“Wait,” I say, before any of the boys takes his first bite. “Do you know the Jewish blessing?”
They stare at me wide-eyed. “Isn’t it the same?” asks a boy with a sad face.
I shake my head. “The soup has vegetables. We would say ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the ground.’ ”
“Say it again,” asks the oldest-looking boy.
I say it once more and then we all repeat it together. “She’s like a nun,” says the sad-faced boy. He looks like the youngest of the group.
“Not a nun. She’s like a teacher,” says the boy next to him.
They talk about Chaim. “Chaim, Chaim, the crazy man.”
“I can’t figure him out,” says an older boy. “His mother visits every day and he says, ‘I am not your son. I’m Casmir.’ ”
I feel a flash of anger at Chaim. He has a mother and he won’t acknowledge her!
“What are they going to do with him?” asks the youngest boy.
“Keep him here until he remembers who he is.”
“What if he never does?” I ask.
Everyone shrugs.
Mr. Goren enters the room. He’s walking with someone. The person is bald and so thin; I can’t tell if it is a man or a woman.
“Levi,” says Mr. Goren.
The boy with the sad face looks up. “Mama!” He jumps up and throws his arms around her, saying “Mama, Mama, Mama” over and over again until the entire room is quiet. Everyone is staring at the thin woman and Levi. But he doesn’t seem to notice anyone else. His eyes are fixed on his mother as if he can’t believe she’s really here.
The other children scoot to give them room to sit. Levi looks up at Mr. Goren. “He told me you were dead.”
My heart soars. Mr. Goren was wrong about Levi’s mother. He could be wrong about my family too!
Mr. Goren sits down next to me. “I spoke to your Aunt Felicia last night. She’s trying to make arrangements for you to come to Canada.”
“Leave? When?”
“It isn’t easy. Paperwork. Permissions. Could take months.” He stands to go.
I don’t like the idea of Mr. Goren or Aunt Felicia deciding my future. I’ve held onto being Anna Bauman through everything, for myself and for my parents. If I can’t be with Mama and Papa then I want to be with my Polish family, with Sophia and Stephan and Jerzy.
I remember Papa, so proud to be Polish. “It’s not one or the other, Anna,” he told me when we had to move to the ghetto. “We are both Polish and Jewish.” Papa standing by the window. “One hundred and twenty-three years Poland was absent from the map. Then back again. Nothing can stop the Polish people.”
I stare at Levi and his mother and pray that someday very soon Mama and Papa will make their way back to me.
Chapter 49
Levi and his mother leave the room. Most of the other boys scatter too. Some older children fill in the places around me. They talk about their interviews, share their stories. Some girls say they were treated badly staying in homes and in orphanages. A brother and sister tell about living in the forest. They made their own fort and slept during the day and searched for food at night, even in winter. Two boys say they lived in the forest and fought with the Home Army.
“We had tents and bunkers,” says the older-looking boy with a round face.
“And food,” adds the younger boy.
I’m sure that’s where Jerzy took Zina and Jozef. Stephan must have been helping the Home Army.
“How old are you?” I can’t help asking.
“Fifteen,” says the taller one with the round face.
“Sixteen,” says the other.
A girl with large green eyes says she fought with the Polish army too. “There were lots of us girls fighting.” She looks old enough to be a solider.
A boy with shaggy blond hair says, “I fought with the Ukrainian army.”
We can’t hide our surprise. “Impossible! Really?”
But the blond boy insists. “Anyone who was fighting the Germans was a friend of mine. And they had food, too.”
I ask the question I’m sure everyone is thinking. “Did you really fight? In battles?”
They all speak at once. The girl with the green eyes speaks the loudest. “Sometimes fighting, but more often sabotage.” Her voice is buzzing with energy. “We blew up train tracks, set Gestapo headquarters on fire and spied for the Home Army.”
Her excitement is contagious. Everyone asks, “You were a spy?”
She nods her head. “Yes. Two girls in my group lived in town and worked cleaning for German officials. We met at the market every day. While we pretended to shop, they told me what they learned. I memorized everything and ran back to camp with the news.”
“I heard about the fire at Gestapo headquarters,” I say. “The family I stayed with printed an underground newspaper. I helped too.”
Talk turns to the future. Many of the boys and girls around me are planning to go to Palestine. Their voices are full of excitement. Still, I bet that many months ago their dreams were the same as mine: the war would end and they could move back home and be with their families.
There is a lull in the conversation. It seems like people are looking at me. So I tell them. “I was six years old when the war started. That’s the last birthday I remember being happy. I was nine when I left the ghetto and ten when I left the orphanage. Tomorrow I will be twelve.” I swallow and look around. “And I have no idea at all about my future.”
Chapter 50
A few of the people I spoke to yesterday remember and congratulate me on my birthday. But even when they sit near me, I am alone. In this building crowded with children, I am alone.
My cousin Ada turned twelve before the war. My mother and grandmother stood at her side. “This is your most significant birthday,” they told her. I couldn’t wait to grow up too.
I watch the children struck with the hunger. They bring their plates to their faces and shove food into their mouths with their hands. Not all children. Some, like me, have had enough to eat. Many of the girls and boys cross themselves before eating and mumble prayers that are not their own. My heart is overflowing with sadness and I can’t blink back my tears. I’m filled with emptiness. I’m sad for everyone here.
In seconds I realize my tears are selfish. I’m crying for myself. After years of pretending to be one, I actually may be an orphan. After nearly two years as part of a family, I am all alone. After so long pretending to be someone else, I feel lost.
I miss Sophia. And Stephan. And Jerzy. It is true that they said I would always have a home there. Being Anna Karwolska meant being afraid. I was afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid to talk in my sleep, afraid of being caught, of being killed.
Now my name is Anna Bauman again. I spent so many nights trying to remember everything about being Anna Bauman. But I am not that girl. She had parents, grandparents, cousins. She had a home. She was very young.
This is my most significant birthday. It is time for me to decide.
If my mother were sitting across from me, she’d give me her advice. I can’t imagine her talking to me the way she and Grandma spoke to my cousin Ada. About boys. About what to study in school. Ada was so grown-up.
If Papa were here, he’d ask for my opinion. “What now, Anna?” he’d say. I imagine Papa sitting across from me, tilting his head, waiting for my answer. I’m crying again. After such a long wait for Poland to be free of Germany, how can I move to another country? Canada. I know nothing about it.
I clear my plate, determined to find Mr. Goren. I knock on the doors lining the hallways, interrupting interviews, but he’s not here. After I’ve checked every room I turn and find Mr. Goren walking toward me, a thin smile on his face. Beside him is a tall boy, a few years younger than Jerzy.
“Anna this is—” Mr. Goren starts.
I throw my arms around the boy without waiting for Mr. Goren to finish. He wraps his thin arms around me and
crushes me in a hug. When we finally release I look up at his face. It’s long and thin, topped with very short hair, but I’d know those eyes anywhere.
“Jakub!”
We make our way out the front door and sit on the porch steps. Guards are posted at each corner of the building. They nod to us. I grab Jakub’s hand. He doesn’t curl his fingers around mine automatically, so I place our hands together palm-to-palm the way Jerzy did when we said goodbye. Jakub’s fingers are longer than mine, but he’s so thin each of his fingers is a sliver compared to my own.
“We heard you were so sick. I was worried you had typhus, worried . . .”
Jakub smiles at me. “Sick? When?”
“Grandma wrote to us when you first moved to the Lodz ghetto.”
Jakub studies our hands. “Oh. I’d forgotten about that.”
“You forgot? She wrote you were sick with fever for ten days!” All this time, I carried the fear that Jakub had never recovered. And he doesn’t even remember the illness.
“It wasn’t so bad. Especially compared to what came after.” Jakub doesn’t wait. He tells me. My grandmother is dead. So is my grandfather. And Jakub’s parents, Uncle Aleksander and Aunt Roza. And all of Mama and Uncle Aleksander’s brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives and children.
I shake my head. I can’t believe him. “How? How do you know?”
Jakub looks directly into my eyes. “That’s what happened at the camp. I was there. I know.”
I don’t want to believe it. I’ve heard about the camps. When Stephan and Sophia’s friends came over and talked late into the night, I heard about the horrible death camps. My grandparents. They were so old. Why?
Jaina stands behind us. “Jakub?” Her arms are full of supplies.
“Yes?”
“Here.” She hands him a toothbrush wrapped in a cloth. “You are on the first floor, bed number 224.” She walks back inside.
I study Jakub. He holds my stare. His face isn’t exactly the same. It’s thin. So little hair. It’s as if I’m looking at him underwater at the lake near my grandparents’ house and the Jakub I see is a bit blurry. I take a deep breath, but hold his stare. I don’t look away, but I blink before he does.
“Mr. Goren says my parents . . .” I swallow and shake my head. “My parents were in a . . .”
Jakub looks down at the steps and says, “He told me they were in a camp.”
“If we go to Canada and they come to Warsaw, how will they find me? Find us?”
Jakub studies the small piece of pavement between his feet. “Over one hundred days since I walked out of the last camp. Every morning when I wake up, I have to remind myself that I’m no longer there, that I have a chance.” He runs his hands over his face. “I force myself not to think about it, but I will tell you. Anything you want to know about the camps, I’ll tell you.”
I don’t want to hear about the camps. I want Jakub to tell me that my parents are alive and when I will see them again. It can’t be true that they are really gone. It can’t be true. I try to speak but can’t make a sound. I clear my throat. At times I don’t know what I am going to say until the words make their way out of my mouth. “I have a poem that my father read to me the last time I saw him. And I have a very thin strip of faded cloth that my mother used to tie one of my braids.”
Jakub looks up at me. He waits.
I shake my head and try to stop the words, try to stop myself believing that it is even possible. “That can’t be all that I have left of Mama and Papa. That can’t be all there is.”
Jakub pulls me to his chest. He strokes my hair the way Sophia did. “I will help you, Anna. If they made it, I will help you find them. And if they didn’t make it . . .” Jakub swallows. “If they didn’t survive the camp, I will help you find out what happened.”
I close my eyes and feel the slow rise and fall of Jakub’s breathing. He didn’t say what I had hoped to hear, but his words have stopped my tears. His collar bone presses against my cheek and his hand moves clumsily from the top of my head to the end of my hair and back again. I can imagine that I’m being held by Sophia or even Mama.
“And Anna”—Jakub’s voice is thin, as if he’s afraid his words will hurt me—“even if we don’t find them. The poem and the cloth. That’s not all there is.”
I know that Jakub’s right. Each night since we’ve parted, remembering my life with Mama and Papa has shown me that. Still, I’m crying again and this time it feels like nothing in the world can help me stop.
Author’s Note
This book was inspired by Irena Sendler. Before World War II, she was a social worker in Warsaw, Poland. During the war, she was a spy who smuggled food, clothing and medicine into the Warsaw ghetto and smuggled children out. Even though her name doesn’t appear in the story, the character of Irena is there (as Jolanta in the ghetto and as Mrs. Dabrowska at the orphanage). Irena arranged every detail of the children’s escapes. She received money from the Polish government in exile; they dropped it from planes using parachutes. With the help of hundreds of collaborators, Irena Sendler and the organization Zegota saved more than twenty-five hundred children.
I first learned about Irena Sendler in 2004 and knew immediately that I wanted to write about her. I was excited to discover that she was still living in Warsaw and began to hope that I could somehow meet her. I applied for and was awarded the Kimberly Colen Grant from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. This grant made it possible for me to conduct research in Warsaw, and the Jewish Historical Institute there accepted my request to research their archives.
In March 2005 I flew to Poland with my daughter, Alexandria, who was eight years old at that time. With the help of a translator, I read testimonies recorded by children immediately after the war. I met Irena’s biographer, Anna Mieskowska, and also met Irena Sendler. When we stepped into her room, Irena reached her arms out to us, smiling. She saved greeting my daughter for last and kept her close to her side the entire visit.
I smiled and spoke in Polish. I was sure I had said “Hello, it is very nice to meet you” in the formal way I’d learned in my Polish lessons. But the translator translated my greeting. She and Irena spoke a bit and laughed. She told me later that I actually greeted Irena by saying, “Thank you and good-bye.”
Irena told us that her greatest challenge with the rescue operations was convincing the parents to allow the children to leave the ghetto. She praised her friends who risked and lost their lives helping with the escapes, especially Eva Rechtman. From our conversation, it was clear that Irena never thought of herself as a hero. Instead, she focused on the contributions of others who helped her and the brave parents who gave up their children.
Irena also spoke against torture. She stated, “I am living proof that torture does not work.” On October 20, 1943, Irena was arrested and held in Pawiak prison. She was tortured every day for three months, but she didn’t give up any information. Irena was sentenced to death. At the very last moment she was rescued.
Even after she escaped prison and knew the Germans were searching for her, Irena continued her work saving children. She wore a wig, changed her address every day and sometimes used the alias Klara Dabrowska. Irena walked with a limp because of the torture she suffered in prison and was in pain for the rest of her life.
When it was time for us to leave, she put her arms around Alexandria and asked, “Aren’t you going to take a photo?”
Irena Sendler lived to be ninety-eight years old. Many of the children she helped rescue reunited with her when they were adults. Some of the survivors became her close friends and visited her at her home in Warsaw.
Irena and I exchanged letters after we met. I shared with her my struggle to write about the child rescues when the children were in such dire circumstances. She wrote back an encouraging response: “There are humane aspects that are extremely important to developing values: helping to rescue a human being from his misery, necessary courage and an ability to disr
egard your own danger in order to save somebody’s life.”
Irena was, is and always will be my hero. Last year at a Days of Remembrance ceremony (a national day for communities to learn about and remember the Holocaust) I spoke about the people who assisted Irena with the child rescues. Eva Rechtman insisted on saving the children rather than being rescued herself. Anton drove a tram with hidden children for many successful escapes before he was caught and killed. Women risked their lives teaching children to speak Polish and say Catholic prayers in the safe houses. They found doctors to place quarantine signs on the doors of these houses in hopes that rumors of infection would be enough to keep suspicious neighbors away. There were German soldiers who agreed to let children slip past the guarded gates. Custodians left the courthouse unlocked at night. Friends provided forged documents. Doctors offered medicine to help babies sleep during their escapes. The Polish government in exile funded the operations. Churches and orphanages protected children. Hundreds of host families cared for the rescued children. Friends checked in on the children and brought money to host families. These brave individuals are the reason Irena didn’t consider herself a hero. How could she when so many people—practically everybody she knew—were doing their part to save these children?
Irena Sendler, Angela Cerrito and her daughter Alexandria
TO THE YOUNG
by Adam Asnyk (1838–1897)
Translated from the Polish by Jarosław Zawadski
The brightening flame of truth pursue,
Seek to discover ways no human knows.
With every secret now revealed to you,
The soul of man expands within the new.
And God still bigger grows!
Although you may the flowers of myths remove,
Although you may the fabulous dark disperse,
The Safest Lie Page 15