Marta shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers. ‘It’s awful, not knowing where they are, whether they’re okay.’
Nechuma nods and something passes between the two women that eases Halina’s heart.
Albert returns to his wife’s side, rests his hand on the small of her back. ‘Soon,’ he declares, his voice suddenly grim, ‘this godforsaken war will be over. And we can all go back to life as normal.’
The Kurcs nod, praying that there is truth to his words.
‘I really must go,’ Halina says, fishing an envelope with 200 zloty from her purse and handing it to Albert. ‘I’ll be back in a month. You have my address; please, should anything happen,’ she says, avoiding eye contact with her parents, ‘write to me right away.’
‘Certainly,’ Albert says. ‘We’ll see you next month. Be safe.’ The Górskis leave the den to give the Kurcs some privacy.
When they are alone, Sol smiles at Halina, and then at the room around him, his palms turned up to the ceiling. ‘You care for us well,’ he says. Crow’s feet flank his eyes, and Halina’s heart emanates longing for her father, for his smile that she will miss the moment she walks out the door. She reaches for him, presses her cheek into the soft barrel of his chest.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ she whispers, cherishing the feeling of being wrapped up in his warmth and hoping he won’t be the first to let go.
‘Take care of yourself,’ Sol says as they part, handing her the keys to the Fiat.
With the green of her eyes amplified behind a wall of tears, Halina turns to her mother, thankful the room is dark – she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. Be strong, she reminds herself. They are safe here. You’ll see them in a month. ‘Goodbye, Mother,’ she says. They hug and exchange kisses on the cheek, and Halina can tell from the way her mother’s chest rises and falls that Nechuma is doing her best to hold back tears, too.
Halina leaves her parents standing by the trick bookcase and walks to the door. ‘I’ll be back in September,’ she says, with a hand on the knob. ‘I’ll try to bring some news.’
‘Please do,’ Sol says, taking Nechuma’s hand in his.
If her parents are as nervous as she about her leaving, they’ve done a good job of masking it. She opens the door and squints into the afternoon light, half expecting to catch someone spying on them from behind one of Albert’s laundered shirts. She steps outside and turns to look back at her parents. Their faces are obscured by the shadows. ‘I love you,’ she says to their silhouettes, and closes the door behind her.
AUGUST 17–18, 1942: Radoms larger Wałowa ghetto is liquidated. Eight hundred residents, including those from the shelter for the old and disabled as well as patients at the ghetto’s hospital, are murdered over the course of two days. Approximately 18,000 others are deported by train to Treblinka. Some 3,000 young, skilled Jewish workers remain in Radom for forced labour.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Genek and Herta
Tehran, Persia ~ August 20, 1942
A flash of orange hurtles through the space between their shoulders. Genek flinches. Herta covers Józef’s face instinctively with her hand. They are three of twenty Polish recruits wedged into the bed of an old pickup, sitting hip bone to hip bone on slabs of plywood running the length of the bed. They’ve all come from different camps – released as Genek and Herta had been, on amnesty – to fight for the Allies. Their bodies are in bad shape – riddled with boils, ringworm, scabies, their hair sweaty and lice-infested, pasted to their foreheads. Tattered clothes hang loosely over gaunt frames and a foul odour surrounds them, following the truck like a repulsive, malodorous shadow. A few of the sickest lay crumpled at Genek’s and Herta’s feet, incapable of sitting up on their own, hours, it seems, from death.
They’ve been driving for three days, skirting the coast of the Caspian Sea on a narrow dirt road flanked by sand dunes and the occasional palm tree. ‘I suppose we’ve nearly reached Tehran,’ Genek says. They stare wide-eyed at the Persians lining the dusty thoroughfare, who stare back at them. ‘We must look pitiful,’ Herta whispers.
Tehran marks the end, for now, of their 5,000-kilometre journey. It’s been a year since they were released from their work camp in Altynay, nine months since they finally left Wrewskoje, Uzbekistan, where they’d been forced to spend the winter. January and February were tough on them. Subjected to a diet of eighty grams of bread and a bowl of watery soup a day, their midlines had been whittled away until they’d lost a quarter of their body weight. Were it not for the blankets Anders had issued, they’d have frozen to death.
But they were lucky. Hundreds of others who’d come to Uzbekistan as they had, to join the army, were laid to rest in Wrewskoje. Every week, a carriage would clatter through the village to collect the skeletal remains of those who had lost their battles with malaria, typhus, pneumonia, dysentery, starvation. The dead were gathered up with pitchforks and heaped into piles outside the city. When the piles rose too high, someone would smother the corpses in crude oil and burn them, causing a sickly smell that hung in the air long after the bodies had turned to ash.
By March it was clear that Stalin either wasn’t able or wasn’t willing to properly feed or equip the exiles who’d enlisted in Anders’s Army. There were 44,000 recruits, according to the registrar, awaiting orders in Uzbekistan; rations issued by the Soviets, however, were maintained for 26,000. Furious, Anders pushed Stalin to allow him to evacuate his troops to Persia, where they would come under the care of the British. When Stalin finally agreed, Genek and Herta set off on another four-month exodus, traversing 2,400 kilometres of endless steppe and desert through Samarkand and Chirakchi to the port of Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. There, they were surrounded by NKVD toting large canvas bags; ‘Drop the belongings you can’t carry,’ they were told – a rather pointless order, as most had nothing more to their names than the shirts on their backs. ‘Money and documents, too,’ the NKVD added. They’d be searched on embarkation, they were told. ‘Anyone trying to smuggle money or papers out of the country will be arrested.’ Genek and Herta had used the last of their zloty months ago. Their Polish passports had been confiscated in Lvov. They said goodbye to their amnesty certificates and non-resident permits issued in Altynay, along with their foreign passports issued in Wrewskoje. Without a single coin or form of identification in their pockets, they were true nomads. But it didn’t matter – whatever the requirements to get them out of the grip of the Iron Fist and into the caring hands of the British and General Anders, they were more than willing to oblige. It wasn’t until they finally climbed the steep gangway to board the Kaganovich, the rusted-up freighter that would deliver them to the Persian port of Pahlevi, that they smelt their first hint of freedom in the hot, salty air.
After a few days at sea, however, that smell was quickly overpowered by one of vomit, faeces, and urine. For forty-eight hellish hours, they stood shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of other passengers on board, their shoes drenched in excrement, their scalps sizzling beneath the blaze of the relentless sun, their stomachs churned by the never-ending ocean swells. Every square centimetre of the ship was occupied: the hold, the deck, the staircases, even the lifeboats. Dozens died, their limp bodies held aloft by outstretched hands, passed overhead to the nearest opening on the vessel’s railing to be tossed overboard, where they were swallowed by the sea.
Genek and Herta finally arrived in Pahlevi, a Persian port on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, in August. Numbed by fatigue and dizzy with hunger, thirst, and seasickness, they learnt that the last vessel to cross the Caspian, carrying with it over a thousand souls, had sunk. They slept for two nights on the beach in Pahlevi under an open sky until a caravan of pickups arrived to take them to Tehran, where they were told a division of the Polish Army awaited.
A second sphere sails overhead, and this time Genek reflexively catches it. Why would the locals taunt such a pitiful-looking group of people, he wonders? But when
he opens his hand, he finds an orange. A nice one, too. Fresh. Plump. The first piece of fruit his fingers have touched in over two years. He glances over his shoulder to see if he can spot whoever threw it, catching the eye of a young woman wearing a maroon headscarf, standing on the sidewalk with her hands on the shoulders of two young boys in front of her. She smiles, her brown eyes soft and full of pity, and suddenly it’s clear: the orange wasn’t hurled as a sign of disrespect – it was a gift. Sustenance. Genek’s eyes well up as he rolls the fruit between his palms. A gift. He waves at the Persian woman, who waves back and then disappears into a cloud of dust. Genek can’t remember the last time a stranger did something nice for him without expecting something in return.
He digs a dirty fingernail into the orange, peels it, and hands a wedge to Herta. She bites off a piece and holds what’s left of it to Józef’s lips, laughing softly as his nose crumples. ‘It’s an orange, Ze,’ she offers. A new word for him. ‘Pomarańcza. Soon enough, you’ll learn to like it.’
Genek peels off a wedge for himself and closes his eyes as he chews. The flavour explodes on his tongue. It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.
Their camp faces north, overlooking the shore of the Caspian Sea and beyond that the purple-grey of the Elburz mountains. ‘Are we in heaven?’ Herta whispers as they approach, reaching for Genek’s hand. Two young English women nod from beneath the brims of army caps and direct them toward a series of long, narrow tents with canvas flaps rolled and tied up to allow for airflow. ‘Men to the right, women to the left,’ they explain, pointing at two tents marked STERILISATION.
Inside the men’s tent, Genek is more than willing to undress – he’d traded what clothes he could spare for firewood and extra food rations to help get through the Siberian winter; he’s been wearing the same trousers, shirt, and undergarments nearly every day since. He makes his way, naked, to a hose spraying something that burns his nostrils as he approaches. ‘You’ll want to close your eyes,’ the recruit who is just finishing before him calls out. The sterilisation shower stings, but Genek savours the cold bite of the solution cascading over his ribs, sloughing the grime from his skin, cleansing him of his time in exile. When it’s over he opens his eyes, relieved to see that his small pile of threadbare clothes has been removed, undoubtedly to be burnt. He shakes a few drops of the sharp-smelling solution from his limbs and joins the other recruit at a bucket of what appears to be seawater, where he rinses off with a sponge – a sponge! With others waiting behind him, it’s everything he can do not to revel for an extra minute or two in his first real bath in months. Smelling now like a mix of chlorine and the sea, he’s handed a towel and guided to another tent, this one stocked with neat piles of new clothes: underwear, undershirts, and uniforms in several shapes and sizes. He selects a pair of lightweight khaki pants and pulls a collared short-sleeved shirt over his head, the cotton luxuriously soft against his chest. In a third tent, he’s handed a pair of white canvas shoes, a cork helmet, a sack of dates, six cigarettes, and a small paycheck. ‘Breakfast is at seven o’clock sharp,’ he’s told by the quartermaster as he turns to leave.
‘Breakfast?’ He’s so accustomed to living off of a single meal a day, the concept of putting something nourishing in his stomach at daybreak has become foreign.
‘You know, bread, cheese, jam, tea.’ Cheese and jam and tea! Genek nods, salivating, too elated to speak.
On the beach, he finds Herta sitting with Józef in her lap and a basket of oranges beside her. She’s been issued the same khaki slacks and shirt, in a women’s cut. Józef is naked but for a cloth diaper and a handkerchief that Herta has drenched with ocean water and draped over his head. He kicks his feet in the sand, fascinated by the feel of the tiny hot grains against his skin. A young Persian boy walks by selling grapes. They sit for a while in silence, staring at the horizon, at the shimmering surface of the Caspian Sea, and at the saw-toothed line of the Elburz range looming over it. ‘I think we’ve come to the right place,’ Genek says, smiling.
AUGUST 1942, TEHRAN: Soon after Anders’s men reach Tehran, Stalin pushes hard to send the Poles directly to battle, but Anders insists that they need more time to recuperate. Many of his men die in Tehran – some too weak and sick from the exodus, some unable to stomach the sudden intake of rich food. Others, with the care of the Persians and the supplies sent from Britain, grow stronger. When new battle attire and real leather boots arrive in October, morale at the Tehran tent camp reaches an all-time high.
AUGUST 23, 1942: The Battle of Stalingrad begins. Nazi Germany, supported by Axis forces, pushes the boundary of its European territories and fights for control of Stalingrad in south-western Russia in what will become one of history’s bloodiest battles.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Felicia
Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ September 1942
Felicia sings quietly to herself – the song about the kitten that her grandfather taught her – as she squats on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, balancing a nest of metal bowls one on top of another. She glances every few minutes at the round clock hanging by the stove (her mother had taught her recently how to read time), counting down the minutes to five o’clock, when Mila is meant to arrive. The apartment belongs to a friend of her aunt Halina’s. It’s much nicer than the flat in the ghetto, but at least in the ghetto her mother came home to her every night. Here in Warsaw, for reasons Felicia still can’t understand, her mother lives in a separate apartment down the street. They spend time together on the weekends, and once a week Mila comes to the apartment to deliver money for the landlord. The couple that owns the place works, so Felicia has grown accustomed to spending her days alone. There’s another stowaway, an old fellow called Karl who arrived a few weeks ago, but she doesn’t interact with him much – he mostly reads, or stays in his room, which is fine with Felicia as it makes her uneasy when people she doesn’t know, men especially, ask her questions.
The lock on the apartment door rattles and Felicia looks up at the clock, at the long hand. It’s too early. Her mother is usually here just after five, not before, and the owners of the place don’t get home until six. For a moment she imagines it to be her father. ‘I found you!’ he’d say as he burst through the door wearing his army uniform. But then she freezes, wonders if she should hide. She’s been told to be careful about strangers. The apartment door opens and closes, and after a moment a voice calls. Felicia softens when she recognises it as her mother’s cousin Franka’s.
‘Felicia, honey, it’s me. Franka. Your mother couldn’t make it,’ she explains as she makes her way from the foyer into the kitchen. ‘There you are,’ she says, finding Felicia sitting on the floor among her bowls. ‘Your mother is fine, just has to work late today.’ Franka sets a box on the kitchen table and bends to give Felicia a hug.
‘She has to work late?’ Felicia asks, looking past Franka, as if willing her mother to appear.
‘She’ll try to come visit you tomorrow.’ Franka stands. ‘Are you all right? Is everything okay here?’
Felicia glances up at Franka. She seems nervous, like she’s in a hurry.
‘I’m okay. Are you going to stay with me?’ she asks, although she knows what the answer will be.
‘I wish I could, love. But I’m working this evening, and Sabine is waiting for me downstairs. She came with me to keep watch while I brought the money. I shouldn’t be seen up here.’
Felicia sighs and stands to get a closer look at the box Franka had set on the kitchen table. ‘What’s that?’ she asks. With her fourth birthday approaching, she’s been begging her mother for a new dress. It occurs to her that perhaps Franka has brought her one.
‘It’s shoes. Thought it best to look like I’d come with a delivery, in case anyone asked why I was here,’ Franka says.
‘Oh.’ Felicia’s eyes are level with the box. She stands on her toes to peek under the lid, wondering what a new pair of shoes might look like, smell like. But the oxfords inside are scuffy and w
orn.
‘Is there anything that you need?’ Franka asks, pulling an envelope from inside her shirt.
Felicia looks at the floor. There’s a lot she needs. She doesn’t answer.
Franka tucks the envelope into the usual spot – behind a picture frame over the stove. ‘Where is Mister – what’s the fellow’s name?’ she asks, checking her watch.
Felicia is about to explain that Karl hasn’t yet ventured from his room when someone knocks hard on the door. Felicia’s first thought is that it must be Franka’s friend Sabine. But Franka jumps. She looks at her watch, and then at Felicia. They stare at one another, unsure of what to do. After another knock, Franka lifts the tablecloth and points.
‘Hide, quickly!’ she whispers.
Felicia scrambles beneath the table. There is a third knock; this time it sounds like metal smacking wood. They’re going to break the door down, Felicia realises, if no one answers it.
Franka adjusts the tablecloth so it hangs a centimetre from the floor. ‘Coming!’ she calls, and then squats and whispers through the tablecloth: ‘If they find you, you are the daughter of the concierge.’
I’m the daughter of the concierge. These are the words she’s supposed to recite, should someone discover her in hiding. In the months since she moved to the apartment, she hasn’t needed to use them; until today, no one but the landlord has come unannounced. ‘I’m the daughter of the concierge,’ she whispers, feeling out the lie.
As soon as Franka reaches the door, Felicia hears voices. Three, four maybe, yelling in a language she has learnt to recognise as German. The voices belong to men. They stomp from the foyer into the kitchen. Beneath the table, Felicia startles at the jarring clatter of her bowls scattering across the floor.
We Were the Lucky Ones Page 27