Karolina's Twins

by Ronald H. Balson

  “I rose from the mat and reached behind the furnace. There, where I had hidden it in the dark corner in 1943, was Milosz’s shoe. I kissed it and put it in my duffel. I still had my piece of Milosz. When I reached into the bag, I saw that Alicja had not only given me food and extra clothes, she had generously given me money. Taking stock of where I was and what had happened, I wondered why I was chosen to be the lucky one. The only survivor. I certainly did not feel worthy.

  “It was still late in January, but the day was sunny and relatively warm, and I set out to see what was left of Chrzanów. As you might expect, my steps led me directly to 1403 Kościuszko, my parents’ house.”

  Gladys poked her head in the conference room door, interrupted Lena and said, “Cat, your other is here.”

  Catherine glanced over at Lena and said, “Gladys refuses to call him my significant other or my husband. He’s just my other. Gladys and Liam are engaged in eternal banter. Send him back, Gladys.”

  Liam walked into the room, kissed his wife, shook Lena’s hand and said, “I just stopped by on my way to the airport. I wanted to tell you I have a line on Siegfried Schultz. The Nazi army records list his address in Scharmassing, Germany.”

  “That was the town,” Lena said. “I can’t remember the street, but the paper we pinned on the babies gave Siegfried’s mother’s address in Scharmassing.”

  “Dorfstrasse is the name of the street. It’s about sixty miles north of the Munich airport.”

  “Are you going there?”

  Liam nodded. “I’m going there after I go to Jerusalem. I don’t expect to meet up with Siegfried, but if those babies made their way into Germany, I might be able to find out something.”

  Lena shook her head. “No wonder Ben raved about you two.”

  “One more thing,” Liam said. “The babies were tossed into the wheat fields on the way from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen, correct?”

  Lena nodded.

  “And as I remember the story, the train was moving slowly, right?”

  Lena nodded again. “Very slowly. We had just pulled out of a side track and were starting up again.”

  “Can you estimate how far you’d gone on your journey from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen?”

  Lena shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Think hard, Lena. Had you gone halfway?”

  “Yes, more than halfway. We had gone a day and a night, we had that confrontation with the woman, Karolina sat and stared into space for quite a while and then we dressed the babies. Maybe two-thirds of the way.”

  “Okay. Good work. I’ll see you guys in a few days.” Liam left and closed the door.

  “Do you think he’ll find them?” Lena said excitedly.

  “He’s really good at what he does. Nobody better.”

  FORTY-TWO

  I DECIDED TO GO home and started walking through the square toward Kościuszko Street. When I was a child, Jews owned most of the stores in the square. We were shopkeepers. When the Nazis invaded, they took the stores away from us and gave most of them to Gentiles. Now, as I walked through the market square, many of those stores were shuttered.

  “I continued down the residential streets and noticed that many of the houses were vacant as well. It felt like Chrzanów had been ravaged. I guess it had. Sixteen thousand Jews had been killed or transported out of Chrzanów. More than half the population was gone. The Nazis who had confiscated our homes, like Colonel Müller, were also gone.

  “I stood in front of my house wondering if I wanted to go inside. The way the Müllers had changed my house had upset me so much when I was bringing the reports to the colonel. I didn’t want to walk in and see Else’s ghost sitting on the couch, her nose in the air, my mother’s bracelet on her arm. I wanted to remember my home the way it was when I lived there.

  “Nevertheless, I walked up to the door. It occurred to me that the last time I stood here I was begging the colonel to save the babies. So long ago. Something urged me to just open the door and go inside. If the house were vacant, could I move in? Could I live here again?

  “I tried the door, but it was locked. I knocked. No one answered. I walked around to the back door and it was locked as well. I looked for a window to open, but it was winter and they were shut. I peered in through the living room windows and was about to leave when the front door opened and a man said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  “‘I should ask what you are doing here. This is my house.’

  “‘To hell with you. I bought it, I paid good money for it, now get out of here.’

  “‘Who did you pay money to? No one had the right to sell my house to you. This house belongs to my father, Captain Scheinman.’

  “The man stormed belligerently into the yard. ‘Yeah, well, it’s mine now. Jews forfeited their property. That was the German law. Since we were part of Germany, it was all legal. I bought it, so it’s mine. Now leave or I’ll get my gun.’

  “I stood my ground. ‘You don’t have a gun, the Nazis took all the guns. Jewish forfeiture was an illegal act. And I don’t believe you paid anybody. You’re a squatter.’

  “‘Look, lady, whoever you are, my family is now living in this house. My wife and my three kids. And we’re not moving. I’m not giving it to you. Since you’re obviously Jewish, why do you want to be here? There are no Jews in Chrzanów anymore.’

  “‘Well, there’s at least one now.’

  “He just shook his head. ‘Just go away. I’m not moving, and no Polish authority will force me to move.’ He went back into the house and locked the door. He was probably right. What was I going to do?

  “Closer to the square there were several empty houses. I was cold and I entered one to sit down and eat my lunch. The house was furnished but abandoned. I surmised that some SS officer or ranking German soldier had been living in the house when the Russians approached and left in a hurry. I had just criticized a man for being a squatter in my house, but that’s what I was about to do, except if the real owner showed up, I would have gladly returned the house to him. Unfortunately, very few Chrzanów Jews lived to come back. That was the sad truth.

  “I unwrapped some of the sausage Alicja had packed for me and drank some of my milk. Then I headed back to the square to see if any of my friends had returned. In front of the bakery, I saw Frank Wolczinski, a Catholic classmate who I knew from my short tenure in the public high school. He told me that a few Jewish residents were starting to straggle back and that Eva Fishman had returned. She was two years older, and a friend from the Kraków Gymnasium. Frank offered to buy me a beer and we went into the bar.

  “He asked me to tell him where I had been for the last four years and I just shook my head. ‘I don’t think I could and you don’t want to know.’

  “He nodded. ‘I heard some things. I hoped that they weren’t true. Listen, some of the younger crowd gathers at the Kryjówka Bar each night after ten. Will you join me tonight? I’ll buy?’ It was an offer I gladly accepted.

  “I asked him if he’d heard anything about David or any more of the Jewish students. He shook his head. Only Eva. He gave me her address and told me he’d see me later at the Kryjówka.

  “I tracked Eva down later that afternoon. I had always known her as a stocky girl, but she’d lost a lot of weight and her dress hung on her like she was a wire hanger. We briefly shared our experiences. She had been at a Gross-Rosen sub-camp as well, an underground camp in northern Poland that made munitions. She saw a few Chrzanów people there, but then she said that most everyone had been tortured and killed, and she broke into tears. She didn’t know anything about David. I stayed a little while longer and went back to my new home.

  “February came, and while it was quiet in Chrzanów, the war wasn’t over by any means. We’d see and hear planes flying over Chrzanów every day. The Nazis were gone from our area, but they were hunkering down in Germany, hoping for the development of Hitler’s super-weapon. Blasts from Russian bombs continued west of us. Russian troops would come th
rough Chrzanów on their way into Germany. Sometimes they were cordial, but we encountered plenty of boisterous, rude and even brutal Russian soldiers.

  “The Russians didn’t give a damn if we were Jewish or Christian, they would just occupy the town for a few days, bully their way around and continue on their military advance into Germany. On the one hand, you could get angry at the belligerent way they made their presence known, but on the other hand, they were our liberators. Still, reports of sexual abuse circulated among the women and we knew not to go out alone, only in groups.

  “I tried to look for a job, but there wasn’t anything available in Chrzanów. I was frugal with my food and my money, so for the time being, I was okay. Through March and into April, stragglers would return from the camps, the lucky ones, with stories that no one wanted to tell and no one wanted to hear. Bit by bit, the Jewish population increased, but only minimally.

  “Sometime in late April, I was invited to a wedding. Sarah Sternberg was getting married to a man she met in the Płaszów camp outside of Kraków. His ears had been boxed, and for all intents and purposes, he was deaf. The ceremony and reception were held at one of the Chrzanów synagogues. During the occupation, the Nazis had used the synagogue as an arms depot. Although battered and defaced, the synagogue was being restored and the hundred or so Jews that had returned to Chrzanów were trying to reconstruct a Jewish community.

  “A rabbi came in from Kraków and the families had built a chuppah, which they had decorated with early spring flowers. Our little community gathered for what was to be the first Jewish ceremony since the Nazi occupation. It felt good to openly celebrate such a positive, affirming event. I went with a group of girls and was standing with a glass of wine when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, spunky one.’

  “I spun around and there he was. David Woodward. I couldn’t believe it and I threw my arms around him and cried like a baby.”

  “Did you say Woodward?”

  “Of course. Didn’t you know? I married David.”

  Catherine was shocked and dropped her pen. “No, you never said your husband’s name was David. Believe me, I’d have picked up on that. The business—it was called D. Morris Woodward Investments.”

  “Right. David Morris Woodward. David called the business D. Morris Woodward because he liked the way it sounded, and Morris was also his father’s name.”

  Catherine shook her head. “I never would have thought. You are so full of surprises.”

  Lena smiled mischievously. “Oh, you have no idea. David and I reconnected at Sarah Sternberg’s wedding. He had lost a lot of weight, like the rest of us, and there were wrinkles on his face that hadn’t been there before. His left arm was a little misshapen from a beating he received. As with many of us, he had scars that were visible and scars that were not.

  “The years had taken away some of his boyish exuberance, but not his spirit. Or his smile. His eyes were as blue and as kind as ever. He stood there in a dark blue sport coat with an open collar shirt and gray slacks, neatly pressed. And I was just as entranced as I had ever been. Maybe more so.

  “‘You made it,’ he said. ‘I always knew you would.’

  “‘Oh, my God, I’ve asked everyone about you. Everywhere I went. Colonel Müller said you were transferred to Gross-Rosen, and when I was sent there, I thought I’d join up with you, but I was immediately shipped out to Parschnitz. I worked in the textile factory and I figured you might be there too, but I never saw you and no one had heard of you. Were you in Czechoslovakia?’

  “David shook his head. ‘I was in the Neusalz sub-camp in western Poland, running a textile mill. I had hoped they would send you there, but Neusalz was a terrible place.’

  “‘Let’s not talk about the camps. Only the future.’

  “He looked at me and I could see water in his eyes and he said, ‘All these months, all these years, I dreamed we’d meet again and we would talk about our future.’ With that, David put his arm around me, raised his glass and his voice and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I invite you to another wedding. In one month, in this synagogue, God willing, Lena Scheinman and I will be married.’

  “I was floored. People were clapping and cheering. I looked at David and said, ‘You didn’t ask me to marry you and I didn’t say yes.’

  “‘Will you marry me, Lena Scheinman?’

  “‘Oh, yes!’

  “The wedding was planned for Sunday, May 13, 1945. In the interim, on May seventh, Germany surrendered and the war was officially over.”

  “That’s such a coincidence,” Catherine said. “That’s my due date. May thirteenth.”

  “It’s getting close now, isn’t it?”

  Catherine smiled and nodded. “He’s an active little guy. So, you married David on May thirteenth?”

  “There were celebrations in Chrzanów all through the month of May, including the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. David Woodward. All the survivors, those who had made it back to Chrzanów, attended. Alicja came from Kobiór. It was a lovely May night and our wedding was outside under the stars. For us on that night, the Holocaust had never existed.

  “We settled into the little house that I had occupied and tried, with the others, to rejuvenate our Jewish community. But it was not to be. The sad fact was that the Chrzanów Jews had been slaughtered. Eliminated. Those few that had survived and returned found the town unrecognizable. What was left of a once-vibrant Chrzanów was now a handful of townsfolk, battered and bruised by the war. Chrzanów’s economy had been decimated. The Russians were now in command and taking over the town. Administrators had been appointed. Poland would be Communist.”

  Catherine closed her notebook. “Enough for today, Lena. Can we pick up next week?”

  “Catherine, I’d like you to come to my apartment next Tuesday. There’s something I’d like you to see.”

  FORTY-THREE

  CATHERINE SAT IN HER bedroom with her feet raised, rubbing vitamin E lotion on her abdomen with her right hand, holding her phone in her left. Liam was in Israel.

  “Cat, I met with Ruth Abrams today. She’s a curator in the archives here at Yad Vashem. Lena is well documented here. As you know, she gave a video history. It’s about an hour long and she gives quite a detailed narrative about prewar Chrzanów and her time in the camps. But she doesn’t mention Karolina or the babies. Totally omitted. Doesn’t that trouble you?”

  “A little, but I can understand it. Why would she want to relive the story of the twins, and permanently record how she threw them out of the window? She’s never told this story before. She told me that after the war she closed and locked that door. Did she talk about Milosz and her time in the attic?”

  “Oh, yes. And her time at the Tarnowski farm. Obviously the hours she spent with you provide much greater detail than the one-hour videotape she made. But the chronology is the same. She summarizes her time in the Shop, her time in the Parschnitz concentration camp and her captivity in Auschwitz. She talks about her escape from the death march and her return to Chrzanów. She even mentioned that while she worked in the Shop, she lived in a furnace room in the ghetto. But she totally omits Karolina and the twins.”

  “I don’t find that inconsistent. It’s just too painful.”

  “I also researched Karolina Neuman. She’s listed here as a Shoah victim, killed at the Parschnitz sub-camp. Born in 1922, died in 1943. No survivors.”

  “No mention of her twins?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, think about it, Liam. Who would know about the twins?”

  “Are you kidding? Lena would know. She may have been the very person who gave the information about Karolina to the museum. But she didn’t say anything about the twins.”

  “And you find that disturbing?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Any luck finding Muriel or Chaya?”

  “Chaya is deceased. She died in 1945. Probably on the death march. But I had better luck with Muriel. She’s still alive. I was given an add
ress in New York and I believe she still lives there. I’ve tried to contact her, but so far I’ve had no luck.”

  “So now what?”

  “I’m going first to Scharmassing, Germany. I’m going to try to track down the Schultz family. That would seem to be the logical starting point to finding the twins. If they survived being cast into a field from a moving train. If somebody found them and rescued them, then they would have seen the address. I’m going there first.”

  “I agree. That makes sense.”

  “How’s my little tyke doing? Growing fast?”

  “Kicking the stuffings out of me and keeping me up at night.”

  “Then it’s probably a boy, and with legs like that, the Chicago Bears will want to take a look at him.”

  “It could be a girl, you know.”

  “Well, then, she’ll be kicking ass in some courtroom like her mother.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “Nope.”

  “So when do you leave for Germany?”

  “Tomorrow. Tonight I’m having dinner with Kayla Cummings.”

  “Kayla? Seriously? Do I have to worry about you two again?”

  “Again? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I worried about the two of you before. Tell me you’re not having dinner in Hebron. You know she’s a reckless intelligence agent. She’s pulled you into the battlefields before.”

  “Do I sense a return of Cat jealousy?”

  “No. Maybe I was last year when you were spending so much time with a gorgeous spy on the beaches of Hawaii and chasing after Sophie Sommers.”

  “On the beaches of Hawaii? I think it was me and a suspicious jealous woman named Catherine on the beaches of Hawaii, whose unreasonable suspicions were proven to be false. And besides, we were chasing after Arif al-Zahani, a terrorist in Israel.”