by David Safier
“Ben Redhead,” I said, and smiled.
It was good that he was still alive. That would be sure to please Hannah if I ever went back to visit her in the island world. From day to day, I was more convinced that she really did live there, even when I wasn’t with her. I was probably out of my mind.
“R … R … Redhead?” Ben asked, and stuttered as usual. There are some things that don’t change, no matter how much you grow.
Of course, Ben didn’t know that he was called Ben Redhead in the island world. But if I told him about my fantasy, then he’d realize that I was going mad. So I ignored his question and instead asked him how he had managed to survive. Ben told me that his father worked for the Jewish council and he had started to despise him more and more until he couldn’t stand it any longer and ran away to join the ŻOB. He would rather die honorably than live tolerated by the Germans, even if that meant breaking with his family.
I presumed that it had been his father who had stopped Ben from visiting Hannah again after the start of the Aktion in the summer, but didn’t inquire any further. With his heart in his mouth, Ben asked the question he was so dreading to know. “D … did … Ha … Hannah…?”
“No…” was all I could say.
Ben broke down in tears. Uncontrollably. He was still able to do something the rest of us fighters could no longer do. He could let his grief run free.
The others looked annoyed. His tears reminded them of their own pain. And they didn’t need that. Certainly not in preparation for the final battle.
I was totally unsure how I should react. His tears annoyed me, too. On the other hand, Ben was the closest thing I had to family. We were bound together by our love of Hannah. So I put my arms round him. He drooped over my shoulder, and I gently stroked his red hair.
“As long as we still remember her,” I said to him quietly, “she isn’t dead.”
It wasn’t much, but it worked. Ben stopped crying. He let go of me and wiped away his tears with his sleeve.
“I … th … think about Ha … Ha … Hannah every d … day,” he said. “And I … I … always w … will.”
“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”
But I had a terrible thought. When the two of us were dead, and that would be very soon now—hopefully killed in action and not in the gas chambers—then the memory of Hannah would be completely gone and she would be dead for good.
43
“When you have finished comforting each other,” Esther said to me, “I need to talk to you for a moment”—she emphasized the word comforting in a disparaging way. Grief was a useless waste of time as far as Esther was concerned. A distraction from what was important. At least she treated me with a little bit of respect, now that I was a hero. And perhaps, or so I thought, she was just a tiny bit jealous because I had been allowed to fight in her place and she still hadn’t killed any Germans yet. Though I would have happily swapped places with her if I could. If I’d had a time machine like the hero in the book by H. G. Wells, then I’d have gone back in time with Esther and left it to her to kill the German. She could have had my hero status, and four weeks later, I wouldn’t still be haunted by nightmares. Actually—much better—I’d have traveled back in time to save Hannah, my mama, and my papa, and would have stopped Simon from ever joining the Jewish police. Of course the best thing would be to go even further back in time and kill Hitler while he was still a child. That was someone I could imagine killing.
I looked at Ben Redhead—he would always be Ben Redhead to me—and said, “We’ll talk later.”
Although I had no idea what we would talk about next time. About how Hannah died? Should I tell him how she had lain in her own blood? Then he would cry again and I would, too. Although … perhaps it would be nice to be able to share my pain with someone. Maybe I could find some comfort in that. Of sorts.
Together with Esther, I walked up the stairs from the cellar to the flat, and she said, “I don’t think boys like him will be any use.”
“You thought the same about me,” I answered.
Esther didn’t deny this.
“And I cost one hundred thousand zlotys,” I added without thinking.
“Which were meant for Zacharia,” she replied, and her eyes shone with contempt for a moment.
I should have kept my mouth shut. She still hadn’t forgiven me for the fact that Amos had got me out of the Umschlagplatz instead of her comrade. What could I say? That I thought it would be better if I had landed in the ovens?
Of course I said nothing of the sort. Instead I continued to defend my Ben Redhead. “Ben could simply have stayed with his Jewish council father. That just goes to show how strong his will really is.”
Esther didn’t reply. It was as if she thought it was useless talking about the boy any longer. Although she had started this. I was beginning to realize that she had seen that something connected Ben and me and she had wanted to hurt me by questioning his abilities.
She pushed open the door of the flat. I wondered if I should ask what she actually wanted me for, but I didn’t. I would find out soon enough. If we didn’t speak to each other, then at least we couldn’t argue.
We went into the kitchen where Mordechai and Amos were sitting at a table beside the printing press. Amos’s wounded arm was healing by now. Mordechai jumped up and hugged me like an old comrade. I was one, as far as he was concerned.
Just a few weeks ago, I hadn’t even dared look at Mordechai let alone speak to him; now I managed to hug him back so that I wouldn’t seem impolite. Once he’d let go of me, he said, “We need more weapons.”
“We couldn’t own fewer, could we?” Amos joked.
Mordechai smiled, Esther didn’t react, and I hopped nervously from one foot to the other. What was our leader planning now?
“We need people to organize weapons on the Polish side. People who live there permanently to liaise with the Polish resistance.”
So this was why I was here. I was going to leave the ghetto, to live on the other side of the wall.
“I need really good people,” Mordechai said. He looked at Amos and then at me and smiled again, “But all I’ve got is you.”
Jewish humor. Oh, great!
“You two,” he was serious again, “are both experienced on the other side, and you could both pass as Poles,” he said.
I wasn’t so sure myself. It was almost a year since I had been in the Polish part of the city. Okay, so I didn’t look as Jewish as Esther did, for example. But I didn’t have Amos’s blond hair. Just green eyes.
I also had no real wish to go to the other side of Warsaw. Home was home. Even if it was the ghetto. Since the Aktion I hadn’t once dreamed of going to see New York’s city lights. Those dreams belonged to a different life. The life with Daniel.
Daniel. If Ben Redhead was still alive, couldn’t Daniel…?
“Mira and I could be a Polish couple,” Amos said, interrupting my thoughts. “We’ve done it before, haven’t we?” He was laughing at me.
What was he playing at? The thought flashed through my mind. Going by Esther’s expression, she was wondering the same thing.
“Then,” Mordechai said, “tell us what kind of couple you’d be.”
“A fantastic one, more gentile than any other.” Amos just couldn’t stop talking nonsense.
“We wouldn’t be anything,” I mumbled. All this silly talk annoyed me more than I could say.
Mordechai laughed at our different reactions. Esther did what she always did when emotions were involved. She returned to business and said matter-of-factly, “I’ll make sure that the two of them get over to the other side.”
“Good!” Mordechai looked pleased and said goodbye to each of us with another hug. Once he was gone, the three of us stood in the kitchen. We didn’t speak until Esther said quietly, “He should have sent me.”
She’d said it! This strong woman felt degraded by the likes of a young girl like me.
“Mira has green eyes; you don’t,” A
mos said gently, trying to put his arms around her. But she pushed him away and said, “I’m surprised you even know what color my eyes are.”
She regretted her outburst immediately and left the kitchen.
Now there were just the two of us. Amos and me. All alone.
“It’s just ’cause she loves me,” he said. But what he meant was: (1) he thought I was too stupid to see what was obvious, and (2) he didn’t love her; otherwise he would have said, “We love each other.”
So he was just like Miriam. She’d been together with someone she didn’t actually love, she’d even got married, because it seemed better than being alone until she died.
I could just about understand Miriam at the time, but I was disgusted with Amos. Miriam had had no hope of falling in love, but Amos was incapable of loving anyone. He was using Esther, and I stopped feeling inferior to her. All of a sudden, I felt sorry for her.
I left the kitchen, but then just as I was going out, I turned round and said, “If Esther really loves you, I pity her.”
As I left, I heard him say, “Ouch!”
44
Esther had organized everything for us, but it was still dangerous to get out of the ghetto. Amos and I were to leave with a group of Jews who were working on the Polish side of Warsaw at Okęcie airport and who usually lived in the barracks on-site. Every two weeks, the workers were allowed to return to the ghetto for a day, and they used the opportunity to smuggle food into the ghetto and valuables out. One of the foremen of the group was a young man named Henryk Tuchner. He was worn down by the hard work at the airport and had deep dark rings beneath his eyes, but he was a member of the ŻOB. He had added our names to the list of workers who would be allowed to pass through the checkpoint to the Polish side, and gave us our forged work permits in the early morning. We walked through the empty streets with him. A half-starving cat crossed our path. A black one.
“That’s good luck,” Amos said, and grinned at me.
“Idiot!” was all I said.
“Oh, I know,” he said, grinning a bit more.
We walked on without saying anything else and joined about thirty workers who were waiting for us at the next street corner. They weren’t exactly pleased to see us—we were putting them in danger. The soldiers were prepared to ignore their petty smuggling if they received a share. But ghetto fighters would be shot at once, and if there were bullets flying, no one wanted to be caught in the fray.
None of these men would dare betray us, though. They were too scared of the ŻOB. I was far more worried that they’d do a body search at the gate. Mordechai had given me an important letter. A report for the Polish resistance. It listed exactly how many weapons and what support the ŻOB leaders required from their Polish comrades. This report was hidden under my foot in my sock. When I put it there this morning Amos had grinned and said, “Our Polish friends will be able to smell cheese when they read it.”
It was such a stupid remark that I hadn’t even bothered to call him an idiot.
The troop of workers went across to the Polish side on a regular basis and our forged papers were excellent, so the chances of being discovered weren’t great. But I was still nervous. Who wouldn’t be in this situation?
Amos, of course.
He even had a friendly smile for the other workers, though none of them were keen to walk through the gate at Żelazna Street right next to us. When we got there, we had to stop in front of four SS soldiers. A fat German, who had the sort of face friends might call jovial, read out the workers’ names on the list. “Jurek Polesch, Shimon Rabin, Amos Rosenwinkel, Mira Weiss…”
We reported as our names were called, but while all the other workers were allowed through the gate, the fat German stopped me. Of course I didn’t ask what was going on. It would have been foolish to address a German without being spoken to. Foolish and dangerous. A smack in the face was the least you could expect, the lash of the whip likely, and a bullet not impossible.
The fat man pointed at the guardhouse and ordered me to go in.
I looked at Amos, who gave an encouraging nod. I started to move, but I wasn’t fast enough for the fat man, and he shoved me along. He didn’t make me fall, but he forced me to walk faster.
I hurried into the room. It was sparsely furnished with a table, a chair, and a cupboard, and with temperatures around about freezing it was not much warmer than outside. As soon as we had entered, the fat German closed the door, grabbed his whip, and shouted in German, “Ausziehen!”
He wanted me to take off my clothes! I was so scared I didn’t react immediately. The man raised his whip and threatened to strike me.
He said it again, “Ausziehen!”
I took off my jacket.
And my trousers.
And my shoes.
Now I was standing there with nothing on except underwear and socks, hoping he wouldn’t ask for more. Couldn’t he see that I wasn’t smuggling anything? It wasn’t just humiliating to be standing in front of this swine freezing and half-naked. I had to make sure that he didn’t find the letter addressed to the Polish resistance that was hidden in my left sock.
If I’d been a real fighter, I’d only have been worried about the report, because it was so important to our cause. If the Germans got hold of it they would know how poorly armed we all were and they would lose the tiny bit of fear we had been able to instill in them. But I was more worried that I’d be thrown into a German prison where SS soldiers would torture all the information I had out of me. I trembled with cold and fear.
The SS man looked me over from every angle. Why didn’t he let me get dressed? He could see that I wasn’t carrying any valuables hidden under my clothes. Even if I’d been hiding things in my underwear, it would have been visible through the material.
“Ausziehen, hab ich gesagt!” he snarled.
What was this pig after? Did he suspect something, or did he just want to see a young girl naked? Or did he want more? I took off my undershirt, shivering in underwear and socks.
“Alles,” he barked, and raised the whip again. Everything! Before he could hit me, I took off my underwear as fast as I could. He stared at me naked. He leered at me.
The pig wanted more.
Like those SS men in the camps with Ruth. Like the brutal man everyone had simply called “the doll” who had forced Ruth to sleep with him and worse.
Suddenly, here was something I was even more afraid of than the torture chamber.
The fat German was looking at me as if I were a piece of meat. At his disposal. Even though I tried to hide as much as possible, I couldn’t stop him staring at my naked bottom. I had never felt so helpless or humiliated in all my life, or so afraid of the humiliation to come.
He gave me a wet kiss on the cheek.
Now I wasn’t just trembling from cold and fear. I was physically shaking, trying to fight back the tears of desperation I felt welling up.
“Du hast ja noch die Socken an,” he said. And as I couldn’t quite understand his German, he pointed at my feet.
I looked around in a hurry. Was there anything I could use to defend myself against this fat pig? The ashtray on the table? Maybe I could grab that and hit him with it. But even if I managed to knock him down, his three colleagues would come in and shoot me. If I was lucky, that is.
Why didn’t Amos come and help me?
“I am cold,” I tried to explain why I was keeping my socks on in Polish. And so that he would understand, I shivered a bit more.
The SS man simply laughed. I was just a pathetic, naked Jew with socks on.
“Dich werde ich schon heiß machen,” he said.
I had no idea what he’d said, but his laughter was so obscene that I wanted to throw up.
“Die Socken aus!”
I hesitated.
“Zieh die Socken aus!”
For a moment I thought about whether I should just let him beat me up. He had no idea about the letter, and once I was lying bleeding on the filthy floor of the hut,
he wasn’t likely to take off a dirty Jew’s socks before he abused her.
Maybe, if I was lucky, he might lose the urge when I was just one more piece of bloody meat.
“Ganz nackt!” Completely naked!
A real hero would have cared more about the resistance than her own fate. Even now.
But I wasn’t a hero. Just a shaking, frightened thing, wearing nothing but a pair of socks. I started to cry and beg for mercy. “Please,” I cried, “please … don’t…”
I couldn’t say any more. The SS man slapped me in the face. So hard that I almost fell over and the pain swamped my head. I started to cry. And didn’t dare beg for mercy again because I was so frightened of the next blow.
The SS man undid his belt.
My hot tears dripped onto my shivering body.
He undid his zipper.
I cried and cried. So helpless. So wretched.
The man started to take off his trousers … then the door opened.
“Was zum Teufel ist hier los, Scharper?” said a deep voice behind me.
Although I couldn’t understand much German, I could tell that the person speaking was not pleased by what he saw.
I froze and didn’t dare turn round or breathe. I didn’t even dare hope. I could hear the SS man pull up his trousers and the belt clinking. Perhaps there was hope after all. I stopped crying.
“Raus!” the deep voice ordered.
The SS pig hastened past me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him do up his belt as he went out of the guards’ hut. And I heard the burst of laughter from his colleagues when he stepped outside.
The door slammed shut; I stood up, but didn’t yet dare look at the man who had saved me. Because I had no idea if he really had saved me or if he just wanted me himself.
“You can turn round,” the man said in broken Polish. He seemed to be one of the few occupiers who had made the effort to learn a bit of our language.
I didn’t want to turn round, but was so afraid of being beaten again that I did what he wanted.