It was only after the war that Uncle Izio found out what had happened, when he ran into the doctor who lived near the prison, the one who’d come to see him when he’d had typhoid fever. After telling me this story, he lapses into heavy silence. He’s eighty-seven now, physically fit, mentally alert and sartorially immaculate. All his life he has tried to suppress the memories which I’m now trying to revive, and they plunge him into deep depression. At the risk of arousing his anger and opening old wounds, there’s one more question I have to ask: ‘Do you feel bad that you survived and they didn’t?’
He looks at me, his eyes tired, faded and full of pain. I have to sit forward to catch his tremulous whisper: ‘Yes, I feel guilty.’
For Slawa, too, her mother’s death remains an unhealed wound. ‘I’ve been to Warsaw hundreds of times but I can never bring myself to go near the house where they used to live. I’ll never forget how Rozia used to stand behind the door with her prayer book so the landlady wouldn’t see her, murmuring prayers in her intense way. But God didn’t hear her. She and Mama perished together.’ Tears roll down my aunt’s plump cheeks.
Pawiak Prison has now become the Museum of the Resistance. It’s closed the day I visit, but I can picture my grandmother and aunt being pushed through that forbidding wrought-iron gate topped with barbed wire. As I peer over the wall to see the yard, I think of those two women who loved me standing there, and wonder what they said to each other before those bullets killed their world. I wonder whether Lieba’s life scrolled before her as she sank to the ground, whether she thought of Daniel, or smelled the scent of pine trees as she fell.
CHAPTER 26
On 1 August 1944, unaware of her mother’s fate, Slawa restlessly awaited her release. To fill the long hours, she decided to sell some cigarettes in the city. Near Zlota Street, however, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire made her run for cover. ‘Get off the street, the Uprising’s started!’ people were shouting, and she started running and didn’t stop until she reached her sister Andzia’s place and collapsed on the bed out of breath.
The shooting continued and a few days later bombs started to fall, but Slawa was in such a state of shock that she refused to go down to the cellar with Andzia and the other tenants. Stretched out on Andzia’s bed, she continued to read her novel as though the bombardment had nothing to do with her. Planes flew low overhead and bombs were falling terrifyingly close, but to Krysia’s amazement her aunt hardly looked up.
Slawa doesn’t know to this day what it was in the droning sound of the bombers flying directly overhead that made her leap to her feet and rush upstairs to the washroom where Krysia was standing in her thin nightdress, washing herself over the wide enamel basin. Throwing an overcoat over her niece’s shoulders, she grabbed her hand and hissed, ‘Run!’
When they reached the ground floor, Slawa suddenly ran out into the yard, stopped dead, and started counting the fighter planes. Krysia counted with her, both mesmerised by the surreal nature of the scene. In broad daylight, on a bright summer afternoon as the sun beat down on the city, bombs were falling all around them. They counted twelve before they suddenly came to their senses and tore down to the cellar just as a bomb hit their building and blew up the room where only a minute earlier Slawa had been reading.
They pressed themselves against the stairs as the whole building shook. With a clarity of mind that surprised her, Krysia counted five separate explosions. Five bombs hit their apartment block, and as everything around them shook, she expected the whole building to collapse on her head. ‘I didn’t know whether I was alive or dead,’ she recalls in her slow, resonant voice. ‘Those bombs weighed a tonne and reduced the building to rubble. I don’t know why the cellar didn’t collapse on top of us. It was used for storing coal, and the floor was blanketed with coal dust which billowed up with each blast. The air became so thick with soot that people couldn’t breathe; they were coughing, choking and suffocating. The soot soaked into our skin, blinded our eyes and settled in our lungs. Everyone’s faces, arms and legs were black. Suddenly I had the strange feeling that I’d been turned upside down and was standing on my head in the coal dust. I could hear muffled voices coming from far away, but had no idea whether anyone was still alive.’
Just then one last bomb struck the house. This one ripped through the wrecked building and landed in the cellar, but by some miracle it didn’t explode. As it pierced the rubble, it created a hole through which they later crawled out.
Slawa was bewildered by the sudden silence. Her hearing was damaged by the blast, and for the rest of her life she was to remain deaf in one ear. Stunned, disoriented and covered in soot, she looked like a startled golliwog. ‘Coal dust had penetrated my skin from head to toe, and my blackened hair stood on end. Tears were streaming from my eyes, carving two white paths down my sooty cheeks. Through the tears, I saw a tall aristocratic man looking at me. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and gently wiped my face.
‘And that’s how I met my future husband Mietek and fell madly in love,’ she says, as dewy-eyed as a teenager. ‘I knew by then that my husband Jerzyk, from whom I’d been separated for the past two years, had been taken to the woods and shot together with his parents in 1942.’ From the walnut sideboard which had belonged to her sister Karola, Aunty Slawa takes down a framed photograph of a sternly handsome man with gaunt cheeks and a craggy nose. Mietek, who was Catholic, had been caught by the Uprising while visiting his family. He told her that his family were descended from the szlachta, the Polish aristocracy, but that he worked on the railways. From the moment they met, she had looked adoringly up at him and hung on every word he uttered, intrigued by his reserved, laconic manner.
When it was safe to venture out, they crept out of the cellar. Warsaw had become a war zone and their building was in the centre of the battlefield. Dead bodies were lying all over the street, while injured people lay bleeding from their wounds, some moaning for help. What had been a neat city street was now a heap of smoking rubble. Gunshots sputtered from a nearby street, guttural German voices yelled orders, boots clattered on cobblestones, and flames licked the ruins.
For nine weeks the residents of Warsaw lived below the ground in a state of siege, while above ground members of the underground army fought for their city street by street. Day by day food became scarcer, and before long there wasn’t a cat or a dog left alive. As the water pipes had been bombed, obtaining drinking water was the biggest problem. A few blocks away from their building stood an underground well, but to reach it they had to pass under what became known as the Gate of Death because German soldiers were shooting at anyone who passed through. Once they reached the well, they often had to queue all night for their turn to dip the bucket into the water, but whenever they heard the peculiar high-pitched mooing sound of rockets, they rushed back to their shelter empty-handed.
It didn’t take long for Slawa’s resourceful mind to become active again. Remembering that she’d left a cache of cigarettes upstairs, she and Mietek stepped gingerly up the rickety stairs and over the rubble to retrieve them, while the whole building wobbled around them as though hanging together by a thread. Through a hole in the wall they crawled into what was left of Slawa’s room and picked up cigarettes which lay scattered amongst crumbled plaster, splintered shards of wood and broken bricks.
Once they’d stuffed them into their pockets, they looked around for something to eat. In one room Slawa found a big bag of bread crusts which were hard and blackened, but she rejoiced as though she’d unearthed buried treasure. ‘We were so hungry that we didn’t even brush off the soot. Our fingers shook as we lit a fire, made coffee and dipped those hard crusts into the bitter liquid and devoured them. There was such a terrible famine during the uprising that we used to go through rubbish bins, picking out rotting carrots and mouldy onions, whatever we could find. When some of the people in our street came across a horse which had died of gunshot wounds, they swooped on it and within minutes hacked it into chunks. I got a piece too and cook
ed it into a marvellous broth. It tasted just like goose!’
As she had hoped, the cigarettes saved them from starvation. When the resistance fighters heard about her supply, a brisk trade began. They used to raid abandoned shops and bartered slices of bread, coffee, sugar or buckwheat kasha for a few cigarettes.
As the struggle for Warsaw intensified, the Polish losses mounted. At first the Germans were bewildered by urban guerrilla tactics for which they hadn’t been trained, but in the end, might and modern weapons defeated daring and patriotism. Some of the Jews who had survived the ghetto uprising now fought side by side with the resistance to liberate their devastated city.
But instead of putting Warsaw in Polish hands, the uprising became yet another of Poland’s heroic defeats. The underground had counted on assistance from their western allies, but they weren’t aware of the agreement in Teheran the previous year which had precluded their help. Britain and America had promised the eastern part of Poland to their ally Stalin. Although the Red Army was already close to Warsaw, on the east bank of the Vistula, Stalin was waiting for the defeat of the patriotic, right-wing members of the underground army, many of whom loathed communism even more than fascism. In the bitterest moment of his life, on 3 October 1944, General Tadeusz ‘Bor’ Komorowski capitulated to the Germans. About 150 000 Polish civilians had died during the uprising.
When Hitler ordered his soldiers to blow up every building in Warsaw so that the advancing Russian army would have no winter quarters, the mass evacuation of civilians began. The roads leading out of Warsaw were choked with refugees fleeing the doomed city on foot, lugging whatever they could carry. Izio, who had survived the bombardment in his cellar, joined his sister Slawa and Mietek, who were heading for Mietek’s family home at Piaseczna. When Slawa saw that Izio was wearing his jaunty hunting hat, she advised him to change it for Mietek’s railwayman’s cap so that he’d draw less attention to himself.
Along the way they were so famished and exhausted that they knocked on a village hut, asking an old couple for food and shelter. ‘When we said we’d come from the Uprising, they let us in, but all they had to eat were onions which the old woman sliced into a large white bowl. I was so ravenous that I couldn’t stop eating them and burned the skin inside my mouth so badly that I could hardly eat for weeks,’ Aunty Slawa recalls.
At the family farm, Mietek didn’t tell his relatives that Slawa and Izio were Jewish. ‘They wouldn’t have agreed to have us there if they’d known,’ my aunt says. For the next three months Slawa raked and planted in the garden, Mietek chopped wood and Izio looked after the piglets which ran after him like puppies. In January 1945, when the Germans had retreated and the Russian army had taken over, they decided to return to Krakow. ‘While crossing the Debnicki Bridge, I saw a German soldier who had been crushed beneath a cement post. One of his feet stuck out and I noticed that the boot was missing. People were so destitute that someone must have pulled it off, hoping to trade one boot.’
Slawa and Mietek married as soon as they’d settled in Krakow. Then she started searching for the man who’d denounced her mother and sister to the Gestapo. The new socialist government had announced its intention of prosecuting those who had turned Jews over to the Nazis and she’d written a detailed report describing what had happened. Nothing could bring Lieba and Rozia back, but at least she’d have the satisfaction of bringing their betrayer to justice. She found out that Mrs Wiatrak’s previous Jewish tenants had met a similar fate, while later ones barely escaped with their lives. When they returned to claim their possessions, the landlady had warned them that if they ever darkened her doorstep again, she’d set the Gestapo on them.
When Slawa found out that Tadeusz Zawoda was in Lublin, she travelled there, nervous but determined to confront him. She found him at the Army Commissariat of the Polish People’s Republic, the image of a Polish patriot, self-assured in his captain’s uniform. Her heart was thumping as she took a deep breath and accused him of denouncing her mother and sister.
Aunty Slawa will never forget the menace in his expression as long as she lives. Even now, the memory of it makes her tremble. ‘The murderous hatred in his eyes terrified me more than his words. If looks could kill, then I would have died that instant. “Don’t you ever dare say that again,” he hissed, “Or I’ll see that you regret it.” I fled from Lublin, glad to have escaped with my life.’
CHAPTER 27
Winter had come again, and Piszczac nestled under its mantle of snow. Inside the house Danusia gazed at the fanciful patterns etched by the frost while her warm breath dissolved them before her eyes. The room was fragrant with the sharp, pine scent of the fir tree decorated with shiny baubles and paper cutouts, and like all the children in the village, Danusia was impatiently awaiting the arrival of St Nicholas.
This child is a mystery to me. I don’t know what she thinks or feels, how much she knows or suspects. She scatters rose petals in church processions, kneels in church on Sundays and hears children saying that the filthy Jews killed Our Blessed Saviour. Does she also despise Jews? Or is there a corner of her mind where she conceals a secret she hasn’t even told herself?
By now Henek and Bronia’s foothold on life was becoming as slippery as the ice that glazed the roads. Although the village was buzzing with rumours that tens of thousands of German soldiers lay dead on Russia’s frozen land, that the Wehrmacht was being thrashed by the Red Army, and the war couldn’t last much longer, rumours about the Boguslawskis were still gathering momentum. It seemed as though they were fighting two wars simultaneously: one against the Germans and the other against their neighbours, and of the two, the latter was far more threatening.
More anxious than ever to be included in all the village activities, my parents went for sleigh rides in air so crisp that you could almost crush it in your fingers. Sleigh bells jingled merrily and the sound of laughter echoed through the spruce forest while Henek chatted with Jurek Zawadzki whose wife Danuta hooked her arm through Bronia’s. ‘Want to hear the latest gossip in our little backwater? Someone told Mrs Forycka that you walk like a Jewess!’ Bronia tried to make fun of the accusation but there was no mirth in her laughter.
Despite the fact that the end of the war was imminent, our lives were still in danger. Only a week ago some children had run past their house shouting ‘Jews! Jews!’ My mother sighs in the midst of reminiscences she’d rather forget. ‘They never let up. We never had a moment’s peace.’ Suddenly my mother recalls that Mrs Forycka, the doctor’s wife, was such a gossip that one of the villagers had made up a song about her, to the melodious tune of ‘Carnival in Venice’, and she begins to sing it. After all these years, she still remembers the words. ‘Her mouth stretches to heaven, to heaven flies her mouth, if only you could measure, it stretches north to south!’
My parents were living on top of a volcano. They heard its rumbling, saw wisps of smoke, and felt the eruption building up beneath their feet, but they couldn’t flee from its path. ‘How did you keep going?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you ever feel you couldn’t go on?’ My mother shakes her head with that definite motion of hers. ‘Never. When the day finally ended, and we’d survived one more day, I felt on top of the world.’ I look at her, still pretty with her porcelain complexion, immaculately set fair hair now as fine as cotton wool, and eyes that still look unflinchingly at the world. ‘Having you kept us going. I never allowed myself to think even for a moment that we wouldn’t survive.’
After Izio had fled, Henek had organised a new bridge game with Jurek, Dr Forycki, and Mr Grochowski, who worked at the agricultural supplies store and was a member of the underground. While they were playing a rubber in Jurek’s pharmacy one night, a German policeman walked in, glanced at each of the players in turn, locked eyes with Mr Grochowski, and walked out without saying a word. No-one said a word about the German’s visit, which was obviously connected with Mr Grochowski’s underground activities. It bothered Henek that they never spoke about these matters in front of him, not
even Jurek whom he regarded as a close friend.
He’d just finished taking an impression for dentures for one of his regular patients when she looked at him with a serious expression. ‘Dr Boguslawski, I feel I ought to tell you, people are saying that your wife is Jewish.’ Henek’s heart almost jumped out of his chest. It was the first time that anyone had made the accusation to his face.
Several days later, just before Christmas, Jurek drew him aside and there was no smile on his usually friendly face. ‘Danuta and I have just received an anonymous letter. It said, “Don’t have anything to do with the Boguslawskis. Their life hangs by a thread.”’
My father could see us sliding towards disaster. Pretending to be outraged, he told everyone that he was determined to find the culprit who’d dared to malign them. He’d heard that most of the gossip originated from the postmistress. Ever since they’d neglected to invite her to their first party, she’d become their enemy, but people hinted that the priest’s sister was also spreading rumours.
When New Year’s Eve came round, Henek was relieved that they’d been invited to the Grochowskis’ party. Mr Grochowski had always surveyed him with a sardonic expression which made him feel uncomfortable, so he assumed that the invitation indicated some level of acceptance. But when they arrived at the Grochowskis’, they sensed a strained atmosphere. People glanced their way and quickly looked away again as though they weren’t there. Only one person was watching them, and it was a man my father didn’t trust. A week ago this man had suggested in a snide voice that they should go to the Turkish baths together, and Henek had no doubt that his aim was to check out whether he was Jewish.
Realising that they were being ignored, Henek was relieved to see his friend Jurek chatting with a few men near a table loaded with canapes. But as soon as he came up to them, the conversation came to an abrupt halt. ‘I think you should go away because we’re discussing things that aren’t for your ears,’ Jurek said.
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