The Good Doctor of Warsaw

by Elisabeth Gifford

  When no one’s looking, Aronek slips a piece of bread from another child’s plate and hides it away for later.

  Someone is looking, of course. Korczak decides to say nothing about the bread. It often takes a while for children who have known hunger – and he’s known many such children – to believe that there will be bread at every meal. Best not to notice the stolen bread for now. Korczak’s eyes rest on Aronek with sadness. This is a child hungry for his mother. A child in pain.

  But the swearing. Aronek has made himself master in the special kind of Jewish curse that comes from the Yiddish slums of Warsaw, long and poetic, and filled with everything from the gutter. Korczak has learned a few choice curses in the army, but he honestly wonders if Aronek couldn’t outdo him. The children stand around aghast. Or they come screaming to tell him that Aronek is swearing again.

  The child doesn’t seem able to stop himself, swears just as he breathes.

  And all the children know there’s a penalty for swearing. They’ll expect Aronek to be treated like everyone else. This could be a tricky one.

  Korczak leads Abrasha to stand in front of Aronek.

  ‘This is your new big brother.’

  ‘What’s he want then?’ Aronek eyes Abrasha warily. He doesn’t like this thin, girlish boy. One push and a boy like that would cry.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ says Abrasha. ‘I can tell you all about what we do here, how things work.’

  ‘Don’t need no help from a big cissy like you,’ Aronek says, scanning Abrasha’s sensitive musician’s face, his long hands and almond eyes.

  ‘Everyone has a big brother or sister here,’ explains Korczak mildly. ‘It’s normal. Smart people take advice from time to time. Why don’t you listen to Abrasha? And if you still don’t want a big brother by the end of the day, then so be it.’

  Korczak leaves Abrasha beginning the tour of the home and its ways.

  ‘What do you mean there’s a court for children?’ asks Aronek. ‘You mean the teachers can send the kids to prison if they want?’

  ‘No, it’s the children who are the judges. I was a judge three times, you know. Even Pan Doctor was told off for speaking crossly to a girl. All the teachers and children here have to abide by the same rules, respect each other. That way it’s fair. Say if somebody’s mean to you—’

  ‘Then I’d thump them.’

  ‘But then they’ll hit you back. You’ll have a war. No, here you say, I’ll sue you, and the court will listen to your case.’

  Abrasha stops in front of a tall cupboard.

  ‘And each child has a drawer in this cupboard to keep your things. No one ever touches them. The little ones just keep buttons, string, but people still respect their stuff. They really respect children in here, you know.’

  Aronek shrugs. Face pinched. Nobody’s fool.

  The two boys come to a mop and bucket left out in full view like a beautiful ornament. ‘And we all help with the chores.’

  ‘Not me. Catch me mopping the floor.’

  Later, when all the children are ready for bed, Korczak settles down in the chair in the boys’ dormitory to read them a story from Little King Matt.

  Aronek turns away, pulls the sheet up over his head. He’s too old now at eight for babyish stories, after what he has lived through in the ghetto.

  He doesn’t believe in childhood any more.

  Korczak reads on, his sad eyes returning to the sharp shoulder blades moulded under the sheet that stick out like the stubs of wings.

  A few days later, as Korczak sits on the bench in the courtyard while the children play, letting the sun warm his closed eyelids for a moment, he feels a small presence at his side.

  He knows if he looks down he will see those wide ears and the beginning of a pale regrowth of blond hair on the shorn and scarred scalp.

  At least the fetid smell has gone, the decay of pre-death that he’s noticed the starving carry with them.

  ‘Pan Doctor, do you have another of those stories?’

  ‘I might. Let me think. Do you know the one about the flying ship in the forest and the boy with nothing to save him but his kind heart?’

  A hand slips into his.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1941

  Sophia raises her head, stretches out her arm. Misha’s side of the bed is empty, but the sheets still feel warm. She can hear him in the kitchen, brewing something on the stove. She breathes out with relief. He’s here then.

  He’s away at least three nights a week, caring for the children at Korczak’s home, which she absolutely wants him to do, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. She hates it when his side of the bed lies empty all night.

  Misha pushes aside the chenille curtain and hands her a cup.

  Behind the curtain, the wives from two couples who share the tiny flat have already started their first argument of the day, food that’s gone missing, who should go first at the stove.

  She can feel Misha’s pent-up nerviness as he sits on the narrow bed and drinks his coffee, a vibration in his long limbs.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me, Misha. I’m not a child you need to protect.’

  ‘The last of the money we’ve brought from Lvov will be gone by next week. And what I’m earning giving rickshaw rides, it’s just not enough, not with food so dear . . .’

  Sophia looks at his skinny arms with veins like ropes, the loss of flesh alarming.

  ‘You eat more than you earn heaving people around on that bicycle. It can’t be worth it. And I am earning a little from tutoring my nieces.’

  He leans back and squeezes her hand. ‘The main thing is that we’re together. We can get through anything if we know we have each other.’

  In the kitchen, a pot crashes to the floor. The curtain is rudely pulled back and a woman with unbrushed hair stands gesturing at the other woman.

  ‘A louse,’ she shrills. ‘There’s a louse on her. Doesn’t she understand how dangerous that is with half the ghetto dying of typhus? How can I cope if she doesn’t even have the decency to keep clean? I can’t stand it, I tell you.’

  The curtain falls back.

  At the tiny flat on Ogrodowa Street Sophia finds her mother sitting at the table, watching Marianek play with his wooden blocks on the floor. Marianek holds out his arms and Sophia picks him up.

  ‘Where’s Father?’ Her mother looks around the room absently.

  ‘Oh, you know your father, he’s taken something to sell, though goodness knows what we have left.’ She picks up the purse on the table, opens it, then closes it again with a blank expression. ‘I should go out and buy something for supper. I don’t understand how potatoes can be so dear now.’

  ‘I’ll go, Mother. It’s a while before my next pupils come for their session. I’ll see if I can get some eggs.’

  ‘That I should come to a day when I worried if we could afford an egg.’

  ‘At least, I’ll see if I can get one for Marianek.’

  She goes out into the street with the empty basket, wondering if you ever get used to feeling a little hungry all the time.

  As curfew approaches, Erwin walks along one of the blank-faced streets that run along the ghetto walls. During the day they are deserted, guards passing on patrol. But after dusk almost all of the Germans leave the ghetto and the border street fills with a scuffling and pattering of feet, children running across the cobbles to squeeze under the wall through the drain openings.

  Erwin stops at a section of the wall and Isaac appears from the shadows. They check no one is about, then begin to loosen the bricks around the drain opening. Erwin squeezes through, Isaac remaining behind, waiting in a doorway.

  The street on the other side is empty. Erwin stands up cautiously. The light is beginning to fade, the street is empty, but there’s the sound of German voices on the main street a few yards away, convivial laughter. He waits for the soldiers to pass by, then walks out into Aryan W
arsaw.

  With his snub Polish nose and fair hair, no one gives Erwin a second glance as he hurries to a small bakery, the first he’ll visit tonight. He buys a loaf of rye bread, so warm and sweet that it’s all he can do not to tear it apart there and then.

  Back at the wall he gives a low whistle. A reply from Isaac, and Erwin passes the bread through the hole. Now he must wait, hiding in the shadow of the wall, ears alert to every sound. Later, another low whistle and Isaac’s back. Fingers slide some zlotys through to Erwin.

  In the ghetto, bread sells for twice its Aryan price, so he’ll buy two more loaves, then take those back to sell. He’ll need to make several trips before the boys have enough to buy bread to eat and also to keep enough zlotys to begin again tomorrow.

  He’s on his last trip, skirting the walls along Rynkowa Street, when he comes across three Polish men throwing sacks over the wall, fast as they can. Harsh voices shouting in German, the pounding of boots. He draws back around the corner and runs, the sound of gunfire behind him.

  He hides in a doorway until all is quiet, then makes his way back to the wooden fence, his heart still thundering, listening out for the sound of soldiers’ boots.

  Misha is woken by stealthy footsteps across the wooden floor. He sits up, his skin prickling, senses alert. A short, stocky shape is moving over the other side of the dormitory, the jacket oddly bulky.

  Erwin. Misha turns up the carbide lamp a little.

  The teenager comes over to Misha’s bed. He opens the flap of his jacket. Inside, there’s a rough canvas knapsack sewn with big, childish stiches. He rummages and pulls out loaves of black rye bread, his eyes bright in the light of the lamp.

  ‘It’s the real thing, Pan Misha, not the gluey stuff full of sawdust they send into the ghetto shops. And look.’

  He hands Misha a tiny hand soap wrapped in thick paper. Misha takes a sniff of the sugary lavender scent.

  ‘You’re going to smell very good, Erwin.’

  ‘It’s for Halinka. She’s my best friend, Pan Misha. When we grow up I’m going to mend cars and we’ll get married and go to America and have three children. And they will all have milk and white bread every single day. As much as they want.’

  ‘It’s a good plan.’

  Erwin nods and puts the soap away carefully in his jacket.

  ‘But listen, Erwin, you do understand, don’t you, what could happen if you were caught?’

  ‘I can take a beating.’

  Misha lies down, thinking. His own trips over to the Aryan side, using one of the courtyard clothes dryers as a ladder to get over the wall, have provided a pitiful amount – some potatoes, a couple of loaves. A child could have done better. Little children do, since it’s easier for them to squeeze through the sluice holes. Many parents now rely on children as young as six to bring food home.

  What Misha desperately needs is to find a way to join one of the bands of men smuggling in significant amounts of food. These are the people keeping the ghetto alive. He’s heard of houses straddling the ghetto boundary where hundreds of sacks are brought in every day through attics or cellars, tales of a hole in the wall where gallons of milk are poured in through a pipe.

  You need the right contacts before you can hope to be invited into the kind of smuggling enterprise that can bring in enough food to make a real difference.

  But for every man risking his life to smuggle in food to feed the starving ghetto, there’s a man willing to profit from the ghetto’s misery, charging extortionate prices, men who mix with the Gestapo in seedy nightclubs and are happy to sell you out to them for the right price.

  How do you make contact with smugglers without ending up in Pawiak prison?

  Misha lies awake worrying, the intractable wooden hunger prodding at his stomach.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1941

  Just had the fright of my life.’

  Mr Rozental puts down the books he’s been trying to sell on Nowolipki Street. ‘There I was, standing with my books and a Polish policeman comes over, heading straight for me. Then I saw who it was. You’ll never guess. Stanislaw Zymkowski. Remember, Mother? We were at the gymnasium together, years ago. So, what do you think? He tells me he’s smuggling food into the ghetto. Says he can let us have bread at a good price. And there’s more. He’s looking for a good man to help them on this side of the wall. So I told him about Misha and now he wants him to meet the Jewish man he works with, Jakub Frydman. What do you think of that? Isn’t that good news? He wants Misha to meet him at Zglinowicz’s café.’

  ‘Misha is not getting involved with any smuggling ring. Do you realize how dangerous that is?’ Sophia tells him angrily.

  But when Misha hears about it he won’t meet her eye.

  ‘It could be the answer to our problems,’ he says quietly.

  ‘What if this meeting’s a trap to sniff out smugglers? We can’t let you risk it.’

  ‘But it’s a risk to carry on like this, food getting more expensive, money so short.’

  She lies awake listening to the hungry cries of children out on the street. She knows Misha is right. They’ve no choice if they’re to survive in here.

  Misha sits a couple of tables away from the plate-glass window of Zglinowicz’s café. It’s on the lower floor of a smart new apartment block, built in a time when the world was modern, when the world was getting better. From here there’s a clear view of the ten-foot wooden gates and the guards that check everyone as they go through, delivery trucks, a horse and carriage, people on foot. There are three kinds of guards, the Germans with rifles, the Polish blue police with their black patent caps and the Jewish police with their rickety uniform of belt, cap and truncheon over civilian clothes.

  Misha’s already checked out that he can slip away through the back exit if he needs to. He tries not to fiddle with his glass of tea.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing the cap and belt of the Jewish Order Police walks smartly past the window and turns in at the door. He surveys the room, walks over, and takes a seat at Misha’s table. So this is Jakub Frydman.

  A coffee arrives, a friendly word with the barman. Frydman’s evidently well known in here. Liked even. The barman was quick to bring his order.

  Frydman’s tall and healthy, no sign of hunger. He has an open, well-proportioned face, the sort that inspires confidence, handsome enough to make women’s heads turn, but he wears the requisite gleaming white shirt of the Order Police beneath his civilian suit – who else can afford to wear such pristine linen? – and Misha’s eyes go to the policeman’s cap Frydman places on the table next to a pair of expensive leather gloves. Some of the Jewish police now seem to believe that behaving as brutally as a Nazi makes them a Nazi, privileged and untouchable. Not to be trusted.

  Frydman sees where he’s looking.

  ‘So you don’t like talking to a policeman.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  Frydman lights a cigarette, offers one to Misha but he declines.

  ‘You’re taking a risk. I’m taking a risk. The question is, what are you prepared to do to survive in here?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to work with anyone who works with the Gestapo.’

  ‘There’s something we agree on. But are you prepared to run the risk of being caught by the Gestapo?’

  Misha keeps his gaze steady. ‘If it means I can get supplies through, for Korczak, for my family, I am.’

  ‘Naturally. For Korczak especially we’ll do what we can. A good deal on the price.’

  Misha tries to control a look of gratitude in his face. He still has questions. ‘And you’re sure your Polish connections can be trusted?’

  ‘These are good people. They need to make a living but they don’t do it just for the profit. The Poles are beginning to realize what’s happening in here, talk of piles of bodies. They hear it from across the wall, smell it on the wind, and they know the scent of death is blowing their way too. You should know, for every Pole out there who
’d blackmail a Jew or turn him in there are twice, three times as many who would – who do – risk their lives to help a Jew. These Poles I work with, I trust them like my brothers.’

  Misha studies Frydman’s even, admirable face a moment longer. He seems genuine, capable. And there’s something about Frydman’s energy, his will to take a risk and beat the odds in here, that chimes with Misha’s own restless drive to do more. His instinct is to trust Frydman. A friend perhaps – in time.

  ‘So what do you need me to do?’

  To begin with, Misha’s only job is to wait near the phone in the café opposite the gate. Frydman works with a Polish couple, Tadeusz and Jadwiga Blazejewski. When they are ready to come in through the gate they phone the café and ask for Misha – the barman gets his cut. Misha answers with a code word to let them know if the right guard is still on the gate – the one who will take a bribe – and the young couple drive in, the supplies hidden beneath the cart’s false bottom.

  ‘I don’t know where you get it, and I don’t want to know,’ says Stefa as Misha carries the impossible into the orphanage kitchen, boxes of lard. ‘But thank you. We sorely needed fat for the children, for the vitamins. And tell those friends of yours thank you. But you will be careful, won’t you, Misha?’

  Sophia worries too.

  ‘Darling, I’ll be careful. I promise,’ he says as they hold each other in the cramped bed, that way she has of pulling his arm over her shoulders like a tent, of making a world in that small space just theirs with her love and her closeness.

  And he wonders how to tell her that Frydman has already asked if he’s prepared to go out of the ghetto into Warsaw and help load up the cart at the Wola warehouse.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1941

  Today Korczak is sitting in on a session of the children’s court, perched on one of the rows of chairs where the children are gathered to listen as Halinka explains the crime she’s bringing before the children assembled behind a table to hear the case.