The Good Doctor of Warsaw

by Elisabeth Gifford

Szymonek has a book.

  They stream out of the door and line up under the morning sun, four across, the girls in their navy pinafores over summer dresses, hair in ribbons, the boys in shorts and summer shirts.

  Guards in black uniforms are opening the back gate onto Sliska Street.

  At the front of the column Korczak picks up five-year-old Romcia for her mother Rosa the cook, Szymonek on the other side, holding on to his hand. Korczak still wears no armband.

  The guard gives the order to go out through the gate. Korczak glances back at Stefa and the other half of the children. He sees the thin young teenagers, helping the younger ones, Abrasha next to Aronek and Zygmus. Halinka next to Sara who holds up her doll to the sun.

  The children walk out through the gate in a long column, four abreast. Gienia, Ewa, Jakub and Mietek; Leon, Abus, Meishe and Hanka; Sami, Hella, Mendelek and Jerzyk; Chaimek, Adek, Leon and little Hanna. Two hundred and thirty-nine children file out of the courtyard. With them are over a dozen teachers, many of whom have grown up in the orphanage.

  In the buildings around, everyone has been forced out to stand on the pavement behind lines of armed guards while the action takes place, no one yet sure which buildings are to be cleared. When they see the children walking past, a cry goes up.

  The children walk along Sliska Street and head through the warm streets towards the bridge over Chlodna Street.

  ‘Are we going to play in the garden by the church?’ Sara asks Halinka eagerly.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Halinka pictures the tiny garden through the arched porticoes next to the church on Grzybowski Square where they went to play once or twice before it became too unsafe to go out. She would like to lie down on the grass in the shade there now and watch the red roses on the wall as they tremble in the warm breeze.

  Sara says she is hot. Halinka unscrews her flask lid and Sara takes a sip.

  At Chlodna Street the children clatter up the steps of the wooden bridge into the blue sky, a lighter sound than the usual trudge of adult feet over the bridge. People in the Aryan cut-through walled in on each side look up at this stream of children passing over their heads into the blue sky. Behind them, group after group of children taken from other schools and orphanages follow in rows of four.

  In the large ghetto, the Germans have given orders for people in certain streets to stay indoors. There are rumours of something approaching that’s terrible even by the ghetto’s standards but no one knows what.

  When they see Korczak and the children coming, no one can believe it. The ghetto has seen nothing like this. People crowd at windows or stand stock-still on the streets, calling out to each other in horror, ‘They’ve got the children. They’re taking Korczak and the children.’

  And behind, hundreds and then thousands more children follow.

  Korczak walks on, in a mute protest of light against darkness.

  *

  Swallows shriek like fingers on glass, sewing up the sky with black darts. It’s very hot now. The children walk slowly, straggling out into a long single file along Zamenhofa Street.

  It’s a procession of thousands of children walking the two miles to the Umschlagplatz. There are no voices or cries, only the soft footfall of still-growing feet, in sandals, in plimsolls, in wooden clogs, bare feet, as the children walk on exhausted by the heat. On and on they walk as the ghetto’s heart breaks.

  The march of the children pulls a dark cloud across the sky behind it. Finally, the ghetto understands what the Germans intend. If they can take the children, they will take everybody.

  In Lutek’s small apartment at the far end of Zamenhofa Street, Sophia is sitting with Marianek on her lap while he drinks a mug of water. The four-year-old is restless and clingy. He doesn’t like this new little room and he wants to see Grandpa and Grandma. The window’s open but the room still feels stuffy in the rising heat. In his short life, he has no memory of cool parks or paddling in the water on the white beaches of the river.

  It’s been quiet this morning, people told to stay indoors. A brooding feeling that something is going to happen. Only the sound of the swallows piping their tiny cries across the blue sky. Then she listens. There’s a new noise, a distant sound of feet like a soft rain, light and immense. She looks towards the window, puzzled by this growing sound. If it were a selection, then there’d be screams and pistol shots and rumbling trucks.

  She goes towards the window. Ukrainian guards are stationed along the street. There’s a procession of children walking up Zamenhofa Street towards the Umschlagplatz. She sees Korczak at the front. The children. They are taking the children to the trains.

  She can’t breathe. Her heart races so fast that she thinks she might be dying. They are taking the children.

  In an instant her eyes have registered that Misha’s not there. He always towers above everybody else. But she can see Stefa. And she can see all the children. There are tears pouring down her face, she’s covered in sweat. She grasps the windowsill and shouts, but they can’t hear her above the clattering of so many feet passing over the cobbles, the sound magnified against the walls as they pass by under the hot sun.

  She leans out to try and keep them in sight but moments later they have passed on and she can no longer see them. Through a blur of tears she watches the nightmare of more children following behind in a long procession. Hundreds. Thousands. She sinks to the floor, clinging on to Sabina’s boy. The sight of the children leaving is burned into her soul.

  All through the ghetto people stand stock-still and watch this crime unfolding. Everyone in the ghetto knows Korczak and all that he represents: justice, kindness, fairness and love. He is their candle held up against the darkness, the gleam of sunshine that makes the ghetto smile. Everyone knows how well he and Stefa care for their great family.

  It’s a mute march of protest, the Ukrainian soldiers along the pavement more like a guard of honour, for once not shouting or whipping their prisoners.

  It’s almost midday and very hot. Korczak stumbles from time to time, his shoulders bowed. The children straggle out, weary and thirsty.

  *

  At the top of Dzika Street, Halinka sees a barbed-wire gate. She grips Sara’s hand tightly as they walk past German guards into a large dirt yard. The place has a very bad smell in the heat. There are red-brick walls with barbed wire on three sides, the tall square school building on the other.

  It’s now noon and the sun is at its height but the bare earth yard has no trees. The Ukrainian guards are standing immobile in the heat, holding their guns as if they are too heavy.

  The guard sends the doctor and the children to wait by one of the walls near a gate. There’s a strip of shade here where Stefa sends the youngest children to sit. She tells them to sip only a little from their flasks, to make their water last.

  Halinka doesn’t like this place, but Pan Doctor and Pani Stefa are here, walking around slowly to reassure the children. She watches as more children file through the gates and sit on the hard dirt. She’s never seen so many in one place.

  Nearby, Aronek and Abrasha are crouching on the ground. Aronek has a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes. Abrasha is tuning the strings on his violin. He tries a few bars of a tune but it’s too hot to play.

  Korczak squints up into the cloudless sky. ‘Stefa, the boys have nothing but shirts. I didn’t tell them to bring jackets. A clear sky like this, it will get cold tonight.’

  ‘I gave the girls blankets to carry. Don’t worry. I want you to sit down and drink some water.’

  ‘I should have thought. If they take us east to Russia, we’ll need warm clothes.’

  She hands him the flask of water again and he sips.

  ‘Pan Doctor, are we going to see the countryside today?’ asks Szymonek.

  ‘We may see trees, and fields. We may perhaps.’

  A man in a white doctor’s coat hurries over. Korczak recognizes him from the Jewish Council, Nachum Remba.

  Korczak struggles to his feet. ‘Remba
, what are you doing here, and why are you dressed as a doctor?’

  Remba’s usually pleasant face is grave. ‘I’ve set up a medical post just outside the gate as medical official and I’ve been telling the SS that certain people are too sick to travel. Once they’re inside the tent, we make sure they look sick, add a few bandages and then send them back into the ghetto during the night. But Dr Korczak,’ he says in a low voice, looking around for the guards. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Come with me now. You must go back to the Jewish Council offices immediately and get an exemption. I’ll make sure you get out of here.’

  Korczak looks around at his exhausted charges.

  ‘But the children, can you get the children out?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Korczak, they’ll never let you take them out of here.’

  ‘I can’t leave without my children.’

  ‘But at least you could get an exemption for yourself. You must save yourself.’

  Korczak studies Remba’s face. Korczak has known that it would be a terrible journey for the children, that they would be sent somewhere with harsh conditions, a work camp for adults perhaps, but now he sees it is far worse than that. Remba knows there is no hope. As the realization sinks in, Korczak stands without words, the chasm in front of them reflected in Remba’s hollow eyes. Too late now to do anything, the world flying apart.

  Visibly aged, Korczak shakes his head slowly and firmly.

  ‘Thank you, my friend, but you know I will stay with the children. No one knows what they’re sending the children to. You do not leave a child alone to face the dark.’

  The cattle yard is full. Guards are opening the gates through into a second yard. One of them approaches and tells Korczak and the children to stand and line up again. Remba is pushed back and watches aghast as the children begin to walk towards the gate through to the train sidings, the tears pouring down his cheeks.

  On the far side of the cattle yard there’s a loud noise of screaming and shouting from a crowd of desperate parents and relatives trying to get their children back. They press against the fence, weeping and yelling. The guards beat them back and fire shots into the air as the relatives push against the gates.

  Erwin has managed to push and shove to the front of the crowd. As soon as he returned from his night’s smuggling he heard the news and ran as fast as he could, his lungs bursting, to join the children at the Umschlagplatz. Through a mass of waving arms he can see Korczak across the yard, he can see Halinka and Abrasha and all the others.

  ‘Let me through,’ he shouts. ‘I have to be with them. That man is my father, my father.’

  But the guard won’t let him through. No one is going in or out of the gate.

  Then he sees Korczak and the children stand. They begin to move through into the next yard. Erwin screams out again, ‘I have to go with them. He’s my father.’ Tears are streaming down his face but he can do nothing but watch them go through and disappear.

  Waiting by the trains in the rail yard, the faces of the Jewish police turn to see Korczak and the children walking towards them.

  Aronek and the boys look up with curiosity at the black engine encrusted with soot, massive wheels higher than a child’s head. Behind it stretches a line of old wooden cattle trucks painted oxblood red. The doors gape open and narrow wooden ramps lead up from the dirt sidings.

  Stefa goes in the first car, standing by the open door as children in ribbons and smocks climb the ramp, each holding a doll or a book or a toy. For once the Jewish police are not beating people with truncheons and shouting at them to hurry. They watch pale and open-mouthed, sometimes helping a child up the ramp.

  When Stefa’s car is filled, she looks out at Korczak with a long, sad glance. Then the German guard slams the wooden door across and solders the bolt shut.

  Korczak walks up into the next truck with the children. An acrid smell of lime and chlorine assaults the back of his throat. No soil bucket. There is one small window, high up, criss-crossed with barbed wire.

  When the rest of the children are in, the wooden door is slammed shut.

  The train fills with truck after truck of children from the ghetto’s homes and schools. The guard writes the number inside each truck on the door. When this train and the next and the next are filled, each pulls away.

  A total of some four thousand children leave the ghetto that day.

  *

  In the acrid and hot train, it’s hard to breathe. Korczak begins to tell a story to calm the children, knowing that if he is calm, they will be calm. The children, some of them crying, quieten and listen as the train clacks over the Vistula River. Passing behind the barracks where Misha and the boys are working.

  There’s no room to sit down, although the police have not crammed the children’s trucks as full as they usually do, perhaps. Korczak’s aware that they must have reached Malkinia station now, deep in the woods. He used to pass through here as a student with children on their way to summer camp. The train stops, no air coming in from the tiny window, the children drooping and half asleep in the heat. The chlorine air toxic. A military train thunders past, shaking the carriage. Shortly afterwards, the cattle trucks pull taut and they carry on again. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Korczak is aware that they are taking a track to the right, a spur that he doesn’t remember existing.

  The train clacks on and passes a sign, a village called Treblinka, a few tar-roofed huts with impoverished potato farmers who sent their womenfolk away to stay with relatives as soon as the Ukrainian soldiers arrived.

  The villagers can’t see what is inside the heavily screened camp within the forest, but they can smell a strange stench of rot and burning.

  The train passes along a track where the trees are so close they brush the narrow window slat. After a while, the pine fronds disappear, the train stops and the doors open to a cacophony of shouting in German and Polish.

  There are no work huts at Treblinka. It’s a tiny place among the pine trees, sweet with a smell that makes the hairs rise on the scalp.

  Thousands come here each day. None of them leave. Overheated and thirsty, the passengers who are still alive after the journey disembark. A narrow passage between barbed-wire fences leads to shower chambers where carbon monoxide is pumped out through the nozzles. Within two hours, everyone who disembarks at Treblinka is dead.

  But in the Warsaw ghetto, no one knows this. No one has yet escaped to return and tell the people what Treblinka means.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - EIGHT

  WARSAW, 5 AUGUST 1942

  Only in the sight of God is the apple blossom worth as much as the apple.

  Janusz Korczak

  Later that afternoon Misha and the boys walk back to the ghetto with their shabby work unit. In the compartment under the tools in his bag, Misha has a small cinnamon bun for Sophia’s birthday. He will take it to her at dusk.

  But waiting at the gate while the guard inspects the men, Misha can see that the streets are deserted. The Jewish police are talking in low voices, faces aghast. Something’s happened.

  When he comes alongside one of them inside the gate, he asks what’s the matter.

  ‘My God. You don’t know. They’ve taken Korczak and the children.’

  ‘What do you mean? Taken them?’

  ‘They’ve taken them to the trains. Gone.’

  ‘You saw this?’

  ‘I didn’t see them, but everyone knows.’

  The ghetto is always filled with rumours. Misha shakes his head. He knows the man is wrong. The boys have heard too now. They look to him for reassurance.

  There’s only one way to find out if the children are still there.

  Misha pounds through the empty streets, the boys behind, the air clawing at his lungs. Hurrying over the wooden bridge, Grzybowski, Sienna Street. Tatiana’s café is shuttered. The double door at Sienna Street is open. He runs up the stairs and into the main hall.

  Silence. Everything is covered with feathers like unseasonal snow. Looters have
been through and split the pillows. The chest with the children’s keepsake drawers has been ransacked, buttons and pebbles scattered across the floorboards. Up on the stage the tables are still set for breakfast, half-full cups of milk, bread abandoned on plates.

  No children. No Pani Stefa coming to see what they have managed to get.

  The boys run up to the ballroom. Misha can hear them calling as he goes through into the side office that also serves as the sickbay. He’s still hoping he’ll find some clue to the children and Korczak being somewhere nearby, a temporary move or inspection.

  Then he sees Pan Doctor’s glasses on the floor, one lens cracked across like a star. He never goes anywhere without wearing his glasses, hates not to have them to see what’s going on around him, scribbling notes in his notebook with a thoughtful look. Misha knows at that moment that they won’t be coming back. He begins to weep silently and a look of pain enters his eyes that will always linger, there at the back of every thought.

  He sees there’s a sheet of thin paper in the typewriter, dated that morning.

  I am watering the flowers. My bald head in the window. What a splendid target.

  The soldier by the wall has a rifle. Why is he standing and looking on calmly? He has no order to shoot. Perhaps he was a teacher in civilian life, or a solicitor, or a street sweeper in Leipzig. A waiter in Cologne? What would he do if I nodded to him? If I waved my hand in a friendly gesture? Perhaps he doesn’t even know that things are – as they are. He may only have arrived yesterday, from far away . . .

  It is not in me to hate.

  Tears coursing down his face, Misha gently pulls out the sheet and gathers up the rest of the sheets of paper scattered across the floor. Pan Doctor’s diary. He puts them inside a small suitcase along with notebooks that the doctor filled with notes on the children. He places the cracked glasses on top and shuts the case.

  The three boys come in, as frightened and lost as they were at eight years old, on their first day in the home.