The Girl Who Wouldn?t Die

by Randall Platt

“All three messages are the same. ‘8-1-26.’ We’re leaving today, January eighth, and we’re bringing twenty-six. That’s all they need to know.”

  “Why all the same message? Can’t one at least say ‘send beef and brandy’?”

  “Well, lots can happen between here and their home roost. Which is why we kissed them for good luck.”

  XVII.

  By the time we come back into the cellar, Lizard has changed into his Nazi uniform. I resist the urge to tell him how dashing he looks as a Kraut. He and Otto stand side by side to compare. They look perfect, complete with the boots and the caps. I swear I feel a new chill in the air.

  “Your turn, ladies,” Otto says.

  Irenka, Mrs. Praska, and I excuse ourselves to change into our new identities. The thin cotton costumes are simply white medical symbols covering up as many layers of warmth as we can get away with. First leggings, trousers, shirts, sweaters. Then the dresses.

  “I don’t know why we’re even bothering with these dresses,” Mrs. Praska mutters. “Oh look. I’ve lost weight,” she says sarcastically, buttoning the uniform. We pin rank insignias onto the pockets.

  “Is there even such thing as a Nazi nurse?” I ask Irenka. “A Captain SS Nazi nurse?”

  “What does it matter?” she returns. “Soldiers salute the rank, not the person.”

  We all have gloves, mufflers, hats, and thick boots. Even Germans have to dress against this freezing weather. I hand out the woolen double-breasted greatcoats, and we pass them back and forth until we each have one that fits.

  The five of us stand, looking at each other, turning around, adjusting, pulling, tugging, securing our ranks and our bright red swastikas. Our Aryanism complete, we present ourselves to our regiment of children.

  The younger children edge nervously away as we walk into the room.

  “That’s all Nazi,” Ruth says, pointing to our uniforms. “Look, Nazi,” she informs her friends.

  We put the children’s fears to rest, telling them we’re just playacting. “And soon you get to play, too, Ruthie.” I kneel down to face her.

  “I’m not going to be a goddamn szwab.”

  “Ruthie! You don’t swear!”

  “You do. They do.” She points to Stefan and Lorenz, my protégés.

  “Yes, but you don’t. Mama would be mad if she heard about this.”

  “But I want to grow up to be like you, Abra.”

  I pick her up and hold her head close to mine. “No, Ruthie, never say that. Promise me you’ll never be like me.”

  “I will be like you!”

  I lean back to look at her. “Promise me, Ruth,” I say sternly. “Now.”

  “Okay, I promise I won’t be like you.” I put her down and swear I hear her mutter, “But I will.”

  “And promise me you’re going to be good. Do everything we tell you.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes,” I say, pulling her knit cap down over her ears.

  She yanks it off and throws it down. “I hate orange and green!”

  I pick it up and cram it back on her heard. “Or else!” I give her a mean look, tucking her doll into the belt of her coat. “Now, you take Sofia and go back in there with the other children and listen to the stories.”

  It’s one in the morning. Otto and Lizard leave to wire the quarantine signs to the canvas canopy on the truck, check the gas and tires, and make sure everything is safe and secure.

  The cellar itself seems to pound with the collective beating of our hearts. The older children keep the younger ones busy with a pantomime game.

  “Look at them,” Mrs. Praska says. “Sometimes I wonder if they have any idea what’s really happening. So easily they fall back into their games.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Sometimes I think they’re just old, old people in those children’s bodies. I heard Stefan and two others discussing the merits of being shot rather than dying slowly from starvation. Another wanted to know if it hurts to die.”

  I find Ruthie weeping in a corner. I go to her. “What is it, Ruthie? Are you frightened?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?” I sit down next to her.

  “I’m sad.”

  “Why? We’re going on a great adventure, you and me.” She’s playing with her doll. A great, deep breath builds in her chest and she erupts with tears. “Oh, Ruthie, don’t. Why are you sad?”

  “You forgot,” she whispers.

  “What did I forget?”

  “I left you something and you never came and got it. And you never left me anything else.”

  I have to think. “You mean in the mausoleum? That was a long time ago.”

  “But I remember. I left you something and you never came back. It was right before Mama …” She stops and heaves a heavy sigh. “Before Mama sent me away.”

  “Oh, Ruthie, don’t cry. Tell you what. Maybe it’s still there. Why don’t I go out and look right now?”

  “No, everything in this place is gone. The damn Nazis make people steal, and they take everything. They even burned my …” Again, a great, building sob. “My rocking horse.”

  She puts her head into her hands and muffles her tears. How many times have I told her not to cry?

  I pull her into my arms and rock her tiny body to soothe her. “I’ll get you another rocking horse someday. I promise.”

  She stops weeping, wipes her face. “No. I’m too old for rocking horses.” She gives me a brave face.

  “It’s almost time,” Mrs. Praska says. “Otto and Lizard are back. Everything is ready.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I jump up and grab a flashlight.

  “Arab!” Mrs. Praska grumbles. “Why not put in a revolving door, the way people come and go around here!”

  I’m out of the cellar in a second, crashing through the snow drifts en route to the mausoleum. The iron door has been taken, and snow has built up inside. I look around each crypt, wondering whose sleep I am disturbing. I chip away layers of ice in the corner where Ruthie and I made our exchanges. My fingers find a metal corner, and I dig out the snow around it. I tuck the box under my arm and run with it back to the cellar.

  I go to a private corner and chip away the layers of ice sealing the box. I have to work its edges, but finally pry it open and pull out Ruthie’s last offering. I set the box down and gingerly pull out the delicate silver chain, watching it glimmer in the candlelight.

  “Arab?” Lizard calls out. I scramble for the box but Lizard and Mrs. Praska have already discovered me.

  “Can’t a girl have some privacy once in a while?” I bark. I run my hand over my face. Damn it!

  “What’s this?” Mrs. Praska asks, seeing the box.

  “Yeah,” Lizard chimes in, pointing to the chain now wrapped around my closed hand. “You lift someone’s watch?”

  I slowly open my hand to show them.

  “I knew it,” Mrs. Praska whispers, smiling at me.

  “That’s no watch,” Lizard says, looking at the silver pointer at the end of the chain. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a yad. It was my father’s.”

  “What’s a yad?” Lizard asks, watching it dangle between us.

  “Sacred,” Mrs. Praska says. “It’s used to point to the text of the Torah as it’s read. See the little finger pointing on the end?”

  “My father would have killed us for even thinking about touching this,” I say, holding it by its delicate, serpentine chain as I raise it toward the light. There’s a wooden disk dangling from it.

  “What’s it say?” Lizard asks, looking closely at it. “Oh, it’s in Hebrew.”

  I look at the handwritten inscription.

  “Can you read that?” Mrs. Praska asks me.

  “Yes,” I say, low.

  I go back to Ruthie and I show her the yad. Her eyes get big. “You found it!”

  “Ruthie, how did you ever get this?”

  I know a lie is forming.

  “The truth.”
>
  “It was a secret. I’m not supposed to tell.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  She looks around, as if our parents are right here listening to her confession. She tips her head upwards. “Before Mama sent me away.”

  “He knew we were hiding things there in the …” I remember her silly name for it. “The masso linoleum?”

  She nods her head. “But I didn’t tell him! Honest! He just found out.”

  “And he told you to hide this there?”

  She nods her head again, tears welling in her eyes. I take her into my arms again. “It’s okay, Ruthie. It’s okay.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “Well, it is mine.”

  Her lower lip twitches, indicating a pout is on its way. “Well, okay.” I slip the long yad chain around her neck. “You can keep it for me. Just for now, okay?”

  “Okay!” She holds the yad up close to her eyes. She points the finger on the end toward me. “So what are you going to give me? Your turn!”

  What a little opportunist, I think. “I am going to give you the biggest, most exciting day of your life! How about that?”

  “I wanted candy,” she says.

  “Go on. Go find the others and do as you’re told.”

  She throws her arms around me, and I’m reminded why I’m up to my nose in this insanity. I watch her limp away, still stunned at what I’ve found. And finding it here, now, in this place, stirs something deep inside. Something I’m not prepared for, and yet, something I’ve waited for all my life. I know what that yad meant to my father. He’ll never know what his inscription means to me:

  A PRIZED POSSESSION FOR A PRIZED POSSESSION.

  I WILL ALWAYS PRAY FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS,

  MY PRECIOUS ABRA.

  XVIII.

  Here we are: three nurses, two German guards, a fully-gassed Blitz truck, and twenty-one children, soon to be dying of my Kinem Plague. We’ve packed only what’s absolutely necessary—but how can we know what might be on the road ahead? I put together my own survival essentials in a knapsack. Cigarettes, cash, some Luger magazines I bought on the black market, and my two remaining passes out of the country, swiped so long ago. These I’ve reserved for me and Ruthie. Just in case.

  We’ve sorted out all of our forged documents, matching ages and faces to the children. But our plan, our hope, is that no one will want to risk catching the Kinem Plague. That they won’t dare to even touch, let alone inspect, our papers in the first place. We are banking all our lives on the lowest common denominator in the German war chest—fear.

  Our final step is applying pallor and sickness to the faces of the children. Between the stage makeup and kerosene lamp soot, our gang of children look like death personified. The girls actually giggle as we work to transform them. Irenka donates her only tube of lipstick to smudge along their lower eyelids, making their eyes look weepy and bloodshot. We drill the children who are old enough to understand the importance of our mission.

  “Shit, only girls wear makeup!” little Stefan pipes up.

  Lorenz gives him a brotherly shove and tells him to shut up. I have to break up a scuffle. “But I don’t feel sick,” Stefan insists.

  “I can fix that,” I warn. Then, I bend down to him and look him eye to eye. “Stefan, you know how …”

  “My name is Jaguar,” he corrects me.

  “No!” I hold up the card dangling from a cord around his neck. “Your name is Stefan Orinski and you are very, very sick.”

  “Okay,” he says, closing his eyes to submit to the makeup. “But no lipstick.”

  We line the children up and go over the hand signals we’ve taught them. A finger under the nose means sneeze. Sticking out a tongue means cough. Grabbing a stomach means moan.

  Otto lifts the coal chute door. “Let’s start. Only a few at a time. And quiet. Remember, if anything goes wrong, we’re just soldiers herding Jewish children into the night.” He looks at Lizard. “Come on. Oldest first.”

  “How long does it take for this to work?” I ask, looking at Irenka, who’s deep in thought as she reads the label of a medicine bottle.

  “Not long. I hope. But how much to give the babies?”

  Mrs. Praska takes the bottle and gives it a cursory glance. “I’ll do it.”

  “You know about this?” Irenka asks, handing her a bottle.

  She snorts. “I have given birth to seven children. Of course I know about tincture of opium.”

  “Opium? Do you think that’s safe?”

  “It’s laudanum, and I know how much to give. You tend to the others.”

  She administers the medicine to her baby and the youngest toddlers, and before long they’re sweet, sleeping bundles in our arms as we make our way up, out, and along the two frozen blocks to the piano warehouse where our truck is waiting. We put the sleeping little ones under the benches, some on the racks overhead. Mrs. Praska stays with them, while Lizard and I go back for more. Otto stands guard, weapon drawn, at the warehouse doors.

  It takes four trips before we have our entire troop of drugged actors in the warehouse. Any children that start to whine, protest, or even chat are given a pinch and a tablespoon of cough medicine to make them drowsy. This is no school outing.

  Irenka hands us adults the pièce de résistance to our own disguises—surgical masks. After all, the Kinem Plague is highly contagious. Brilliant! I never would have thought of that—and here it was the first thing our nurse compatriot thought of.

  I look at the blue bottle Mrs. Praska holds. “How long does this stuff take to work?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes. Maybe longer with water.”

  I call Stefan and Lorenz over. “Here. Take this,” I order as Mrs. Praska pours spoonfuls from the bottle.

  “What is it?” Lorenz asks, trying to get a glimpse of the bottle.

  “Syrup of ipecac,” Mrs. Praska says. “It will make you throw up.”

  “But I don’t want to throw up,” Lorenz whimpers.

  Stefan steps in front of him. “I do! This’ll be fun! Come on, Lorenz.”

  Lorenz complies, grimacing while he takes the medicine.

  “I like it!” my precious Stefan announces.

  We are ready. We look at each other.

  “Well, this is it,” Otto says.

  “In case …” Irenka says, her voice trembling, “… something happens. Goes wrong. I’ll always remember you and thank you for … for this chance.”

  “All right. Load up,” Otto orders.

  Lizard checks the road outside and opens the warehouse doors. Irenka climbs into the back of the truck, then Mrs. Praska, who turns to me and hesitates. “I … I just want to say. No matter what is out there, Arab, no matter what, you’ve saved us just as surely as Moses saved our people.” She catches my eye, smiles. “I know, I know. You don’t have a people.”

  I steady her step up. “If it makes you feel any better, may I be your ransom.”

  Her face comes alive at my Jewish blessing. “May you outlive my bones, my dear, dear friend.”

  I smile back, and then climb into the truck after her.

  Otto climbs into the driver’s seat. He puts the Red Cross pass on the dashboard. Lizard, who speaks very little German, rides as a guard in the cab. Irenka, Mrs. Praska, and I stay in the back, keeping Stefan and Lorenz close to the tailgate.

  We rumble out into the icy streets, the chains of the truck crunching the snow and making for slow going. Since the weather is even worse now, we assume the same gates will still be closed, so we head for Leszno Street. The roads will be better—and hopefully clear—on a well-traveled street. For the same reason, we’ll go north on Okopowa, which borders the ghetto walls. Yes, there might be more soldiers along that route, but we don’t want to chance getting stuck on the less-traveled roads. Our hope is that even a German won’t be caught dead out on the streets on this frigid January morning.

  XIX.

  The truck stops at the Leszno gate. I can feel the collective heartbe
ats of Mrs. Praska, Irenka, and myself as the truck inches to a halt and we hear the crunch of the approaching guard’s boots.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Lorenz whispers up at me, rubbing his stomach.

  “Wait,” I order. His eyes fill with tears as he looks urgently up at me. “I said wait!”

  I can’t hear what Otto is saying to his interrogator.

  When the canvas of the back of the truck snaps open, I stand up and look down at the face of the young policeman assigned to this post. I know by his blue uniform that he’s Polish police, not a German soldier. That makes sense—the Polish police draw the worst shifts.

  “Stand back!” I order him. “Don’t touch anything!” I try to taint my Polish with a German accent.

  “What is all this?” he asks.

  “Can’t you read?” I demand. “This is quarantine! You better burn that glove, Officer. For God’s sake, don’t touch anything!”

  “What kind of quarantine?”

  “It’s the Kinem Plague.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You will. It’s worse than the Black Death. And you know how the Jews spread that throughout all of Europe! Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand back. Cover your mouth.” He takes a cautious step back.

  Another Polish policeman comes around, his gun drawn. “I don’t know,” he says. “These papers are in German. Do you read German?”

  “This nurse says it’s the Kinem Plague,” he says, pointing to me. The sounds of children moaning and coughing inside the truck make the second policeman also step back.

  “We’re taking these children to the Stutthof camp,” I say. “For study. Kinem Plague is rare this far north, but deadly.”

  “Then maybe you should let them die here,” the first man says, laughing with his fellow policemen. The steam from their laughter clouds the air. “Let all the Jews catch it, and we can just torch this place and all go home.”

  “We better call over to headquarters,” one man says. “No one has said anything to us about this sort of thing.”

  “What is the problem?” a third man asks, holding a flashlight and shining it in my face. This one is a captain. The policeman hands him the papers. He looks at me again, then flashes his light into the back of the truck. “Take off that mask and let me see your papers!”