We Were the Lucky Ones

by Georgia Hunter

  ‘Are you all right?’ Tymoteusz asks.

  Mila isn’t sure if she can move. ‘I think so,’ she whispers.

  Tymoteusz takes her arm. ‘Come,’ he says, and they step together into the shadows.

  Mila glides a narrow beam of light a metre in front of her as they shuffle silently inside. At first they see nothing but the cement floor, its cracks and dust illuminated in the glow of light. But then the beam catches what appear to be footprints, and a second later Mila jumps at the sound of a voice, not far from them. She recognises it as that of the Mother Superior.

  ‘We are here.’

  Mila shines the flashlight in the direction of the voice. There, along the far wall of the bunker, she can begin to make out bodies, large and small. The smaller ones, for the most part, lay motionless. A few sit up, rub their eyes. Run to them! Mila’s heart screams. Find her! She’s just there, she has to be! But she can’t. Her feet are fixed to the ground and her lungs reject the air, which suddenly smells of excrement, and something else, something horrible. Death, Mila realises. It smells like death. Her thoughts come and go quickly. What if Felicia isn’t there? What if she had been outdoors when the bombing began? Or what if she is there, but she’s one of the ones not moving? Too sick even to sit up, or worse …

  ‘Come.’ Tymoteusz nudges her and she moves alongside him, unable to breathe. Someone coughs. They shuffle toward the Mother Superior, who remains sitting, apparently unable to stand. When they reach her, Mila runs the flashlight over the others. There are a dozen bodies, at least.

  ‘Mother Superior,’ Mila whispers. ‘It is Mila Kurc, Felicia … I mean Barbara’s mother. And – and Tymoteusz …’

  ‘Emilia’s father,’ Tymoteusz offers.

  Mila directs the light at herself and at Tymoteusz for a moment. ‘The children. Are they …’

  ‘Papa?’ Soft, scared, a voice penetrates the darkness and Tymoteusz freezes.

  ‘Emilia!’ He drops to his knees in front of his daughter, who disappears in his arms. They are both crying.

  ‘I’m so sorry we couldn’t reach you sooner,’ Mila whispers to the Mother Superior. ‘How – how long have—’

  ‘Mamusiu.’

  Felicia. Mila tracks her light swiftly along the wall of bodies until finally it lands on her daughter. She blinks, swallowing back tears. Felicia is struggling to stand. Bathed in light, the sockets of her eyes appear far too pronounced in her small face, and even from afar Mila can see that her neck and cheeks are badly blistered.

  ‘Felicia!’ Mila presses the flashlight into the Mother Superior’s hand and darts across the bunker floor. ‘My darling.’ She kneels beside Felicia and scoops her up, cradling her with an arm under her neck and another under her legs. She weighs nothing. Her body is hot. Too hot, Mila realises. Felicia is mumbling. Something hurts, she says, but she hasn’t the words or the energy to explain what. Mila rocks her gently. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m here now, love. Shhh. I’m right here. You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.’ She recites the words over and over again, rocking her feverish daughter in her arms like an infant.

  Somewhere over her shoulder she can hear someone speaking to her. Tymoteusz. His voice is soft, but urgent. ‘I know of a doctor in Warsaw. You need to get her to him,’ he says. ‘Right away.’

  JANUARY 17, 1945: Soviet troops capture Warsaw. That same day, the Germans retreat from Kraków.

  JANUARY 18, 1945: With Allied forces approaching, Germany makes a last-ditch effort to evacuate Auschwitz and its surrounding camps; some 60,000 prisoners are forced to set off on foot on what will later be coined a ‘death march’ to the city of Wodzisław in south-western Poland. Thousands are killed before the march, and over 15,000 die en route. Those remaining are loaded onto freight trains in Wodzisław and shipped to concentration camps in Germany. In the coming weeks and months, similar marches will take place from camps like Stutthof, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Halina

  Montelupich Prison, Kraków, German-Occupied Poland ~ January 20, 1945

  A shaft of iridescent light perforates her cell from a miniature barred window three metres overhead, illuminating a square of cement on the wall opposite her. Halina can tell from its position that it is late in the day. It will be dark soon. She closes her eyes, her lids heavy with exhaustion. She didn’t sleep at all the night before. At first, she blamed her restlessness on the cold. Her blanket is threadbare, and her straw pallet does nothing to buffer the icy January chill that emanates from the floor. But even by the standards of Montelupich, the night had been a busy one. Every few minutes, it seemed, she was startled awake by the piercing screams of someone in a cell a floor above her, or by the sobs of a prisoner down the hallway. The misery is suffocating; it’s as if at any moment, it will envelop her.

  Halina’s cellmates, who once numbered thirty-two, have been whittled down to twelve. The handful who were discovered to be Jews were taken months ago. Others come and disappear by the hour. Last week, a Polish woman arrived, accused of spying for the Home Army. Two days later, she was hustled out from the cell before dawn; as the sun began to rise, Halina heard a scream and then the pop of gunfire – the woman never returned.

  Curled on her side with her hands between her knees, she teeters at the edge of sleep, half listening to the whispers of two inmates on pallets next to hers.

  ‘Something’s happening,’ one of them says. ‘They’re acting strange.’

  ‘They are,’ the other agrees. ‘What does it mean?’

  Halina has noticed a change, too. The Germans are behaving differently. Some, like Betz, have vanished, which for her is a blessing – she hasn’t been called into the interrogation room in weeks. The men who come to the door now to remove a prisoner or to drop off a tin of watery soup, in the brief instances that she sees them, seem rushed. Distracted. Nervous, even. Her cellmates are right. Something is happening. There are rumours that the Germans are losing the war. That the Red Army is entering Warsaw. Could the rumours be true? Halina thinks incessantly of her parents in hiding, of Adam, Mila, Jakob, and Bella, presumably still in Warsaw. Of Franka and her family – has Adam been able to find them, she wonders? Will Warsaw soon be liberated? Will Kraków be next?

  The door slides open. ‘Brzoza!’

  Halina starts. She pushes herself to a seated position and then slowly to a stand, her joints stiff as she makes her way across the cell.

  The German at the door reeks of stale alcohol. He grips her elbow tightly as they walk the hallway, but instead of turning right toward the interrogation room, he pushes open a door to a stairwell – the same stairwell she’d descended nearly four months ago, in October, when she was first escorted into the bowels of Montelupich’s women’s ward.

  ‘Herauf,’ the German directs, releasing her elbow. Up.

  Halina uses the metal railing, gripping it tightly with each step for fear that her legs might give out beneath her. At the top of the stairwell, she’s escorted through another door, and then down a long hallway to an office with the name HAHN printed in black letters across an opaque glass door. Inside, the man behind the desk – Herr Hahn, Halina guesses – wears a uniform bearing the double lightning insigna of the Sicherheitspolizei. He nods, and in an instant Halina is left standing, alone, shivering, in the doorway.

  ‘Sit,’ Hahn says in German, glancing at a wooden chair opposite his desk. His eyes are tired, his hair slightly dishevelled.

  Halina lowers herself gently to sit at the edge of the chair. Her mind buckles as she contemplates how exactly the Gestapo plan to kill her, whether it will be quick, whether she will suffer. Whether her family, if they are still alive, will ever learn of her fate.

  Hahn slides a piece of parchment across the desk. ‘Frau Brzoza. Your discharge papers.’

  Halina stares at him for a moment. And then down at the parchment. ‘Frau Brzoza, it seems your arrest was invalid.’

  She looks up.

>   ‘We have been trying to contact your boss, Herr Den, for months. It turns out his bank was closed. But we’ve finally found him, and he has stated that you are who you say you are.’ Hahn laces his fingers into a tight ball. ‘It appears a mistake has been made.’

  Halina exhales. A smouldering rage crawls up her spine as she stares at the man opposite her. For four months, she’s been locked up, starved, beaten. For four months she’s worried incessantly about her family. And now this, a half-hearted apology? She opens her mouth, furious, but the words don’t come. Instead she swallows. And as the relief washes over her, quelling her anger, she is dizzy. The room spins. For the first time in her life, she is speechless.

  ‘You are free to go,’ Hahn says. ‘You can collect your belongings on your way out.’

  Halina blinks.

  ‘Do you understand? You’re free to go.’

  She presses both hands into the arms of the chair and eases herself to a stand. ‘Thank you,’ Halina whispers, when her balance is in check. Thank you, she whispers, silently this time, to Herr Den. He’s done it again. Saved her life. She can’t think of how she will ever repay him. She has nothing to give him. Somehow, someday, she will find a way. But first, she needs to contact Adam. Please, just let him be alive. Let my family be alive.

  At the prison office, Halina collects her purse and the clothes she’d arrived in, and steps into a washroom to change. Her blouse and skirt feel sumptuous against her skin, but her appearance is shocking. ‘Oh, my,’ she whispers when she catches a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror over the sink. Her eyes are bloodshot, the skin under them eggplant purple. The bruises over her cheekbones have faded to a dull green, but the gash above her right eyebrow – thick and scabbed black, with an angry red rash around it – is lurid. Her hair is disastrous. Leaning over the sink, she cups her palms together and splashes a few handfuls of water over her face. Finally, she digs a clip from her purse and combs a lock of blonde hair with her fingers a few times before pulling it over her forehead and pinning it to the side in an attempt to cover the laceration over her brow.

  Folding her tattered prison jumpsuit, she sets it on the floor, then rifles through her pocketbook, where, somewhat miraculously, she finds her watch and her wallet. The money, of course, which was intended for the Górskis, is gone. But her false ID is there. Her work permit. A card with Den’s information. And – her stomach drops when she feels it still hidden in the soft lining of her purse – Adam’s ID. His real ID. With his real name, Eichenwald. Halina and Adam had exchanged their old IDs at the start of the war, shortly after they were married. It was Adam’s idea. ‘You never know when we might need them again,’ he’d said, ‘until then, best not to give anyone a chance to find them on us.’ Halina had cut a slit in the lining of her purse and sewn Adam’s ID into it. She didn’t have time to remove it after her arrest and before turning over her purse. The Germans had missed it. Breathing relief for the oversight, Halina exits the prison as quickly as her swollen joints will allow her.

  Outside, the January cold slaps her hard in the face. Patches of snow and ice cover the cobblestone street. She’d arrived in early October, when the weather was still relatively mild and she’d traded Pinkus her winter coat. Her lightweight trench is no match for the winter chill. She pulls her collar up to her chin and digs her hands into her pockets, squinting uncomfortably into the glare of the sun. Ignoring the wind slicing at her cheeks and the shooting pain behind her kneecaps, she walks briskly, determined to put as much space between her and Montelupich as she can while she contemplates what to do next.

  At a street called Kamienna, she pauses at a news stand, where she realises for the first time since leaving the prison that she hasn’t seen any Germans on the streets. She scans the papers, elated to read that the Soviets, just three days ago, had captured Warsaw. That the Nazis had begun to retreat from Kraków. That in France, the Germans were withdrawing from the Ardennes. These are good signs! Perhaps the rumours flying around Montelupich were true – perhaps the war would soon be over.

  Halina peruses the small crowd of Poles gathered at the stand for someone who might be able to direct her to the address Herr Den had left her. Hahn had said the bank was closed, but maybe with the German retreat it’s been reopened. They were able to find Herr Den, after all. If he isn’t there, she decides, she’ll have to track down his home address. She’ll reach him. Thank him. Promise to reimburse him, then ask for a loan. Just enough to pay for some food, and for her passage back to Warsaw, where, she prays, she’ll find her family intact.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Halina and Adam

  Wilanów, Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ February 1945

  ‘It’s this one here, on the left,’ Halina says, and Adam turns the Volkswagen down the narrow drive leading to the Górskis’ home. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she adds.

  From behind the steering wheel, Adam glances at her and nods. ‘Of course.’

  Halina rests a hand on Adam’s knee, deeply thankful for the man at her side. She would never forget the day that she returned from Kraków to her apartment in Warsaw to find him waiting for her. Mila, Felicia, Jakob, and Bella were there, too. The feeling of seeing them together, her siblings, was indescribable. Her euphoria vanished, however, when Adam told her he had no news of Franka and her family. They were still missing. His own parents and three siblings – two brothers and a sister with a two-year-old son – had disappeared, too, not long after Halina left for Kraków. Adam had been trying desperately to find them, but without any luck, and Halina could sense how much this agonised him.

  She’d felt bad at first, asking him to come along with her to Wilanów – but she knew that he would never let her travel on her own, and that if she arrived to an empty house or to bad news from the Górskis, she wouldn’t have the strength to return to Warsaw alone.

  Adam slows the Volkswagen to a stop and Halina peers at the Górskis’ cottage through the dusty windshield. It looks tired – as if the war has given it a beating. There are a dozen shingles missing from the roof, and the white paint has begun to peel from the shutters like birch-tree bark. Weeds grow in the spaces between the blue slate walkway leading to the door. Halina’s stomach turns. The house looks abandoned. Adam said he wrote to the Górskis twice over the winter to check up on them, promising to send money as soon as he could, but he never received a reply.

  Halina runs her fingers along the unsightly scar over her eyebrow and then slips her hand into her pocket, where she’s tucked an envelope of zloty – half of the sum Herr Den loaned her when she finally tracked him down in Kraków. It’s been seven months since she has been able to deliver the Górskis their money, since she last saw her parents, and it is everything she can do not to fear that the worst of her nightmares have come true. ‘Just be here,’ Halina whispers, wishing away the horrific scenarios her mind has become adept at concocting: that the Górskis, destitute, had been forced to leave her parents at the train station to fend for themselves with their false IDs; that Marta’s sister, nosing around, had discovered the false wall behind the bookcase and threatened to turn Albert in for harbouring a Jew unless he got rid of them; that a neighbour had spotted her parents’ laundry, suspiciously larger than the Górskis’, hanging to dry in the backyard, and reported the Górskis to the Blue Police; that the Gestapo had made an unexpected visit and discovered her parents before they had a chance to slip into their hiding place. The possibilities were endless.

  Adam turns off the ignition. Halina takes a breath, exhales through a narrow part in her lips. ‘Ready?’ Adam asks. Halina nods.

  She climbs out of the car and walks ahead, guiding Adam around to the back of the house. At the door, she turns, shakes her head. ‘I don’t know if I can,’ she says.

  ‘You can,’ Adam says. ‘Would you like me to knock?’

  ‘Yes,’ Halina whispers. ‘Twice. Knock twice.’

  As Adam reaches around her, Halina looks from the door to her feet to a line of tiny bl
ack ants marching across the stone doorstep. Adam raps his knuckles twice against the door and then reaches for her hand. Halina holds her breath, and listens. Somewhere behind her, a wood pigeon coos. A dog barks. Wind rustles the scale-like leaves of a cypress. And then finally, the sound of footsteps. If the steps belong to the Górskis, their expressions will say it all, Halina realises, staring now at the doorknob, waiting.

  Albert answers the door, thinner and grayer than when she’d seen him last. His eyebrows leap at the sight of her. ‘It’s you!’ he says, and then claps a hand over his mouth, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Halina,’ he says through his fingers. ‘We thought …’

  Halina forces herself to meet his gaze. She opens her mouth but can’t bring herself to speak. She hasn’t the courage to ask him what she needs to know. She searches his eyes for an answer but all she can read is his surprise at finding her at his doorstep.

  ‘Come, please,’ Albert says, waving them inside. ‘I’ve been so worried, with the news from Warsaw. Such devastation. How on earth …’

  Adam introduces himself and in an instant they are enveloped in shadows as Albert closes the door behind them.

  ‘Here,’ Albert says, flipping on a lamp. ‘It’s terribly dark in here.’

  Blinking, Halina scours the den for a sign, any sign, of her parents, but the room is just how she remembers it. The blue ceramic vase on the windowsill, the green paisley pattern adorning the armchair tucked into the corner, the Bible resting on a small oak side table beside the sofa – there is nothing out of the ordinary. She lets her eyes travel along the far wall to the bookshelf with the invisible wheels.