli’s massive hand wrapped around little Izaak’s hand, they walked across town to the Church of Saint Peter the Apostle. A few days earlier, Lucya had come to the brickyard to extend an invitation to Eli and his father to attend the grand unveiling of the newly restored statue of the Blessed Virgin and the ceremony honoring Louis. Jakob had awkwardly declined, offering an excuse that there was too much work to be done at the brickyard.
“He still has one foot in the old days when Jews and Catholics did not attend one another’s religious celebrations,” Eli whispered to Lucya. “I don’t think he’s ever been in a church. But I’ll be pleased to attend the unveiling and support my brother’s work. I’ll bring my son, Izaak. My wife would also come, but she works at the clinic on Sundays.”