The human
spirit is a miraculous thing. It is the strongest part of us—crushed under
pressure, but rarely broken. Trapped within our weak and fallible bodies, but
never contained. I pondered this as my brother and I walked to a street vendor
on Zamenhofa Street in the Warsaw Ghetto, late in the afternoon on a blessedly
warm spring day.
“There was one right there,” he
said, pointing to a rare gap in the crowd on the sidewalk. I nodded but did not
reply. Dawidek sometimes needed to talk me through his workday but he did not
need me to comment, which was fortunate, because even after months of this
ritual, I still had no idea what to say.
“Down that alleyway, there was
one on the steps of a building. Not even on the sidewalk, just right there on
the steps.”
I fumbled in my pocket, making
sure I still had the sliver of soap my stepfather had given me. Soap was in
desperate demand
in the
ghetto, a place where overcrowding and lack of running water had created a
perfect storm for illness. My stepfather ran a tiny dentistry practice in the
front room of our apartment and needed the soap as much as anyone—maybe even
more so. But as desperate as Samuel’s need for soap was, my mother’s need for
food eclipsed it, and so there Dawidek and I were. It was generally considered
a woman’s job to go to the market, but Mother needed to conserve every bit of
strength she could, and the street vendor Samuel wanted me to speak to was
blocks away from our home.
“…and Roman, one was behind a
big dumpster,” he hesitated, then grimaced. “Except I think we missed that one
yesterday.”
I didn’t ask how he’d come to
that conclusion. I knew that the answer was liable to make my heart race and my
vision darken, the way it did sometimes. Sometimes, it felt as if my anger was
simmering just below the surface: at my nine-year-old brother and the rest of
my family. Although, none of this was their fault. At Sala, my boss at the
factory on Nowolipki Street, even though he was a good man and he’d gone out of
his way to help me and my family more than once. At every damned German I laid
eyes on. Always them. Especially them. A sharp, uncompromising anger tinged
every interaction those days, and although that anger started and ended with
the Germans who had changed our world, it cycled through everyone else I knew
before it made its way back where it belonged.
“There was one here yesterday.
In the middle of the road at the entrance to the market.”
Dawidek had already told me all
about that one, but I let him talk anyway. I hoped this running commentary
would spare him from the noxious interior that I was currently grappling with.
I envied the ease with which he could talk about his day, even if hearing the
details filled me with guilt. Guilt I could handle, I probably deserved it. It
was the anger that scared me. I felt like my grip on control was caught between
my sweaty hands and, at any given moment, all it would take was for someone to
startle me, and I’d lose control.
The street stall came into view
through the crowd. There was always a crush of people on the street until the
last second before seven o’clock curfew. This was especially the case in
summer, when the oppressive heat inside the ghetto apartments could bring
people to faint, besides which, the overcrowding inside was no better than the
overcrowding outside. I had no idea how many people were inside those ghetto
walls—Samuel guessed a million, Mrs. Kuklin´ski in the bedroom beside ours said
it was much more, Mother was quite confident that it was maybe only a hundred
thousand. All I knew was that ours was not the only apartment in the ghetto
designed for one family that was currently housing four—in fact, there were
many living in even worse conditions. While the population was a hot topic of
conversation on a regular basis, it didn’t actually matter all that much to me.
I could see with my own eyes and smell with my own nose that however many
people were trapped within the ghetto walls, it was far, far too many.
When the vendor’s table came
into view, my heart sank: she was already packing up for the day and there was
no produce left. I was disappointed but not surprised: there had been no chance
of us finding food so late in the day, let alone food that someone would barter
for a simple slip of soap. Dawidek and I had passed a store that was selling
eggs, but they’d want zloty for the eggs, not a tiny scrap of soap.
“Wait here a minute,” I murmured
to my brother, who shrugged as he sank to sit on an apartment stoop. I might
have let him follow me, but even after the depths our family had sunk to over
the years of occupation, I still hated for him to see me beg. I glanced at him,
recording his location to memory, and then pushed through the last few feet of
people mingling on the sidewalk until I reached the street vendor. She shook her
head before I’d spoken a word.
“I am sorry young man; I have
nothing to offer you.”
“I am Samuel Gorka’s son,” I
told her. It was an oversimplification of a complicated truth, but it was the
best way I could help her place me. “He fixed your tooth for you, remember? A
few months ago? His practice is on Miła Street.”
Recognition dawned in her gaze,
but she still regarded me warily.
“I remember Samuel and I’m
grateful to him, but that doesn’t change anything. I have no food left today.”
“My brother and I…we work during
the day. And Samuel too. You know how busy he is, helping people like yourself.
But the thing is, we have a sick family member who hasn’t—”
“Kid, I respect your father.
He’s a good man, and a good dentist. I wish I could help, but I have nothing to
give you.” She waved to the table, to the empty wooden box she had packed up
behind her, and then opened her palms towards me as if to prove the truth of
her words.
“There is nowhere else for me to
go. I can’t take no for an answer. I’m going to bed hungry tonight, but I can’t
let…” I trailed off, the hopelessness hitting me right in the chest. I knew I
would be going home without food for my mother that night, and the implications
made me want to curl up in a ball, right there in the gutter. But hopelessness
was dangerous, at least in part because it was always followed by an evil
cousin. Hopelessness was a passive emotion, but its natural successor drove
action, and that action rarely resulted in anything positive. I clenched my
fists, and my fingers curled around the soap. I pulled it from my pocket and
extended it towards the vendor. She looked from my palm to my face, then sighed
impatiently and leaned close to me to hiss,
“I told you. I have nothing left
to trade today. If you want food, you need to come earlier in the day.”
“That’s impossible for us. Don’t
you understand?”
To get to the market early in
the day one of us would have to miss work. Samuel couldn’t miss work; he could
barely keep up as it was—he performed extractions from sunup to curfew most
days. Rarely was this work paid now that money was in such short supply among
ordinary families like his patients, but the work was important—not just
because it afforded some small measure of comfort for a people group who were,
in every other way, suffering immensely. But every now and again Samuel did a
favor for one of the Jewish police officers or even a passing German soldier.
He had a theory that one day soon, those favors were going to come in handy. I
was less optimistic, but I understood that he couldn’t just close his practice.
The moment Samuel stopped working would be the moment he had to perform an
honest reckoning with our situation, and if he did that, he would come closer
to the despair I felt every waking moment of every day.
“Do you have anything else? Or
is it just the soap?” the woman asked me suddenly.
“That’s all.”
“Tomorrow. Come back this time
tomorrow. I’ll keep something for you, but for that much soap?” She shook her
head then pursed her lips. “It’s not going to be much. See if you can find
something else to barter.”
“There is nothing else,” I said,
my throat tight. But the woman’s gaze was at least sympathetic, and so I nodded
at her. “I’ll do my best. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I turned away, I wondered if it
was worth calling into that store to ask about the eggs, even though I knew
that the soap wasn’t nearly enough for a whole egg. It wasn’t enough for even
half an egg here on the market, and the stores were always more expensive than
the street vendors. Maybe they would give me a shell? We could grind it up and
Mother could drink it in a little water. We’d done that once before for her. It
wasn’t as good as real food, but it might help a little overnight. It surely
couldn’t hurt.
As I spun back towards our
apartment, a burst of adrenaline nearly knocked me sideways. Dawidek hadn’t
moved, but two Jewish police officers were now standing in front of him. Like
me, my brother was tall for his age—an inheritance from our maternal
grandfather that made us look bizarre when we stood with Samuel and Mother, who
were both more diminutive. Even so, he looked far too small to be crowded into
the doorway of an apartment by two Jewish Police officers. That situation could
turn to bloodshed in a heartbeat. The Kapo operated on a spectrum from
well-meaning and kindly to murderously violent, and I had no way of knowing
what kind of Kapo were currently accosting Dawidek. My heart thundered against
the wall of my chest as I pushed my way back to them, knowing even as I approached
that intervening could well get me shot.
For everything I had been
through and for everything I had seen, the only thing that kept me going was my
family, especially Dawidek. He was my favorite person in the world, a burst of
purity in an environment of pure evil. Some days, the only time I felt still
inside was when he and I were playing or talking in the evenings—and that
stillness was the only rest I got. I could not live without him, in fact—I had
already decided that if it came to that, I wouldn’t even try.
“Dawidek?” I called as I neared. Both Kapo turned toward me. The one on
the left, the taller one, sized me up as if an emaciated, unarmed 16-year-old
was any kind of threat. I knew from bitter experience that the smart thing to
do would have been to let Dawidek try to talk his own way out of this. He was
nine years old but used to defending himself in the bizarrely toxic environment
of the Ghetto. All day long, he was at his job alone, and I was at mine. He
needed his wits about him to survive even an hour of that, and I needed to
trust that he could handle himself.
But I couldn’t convince myself
to be smart, even when I knew that what I was about to do was likely to earn
me, at best, a severe beating. I couldn’t even stop myself when the Kapo gave
me a second chance to walk away. They ignored me and kept their attention on my
brother. “Hey!” I shouted, loud enough that my voice echoed up and down the
street, and dozens of people turned to stare. “He’s just a kid. He hasn’t done
anything wrong!”
I was mentally planning my next
move. I’d make a scene, maybe push one of the Kapo, and when they turned to
beat me, Dawidek could run. Pain was never pleasant, but physical pain could
also be an effective distraction from mental anguish, which was the worst kind.
Maybe I could even land a punch, and that might feel good. But my brother
stepped forward, held his hands up to me and said fiercely, “These are my
supervisors, Roman. Just supervisors on the crew. We were just talking.”
My stomach dropped. My heartbeat
pounded in my ears and my hands were hot.—I knew my face was flushed raspberry,
both with embarrassment and from the adrenaline. After a terse pause that
seemed to stretch forever, the Kapo exchanged an amused glance, one patted
Dawidek on the back, and they continued down the street, both laughing at me.
Dawidek shook his head in frustration.
“Why did you do that? What would
you do, even if I was in trouble?”
“I’m sorry,” I admitted,
scraping my hand through my hair. “I lost my head.”
“You’re always losing your
head,” Dawidek muttered, falling into step beside me, as we began to follow the
Kapo back towards our own apartment. “You need to listen to Father. Keep your
head down, work hard and hope for the best. You are too smart to keep making
such dumb decisions.”
Hearing my little brother
echoing his father’s wisdom in the same tone and with the same impatience was
always jarring, but in this case, I was dizzy with relief, and so I messed up
his hair, and let out a weak laugh.
“For a nine-year-old, you are
awfully wise.”
“Wise enough to know that you
didn’t get any food for mother.”
“We were too late,” I said, and
then I swallowed the lump in my throat. “But she said that we should come back
tomorrow. She will set something aside for us.”
“Let’s walk the long way home.
The trashcans on Smocza Street are sometimes good.”
We were far from the only family
in the ghetto who had run out of resources. We were all starving and any morsel
of food was quickly found, even if it was from a trashcan. Still, I was not at
all keen to return to our crowded apartment, to face the disappointment in my
stepfather’s gaze or to see the starvation in my mother’s. I let Dawidek lead
the way, and we walked in silence, broken by his periodic bursts of commentary.
“We picked one up here… Another
over there… Mordechai helped me with one there.”
As we turned down a quiet
street, I realized that Dawidek’s Kapo supervisors were right in front of us,
walking a few dozen feet ahead.
“We should turn around, I don’t
want any trouble with those guys,” I muttered. Dawidek shook his head.
“They like me. I work hard and
don’t give them any trouble. Now that you have stopped trying to get yourself
killed, they won’t bother us, even if they do notice us.”
Just then, the shorter policeman
glanced towards the sidewalk on his right, and then he paused. He waved his
companion ahead, then withdrew something from his pocket as he crouched low to
the ground. —I was far too far away to hear the words he spoke, but I saw the
sadness in his gaze. The Kapo then rose and jogged ahead to catch up with his
partner. Dawidek and I continued along the street, but only when we drew near
where he had stopped did I realize why.
We had been in the ghetto for
almost two years. Conditions were bad to begin with, and every new day seemed
to bring new trials. I learned to wear blinders—to block out the public pain
and suffering of my fellow prisoners. I had walked every block of the ghetto,
both the Little Ghetto with its nicer apartments where the elite and artists
appeared to live in relative comport, and through the Big Ghetto, where poor
families like my own were crammed in, trying to survive at a much higher
density. The footbridge on Chłodna Street connected the two and elevated the
Ghetto residents above the “Aryan” Poles, and even the Germans, who passed
beneath it. The irony of this never failed to amuse me when I crossed.
Sometimes, I crossed it just to cheer myself up.
I knew the Ghetto inside and
out, and I noticed every detail, even if I had taught myself to ignore what I
saw as much as I could. I learned not to react when an elderly man or woman
caught my hand as I passed, clawing in the hopes that I could spare them a
morsel of food. I learned not to so much as startle if someone was shot in
front of my eyes. And most of all, I learned to never look at the face of any
unfortunate soul who was prone on the sidewalk. The only way to survive was to
remain alert so I had to see it all, but I also had to learn to look right
through it. The only way to manage my own broiling fury was to bury it.
But the policeman had drawn my
attention to a scene of utter carnage outside of what used to be a clothing
store. The store had long ago run out of stock and had been re-purposed as
accommodation for several families. The wide front window was now taped over
with Hessian sacks for privacy; outside of that window, on the paved sidewalk,
a child was lying on her stomach. Alive, but barely.
The Ghetto was teeming with street children. The orphanages were full to
bursting which meant that those who weren’t under the care of relatives or
kindly strangers were left to their own devices. I saw abandoned children, but
I didn’t see them.
I’d have passed right by this child on any other day. I couldn’t even manage
to keep my own family safe and well, so it was better to keep walking and spare
myself the pain of powerlessness. But I was curious about what the policeman
had given the child, and so even as we approached her, I was scanning—looking
to see what had caught his attention and to try to figure out what he’d put
down on the ground.
Starvation confused the normal growth and development of children, but
even so, I guessed she was two or three. She wore the same vacant expression I
saw in most children by that stage. Patches of her hair had fallen out, and her
naked stomach and legs were swollen. Someone had taken her clothing except for
a tattered pair of underwear, and I understood why.
This child would not be alive by morning. Once they became too weak to
beg for help, it didn’t take long, and this child was long past that point. Her
dull brown eyes were liquid pools of defeat and agony.
My eyes drifted to her hands. One was lying open and empty on the
sidewalk beside her, her palm facing upward, as if opening her hands to God.
The other was also open, slumped against the sidewalk on the other side of her,
but this palm was not empty. Bread. The policeman had pressed a chunk of bread
beneath the child’s hand. I stared at the food and even though it was never
going to find its way to my lips, my mouth began to water. I was torturing
myself, but it was much easier to look at the bread than at the girl’s dull
eyes.
Dawidek stood silently beside me. I thought of my mother, and then
crouched beside the little girl.
“Hello,” I said, stiff and awkward. The child did not react. I cast my
gaze all over her face, taking it in. The sharp cheekbones. The way her eyes
seemed too big for her face. The matted hair. Someone had once brushed this
little girl’s hair, and probably pulled it into pretty braids. Someone had once
bathed this child, and tucked her into bed at night, bending down to whisper in
her ear that she was loved and special and wanted.
Now, her lips were dry and cracked, and blood dried into a dirty black scab
in the corner of her mouth. My eyes burned, and it took me a moment to realize
that I was struggling to hold back tears.
“You should eat the bread,” I urged softly. Her eyes moved, and then she
blinked, but then her eyelids fluttered and fell closed. She drew in a breath,
but her whole chest rattled, the sound I knew people made just before they
died—when they were far too ill to even cough. A tear rolled down my cheek. I
closed my eyes, but now, instead of blackness, I saw the little girl’s face.
This was why I learned to wear blinders, because if you got too close to
the suffering, it would burn itself into your soul. This little girl was now a
part of me, and her pain was part of mine.
Even so, I knew that she could not eat the bread. The policeman’s gesture
had been well-meaning, but it had come far too late. If I didn’t take the
bread, the next person who passed would. If my time in the ghetto had taught me
anything, it was that life might deliver blessings, but each one would have a
sting in its tail. God might deliver us fortune, but never without a cost. I
would take the bread, and the child would die overnight. But that wouldn’t be
the end of the tragedy. In some ways, it was only the beginning.
I wiped my cheeks roughly with the back of my hand, and then before I
could allow my conscience to stop me, I reached down and plucked the bread from
under the child’s hand, to swiftly hide it my pocket. Then I stood, and forced
myself to not look at her again. Dawidek and I began to walk.
“The little ones should be easier. I don’t have to ask the big kids for
help lifting them, and they don’t weigh anything at all. They should be easier,
shouldn’t they?” Dawidek said, almost philosophically. He sighed heavily, and
then added in a voice thick with confusion and pain. “I’ll be able to lift her
by myself tomorrow morning, but that won’t make it easier.”
Fortune gave me a job with one of the few factories in the ghetto that
was owned by a kindly Jew, rather than some German businessman only wanting to
take advantage of slave labor. But this meant that when the Kapo came looking
for me at home, to help collect the bodies from the streets before sunrise each
day, the only other viable person in our household was my brother.
When Dawidek was first recruited to this hideous role, I wanted to quit
my job so that I could relieve him of it. But corpse-collection was unpaid work
and my factory job paid me in food—every single day, I sat down to a hot lunch,
which meant other members of my family could share my portion of rations. This
girl would die overnight, and by dawn, my little brother would have lifted her
into the back of a wagon. He and a team of children and teenagers, under the
supervision of the Kapo, would drag the wagon to the cemetery, where they would
tip the corpses into a pit with dozens of others.
Rage, black and red and violent in its intensity, clouded the edges of my
vision and I felt the thunder of the injustice in my blood. But then Dawidek
drew a deep breath, and he leaned forward to catch my gaze. He gave me a smile,
a brave smile, one that tilted the axis of my world until I felt it chase the
rage away.
I had to maintain control. I couldn’t allow my fury to destroy me,
because my family was relying on me. Dawidek was relying on me.
“Mother is going to be so excited to have bread,” he said, his big brown
eyes lighting up at the thought of pleasing her. “And that means Eleonora will
get better milk tomorrow, won’t she?”
“Yes,” I said, my tone as empty as the words themselves. “This bread is a
real blessing.”
