28 Days

by David Safier

  He recognized me, but he didn’t want to stop.

  I ran over to him and barred his path. Instead of saying hello, I simply asked, “You … you dyed your hair?”

  “I had to close my shop, so I need to find work.” He sounded defeated. “The Germans only want productive Jews. They don’t have any work for old Jews…”

  His eyes were jittery. Where was the old man who had been so relaxed about meeting death because he could look back on a lovely, fulfilled life?

  When death called, I now realized, no one stayed calm.

  “So you dyed your hair!” I couldn’t believe it. He had actually put on a little bit of rouge to look younger, too.

  “It’s not just me,” he said. “Look!” And he was right: There were some elderly women with dyed hair just like Jurek.

  “Look at those two.” Jurek pointed at two boys walking past with their parents. The children weren’t much older than Hannah, but they were wearing suits and ties to make them seem older. Old enough for a lifesaving job at one of the factories.

  It was spooky. A terrible masquerade to defy death.

  And it got even spookier. An old women with a hunchback came up to us. She wasn’t trying to hide her age like Jurek was. She was holding an amulet and waved it at us, especially at me.

  “A protection charm. It doesn’t cost much. A protection charm. It’s cheap,” she chanted in a horrible voice.

  I was far too scared to react, but Jurek chased her away with a sweeping arm movement. “Be gone, you witch!”

  The woman cackled and held the amulet directly in his face. “I’ll curse you for free,” she said …

  “We’re damned already,” Jurek answered.

  “You’re right, there,” she cackled again, and limped away.

  Jurek’s old hand—no amount of makeup could have hidden the protruding veins—shook. And he said, “God won’t help us, so we must rely on magic.”

  I watched the old woman go on her way. Offering her amulet to passersby in the hope of earning a zloty or two.

  “Well, what do you still believe in, Jurek?”

  “I believe in jam,” he said.

  “What?” I was stunned.

  “If I have to die, then I’ll die with a bit of jam,” he mumbled sadly, and then he simply walked away.

  I watched him go, far too surprised to call after him.

  A few minutes later, I realized what Jurek had been talking about. On my way to find Simon, I saw Rubinstein leaping around in front of a new notice. He was shouting, “Catch bears with honey and catch Jews with jam.”

  He was even dirtier than usual and stank to high heaven. The fact that he was wearing nothing but underwear and rubber boots didn’t help. There was a small group of people standing watching who couldn’t help laughing. Rubinstein was still good for a laugh, even now.

  I didn’t understand why everyone kept going on about jam, but then I read the notice the madman had chosen as a backdrop for his performance:

  APPEAL

  I hereby inform the residents that anyone who voluntarily reports for evacuation on July 29, 30, and 31 will be provided with food, namely 3 kilos of bread and one kilo of jam.

  The Commander of the Jewish police

  Warsaw, July 29th, 1942

  A kilogram of jam per person!

  Most of us hadn’t seen that amount of jam for years.

  And Jurek was going to die for that?

  “Lovely, tasty hangman’s jam,” Rubinstein called, and pretended to be licking jam out of a large jar. The movements were the same as last time, when he’d blackmailed Jurek, only this time he didn’t actually have any.

  “Who would have thought.” The madman giggled. “Who’d have thought that the first days of resettlement would look like the good old days so soon?”

  A couple of people actually laughed.

  Rubinstein started to shout his greatest hit, “All the same, all the same.”

  And laughed his loud mad laugh. The people watching joined in and sounded nearly as mad. The whole ghetto was slowly but surely going insane.

  As they all laughed, I started to feel angry.

  We weren’t all the same. Jews weren’t the same as the Germans, and Jews weren’t even the same as one another.

  It was nothing but ridiculous talk from a clown.

  I turned away, but Rubinstein saw me. “Where are you off to, little one? I thought you wanted to be my apprentice?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. I wasn’t the sort of person who had time for this kind of rubbish anymore. I had to find my brother and get some food.

  I rushed through the ghetto and turned into the street where the police headquarters stood. Then I heard someone shouting, “The orphanages. They are clearing out the orphanages!”

  21

  I didn’t even bother to turn around to see who was shouting. I didn’t care. And I didn’t stop to think that it was probably a bad idea to go to Korczak’s orphanage when it was about to be evacuated. Because I was so young, they might mistake me for one of the inhabitants and deport me, too, but all I wanted was to be with Daniel. I wanted him to be spared. I hoped that all of Korczak’s foreign supporters had been able to raise enough money to save him and all his children from the Nazis’ claws.

  I was panting when I got to the orphanage. There were no soldiers anywhere. This meant that I was too late …

  Oh please, don’t let it mean that!

  The children couldn’t be at the Umschlagplatz yet, surely!

  Daniel wasn’t at the Umschlagplatz.

  Or that’s what I kept telling myself as I walked up to the entrance. I was terrified that there would be no one there when I opened the door, just knocked-over furniture, smashed plates, scattered toys, and a teddy bear torn to pieces, maybe, whose stuffing had been ripped out like some gutted animal.

  No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that Daniel was not at the Umschlagplatz, my fear got the better of me.

  I shuddered as I pressed down the door handle and opened the creaking door. When it stopped making a noise, all I could hear …

  … was nothing.

  It was deathly still. Deserted.

  Deathly still. I had never thought about what that really meant before.

  I held my breath. I hoped I’d been breathing too hard to be able to hear properly. But I still couldn’t hear anything. Desperately, I let out my breath. I was just closing the door, about to sit down on the street and start to cry, when I heard a boy calling, “She is going to die.”

  I dashed up the stairs. Had children been left behind? With Daniel?

  I threw open the door to the hall, and there were all the orphans with their backs to me, watching a little play on an improvised stage. Their caregivers were all there, too, and Korczak and Daniel! Daniel!

  I burst into tears.

  The children closest to me stared, confused. The little girl with the red polka-dot dress who had stuck her tongue out at me last time was one of them, and she stuck her tongue out again. I needed quite a while before I was able to stick out my tongue back.

  Onstage, a girl was acting that she was dying of a fever. The boy whose voice I had heard from downstairs was dressed up as a rabbi with a false beard and wearing a black cloak and white prayer shawl. They were surrounded by children of all shapes and sizes who had come to say goodbye to the little girl. “Her suffering will end,” the rabbi said. “No more pain or sorrow. She will go to a better place.”

  The mourners were consoled. The dying girl closed her eyes peacefully and passed away forever. Everyone kissed her on the cheek or eyes or even on the mouth. There were probably a couple of boys who took the opportunity to kiss a girl on the lips at long last.

  When the play was over, Korczak started to clap and the whole audience joined in. Especially Daniel.

  I wiped away the tears on my face with my sleeve and walked through the crowd of applauding children to my boyfriend. When he saw me, he was startled. Ever since the Aktion h
ad begun, we’d only seen each other in our would-be haven in my room. We hadn’t met anywhere else since the Germans had started carting Jews off like animals. That was eleven days ago—an eternity.

  Daniel stopped clapping only after the little actors had taken the fifth or sixth bow. Korczak stopped just before him and looked at me. He had aged years again. But his eyes still sparkled merrily when he smiled. He said, “It is so nice to see you, Mira,” which of course really meant, “It is so wonderful that you are still alive, Mira.”

  “And you,” I said. “And you.”

  A little girl ran up to us calling, “Dr. Korczak, Dr. Korczak! Elias stole my donkey.” She was missing two front teeth, one top, one bottom, which looked adorable, but she was almost in tears.

  Korczak smiled. “A donkey needs more donkeys,” he smiled. And the little girl had to laugh, even though she felt so angry.

  He took her hand in his and said, “Let us go find those two donkeys, eh?” And the pair of them went off.

  Now there was just me and Daniel standing looking at each other, while some of the children started putting out tables and chairs ready for lunch. No one had needed to tell them to do this. The children understood their responsibilities within the community.

  “Why are you here?” Daniel asked. He didn’t know whether he should be pleased or worried.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. There were children all around us, and I would scare them if I told him that the orphanage was about to be evacuated. Perhaps it was just another ghetto myth, and I had overreacted.

  “I’ll tell you on the roof,” I decided to say.

  Daniel looked unsure. It was his job to help the children set the tables.

  “It won’t take long,” I promised, and he nodded.

  As we climbed the stairs to the attic, I thought about what I was going to say. When the orphanage got evacuated—even if it didn’t happen today—I didn’t want Daniel to be there. He had to stay with me. Stay alive. But would he be willing to abandon the children? Korczak never would. He had already turned down any help to escape. And Daniel adored him. How would he be able to stay behind while his surrogate father and family were loaded into the cattle trucks? How could I make Daniel stay with me?

  Love! Surely he loved me more than Korczak, didn’t he?

  “The play you just saw is called Goodbye to Sarah,” Daniel said as he opened the skylight in the attic.

  He tore me away from my thoughts.

  “Korczak wrote it. He is preparing the children for death. He doesn’t want them to be frightened, and he wants them to see the end of life as something all-redeeming.”

  It was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

  Daniel climbed through the skylight, and I followed him. The sun was beating down on our roof. It was good that we were wearing shoes. You could have fried an egg on the hot roof tiles. If you had the luxury of having an egg, that is. It was too hot to sit down. Unless we sat on one of the old planks still lying around. Daniel had been going to build us a little shelter from the rain, but then the Aktion started.

  “So, why are you here?” he asked.

  “Move in with me at Miła Street!” I said, and was as surprised by my words as Daniel was. He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

  “They are going to clear out the orphanages,” I explained desperately. But I already knew what he was going to say, “My place is here with the children. With Korczak.”

  And because I knew, he didn’t need to say it.

  “I just heard someone shouting that the SS are on their way to get you!”

  Daniel looked alarmed. He was more worried about the children than about himself, but of course he feared for his life, like anyone else. He wasn’t a saint.

  “Come with me,” I begged.

  “I can’t, you know that.”

  I was furious.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said sharply. “What do they get out of it if you die?”

  “My place is by their side.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I said. “I asked what good it will do anyone if you die with them.”

  “They are my brothers and sisters. They need me!”

  “I need you, too!”

  He realized how desperate I was and put his arms around me.

  “Don’t…” I held up my hands to stop him.

  He stood still.

  “Unless you come with me…”

  He didn’t move.

  My eyes welled up, but instead of giving in to tears, I started yelling,

  “Korczak is an old man. He can die if he likes, but not you!”

  Daniel was shocked. But I didn’t care. “He has no right to take you with him.”

  “It is my decision.”

  “That’s the point!”

  We stared at each other, and my lips trembled because I was trying so hard not to cry.

  “It really is your decision,” I said quietly, “choose…”

  I should have said “life.”

  But instead I whispered, “Me!”

  Daniel didn’t say anything.

  I could see that he was torn.

  But not enough to change his mind.

  He’d known Korczak all his life. He’d looked after most of the children for years. They were a family with two hundred members; I was just his girlfriend. How could his love for me ever compete with all the bonds he had here?

  Before Daniel managed to tell me that he would never choose me, and before I had time to cry, we heard the trucks coming.

  We dashed to the edge of the roof. Two trucks had stopped in front of the orphanage. Jewish policemen, SS men, and the Ukrainian monsters jumped down and charged into the house.

  “I’ve got to get to the children,” Daniel said without a moment’s hesitation.

  He tried to get to the skylight, but I jumped in his way. “Maybe they won’t look up here! Maybe they won’t get us!”

  Daniel wanted to push me aside, but I grabbed his arms and yelled at him, “They’ll kill you!”

  He knew.

  “My place is with them.”

  I now hated this sentence with all my heart.

  He got away from me and opened the skylight.

  I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t let Daniel go back down there! He’d die!

  I grabbed one of the wooden planks … and knocked him out.

  22

  It took a moment for me to realize what I had just done. Daniel lay unconscious on the baking roof. The back of his head was bleeding.

  Oh God! Did I kill him?

  I knelt down beside him to see if he was alive. He was still breathing. And suddenly I was glad that I’d knocked him out. He couldn’t go back to the children now. He was going to survive—if the Germans didn’t find us up here.

  I quickly closed the skylight. Then I lay down, too. Even though the hot tiles burned my skin, I crawled to the edge of the roof to see what was going on. I expected the children to be forced out of the house brutally, but nothing happened. The Germans and their helpers came back out onto the street. Without Korczak. Without the children.

  Were they going to spare the children’s home? Had I knocked Daniel out for nothing?

  On the other hand, the eviction squad showed no signs of leaving. No one climbed back into the trucks. They all waited in front of the house. The soldiers lit cigarettes and chatted among themselves. Jewish policemen wiped sweat off their foreheads. Even now, I couldn’t stop myself looking to see if Simon was one of them. And I was relieved to see that he wasn’t standing down there.

  I looked over at Daniel. He was still unconscious. He was probably going to stay that way for a while. I hoped he didn’t have a concussion. I had never attacked anyone, and then it had to be Daniel of all people!

  There was nothing I could do for him at that moment. I stayed lying on the roof, so as not to be seen, and watched what was going on below. The Jewish policemen looked like nervous wrecks, but the SS men just seemed bored. One of
them told a joke, and the other men laughed. The way they laughed made me think it must have been something indecent.

  What on earth were they waiting for? Why didn’t they leave? It was all very strange. And it was never a good thing when the Germans started acting strange.

  It took almost a quarter of an hour for the door of the orphanage to open again. Korczak stepped out. He had been a member of the Polish army, and he was wearing his uniform. On each side he was holding the tiny hand of a small child. The boy on his left was clutching a worn teddy bear tightly in his other hand. A little blond girl with braids was on his right. She was carrying a doll with a missing leg and was talking to it, as if she were comforting the doll.

  Behind Korczak, an older boy stepped out into the street. He was about thirteen years old and was holding a huge flag with both hands. It was King Macius’s standard. King Macius was Korczak’s most famous creation. The flag was green, with the blue Star of David on a white background on one side. The armbands we were all forced to wear had the same star on them as a sign of shame, but this flag was a sign of pride.

  In any other situation, the SS soldiers would have taken the flag away from the boy. But they let him be. Korczak emanated such dignity, even they were impressed.

  One after another, all two hundred children left the house. They were wearing their best clothes. Some of them had little knapsacks on their backs, as if they were going on a school outing.

  Apparently, Korczak had persuaded the SS men to give the children enough time to get ready. And made sure that they wouldn’t be hounded into the streets by shouting soldiers and be even more frightened.

  The orphans lined up in rows of four, taking one another’s hands, and set off with their caregivers. Korczak walked ahead with the boy who was hiding behind his grubby teddy bear now, and the little girl who talked to her doll kept kissing it over and over again.

  The SS and the Jewish police stayed back. Normally they yelled at the people to move, chasing them to the Umschlagplatz and beating them if they didn’t move fast enough. Or whenever they felt like it.