Kommandant’s Girl
Pam Jenoff

To my family

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For several years after my return to the United States in 1998, I had wanted to write a novel that captured the experiences in Poland, and particularly with the Jewish community there, that had affected me so profoundly. I was captivated for some time by the vision of a young woman nervously guiding a child across Krakow’s market square during the Nazi occupation. But it was not until early 2002, when I had the good fortune to ride a train from Washington, DC to Philadelphia with an elderly couple who were both Holocaust survivors, that I learned for the first time the extraordinary story of the Krakow resistance. And with that historical foundation, Kommandant’s Girl was born.

There are so many people who have walked this path with me from concept to finished novel. I am eternally grateful to my family, friends and colleagues, including my mother and father, my brother Jay (yes, you can read it now), Phillip, Joanne, Stephanie, Barb and others too numerous to mention for their endless interest, patience and love. I would also like to thank my writing instructor, Janet Benton, and the other writers who have offered selfless guidance, fellowship and support every step of the way.

This book would not have been possible without the relentless efforts of my wonderful agent, Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary Management, who recognised the potential in this book before anyone else, worked tirelessly to refine it, and persevered long after most others would have quit. I would also like to salute my brilliant editor, Susan Pezzack, for her many insights in bringing this work to life and for making a dream come true.

Finally, I have come to realise through the writing of this book that the term “historical fiction” is somewhat of an oxymoron. While creating imaginary characters and events, I have endeavoured to remain true to the spirit of those who lived and died during World War II and the Holocaust, and to realistically depict the full range of human strengths, frailties and emotions brought out by this tragic and remarkable era. To this end, I would like to express my boundless admiration for the Jewish communities of Poland, and all of Central and Eastern Europe, past, present and future: your courageous struggle is an inspiration to us all.

CHAPTER 1

As we cut across the wide span of the market square, past the pigeons gathered around fetid puddles, I eye the sky warily and tighten my grip on Lukasz’s hand, willing him to walk faster. But the child licks his ice-cream cone, oblivious to the darkening sky, a drop hanging from his blond curls. Thank God for his blond curls. A sharp March wind gusts across the square, and I fight the urge to let go of his hand and draw my threadbare coat closer around me.

We pass through the high center arch of the Sukennice, the massive yellow mercantile hall that bisects the square. It is still several blocks to Nowy Kleparz, the outdoor market on the far northern edge of Kraków’s city center, and already I can feel Lukasz’s gait slowing, his tiny, thin-soled shoes scuffing harder against the cobblestones with every step. I consider carrying him, but he is three years old and growing heavier by the day. Well fed, I might have managed it, but now I know that I would make it a few meters at most. If only he would go faster. “Szybko, kochana,” I plead with him under my breath. “Chocz!” His steps seem to lighten as we wind our way through the flower vendors peddling their wares in the shadow of the Mariacki Cathedral spires.

Moments later, we reach the far side of the square and I feel a familiar rumble under my feet. I pause. I have not been on a trolley in almost a year. I imagine lifting Lukasz onto the streetcar and sinking into a seat, watching the buildings and people walking below as we pass. We could be at the market in minutes. Then I stop, shake my head inwardly. The ink on our new papers is barely dry, and the wonder on Lukasz’s face at his first trolley ride would surely arouse suspicion. I cannot trade our safety for convenience. We press onward.

Though I try to remind myself to keep my head low and avoid eye contact with the shoppers who line the streets this midweek morning, I cannot help but drink it all in. It has been more than a year since I was last in the city center. I inhale deeply. The air, damp from the last bits of melting snow, is perfumed with the smell of roasting chestnuts from the corner kiosk. Then the trumpeter in the cathedral tower begins to play the hejnal, the brief melody he sends across the square every hour on the hour to commemorate the Tartar invasion of Kraków centuries earlier. I resist the urge to turn back toward the sound, which greets me like an old friend.

As we approach the end of Florianska Street, Lukasz suddenly freezes, tightening his grip on my hand. I look down. He has dropped the last bit of his precious ice-cream cone on the pavement but does not seem to notice. His face, already pale from months of hiding indoors, has turned gray. “What is it?” I whisper, crouching beside him, but he does not respond. I follow his gaze to where it is riveted. Ten meters ahead, by the arched entrance to the medieval Florian Gate, stand two Nazis carrying machine guns. Lukasz shudders. “There, there, kochana. It’s okay.” I put my arms around his shoulders, but there is nothing I can do to soothe him. His eyes dart back and forth, and his mouth moves without sound. “Come.” I lift him up and he buries his head in my neck. I look around for a side street to take, but there is none and turning around might attract attention. With a furtive glance to make sure no one is watching, I push the remnants of the ice-cream cone toward the gutter with my foot and proceed past the Nazis, who do not seem to notice us. A few minutes later, when I feel the child breathing calmly again, I set him down.

Soon we approach the Nowy Kleparz market. It is hard to contain my excitement at being out again, walking and shopping like a normal person. As we navigate the narrow walkways between the stalls, I hear people complaining. The cabbage is pale and wilted, the bread hard and dry; the meat, what there is of it, is from an unidentifiable source and already giving off a curious odor. To the townspeople and villagers, still accustomed to the prewar bounty of the Polish countryside, the food is an abomination. To me, it is paradise. My stomach tightens.

“Two loaves,” I say to the baker, keeping my head low as I pass him my ration cards. A curious look crosses his face. It is your imagination, I tell myself. Stay calm. To a stranger, I know, I look like any other Pole. My coloring is fair, my accent flawless, my dress purposefully nondescript. Krysia chose this market in a working-class neighborhood on the northern edge of town deliberately, knowing that none of my former acquain-tances from the city would shop here. It is critical that no one recognize me.

I pass from stall to stall, reciting the groceries we need in my head: flour, some eggs, a chicken, if there is one to be had. I have never made lists, a fact that serves me well now that paper is so dear. The shopkeepers are kind, but businesslike. Six months into the war, food is in short supply; there is no generous cut of cheese for a smile, no sweet biscuit for the child with the large blue eyes. Soon I have used all of our ration cards, yet the basket remains half empty. We begin the long walk home.

Still feeling the chill from the wind on the market square, I lead Lukasz through side streets on our way back across town. A few minutes later, we turn onto Grodzka Street, a wide thoroughfare lined with elegant shops and houses. I hesitate. I had not meant to come here. My chest tightens, making it hard to breathe. Easy, I tell myself, you can do this. It is just another street. I walk a few meters farther, then stop. I am standing before a pale yellow house with a white door and wooden flower boxes in the windows. My eyes travel upward to the second floor. A lump forms in my throat, making it difficult to swallow. Don’t, I think, but it is too late. This was Jacob’s house. Our house.

I met Jacob eighteen months ago while I was working as a clerk in the university library. It was a Friday afternoon, I remember, because I was rushing to update the book catalog and get home in time for Shabbes. “Excuse me,” a deep voice said. I looked up from my work, annoyed at the interruption. The speaker was of medium height and wore a small yarmulke and closely trimmed beard and mustache. His hair was brown with flecks of red. “Can you recommend a good book?”

“A good book?” I was caught off guard as much by the swimming darkness of his eyes as by the generic nature of his request.

“Yes, I would like something light to read over the weekend to take my mind off my studies. Perhaps the Iliad …?”

I could not help laughing. “You consider Homer light reading?”

“Relative to physics texts, yes.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. I led him to the literature section, where he settled upon a volume of Shakespeare’s comedies. Our knuckles brushed as I handed him the book, sending a chill down my spine. I checked out the book to him, but still he lingered. I learned that his name was Jacob and that he was twenty, two years my senior.

After that, he came to visit me daily. I quickly learned that even though he was a science major, his real passion was politics and that he was involved with many activist groups. He wrote pieces, published in student and local newspapers, that were critical not only of the Polish government, but of what he called “Germany’s unfettered dominance” over its neighbors. I worried that it was dangerous to be so outspoken. While the Jews of my neighborhood argued heatedly on their front stoops, outside the synagogues and in the stores about current affairs and everything else, I was raised to believe that it was safer to keep one’s voice low when dealing with the outside world. But Jacob, the son of prominent sociologist Maximillian Bau, had no such concerns, and as I listened to him speak, watched his eyes burn and his hands fly, I forgot to be afraid.

I was amazed that a student from a wealthy, secular family would be interested in me, the daughter of a poor Orthodox baker, but if he noticed the difference in our backgrounds, it did not seem to matter. We began spending our Sunday afternoons together, talking and strolling along the Wisla River. “I should be getting home,” I remarked one Sunday afternoon in April as the sky grew dusky. Jacob and I had been walking along the river path where it wound around the base of Wawel Castle, talking so intensely I had lost track of time. “My parents will be wondering where I am.”

“Yes, I should meet them soon,” he replied matter-of-factly. I stopped in my tracks. “That’s what one does, isn’t it, when one wants to ask permission to court?” I was too surprised to answer. Though Jacob and I had spent much time together these recent months and I knew he enjoyed my company, I somehow never thought that he would seek permission to see me formally. He reached down and took my chin in his gloved fingers. Softly, he pressed his lips down on mine for the first time. Our mouths lingered together, lips slightly parted. The ground seemed to slide sideways, and I felt so dizzy I was afraid that I might faint.

Thinking now of Jacob’s kiss, I feel my legs grow warm. Stop it, I tell myself, but it is no use. It has been nearly six months since I have seen my husband, been touched by him. My whole body aches with longing.

A sharp clicking noise jars me from my thoughts. My vision clears and I find myself still standing in front of the yellow house, staring upward. The front door opens and an older, well-dressed woman steps out. Noticing me and Lukasz, she hesitates. I can tell she is wondering who we are, why we have stopped in front of her house. Then she turns from us dismissively, locks the door and proceeds down the steps. This is her home now. Enough, I tell myself sharply. I cannot afford to do anything that will draw attention. I shake my head, trying to clear the image of Jacob from my mind.

“Come, Lukasz,” I say aloud, tugging gently on the child’s hand. We continue walking and soon cross the Planty, the broad swath of parkland that rings the city center. The trees are revealing the most premature of buds, which will surely be cut down by a late frost. Lukasz tightens his grip on my hand, staring wide-eyed at the few squirrels that play among the bushes as though it is already spring. As we push onward, I feel the city skyline receding behind us. Five minutes later we reach the Aleje, the wide boulevard that, if taken to the left, leads south across the river. I stop and look toward the bridge. Just on the other side, a half kilometer south, lies the ghetto. I start to turn in that direction, thinking of my parents. Perhaps if I go to the wall, I can see them, find a way to slip them some of the food I have just purchased. Krysia would not mind. Then I stop—I cannot risk it, not in broad daylight, not with the child. I feel shame at my stomach, which no longer twists with hunger, and at my freedom, at crossing the street as though the occupation and the war do not exist.

Half an hour later, Lukasz and I reach Chelmska, the rural neighborhood we have come to call home. My feet are sore from walking along the uneven dirt road and my arms ache from carrying the groceries, as well as the child, for the last several meters. As we round the corner where the main road divides in two, I inhale deeply; the air has grown colder now, its pureness broken only by an acrid hint of smoke from a farmer burning piles of dead winter brush. I can see the fires smoldering across the sloping farmland to my right, their thick smoke fanning out over the fields that roll like a gentle green lake into the horizon.

We turn left onto the road dotted with farmhouses that, if taken farther, winds upward into the tree-covered hills of Las Wolski. About fifty yards up the road stands Krysia’s house, a dark wood, three-story chalet, nestled among the pine trees. A plume of smoke rises from the chimney to greet us. I set the child down and he runs ahead. Hearing his footsteps, Krysia appears from behind the house and walks to the front gate. With her silver hair piled high on her head, she looks as though she is attending the opera, except that her hands are clad in cracked leather gardening gloves, rather than silk or lace. The hem of her working dress, nicer than anything I could ever hope to own, is caked with dirt. At the sight of Lukasz, her lineless face folds into a smile. She breaks her perfect posture to stoop and lift him.

“Did everything go all right?” Krysia asks as I approach, still bouncing Lukasz on her hip and studying his face. She does not look at me. I am not offended by her preoccupation with the child. In the time he has been with us, he has yet to smile or speak, a fact that is a source of constant worry for both of us.

“More or less.”

“Oh?” Her head snaps up. “What happened?”

I hesitate, not wanting to speak in front of the child. “We saw some, um, Germans.” I tilt my head in Lukasz’s direction. “And it was upsetting. But they didn’t notice us.”

“Good. Were you able to get everything at market?”

I shake my head. “Some things.” I lift the basket slightly. “Not as much as I hoped, though.”

“It’s no matter, we’ll manage. I was just turning over the ground in the garden so that we can seed next month.” Wordlessly, I follow Krysia into the house, amazed as ever at her grace and strength. There is a sense of purpose in the way she shifts her weight as she walks that reminds me of my husband.

Upstairs, Krysia takes the basket from me and begins to unpack the groceries. I wander into the parlor. After two weeks of living here, I am still awestruck by the plush furniture, the beautiful artwork that adorns every wall. I walk past the grand piano to the fireplace. On the mantel sit three framed photographs. One is of Marcin, Krysia’s deceased husband, seated with his cello in front of him, wearing a tuxedo. Another is of Jacob as a child playing by a lake. I lift the third picture. It is a photograph of Jacob and me, taken on our wedding day. We are standing on the steps in front of the Baus’ house on Grodzka Street, Jacob in a dark suit, me in the ankle-length white linen wedding dress that had been worn by my mother and grandmother before me. Though we were supposed to be looking at the camera, our heads are tilted toward each other, my lips parted with laughter at a joke he had just whispered to me.

Originally, we had intended to wait to marry until Jacob graduated the following year. But by late July 1939, Germany had swallowed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and the other countries of Western Europe had done nothing to stop him. Hitler stood poised on the Polish border, ready to pounce. We had heard stories of the Nazis’ abysmal treatment of the Jews in Germany and Austria. If the Nazis came into Poland, who knew what our lives would be like? Better, we decided, to get married right away and face the uncertainties of the future together.

Jacob proposed on a humid afternoon during one of our Sunday walks by the river. “Emma …” He stopped and turned to me, then dropped to one knee. I was not entirely surprised. Jacob had walked to synagogue with my father the previous morning, and I could tell from the pensive way my father looked at me as they returned to the apartment afterward that they had not been discussing politics or religion, but rather our future together. Still, my eyes watered. “Times are uncertain,” Jacob began. Inwardly, I could not help but laugh. Only Jacob could turn a proposal into a political speech. “But I know that whatever is coming, I want to face it with you. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“Yes,” I whispered as he slipped a silver ring with a tiny diamond onto my left hand. He rose and kissed me, longer and harder than ever before.

We wed a few weeks later under a canopy in the Baus’ elegant parlor, with only our immediate families in attendance. After the wedding, we moved my few belongings to the spare room in the Baus’ home that Jacob and I were to share. Professor and Mrs. Bau departed shortly after we returned for a teaching sabbatical in Geneva, leaving Jacob and me on our own. Having been raised in a tiny, three-room apartment, I was unaccustomed to living in such splendor. The high ceilings and polished wood floors seemed better suited to a museum. At first, I felt awkward, like a perennial guest in the enormous house, but I soon came to love living in a grand home filled with music, art and books. Jacob and I would lie awake at night and whisper dreams of the following year after his graduation when we would be able to buy a home of our own.

One Friday afternoon about three weeks after the wedding, I decided to walk down to the Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and pick up some challah bread from my parents’ bakery for dinner. When I arrived at the shop, it was crowded with customers rushing to get ready for Shabbes so I stepped behind the counter to help my harried father fill the orders. I had just handed a customer her change when the door to the shop burst open and a young boy ran in. “The Germans have attacked!” he exclaimed.

I froze. The shop became instantly silent. Quickly, my father retrieved his radio from the back room, and the customers huddled around the counter to hear the news. The Germans had attacked the harbor of Westerplatte, near the northern city of Gdansk; Poland and Germany were at war. Some of the women started crying. The radio announcer stopped speaking then and the Polish national anthem began to play. Several customers began to sing along. “The Polish army will defend us,” I heard Pan Klopowitz, a wizened veteran of the Great War, say to another customer. But I knew the truth. The Polish army, consisting in large part of soldiers on horseback and on foot, would be no match for German tanks and machine guns. I looked to my father and our eyes met. One of his hands was fingering the edge of his prayer shawl, the other gripping the edge of the countertop, knuckles white. I could tell that he was imagining the worst.

“Go,” my father said to me after the customers had departed hurriedly with their loaves of bread. I did not return to the library but rushed home. Jacob was already at the apartment when I arrived, his face ashen. Wordlessly, he drew me into his embrace.

Within two weeks of the German invasion, the Polish army was overrun. Suddenly the streets of Kraków were filled with tanks and large, square-jawed men in brown uniforms for whom the crowds parted as they passed. I was fired from my job at the library, and a few days later, Jacob was told by the head of his department that Jews were no longer permitted to attend the university. Our world as we had known it seemed to disappear overnight.

I had hoped that, once Jacob had been dismissed from the university, he would be home more often, but instead his political meetings took on a frenetic pace, held in secret now at apartments throughout the city at night. Though he did not say it, I became aware that these meetings were somehow related to opposing the Nazis. I wanted to ask him, beg him, to stop. I was terrified that he might be arrested, or worse. I knew, though, that my concerns would not squelch his passion.

One Tuesday night in late September, I dozed off while waiting for him to come home. Sometime later, I awoke. The clock on our nightstand told me that it was after midnight. He should have been home by now. I leapt from bed. The apartment was still, except for the sound of my bare feet on the hardwood floor. My mind raced. I paced the house like a mad- woman, returning to the window every five minutes to scan the street below.

Sometime after one-thirty, I heard a noise in the kitchen. Jacob had come up the back stairway. His hair and beard, usually so well-kept, were disheveled. A thin line of perspiration covered the area above his upper lip. I threw my arms around him, trembling. Wordlessly, Jacob took my hand and led me into our bedroom. I did not try to speak further as he pushed me down to the mattress and pressed his weight on top of me with an urgency I had never felt before.

“Emma, I have to leave,” he said later that night, as we lay in the dark listening to the rumbling of the trolleys below. The sweat of our lovemaking had dried on my skin in the cool autumn air, leaving me with an inescapable chill.

My stomach tightened. “Because of your work?”

“Yes.”

I knew he was not referring to his former university job. “When?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Soon … days, I think.” There was an uneasiness in his voice that told me he was not saying all that he knew. He rolled over to press his stomach against my back and curled his knees under mine. “I will leave money in case you need anything.”

I waved my hand in the dark. “I don’t want it.” My eyes teared. Please, I wanted to say. I would have begged if I thought it would have done any good.

“Emma …” He paused. “You should go to your parents.”

“I will.” When you are gone, I thought.

“One other thing …” His warmth pulled away from me and he reached into the drawer of the nightstand. The paper he handed me felt new, the candle-wax seal raised. “Burn this.” It was our kittubah, our Hebrew marriage certificate. In the rush of events, we had not had time to register our marriage with the civil authorities.

I pushed the paper back at him. “Never.”

“You must take off your rings, pretend we were never married. Tell your family to say nothing.” He continued, “It will be dangerous for you if anyone knows you are my wife once I am gone.”

“Dangerous? Jacob, I am a Jew in a country occupied by Nazis. How much more dangerous can it get?”

“Just do it,” he insisted.

“Okay,” I lied, taking the paper from him and sliding it under the mattress. I would not burn the one thing that would always link me to him.

I lay awake after Jacob had begun to breathe his long, even sleep. Softly, I touched his hair where it reached his collar, burying my nose there and inhaling his scent. I traced his hand with mine, trying to etch the shape in my mind. He shifted and grunted, already fighting the enemy in his sleep. As my eyelids at last grew heavy, I struggled to stay awake. There would be plenty of time for sleeping later.

But eventually I lost to my exhaustion. I awoke hours later to the sounds of the street sweepers brushing the sidewalks, and the rhythmic hooves of the deliverymen’s horses banging against the cobblestones. Outside, it was still dark. I ran my hand across the empty space in bed beside me, the sheets still warm and rumpled where my husband had lain. His musky scent hung heavily in the air above me. I did not have to look up to know that his rucksack and other belongings were gone.

Jacob had disappeared. We’d been married for six weeks.

“… hungry?” Krysia’s voice jars me from my thoughts. I realize that she has come into the parlor and has been speaking to me, but I have not heard what she has said. I turn to her reluctantly, as though I have been woken from a pleasant dream. She holds out a plate of bread and cheese toward me.

“No, thank you.” I shake my head, still half lost in memories.

Krysia sets down the plate on the coffee table and comes over to me. “That’s a beautiful picture,” she says, gesturing toward my wedding photo. I do not answer. She lifts up the photo of Jacob as a child. “But we should put these away so no one sees them.”

“Who would see them?” I ask. “I mean, it’s just the three of us here.” Krysia let her maid and her gardener go before Lukasz and I arrived, and in the weeks we have lived with her, there has been no one else inside the house.

“You never know,” she replies. Her voice sounds strange. “Better to be safe.” She holds out her hand and I hesitate, not wanting to surrender one of the last ties I have to my husband. She’s right, I realize. There’s no other choice. With a sigh, I hand her the wedding photograph and watch numbly as she carries it from the room.

CHAPTER 2

The morning Jacob disappeared, not daring to leave a note, I sat in bed for several minutes, blinking and looking around the bedroom. “He’s not coming back,” I said aloud. I was too stunned to cry. I rose and dressed, my movements reflexive, as though I’d rehearsed for this moment a thousand times. I packed my small suitcase as quickly as I could. Reluctantly, I took off my engagement and wedding rings, and slipped them, along with our marriage certificate, into the bottom of my suitcase.

At the door of our bedroom, I hesitated. On the crowded bookshelf by the door, nearly buried beneath Jacob’s physics textbooks and political treatises, lay a small stack of novels, Ivanhoe, Pride and Prejudice and a few others, mostly by foreign authors. I reached out to touch the bindings of the books, remembering. Jacob had given these to me shortly after we had met. He used to come visit me at the library every day, and often he brought me small gifts, such as an apple or a flower or, best of all, a book. I laughed the first time he did this. “Bringing books to a library?” I teased, examining the slim, leather-covered tome, a translation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

“But I am sure you do not have this one!” he protested in earnest, holding out the book, his brown eyes smiling. And he was right, for although I had already read many books, I had not possessed a single one of my own until then. My parents had encouraged learning and had sent me to the Jewish girls’ school as long as they could manage, but owning books, other than the family Bible and prayer book, was not a luxury we could afford. I treasured each of the half dozen or so books Jacob brought me, never telling him that I had read them all before from the library, some so many times I knew them almost by heart. I reread each one (the story was somehow different now that the book was my own) and then tucked it away safely in my dresser drawer. They had been among the few possessions I had brought with me from my parents’ house to the Baus’.

Picturing Jacob as he gave me the first book, my eyes burned. Where are you, I wondered as I stared at the bookshelf, and when will you be back? I brushed away a tear and studied the books. I can’t take them with me, I thought. They’re too heavy. But I won’t leave them all, either. Finally, I pulled two of the books from the shelf and squeezed them into my bag.

I walked to the front door of the Baus’ house, bags in hand. My eyes lingered on the rose-colored silk curtains, held back gracefully from the high windows with bronze-colored rope, the gold-rimmed china in the glass-front cabinet along the foyer wall. With the house empty, what was to stop vagrants, or even the Nazis, from looting the place? For a moment I considered staying. Jacob had been right, though; it would not be safe for me alone. Searches by the Gestapo had become commonplace, and several fine apartments in the city center had already been expropriated from their Jewish owners and given to high-ranking Nazi officers. I thought fleetingly of taking a few of the Baus’ belongings to protect them, perhaps a few small paintings or the silver candlesticks. But even if I had been able to transport these things to my parents’ tiny home, they would hardly be any safer there. Pausing in the foyer, I looked around one last time before closing the door behind me.

I made my way down Grodzka Street, away from the city center toward the Jewish quarter. As I walked, the houses grew more dilapidated, the streets narrower. I could not help but remember the first time I had allowed Jacob to escort me home from the library. He had offered for months, but I had always refused, afraid that if he saw the poor, religious world I came from, he would realize the differences between us and disappear forever. I had watched his face as we reached the edge of the Jewish quarter. I could tell by the way he bit the inside of his cheek and tightened his arm protectively around me that he was taken aback by the naked poverty, by the cramped, run-down buildings, and shabbily dressed inhabitants of my neighborhood. He never said a word, though. If anything, his affection toward me seemed to grow after that day, and he seemed determined to take me away to his world. Until now, I thought, staring at the desolate street before me. Now he was gone and I was returning to Kazimierz, alone. I could feel the tears gathering in my eyes once more.

Soon I reached Szeroka Street, the main square at the heart of the Jewish quarter. I paused, taking in the synagogues and shops that lined the square. Something was different from when I’d last visited just weeks ago. Though it was a weekday morning, the streets were empty and eerily silent. Gone were the neighbors calling to one another through open windows, the men arguing in front of the shops, the shawl-covered women carrying bundles of food and kindling. It was as if the neighborhood had disappeared overnight.

I decided to stop in the bakery and say hello to my father before heading to the apartment. The bakery, which consisted of just a tiny shop with an adjacent kitchen, was my father’s labor of love. He had opened it as a young man more than thirty years ago to support him and my mother, and had worked there every day since. Even after the occupation, he had stubbornly insisted upon keeping the store open with few supplies and even fewer paying customers in order to provide a source of food to our family, friends and neighbors, and to furtively produce small quantities of the Jewish breads, the challah loaves for the Sabbath and matzah for Passover that were now forbidden.

He would want me to stay, of course, to set my suitcases in the corner and put on one of his large aprons and bake with him. Helping my father was one of the things I missed most about not living in Kazimierz since I had gotten married. We used to talk for hours as we made and kneaded the dough together. Often he told me stories of his childhood, of my grandparents, whom I had never met, and the large general store they had owned, close to the German border. Sometimes he would grow quiet and I could hear him humming under his breath. I did not have to look over to know that he was smiling to himself, his dark beard white with flour.

I turned right at the corner of Jozefa Street and stopped in front of the bakery. I tried to open the front door, but it was locked. For a moment, I wondered if I had gotten my days wrong and the bakery was closed for Shabbes. The last time my father had not opened the bakery on a day other than Saturday or a Jewish holiday was the day I was born. I pressed my face against the window. The shop was dark inside. An uneasy feeling arose in me. It was after eight o’clock; my father should have been working for several hours already. I wondered if something was wrong, if he or my mother was sick. With a shiver, I hurried toward our apartment on Miodowa Street.

A few minutes later, I entered the dimly lit building where I had lived all of my life before marrying Jacob. Inside, the air was heavy with the odor of cabbage and onions. I made my way up the three flights of stairs. Breathing heavily, I set my bags down in the hallway, then turned the handle of the door to our apartment. “Hello?” I called, stepping into the living room. Morning sunlight streamed through the two large windows. I looked around. Growing up, I had not minded our tiny, cozy apartment, but after marrying Jacob and moving into the Baus’ grand house, my childhood home seemed somehow changed. On my first visit back after our honeymoon, I had taken in our yellowed curtains and frayed chair cushions with distaste, as though seeing for the first time how small and disheveled our apartment really was. I felt guilty at leaving my parents behind here while I lived in comfort with Jacob. But they did not seem to notice; for them it was the only home they had ever known. Now I have to live here again, I thought, wishing I did not. I was immediately ashamed at my snobbery.

“Hello?” I said again, louder this time. There was no response. I looked at the clock over the mantelpiece. It was eight-thirty, which meant that my father should have long since departed for the bakery. My mother never left this early, though; she should have been home. Something was not right. I sniffed the air. The lingering scent of eggs and onions, the breakfast my mother always cooked, was missing. Alarmed, I raced into my parents’ bedroom. Some of the dresser drawers were open, clothes hanging out. My mother never would have gone out with the apartment in such a state. My grandparents’ gray wool blanket, which usually lay folded at the foot of my parents’ bed, was gone.

“Mama …?” I called, panic seizing me. I ran back through the living room into the corridor and stared down the stairwell. The building was silent except for the echoing of my footsteps. I heard none of the early-morning noises that came through the paper-thin walls, sounds of people talking and pots banging and water running. My heart pounded. Everyone had disappeared. I froze, uncertain what to do.

Suddenly, I heard a creaking noise on the stairway above. “Hello?” I called, starting up the stairs. Through the railings, I could see a flash of blue clothing. “It’s Emma Gershmann,” I said, using my maiden name. “Who’s there?” It did not occur to me to be afraid. I heard one footstep, then another. A small boy, no older than twelve, came into view. I recognized him as one of the many Rosenkrantz children from the fourth floor. “You’re Jonas, aren’t you?” I asked. He nodded. “Where is everyone?”

He did not speak for several minutes. “I was playing in the courtyard when they came,” he began, his voice barely a whisper.

“Who came, Jonas?” I asked, dreading his answer.

“Men in uniforms,” he replied softly. “Lots of them.”

“Germans?” He nodded. Suddenly my knees felt weak. I leaned against the railing for support. “When?”

“Two days ago. They made everyone leave in a hurry. My family. Yours, too.”

My stomach twisted. “Where did they go?”

He shrugged. “They walked south toward the river. Everyone had suitcases.” The ghetto, I thought, sinking down to the bottom stair. Shortly after the start of the occupation, the Nazis had created a walled area in Podgorze, a district south of the river. They had ordered all of the Jews from the nearby villages to move there. It had never occurred to me that my family might have to relocate there, though; we already lived in the Jewish quarter. “I hid until they were gone,” Jonas added. I did not reply, but leapt up and raced back down the stairs to our apartment. At the entrance, I stopped. The mezuzah was gone, ripped from the wooden door frame. I touched the faint shadow that remained where the small metal box had hung for decades. My father must have broken it off as they left. He knew they weren’t coming back.

I had to find them. I grabbed my suitcase and closed the apartment door behind me, turning to Jonas, who had followed me down the steps. “Jonas, you can’t stay here, it isn’t safe,” I said. “Do you have anyone to go to?” He shook his head. I paused. I couldn’t take him with me. “Here,” I continued, reaching into my bag and passing him a handful of the coins that Jacob had left me. “Use this for food.”

He shoved the coins in his pocket. “Where are you going?”

I hesitated. “To find my parents.”

“Are you going to the ghetto?”

I looked at him in surprise. I had not realized that he understood where his family had been taken. “Yes.”

“You won’t be able to leave,” Jonas said with childlike logic. I hesitated. In my haste, it hadn’t occurred to me that going to the ghetto meant I would be imprisoned, too.

“I have to go. You be careful. Stay out of sight.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll tell your mother you’re okay if I see her.” Not waiting for him to reply, I turned and raced down the stairs.

Outside I paused, looking in both directions down the deserted street. The Nazis must have cleared the entire neighborhood, I realized. I stood motionless, trying to figure out what to do. Jonas was right, of course. If I went to the ghetto, I would not be able to leave again. But what other choice did I have? I could not stay in our apartment. Even standing here on the street was probably not safe. I wished desperately that Jacob was here; he would surely know what to do. Of course, if he was here, I would still be safe in our bedroom in the Baus’ apartment, instead of alone on the street corner with nowhere to go. I wondered how far away he was by now. Would he have left if he realized what would happen to me so soon after he was gone?

I will go to the ghetto, I decided. I had to know if my parents were there, if they were all right. Picking up my bags once more, I began walking swiftly through the empty streets of the Jewish quarter, making my way south toward the river. The scraping of the soles of my shoes and my suitcase against the pavement were the only sounds that broke the early morning silence. My skin grew moist under my clothes and my arms ached as I struggled to carry my overstuffed bags in the thick autumn morning.

Shortly, I reached the edge of the Wisla River, which separated our old world from our new one. I paused at the foot of the railway bridge, looking across to the far bank. Podgorze was a foreign neighborhood to me, commercial and crowded. Scanning the dirty, dilapidated buildings, I could just make out the top edge of the ghetto wall. A shiver ran through me. You will only be a few kilometers away, I told myself. The thought gave me no comfort. The ghetto was not Kazimierz, not our home. It might as well have been another planet.

For a moment, I considered turning around and running away. But where would I go? Taking a deep breath, I started walking across the bridge. My legs felt like lead. As I trudged silently across the railway bridge, I could hear the river rippling gently against the shore from which I had come. The smell of brackish water wafted up through the slats in the bridge. Don’t look back, I thought. But as I reached the far bank, a starling cried out behind me and I turned, almost against my will. On the far shore, high atop an embankment overlooking the river, sat Wawel Castle, its roofs and cathedral spires bathed in sunrise gold. Its grandeur seemed a betrayal. For my entire life, I had worked and played, walked and lived in its shadows. I had felt protected by this fortress, which for centuries had been the seat of the Polish monarchy. Now it seemed I was being cast out. I was walking into a prison, and the castle seemed oblivious to my plight. Kraków, the City of Kings, was no longer mine. I had become a foreigner in the place I had always called home.

CHAPTER 3

From the foot of the bridge, I walked a few hundred meters along the granite wall of the ghetto. The top edge of the wall had been sculpted into arcs, each about two feet wide. Like tombstones, I thought, my stomach twisting. When I reached the entrance, an iron gate, I paused, inhaling deeply before approaching the Nazi guard. “Name?” he asked, before I could speak.

“I—I …” I stammered.

The guard looked up from his clipboard. “Name!” he barked.

“Gershmann, Emma,” I managed to say.

The guard scanned his list. “Not here.”

“No, but I think my parents are, Chaim and Reisa Gershmann.”

He looked again, turned to another page. “Yes. Twenty-one Limanowa Street, apartment six.”

“Then I want to be with them.” A look of surprise flashed across his face and he opened his mouth. He’s going to tell me I cannot come inside, I thought. For a moment, I felt almost relieved. But then, seeming to think better of it, the guard wrote my name beside my parents’ on the list and moved aside to let me enter. I hesitated, looking down the street in both directions before stepping into the ghetto. The gate slammed shut behind me.

Inside, a wall of human stench assaulted me and I had to fight the urge not to gag. Trying to take only shallow breaths through my mouth, I asked directions from a man, who pointed me toward Limanowa Street. As I made my way through the ghetto, I tried not to look at the gaunt, bedraggled passersby who stared at me, a new arrival, with unabashed curiosity. I turned onto Limanowa Street, stopping before the address the guard had given me. The building looked as though it had already been condemned. I opened the front door and climbed the stairs. When I reached the top floor, I hesitated, wiping my sweaty palms on my skirt. Through the rotting wood door of one of the apartments I could hear my mother’s voice. Tears sprang to my eyes. Until now, I hadn’t wanted to believe they were really here. I took a deep breath and knocked. “Nu?” I heard my father call. His footsteps grew louder, then the door opened. At the sight of me, his eyes grew wide. “Emmala!” he cried, throwing his enormous arms around me and hugging me so hard I thought we would both fall over.

Behind him, my mother clutched her apron, her eyes dark. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. When my father finally released me, she pulled me into the apartment.

Looking around, I shuddered inwardly: did they really live here? Small and dark and smelling dankly of mold, the single room with its lone cracked window made our modest Kazimierz apartment look like a palace in comparison. I could tell that my mother had tried to make the place habitable, fashioning pale yellow curtains to hang over the cloudy, cracked window and hanging sheets to divide the room into two parts, a makeshift bedroom and a tiny communal living area, barely big enough to hold three chairs and a small table. But it was still horrible.

“I came back to stay with you, but you were gone.” I could hear the accusing tone in my own voice: why hadn’t you told me where you had gone, or at least left a note?

“They gave us thirty minutes to leave,” my father said, pulling out two chairs for me and my mother to sit on. “There was no time to get word to you. Where’s Jacob?”

“His work,” I said simply. They nodded in unison, unsurprised. They were well aware of Jacob’s political activities. Aside from the fact that he was not Orthodox, it was the one thing they did not like about him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” my father fretted, pacing the floor. “We are older people. Probably no one will bother us. But it is the young people …” He did not have to finish the sentence. The young people were the ones being deported from Kraków. Those who received deportation orders in the ghetto were trapped, unable to run.

“I had nowhere else to go,” I replied.

“Well,” my mother said, taking my hand, “at least we are all together. Let’s get you settled.”

The next morning, I reported to the Jewish Administration Building to register with the Judenrat, the group of ghetto inhabitants designated by the Nazis to run the internal affairs of the ghetto. I was assigned to work in the ghetto orphanage. My parents had already received work assignments, and by some luck, they had also been given reasonable jobs, my father to the communal ghetto kitchen, where he could once again bake, my mother to the infirmary as a nurse’s aide. We had all managed to escape the dreaded work details, where Jews were forced to perform heavy manual labor outside the ghetto walls under the eyes of brutal Nazi guards.

I began working that afternoon. The orphanage was a small, two-story facility that the Judenrat had established on Josefinska Street. The inside was dark and overcrowded, but a tiny grass enclosure behind the nursery gave the children, mostly toddlers, a place to play. It housed about thirty children, virtually all of whom had lost their parents since the start of the war. I enjoyed watching them. Aside from being woefully thin from the meager ghetto rations, they were still children, oblivious to the war, their abysmal surroundings and the dire situation of having no parents to care for them in an uncaring world.

Yet despite the small amount of pleasure I took in my job, I thought constantly of Jacob. Surrounded by children, I was often reminded of the family we might have started by then, if not for the war. At night I played back our moments together in my head, our courtship, our wedding, and after. The nights had been few and dear enough that I could remember every single one. Staring up at the low ceiling of our apartment, I thought guiltily, defiantly, of sex, of the silent, unexpected joys that Jacob had fleetingly taught me. Where was Jacob? I worried each night as I lay in bed, and whom he was with? There must be girls in the resistance, yet Jacob had not asked me to join him. I wondered with shame not if Jacob was hurt or warm enough, but whether he was faithful, or if some braver, bolder woman had stolen his heart.

I was lonely not just for Jacob but for other company, too. My parents, overwhelmed by the twelve-hour work shifts spent almost entirely on their feet, had little energy to do more than eat their rations and crawl into bed at day’s end. The ghetto had taken a tremendous toll on both of my parents in the short time they had been there; it was as if they had aged overnight. My father, once hearty and strong, seemed to move with great effort. My mother moved more slowly, too, dark circles ringing her eyes. Her rich, chestnut mane of hair was now brittle and streaked with gray. I knew that she slept little. Some nights, as I lay in bed, I could hear her muffled sobs through the curtain that separated our sleep quarters. “Reisa, Reisa,” my father repeated, trying unsuccessfully to reassure her. Her cries unsettled me. My mother had grown up in the small village of Przemysl in a region to the east known as the Pale, which had been under Russian control prior to the Great War and was subject to intense, sudden outbursts of violence against its Jewish inhabitants. She had seen houses burned, livestock taken, had witnessed the murder of those who offered a hint of resistance. It was the violence of the pogroms that had caused her to flee west to Kraków, after her parents had succumbed to illness brought on by the brutal living conditions. She had managed to survive, but she knew just how afraid we all ought to be.

The other women who worked in the orphanage were not much company, either. In their fifties and older, and mostly from the villages, they were not unkind, but the work of bathing, feeding and minding so many children left little room for conversation. The closest I came to a friend at the orphanage was Hadassa Nederman, a heavy-set widow from the nearby village of Bochnia. Round-faced and perpetually smiling, she always had time for a kind word or a joke. Most days, after the children had gone down for their afternoon naps, we would share a few moments of conversation over our watery afternoon tea, and though I could not tell her about Jacob, she seemed to sense my loneliness.

One day when I had been working in the nursery for about two months, Pani Nederman came to me, leading a dark-haired girl with her same thick-waisted build by the hand. “Emma, this is my daughter, Marta.”

“Hello!” Marta cried exuberantly, drawing me into a bear hug as though we were old friends. I liked her instantly. A few years younger than me, she had bright eyes that leapt out from behind her improbably large spectacles and wild dark curls that sprung from her head in all directions. She smiled and talked nonstop. Marta’s job in the ghetto was to serve as a messenger for the Judenrat, delivering notes and packages within and sometimes outside the ghetto.

“You must come to our Shabbes dinner,” she declared after we had spoken for a few minutes.

“Your family’s?” I asked, puzzled. People seldom admitted observing the Sabbath in the ghetto, much less invited guests to join them.

She shook her head. “My friends and I have a gathering every Friday night. It is just over there.” She pointed to a building across the street from the orphanage. “I checked ahead of time, when my mother told me about you. They said it is all right for you to come.”

I hesitated, thinking of my parents. Shabbes in the ghetto was just the three of us, but we observed it together every week. My father would smuggle a tiny loaf of forbidden challah out of the ghetto kitchen, and my mother would burn a small amount of our precious remaining candles on a saucer, the candlesticks having been left behind in Kazimierz. Though weary from their long, grueling workweeks, my parents always seemed renewed on Friday nights. Their backs would straighten and the color would return a bit to their cheeks as they chanted the Sabbath prayers in hushed but unwavering voices. We would sit together for hours, sharing the anecdotes we were too tired to relate on other days. I hated to think of leaving them alone, even for a single Friday.

“I’ll try,” I promised Marta, thinking that it was unlikely I would go. In truth, it was not just my parents that concerned me; I was shy, and the thought of walking into a room full of strangers made me nervous. But as the week progressed, I found myself wanting to go with Marta. Finally, on Thursday night, I mentioned it to my parents.

“Go,” they replied at the same time, their faces lifting. “You need some company your own age.”

The next afternoon, when my shift at the orphanage was ending and the children had all been fed, Marta appeared at the door unannounced. “Ready?” she asked, as though my attendance at the dinner had never been in question. Together we walked across the street to Josefinska 13.

Marta led me up a flight of dimly lit stairs and through an unlocked door. The room we entered was long and narrow, with a kitchen off to the right side and another door at the far end. The faded, frayed curtains were drawn. A long wooden table occupied most of the room, surrounded by mismatched chairs. Marta introduced me to the dozen or so young people already gathered in the room, some seated at the table, others milling around. I couldn’t remember most of their names, but it didn’t seem to matter. Newcomers, it appeared, were not unusual, and I forgot to be nervous among the friendly banter. I recognized a few of the people from around the ghetto, but they looked like entirely different people from the somber characters I had seen on the streets. Here, they were energized, talking and laughing with friends as though at a party a million miles from the ghetto.

A few minutes later, someone rang a small bell. As if on cue, everyone quieted and gathered around the table to find seats. Marta led me to two empty places at the end of the table by the front door. Looking around, I counted at least eighteen people. It seemed there would not be room for so many, but everyone jostled and squeezed in. We stood shoulder to shoulder with the others at our respective places in silence.

The door at the far end of the room opened and two men entered. One was stocky and appeared to be in his early twenties, the other slightly taller and older with a trim goatee. They stood at the places that had been left empty at the head of the table. A young woman standing beside the older man lit the candles. The gathering watched in silence as she circled the flames with her hands three times, reciting the Sabbath prayer.

“That’s Alek Landesberg,” Marta whispered, gesturing toward the older man. “He sort of leads this group.”

“Shalom aleichem,” the man began to sing in a rich baritone, and the group all joined in the traditional welcome to the Sabbath. I looked around the table. The faces had been unknown to me an hour ago. Now, bathed in candlelight, they looked as familiar as family. As they sang, their voices rose and formed a tapestry that seemed to separate this place from the horrible, desolate world outside. Tears came to my eyes. Marta, noticing my reaction, squeezed my hand.

When the song was over, we sat down and Alek raised a rusted wineglass and said the kiddush blessing. He then said the motze over the challah before sprinkling salt on it, cutting it and passing it around. The bread was clearly not from the ghetto kitchen; it had a thick crust and a soft inside that reminded me of father’s bakery. As soon as the plate had passed by, I regretted not managing to take an extra piece to take to my parents. Then several girls stood and went to the kitchen and emerged with steaming pots, from which they ladled generous spoonfuls of chicken stock, carrots and potatoes into our bowls. My stomach rumbled. This, too, was obviously not ghetto food.

Throughout the meal, people chattered nonstop. They were friendly, but self-absorbed, and there were many inside jokes, teasing and nicknames that no one bothered to explain to me. I listened with interest as Marta talked over me with the girl to my right about various boys, and then debated with two boys to her left whether the United States would enter the war. I did not mind that no one addressed me directly or asked me questions. At the head of the table, I could see the man who had chanted the prayers looking in my direction. He whispered something to the stocky, younger man on his left. I could feel my cheeks growing flushed in the crowded, too-hot room.

After dinner, as the girls served strong, black coffee in cracked cups with mismatched saucers, a young man produced a guitar and began to play. People pushed back from the table and reclined in their chairs, looking as happy and relaxed as though they were at a spa in Krynice for a summer holiday. We sang and listened for hours to the Yiddish and Hebrew songs, including some that I had not heard in years. Finally, when Marta and I dared stay no longer for fear of the curfew, we thanked the others and left.

From that night onward, I returned to the apartment on Josefinska Street every Friday. I tried to shrug off the guilt I felt at not spending the Sabbath with my parents. For those brief few hours each week, I could forget where I was and all that was going on around me. Shabbes dinner became the highlight of my week.

One Friday night, when I had been coming to Shabbes dinner at Josefinska 13 for about six weeks, Helga, the woman who cooked the dinner each week, approached Marta and me as the evening was ending and we were putting on our coats. “Alek would like to see you,” she said, addressing me.

My stomach jumped. Marta flashed me a questioning look. I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “You don’t have to wait for me,” I told her. The woman gestured toward the door at the back of the room. I approached nervously, wondering if perhaps I had done something to offend Alek. But when I knocked on the half-open door, he waved me in affably.

The back room was less than half the size of the front, with a small table covered in papers, a few chairs and a cot. “Emma, I’m Alek,” he said warmly, extending his hand. I shook it, surprised he knew my name. Alek introduced the man who had been seated beside him at dinner. “This is Marek.” The other man nodded and, gathering a stack of papers from the table, excused himself from the room. “Have a seat.” I perched on the edge of the chair Alek had indicated. Up close, I could see the dark circles and fine lines around his eyes. “I apologize for not introducing myself sooner, but I have had pressing business.” I wondered what kind of business one could have in the ghetto. “Emma, let me be blunt.” He lowered his voice. “We have a mutual friend.” His eyebrows lifted. “A very close friend. From the university.”

Alek knows Jacob, I realized, my heart leaping. I was unable to control the flash of recognition that crossed my face. Then, regaining my composure, I started to protest. “I … I don’t know what you’re …

“Don’t worry.” He raised his hand to silence me. “I am the only one who knows.” He continued, “I heard about you from him some time ago, saw your picture.” I blushed. He was referring to our wedding photo, the same one that Krysia had hidden. I knew Jacob had a copy, but I didn’t realize he had shown it to anyone. Did he still have it? I wondered. How long ago had he shown it to this man? “He asked me to keep an eye out in case you arrived here,” Alex explained. “I didn’t know who you were until you came here recently. We do the same work, you see, your friend and I.” I realized then that Alek was also part of the resistance movement.

“Have you …?” I didn’t dare to finish the question.

“We occasionally have word from him, usually through our messengers, since of course he cannot come to the ghetto. I will send word that we’ve made contact and that you are all right.”

“Please, it would mean a great deal to me.” He nodded. I hesitated before speaking again. “Can I help, too … with the work, I mean?”

Alek shook his head firmly. “I’m sorry, but no. Our friend thought that you might ask, and he made it very clear that you were not to become involved. He is concerned for your safety.”

“I wish he was a little less concerned with my safety and a little more with his own.” I was surprised at the forcefulness of my own words.

Alek eyed me sternly. “Your husband is a great fighter, Emma. You should be very proud.”

“I am,” I replied, chastised.

“Good. For the time being, I will respect his wishes and keep you uninvolved. But—” he paused, stroking his goatee “—you are your own person, and if you wish to help, the time may come when you can be of use to us. As you can see, many women are involved.” He gestured to the larger room and I realized for the first time that the others at the Shabbes gathering, including Marta, were actually part of the resistance. “Meanwhile, you are always welcome here. Of course, the others cannot know who you are—your marriage must remain a secret. I just wanted to make contact and let you know about our connection.”

“Thank you.” I grasped Alek’s arm, a wave of relief and gratitude washing over me. He nodded and smiled warmly, then turned back to his paperwork in a manner that, while not rude, told me that our conversation was over and it was time for me to go. I crossed back through the apartment and out the door, almost dancing. Alek knew Jacob and he knew about our marriage. For the first time since my husband had disappeared, I did not feel completely alone.

CHAPTER 4

The Monday after my conversation with Alek, Marta appeared at the orphanage as my shift ended. I was not surprised to see her; she had dropped by almost every day in the time since we’d become friends. “I have to return the kettle to the kitchen,” I told her. Each morning, the central kitchen in the ghetto delivered a large vat of soup to the orphanage for the children. The broth was always pale and watery, with only tiny flecks of potato or cabbage. The meager cup that each child was allotted as one of two meals each day was not nearly enough; Pani Nederman and I and some of the other orphanage staff would share our own rations with the children whenever possible.

“I’ll walk with you,” Marta offered. “Okay.” I pulled my coat from the hook on the door. We said goodbye to Marta’s mother and headed out onto the snow-covered street. The winter air was crisp, but the bitter wind that had been blowing when I’d arrived at work that morning had died down.

“What did you and Alek talk about Friday night, anyway?” she asked as we turned left onto Lwowska Street and walked along the inside perimeter of the ghetto wall. I could tell that she was a little jealous that he had singled me out for conversation.

“Just about a mutual acquaintance,” I replied evenly, not looking at her.

“Oh.” Seemingly placated by my answer, she did not speak for several minutes. “Did you have a boyfriend before the war?” she asked abruptly as we approached the brick warehouse that served as the central kitchen.

I hesitated, uncertain how to answer. I did not enjoy deceiving Marta about my marriage. I had never had a girlfriend to confide in before and I desperately wanted to tell her about Jacob, to share my memories and make them come alive. Perhaps she had even met him through the resistance. But I had promised Jacob I would tell no one of our marriage. He, and Alek, too, had said it would not be safe to do so. “No one special,” I answered at last. My heart twisted at having to deny Jacob’s existence, our love for each other.

“So there were several!” She giggled. I shook my head, suppressing a laugh at the notion of my having multiple suitors; before Jacob, there had been no one.

“I think Alek fancies you,” she whispered, after I handed the empty kettle to the woman at the back door of the kitchen.

“Marta, he’s married!” And so am I, I thought. If only she knew the truth. I liked Alek, but mostly because he was my one connection to Jacob. We began the walk back. “And you?” I asked, eager to change the subject. “Have you met anyone in your travels as a messenger?” She looked away and did not answer, a faint blush creeping upward from her neck.

“There is someone,” she confessed in a low voice.

“Aha!” I exclaimed. “I knew it. Tell me about him.”

“He’s one of us.” I knew she meant the resistance movement. Her voice grew wistful. “But he doesn’t notice me.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “Perhaps he will someday. Give it time.” It began to rain then, thick, heavy drops that signaled the coming of a larger storm. We ran for cover back to the orphanage and spoke no more about it.

I thought about my conversation with Marta several weeks later, as I stood in the kitchen of our apartment, trying to wash linens in the impossibly small sink. It was a Thursday afternoon and I was home alone, enjoying a rare moment of solitude. Normally I worked days at the orphanage, but I had swapped shifts with another girl, agreeing to work the following Sunday instead. I remembered Marta asking me if I had a boyfriend, if I had dated anyone special. Perhaps she knew about Jacob, I mused, and was trying to get me to admit it.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by a loud knocking sound in the alleyway below. I jumped, splashing soapy water everywhere. Wiping the water from my dress, I leaned forward. Through the window over the sink, I heard a woman’s voice, high pitched and desperate, a man’s low and angry. I stepped to one side of the sink, pressing myself against the wall so I could look out the window without being seen. From this vantage point, I could just make out two figures below. I was alarmed to see a man in a Nazi uniform standing in the doorway of the apartment building across the alley. The Nazis, afraid of disease, seldom came inside the ghetto, preferring instead to let the Judenrat run internal, daily affairs. He was arguing with a blond woman I did not recognize. She was tiny but thick around the middle, and I could tell even from where I stood that she was several months pregnant. “Prosze,” I heard her plead.

The voices continued arguing. Though I could not make out most of their words, I surmised that she was trying to keep the soldier from entering the apartment. The woman is very brave, I thought. She must be hiding something important.

At last, the Nazi said something and shoved the woman aside harshly. She hit the door frame and fell to the ground with a thud, motionless. The Nazi stepped over her and into the building. Loud crashing noises arose from inside the apartment, as though furniture was being thrown. Moments later, the Nazi reemerged, grasping a small, religious-looking man by the collar.

The woman on the ground seemed to instantly revive. She wrapped her arms around the Nazi’s ankles, seemingly oblivious to any danger to herself. “Don’t take him!” she pled. The Nazi tried to shake the woman from his ankles, but she would not let go. As the woman continued to beg, the small man’s eyes darted around, like a trapped animal looking for an escape. His gaze shot upward and I ducked back from the window, fearful that he might see me.

The voices rose louder. A shot rang out. I froze. It was the first time in my life I had heard that sound.

Now it was the man who cried out, his wail almost as high pitched as the woman’s had been. Unable to keep from looking, I stepped in front of the window. The woman lay motionless on the ground, her eyes open, her head ringed by a halo of blood. One arm lay draped protectively over her full, round stomach. The Nazi dragged the screaming man from the alley.

I ducked my head and vomited into the sink, great heaving waves of hatred and despair. When at last my stomach spasms subsided, I wiped my mouth and looked back out the window.

The door of the apartment was still ajar. In the doorway, I saw something move. It was a child, not more than three years old, with the same blond hair as the woman’s. The child stood motionless in the doorway, his blue eyes luminous as he stared at the woman’s lifeless form.

A set of hands shot out of the doorway and snatched the child back inside. The door slammed shut, leaving the dead woman like unwanted refuse on the pavement.

I sank to the kitchen floor, trembling and weak, the taste of bile still heavy in my mouth. Until now, I realized, it had been easy to stick my head in the sand like an ostrich, to pretend that the ghetto was just another neighborhood and that the violence and killing were isolated incidents far away. Though we had heard rumors, stories of brutal executions in the forests and even in the street, we had wanted to believe these accounts were exaggerated. Now it was no longer just a rumor from Tarnów or Kielce. The killing had come home.

I spent the rest of the day trying to compose myself, to block out what I had seen. My parents had enough to worry about, and I did not intend to upset them with the news. But others in our apartment block had seen or heard the commotion, and the story spread quickly. When my parents arrived home that night, the shooting in the alleyway was all they could talk about. At dinner, I listened to them describe thirdhand accounts of the events that had taken place next door. Finally, I could hold back no longer. “I saw it!” I burst out, weeping. “I saw everything.” Stunned, my parents looked at me in silence. My father came to my side then. My mother disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a cup of steaming tea. With shaking hands, I recounted for them exactly what I had seen earlier that day. “And the woman was with child, too,” I added. My father blanched—that was the one detail that had not made it to the ghetto rumor mill. “What had she done to deserve that, Papa?” I asked, sniffling. “Just because she was a Jew?”

“Her husband, the man they took, was Aaron Izakowicz, a rabbi from Lublin,” my father replied. “He is descended from a very great rabbinic family, dating back centuries. Pan Halkowski told me that he had arrived with his wife and child a few days ago. I had no idea they were staying so close by. The Nazis knew that his presence in the ghetto surely would have buoyed the spirit of our people here. That is probably why he was arrested.” He shook his head. “Such a loss.” My father spoke as though the man was already dead.

“Surely they would not kill such a respected and famous man.” But even as I said this, I knew that nothing could be further from the truth.

“They killed his wife.” It was my mother who spoke then, and there was a harshness to her voice that I had never heard before. They killed his wife. His pregnant wife, I added silently. The words echoed in my head as I lay awake that night, seeing the hollow eyes of the blond-haired child before me.

The next Friday afternoon, Marta did not come for me. “She has a cold,” Pani Nederman had informed me a few hours earlier. As we bathed and fed the children that afternoon, I deliberated whether I would go to Shabbes dinner without her. The thought of walking into the gathering alone terrified me; even though I had been going for months, I still thought of myself largely as Marta’s guest, rather than as someone who belonged. At five o’clock, I put on my coat and stepped out onto the street. Straining my head to the right, I could see the soft lights behind the yellow curtains at Josefinska 13. My heart twisted as I imagined not being there, going home to our cold, quiet apartment instead. Suddenly, my mind was made up. I crossed the street and entered the building. I climbed the steps and, inhaling deeply, knocked timidly on the door. When no one answered, I entered the apartment.

“Dobry wieczor, Emma,” Helga greeted me from the kitchen as I entered.

“Dobry wieczor,” I replied. “Do you need help?”

She shook her head. “No, but it would be great if you could stay afterward and help clean up. Katya is sick with the flu.”

“I can help. Marta is sick, too,” I added. I turned from the kitchen to the main room. A dozen or so people were already there, the faces familiar to me after a few weeks of visits. “Emma, come join us,” a boy named Piotrek called out, and I soon found myself listening to a story about a one-legged shoe salesman that I somehow doubted was true. It didn’t matter; I was grateful just to be treated as one of them. A few minutes later, a bell rang, Alek and Marek came out, and the weekly ritual began. I enjoyed the dinner, surrounded by the people I had come to know, but it wasn’t the same without Marta beside me to whisper and share confidences.

The crowd thinned out after dessert, with only a handful of us remaining behind to clean up. Alek, Marek and a third man, whom I had noticed at dinner but did not recognize, retreated to the back room. As I cleared the dishes from the table, I noticed that the door to the room was ajar. Curious, I found myself lingering by the door as I cleared the end of the table nearest to it. Edging closer, I could hear the men arguing. “… the railway line outside Plaszow,” I heard Marek say.

“It’s too soon,” Alek replied. “We need to build up the provisions first.”

“We have two dozen guns, a hundred bullets, some grenades …” Marek protested.

“Not enough.”

The stranger spoke then. “In Warsaw, they are organizing within the ghetto.”

“Warsaw is different. The movement, the ghetto itself, everything is bigger,” Alek said.

“If only Minka can get …”

“Emma,” Helga said, coming up behind me and making me jump. “Do you need help with those plates?”

“N-no, thank you,” I stammered, afraid she had caught me listening. I balanced a stack of plates on my forearm and made my way to the kitchen. As I placed the dishes in the sink and turned the tap on, I heard the door to the back room creak and the men still talking as they made their way to the front door. Alek paused at the kitchen entrance and whispered something to Helga. The three men exited the apartment.

A few minutes later, as I was drying the plates, Helga came over to the sink. “I’ll finish this,” she said, taking the towel from my hands. “Would you mind taking out the garbage on your way down?” She pointed to two bags by the kitchen door. I thanked her and bid the others good-night.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and found the back door leading out to the alley. Outside, it was pitch black. I blinked several times, trying to adjust my eyes to the light, before feeling for the step downward. It was a deeper step than I had thought, and icy. I stumbled, almost dropping the garbage bags in the process. “Oh, oh!” I cried.

“Careful,” a deep voice said from the shadows.

I jumped, caught off guard. Then I recognized the voice. “Alek!” I gasped. “What are you doing here? You frightened me.”

“Shhh,” he whispered, taking the bags from me and setting them by the garbage cans. “Come here.” He grabbed my sleeve. He must have asked Helga to have me bring down the garbage in order to speak with me, I realized, as he led me to the far corner of the alley where two buildings met. What did he want? Had I done something to make him mad? I wondered if he had seen me listening by the door. “I have a message.” His voice did not sound angry. He pressed a tiny crumpled slip of paper into my hand.

My heart leapt. “From Jacob?” I asked, my voice rising.

“Shh!” he admonished. He lit a match. “Read it quickly.” I unfolded the paper.

Dearest love,

I am well. I miss you more than you know. Take care of yourself, and do not give up. Help is coming.

Emmeth

There was no signature. Emmeth was the code word Jacob and I had chosen before his disappearance; it was Hebrew for truth. I read the note over and over, until the match threatened to burn Alek’s fingers and he was forced to blow it out. “I don’t understand. Is he near?”

“No, quite the opposite. That note traveled many hundreds of kilometers to reach you.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Alek replied sharply. “He is safe, that is all you need to know.”

“But …” A million questions raced through my mind.

“He is on a … procurement mission,” he said. “Getting things that are very important to us. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

I suddenly realized that my husband was the man about whom they had been speaking in the back room. “Minka?” I asked, forgetting I was not supposed to have heard.

“Yes. Outside the ghetto, we refer to one another by our aliases for safety’s sake. But you should not have been listening to our conversation. Believe me when I say that the less you know, the better.”

“I understand.” But I didn’t really. My mind whirled. Where was Jacob? Was he okay? What did his note mean?

“Your husband has a talent for getting things, for finding what we need and persuading people to help us.” I smiled at this, imagining Jacob’s imploring expression and cajoling tone. I could never refuse him anything, or stay mad at him when he looked at me like that. Alek continued, “He also knows a great deal about guns and munitions.” I realized then how very little I knew about the man I had married. “All right then.” Alek reached over and took the paper from my hand. “You can’t keep that. I’m sorry.” I watched in dismay as he lit another match and held it to the corner of the note.

“But …” I started to protest. Then I stopped, knowing he was right. If the paper was somehow found and traced to Jacob, it could be dangerous. I thought of our marriage certificate and rings, hidden in a book underneath my mattress in our apartment. Nobody knew that I still had them.

“Emma, I know this is difficult for you,” Alek said when the paper was gone and the flame extinguished. The air around us was dark and cold once more. “You must have faith. Jacob is okay, and you are not alone. At least you have your family.” His voice sounded hollow as he said the last part.

“What about you, Alek?” I could not help but ask. I knew only from what Marta had told me that he had a wife and that she was not in the ghetto.

“My family lived in Tarnów before the war.” His voice was flat. “My parents weren’t fighters. They were terribly afraid. The night before the Nazis came for us, they lay down in bed, took something. The next morning they were dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said helplessly.

“And my wife is not in the ghetto,” he added. I could not tell from his tone if he considered this a good thing.

“So you are alone here?”

“Yes, except for my cousin, Helga.” Surprised, I pictured the round-faced cook in my mind. I had not known they were related. “So you see, I understand what you are feeling being away from Jacob. We have to be patient.” I nodded. “Okay, hurry home now. I promise to let you know if I hear anything more about him.”

If, I thought. Not when. “Thank you, Alek.” I reached up and kissed him awkwardly on the cheek, then turned and walked quickly from the alley. On the way home, I puzzled over all I had learned. Jacob was traveling somewhere, getting weapons for the resistance. I shuddered. It sounded terribly dangerous. But at least he is alive, or was when he sent the note to me. My thoughts shifted to Alek. He, too, was separated from the person that he loved. And he was the head of the resistance, yet his own parents had given up, refused to fight. I considered my own parents, who kept going day after day. Suddenly, their simple acts of getting up each morning, of putting one foot in front of the other, seemed remarkably courageous. They did it, I knew, for me. As I reached the safety of our apartment, a wave of gratitude washed over me, and I had to fight the urge to go over to their mattress and hug them as they slept.

I undressed and lay awake in bed, thinking of Jacob and the note. Alek had been unwilling to tell me where he was, but I had seen the piece of envelope on which it was written. The postmark was from Warsaw. It didn’t mean that he was there, but maybe … I shivered. The one place that was more dangerous than Kraków. And his message: help is coming. The words echoed in my head until my eyes grew heavy and I fell into a deep sleep.

That night I dreamed I was with Jacob in the mountains. It was bitterly cold and we were being chased by wolves through deep snow. My feet had gone numb. The harder I ran, the slower I moved, until at last I was several hundred meters behind but he did not notice. “Jacob!” I cried, but he was too far ahead to hear me. One of the wolves leapt at me and I fell, screaming.

I awoke with a start. A floorboard creaked. It was just a dream, I told myself, drawing the blankets closer. But I could not fall back to sleep. On the other side of the curtain, my mother snored. The floor creaked again, louder this time. A shadow appeared suddenly by my bed. I sat up, but before I could react, a hand clamped over my mouth.

“Quiet!” a strange voice whispered. “I’m not here to hurt you.” Panicked, I struggled to break free, but the stranger’s grip was too strong. “Stop it! Alek sent me.” I could make out the stranger’s face faintly in the darkness. He was the man who had been arguing with Alek and Marek in the back room after dinner. “Emmeth,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Emmeth.” I relaxed slightly as the stranger repeated my and Jacob’s code word. I realized then that it was Jacob, most likely through Alek, who had sent this stranger to me.

“Who …?” I started to ask as he released his hand from my mouth.

“Shh! There’s no time. Get dressed.” I leapt up. Maybe Alek had at last found a way for me to help, I thought as I hurriedly put on my work dress over my nightgown. Perhaps Jacob needed me. I climbed into my boots and coat, and followed the stranger toward the door of our apartment. A few feet before the door, I paused by the curtain that separated my parents’ bed from mine. I drew back the curtain. My parents were sleeping soundly, my father’s large arm wrapped protectively around my mother.

“Come,” the stranger whispered harshly, tugging at my arm. I let the curtain drop and followed him from the apartment. The stairway was dark, and each step creaked beneath our feet. At last, we reached the ground and stepped out the back door of the apartment building.

Taking my hand, the stranger led me through the back alleyways of the ghetto. The streets, slick with frozen moisture, were empty except for several large rats scurrying between the gutters. A few minutes later, we reached a corner of the ghetto I had never before seen. There, a crack no more than twelve inches wide separated two sections of the outer wall. Looking furtively from side to side, the stranger pushed me ahead of him, and I realized he meant for me to fit through the hole. I sucked in my breath and held it, forcing myself into the hole. Halfway through, I could go no farther. “I’m stuck,” I whispered, panicking. The Nazis would surely find me here, trapped. I felt the stranger’s arms on me, pushing me hard from behind. The rough stone edges scraped my skin and threatened to tear my clothes. Finally, I broke free and found myself standing on the other side of the wall. Grunting, the stranger then squeezed through behind me.

Grabbing my arm, the stranger pulled me into an alleyway, then peered out onto the street in both directions. “Come,” he mouthed silently, tilting his head to the right. He began to walk with small, swift steps, hugging the side of the building, remaining in the shadows. I obeyed, following as quickly and quietly as I could. At that moment, shocked and confused, I did not realize I had just escaped from the ghetto.

CHAPTER 5

Without speaking, the stranger led me through the empty back streets of Podgorze. I struggled to keep up and to mimic his swift, silent footsteps. My mind switched continuously between bewilderment, a sense of wonder of being outside and terror that we would be caught at any moment. Even our smoky breath threatened to betray us in the cold night air. Finally, the houses thinned and gave way to industrial warehouses. The paved road became dirt, then a crooked, snow-covered path leading into the forest.

Only when we had been enveloped by the trees did the stranger speak. “I’m a friend of Alek’s.” He paused. “And Jacob’s.” He did not slow or turn to face me. “They sent me to take you away.”

“To Jacob?” My voice rose with excitement.

“Shh!” The stranger stopped and looked around. “Not to him. I’m sorry,” he said, seeing my face fall. “He wanted to come himself but it would not be safe.”

Not safe. Nothing was safe. “Then where?”

“No more questions. Trust me. Emmeth,” he repeated, as though his knowledge of my and Jacob’s secret word would magically invoke obedience within me. “I am sorry that we have to walk so far. To do otherwise would attract too much attention.”

“It feels good to be out walking,” I said, though in truth my toes were a bit numb. Then I froze in my tracks. “I’m not coming back, am I?”

“No.”

My heart sank. “But my parents …”

“I will make sure word gets to them that you are safe. But it is better for them if they know little.”

I pictured my parents as I had last seen them, sleeping peacefully. Then I imagined them waking up and finding me gone. I had not had the chance to say goodbye. I opened my mouth to say that I would not leave them, but the stranger had already begun walking once more and I had no choice but to follow him or be left behind. It was nearly dawn, I realized, as fine cracks of light began to appear in the eggshell night sky. Looking around at the seemingly unfamiliar route, I recognized then a small wooden church in a clearing. We were in Las Wolski, the forest to the west of the city. I knew then where I was going. “Pani Smok …?” I recalled that Jacob’s aunt, Krysia Smok, lived on the far side of Las Wolski. The stranger, still moving, nodded. “But won’t I put her in danger?”

“There are papers. You will not be the same person.” My mind raced, overwhelmed by the flood of events and information, but there was little time to wonder. The stranger moved swiftly, and I fought to keep up and not trip on the stones and tree roots that littered our path.

As we cut through the forest, I pictured Jacob’s aunt. I had first met Krysia at a dinner at the Baus’ apartment a few weeks before Jacob and I were married. I remember dressing for the occasion as though I was to be introduced to royalty. Krysia was legendary in Kraków, both as the wife of the cellist, Marcin Smok, and as a social figure in her own right. But when we were introduced, Krysia proved to be as unpredictable as she was regal, skipping the traditional three airy kisses on the cheek and drawing me into a firm embrace. “I can see why you love her so,” she exclaimed to a blushing Jacob.

Krysia’s warm reception of me seemed ironic when I considered that she was not even a Jew, but a devout Catholic. Her marriage to Mrs. Bau’s brother, Marcin, had been an enormous source of controversy and scandal—interfaith marriage was simply unheard of, even for the secular Bau family. Marcin and Krysia had eloped to Paris and the Baus shunned the couple for several years thereafter. Only when Jacob was born did Mrs. Bau, who had lost both of her parents to disease at an early age and had few other relatives, soften and decide to forgive Marcin for the sake of her son.

I quickly understood why Jacob adored Krysia—her mix of elegance and unpredictability was irresistible. The child of diplomats who had refused to consign her to boarding school, Krysia had grown up in places I had only read about: Rome, London, Paris. When she married Marcin, they settled in Kraków, and while he continued to travel and perform, Krysia made their home in the city. Their two-story apartment on Basztowa Street quickly became a hub for the city’s cultural elite, with Krysia throwing lavish parties at which she introduced some of Poland’s most promising artists and musicians to those who would become lifelong sponsors and patrons. Yet despite her prominent social role, Krysia shunned convention: she could just as easily be found in one of Kraków’s many cavernous brick cellar taverns, drinking shots of ice-cold potato vodka and debating politics late into the night, as attending the opera or a charity ball.

Krysia and Marcin remained childless; Jacob once told me that he did not know whether this was by choice or by nature. Marcin had died in 1932 after a two-year struggle with cancer. After his death, Krysia sold their apartment in the city center and retreated permanently to their weekend home at Chelmska. There, Krysia mixed solitude with sociability, enjoying the quiet of her garden during the week while continuing to throw dinner parties for those who came to call on the weekends. It was to this house that the stranger was now taking me.

Soon the forest path began to slope downward and the trees grew thinner. A few minutes later, we emerged from the woods. Below us lay the farmhouses of the Chelmska neighborhood. As we started down the road, a rooster’s crowing, then a dog’s bark cut through the silence, threatening to betray our presence. The stranger placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and we froze behind a large bush until the noises subsided. Looking carefully to make sure the way was clear, the stranger led me across the road and around the back of one of the larger houses. He knocked on the door, almost inaudibly. A second later, the back door opened and there, in the dim light, stood Krysia Smok. Before her larger-than-life presence, I felt shamed by my worn clothes and unkempt hair, but she reached out and drew me through the door and into her arms. Her scent, a mix of cinnamon and apples, reminded me of Jacob.

“Kochana,” she said, stroking my hair softly. I stood in her embrace without moving for several moments. Then, remembering the stranger, I turned to thank him, but he was gone.

“Are you tired?” Krysia closed the door and drew me up the stairs into the parlor to a seat beside the fire. I shook my head. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared and I could hear her footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the third floor, followed by the sound of running water overhead. I looked around the room in bewilderment. On the mantel over the fireplace, there were several framed photographs. I stood and walked toward them. Jacob as a child. Jacob and I on our wedding day. Jacob. It was so strange being there without him.

A few minutes later, Krysia reappeared. “You need a warm bath,” she said, placing a large mug of tea on the low table in front of me. “I’m sorry we had to do it this way, there was no choice.”

I buried my head in my hands. “My parents …”

“I know.” She came to stand by my side, and her spicy scent wafted over me once more. “There was no way to get all of you out together. They will be happy to know that you are safe. And we will do what we can to help them from outside.”

I began sobbing, the months of despair catching up with me at last. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, ashamed. Krysia did not reply but simply put her arm around my shoulder and led me upstairs to the bathroom, where fresh nightclothes had been laid out beside the steaming water. When she left, I undressed and stepped into my first real bath in months. I scrubbed from head to toe, washing my hair twice, and lingered until the water had gone cold and brown with dirt.

When I emerged, relaxed and almost too exhausted to stand, Krysia led me to a bedroom. I stared in amazement at the vase of fresh gardenias on the nightstand: did such things really still exist in the world? “Sleep now,” she said, turning back the duvet to reveal crisp white sheets. “I promise that in the morning, I’ll explain everything.”

After months on my straw ghetto pallet, the thick mattress and soft linens felt like a dream. Despite all that had happened that night, I fell quickly into a deep sleep.

I awoke the next morning, confused. Looking around the elegant bedroom, I wondered for a second if I was back in the room I had shared with Jacob at the Baus’. Suddenly, the events of the night before came rushing back to me. I’m at Krysia’s, I remembered, looking out at the forest and wondering how long I had been asleep. The sun was already well across the sky. I went downstairs to the kitchen where Krysia stood at the stove. “I’m sorry to have slept so long,” I apologized.

“Sleep was exactly what you needed. That, and a good meal.” She gestured to a platter of freshly cut fruit on the table. “Sit down.” I sat, hoping she could not hear the loud rumbling of my stomach. She placed a glass of orange juice, thick with pulp, before me. “I am told that your disappearance has already been explained to your parents, and that another girl is taking your place at the orphanage so you will not be missed.” I was both relieved and intensely curious: how did Krysia know such things?

I hesitated, wanting to ask her about Jacob. “The Baus?” I inquired instead, when she had set a plate of eggs in front of me and sat down.

Krysia shook her head. “I heard from them about two months ago. Nothing since. They are fine, although living not in Fania’s usual style.” I detected a wry note in her voice. I nodded. Polish money, even a great deal of it, surely would not go that far in Switzerland, and I knew that much of the Baus’ wealth was inaccessible to them because of the war. “They wanted to contact you themselves, but they were afraid to draw attention to the fact that you were related.”

“Their home …” My stomach twisted at the thought of their grand home.

“It was occupied by a high-ranking Nazi official last spring. The Baus know, or have guessed.” She placed her hand over mine. “There was nothing you could have done to stop it. Now eat.” I obeyed, forgetting my manners and washing down enormous bites of eggs and fruit with mouthfuls of juice. But as I savored the meal, my stomach twisted at the thought of my parents, left behind with only ghetto rations.

“Your name,” Krysia began when I had finished eating, “is Anna Lipowski. You were raised in the northern city of Gdansk but your parents died in the early days of the war and you have come to live with me, your aunt Krysia.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “I don’t understand …”

“You are to live as a gentile, outwardly and openly,” she replied matter-of-factly. “It is the only way. It is impossible to hide Jews in the city, and the countryside is even worse. You are fair-skinned and can easily pass for a Pole. And with the exception of your former coworkers at the university, whom you will avoid, anyone who would have known you as a Jew is gone from the city.” Her last words rang in my ears. Kraków had so changed, I could pass as a stranger in the place I had lived all my life.

“Here are your papers.” She pushed a brown folder across the table to me. Inside were an identity card and two birth certificates.

“Lukasz Lipowski,” I read aloud from the second one. “A three-year-old?”

“Yes, I understand you’ve been eager to help in Jacob’s work.” She paused. “Now is your chance. There is a child who has been hidden in the ghetto for months. He has no parents. He will be brought here to live with us and … to the outside world, he will be your little brother. He arrives tonight.” I nodded slightly, my head spinning. Twenty-four hours ago, I was living in the ghetto with my parents. Now I was free, living with Krysia as a gentile and caring for a child.

“One other thing.” She pushed a smaller envelope across the table. I opened the clasp, and a gold chain with a small gold cross slithered out onto the table. My hand recoiled. “I understand,” she said. “But it is a necessary precaution. There is no other way.” She picked up the necklace and stepped behind me to fasten the clasp. And with that, my life as a non-Jew began.

After breakfast, I followed Krysia upstairs to her bedroom. She opened her closet and pushed back the dresses to reveal a set of stairs leading to the attic. She climbed the stairs and handed down to me several pieces of metal and a small mattress. We carried the parts to the guest room that was to be the child’s. “This was Jacob’s,” she said as we assembled the crib. “I kept it here for his parents after he’d outgrown it, thinking perhaps I might use it for a child of my own.” Her eyes had a hollow look, and I knew then that her childlessness was not by choice. When it was assembled, I stroked the chipped wooden rail of the bed, imagining my husband lying there as an infant.

At lunch, Krysia set out plates heaped with cold cuts, bread and cheese. I hesitated momentarily. Surely the meat was not kosher, and eating meat and cheese together was forbidden. “Oh,” she said, noticing my hesitation and realizing. “I’m so sorry. I would have tried to get kosher meat, but …”

“There are no more kosher butchers,” I finished for her. She nodded. “It’s okay, really.” The food had not been strictly kosher when I lived at the Baus’, and in the ghetto, we ate whatever we could get when we could get it. I knew my parents would understand, and be glad I had good food to eat. As if on cue, my stomach rumbled then. A look of relief crossed over Krysia’s face as I took generous helpings of the meat and cheese.

“You know, I’ve never cared for a child,” Krysia confessed later that afternoon. We were standing on the balcony just off the parlor, hanging freshly washed children’s clothing, which Krysia said had been given to her by a friend.

“Me, neither, until I worked at the ghetto orphanage.” I looked at Krysia. She was staring at the damp blue children’s shirt in her hand, a helpless expression on her face. I could tell that she was really worried. “But, Krysia, you have cared for a child. Jacob told me he was often here as a boy.”

She shook her head. “Being an aunt for a few hours isn’t the same.”

I took the shirt from her, hung it on the line. “We’ll figure it out. It will be okay. I promise.”

The child, Krysia told me, would arrive late that night as I had done the night before. By early evening, Krysia looked exhausted. “Why don’t you rest a bit?” I offered, but she shook her head. As the hands on the walnut grandfather clock in the hallway climbed well past midnight, she continued moving around the cottage without resting, cleaning and organizing dozens of little things. Krysia had turned the lights down low so that only the faintest glow remained in the kitchen and our shadows grew long in the corridors. Every few minutes she would lift the heavy drapes of the rear parlor window slightly to look out at the back garden for the new arrival.

Finally, around two o’clock in the morning, we settled in the kitchen with mugs of strong coffee. I hesitated for several minutes before speaking. There was so much I wanted to ask Krysia that I didn’t know where to begin. “How did you …?” I began at last.

“Become involved with the resistance?” She stirred her coffee once more, then placed the spoon in the cradle of the saucer. “I always knew about Jacob’s causes. He spoke to me about it because his mother was not that interested, and his father worried too much for his safety. I was concerned, too, of course,” she added, taking a sip from her cup. “But I knew he was unstoppable.” So did I, I thought. “He came here late one night shortly after the occupation,” she continued. I realized she must have been talking about the night before his disappearance, when Jacob had not returned home for many hours. “He didn’t exactly tell me what was going on, but he asked me to keep an eye on you, in case anything should happen to him. I asked what else I could do, and we realized together that my home and my position might be useful somehow. He put me in contact with people … the specifics did not come until after he was gone.”

“But this is terribly dangerous for you! Aren’t you at all afraid?”

“Of course I am, darling.” The corners of her mouth pressed wryly upward. “Even an old widow with no children wishes to live. But this war …” Her expression turned serious. “This war is the shame of my people. Having you and the child live here with me is the least I can do.”

“The Poles didn’t start this war,” I protested.

“No, but …” Her thought was interrupted by a light scratching sound at the back door. “Wait here.”

Krysia tiptoed downstairs. I heard whispers, some movement, then a tiny click as the door shut. Krysia came back up the stairs, her footsteps slower and heavier now. When she reached the landing, her arms overflowed with a large cloth bundle. I stood to help her and together we carried the sleeping child to the third floor.

We set the child on the crib and Krysia unwrapped the blankets in which he had been swaddled. At the sight of the child’s face, I gasped loudly. It was the blond child whose mother had been shot in the alleyway.

“What is it?” But before I could answer, the child, awakened by my gasp and Krysia’s voice, began to whimper. “Shh,” she soothed, rubbing the child’s back. He settled into sleep once more.

Silently, we backed out of the room. “That child,” I whispered. “That’s …”

“The descendant of Rabbi Izakowicz, the great rabbi of Lublin. His mother was shot …”

“I know! I saw it happen from our apartment.”

“Oh, you poor dear,” Krysia said, patting my shoulder.

“You said he has no parents. What about his father?”

“We don’t know. He was either shot in the woods near Chernichow or taken to a camp. Either way, it doesn’t look good.”

I squeezed my eyes tight then, remembering the scene in the alleyway. Surely they wouldn’t kill the rabbi, I had said to my parents that night. “She was with child when she was killed,” I added, my eyes beginning to burn. “His mother, I mean.”

Krysia nodded. “I had heard that. It makes what we are doing that much more important. The child is the last of a great rabbinic dynasty. He must be kept alive.”

Krysia and I took turns sleeping that night in case the child should awaken and be confused or upset by the strange surroundings, but he slept through the night and did not stir. The next morning, I went to his crib and lifted him, still in his street clothes. He was damp with sweat, his blond curls darkened and pressed against his forehead. He blinked but did not make a sound as I placed him on my hip. Instead, he wrapped his hands around my neck and rested his head on my shoulder as though he had done this every day of his young life. Together we headed down the stairs to the kitchen, where Krysia was once again preparing breakfast. At the sight of us in the doorway, her eyes warmed and her face broke into a wide smile.

A week later, Lukasz and I would walk into town for our debut appearance as gentiles at market. His eyes would light up at the sight of an ice-cream cart and I, unable to resist, would take a few pennies from our food money to buy him a vanilla cone. And this is how Lukasz, the son of the great rabbi of Lublin, and Emma, the daughter of a poor Kazimierz baker, came to live with the elegant Krysia Smok in a cottage that seemed like a palace in Chelmska.

CHAPTER 6

“We will be having a dinner party on Saturday,” Krysia announces as routinely as though she is discussing the weather. The damp white towel I am holding falls from my hands to the dirt.

We are working in the garden, Krysia pulling weeds from around the spry green plants that are just beginning to bud, me hanging the linens we washed in a large basin an hour earlier. A few feet away, Lukasz digs silently in the dirt with a stick. It has been more than a month since Lukasz and I came to live with Krysia. I can tell that she is overwhelmed at times. Since arriving here, I have tried to take on as much of the housework as I can, but the labor has still taken its toll on her. Her delicate hands seem to grow more callused by the day, and her work dresses have become soiled and tattered. Yet despite her sacrifices, Krysia seems to like having us around. We are the first real companions she’s had since Marcin died. She and I make easy company for each other, sometimes chatting as we work around the house, other times falling into deep silence. There is, after all, much to think about for both of us. I know she worries, as I do, about Jacob, and about us, how we must never be discovered, what would happen if we were.

The child’s presence, however, keeps us from wallowing too deeply. Lukasz is a beautiful boy, calm and undemanding. In the weeks he has been with us, though, he has not spoken a word. We try desperately to make him laugh. Sometimes I invent childish games, and often in the evenings, Krysia plays lively tunes on the piano as I whirl him around in my arms to the music. But so far it has not helped. Lukasz watches patiently, as though the revelry is for our benefit, not his, and he is only humoring us. When the music and games stop, he picks up the tattered blue blanket in which he arrived and retreats to a corner.

“A dinner party?” I repeat, picking up the towel from the dirt.

“Yes, I used to throw them quite often before the war. I still do, from time to time. I don’t enjoy it so much anymore. The guest list—” her mouth twists “—is a little different these days. But it is important to keep up appearances.” I nod, understanding. Before the war, Krysia’s guests would have been artists, intellectuals and socialites. Most of the artists and intellectuals were gone now—they had either fled abroad or been imprisoned, because of their religion or political views, or both. They had been replaced at Krysia’s dinner table, I suspect, by guests of a far different sort.

Wiping her hands on her apron, she ticks off the guest list on her fingers. “Deputy Mayor Baran,” she pronounces the word mayor with irony. Wladislaw Baran was a known collaborator who, along with much of the present city administration, had been installed in office by the Nazis as a puppet of their regime. “The new vice director and his wife …”

“Nazis.” I turn away, fighting the urge to spit.

“The party in power,” she replies evenly. “We must keep them on our good side.”

“I suppose.” My stomach twists at the thought of being under the same roof as those people.

“You arrived several weeks ago. It would not do to have my niece living with me and not be properly introduced about town.”

“B-but …” I stammer. I had not realized Krysia expected me to be at the dinner. I had envisioned hiding upstairs for the duration of the party, or at most helping in the kitchen.

“Your presence is essential.” And I know from her tone that there will be no further discussion on the subject.

No sooner has Krysia spoken of the dinner party than the preparations begin, and they continue nonstop all week. For the occasion, Krysia brings back Elzbieta, the ruddy-cheeked housekeeper she had dismissed before my arrival. She returns without hard feelings, all energy and smiles, and immediately sets about scrubbing the house from top to bottom, putting my and Krysia’s housekeeping efforts to shame.

Krysia is glad to have Elzbieta back again, I can tell, and not just for her cooking and cleaning skills: Elzbieta’s boyfriend, Miroslaw, has a particular gift for procuring items that can no longer be found in the shops, delicacies we will need for the party. Within two days, he magically produces smoked salmon, fine cheeses and dark chocolate. “I haven’t seen such items since before the war!” Krysia exclaims upon receiving the bounty. I can only nod; I have seldom seen such things in my life. To round out the meal, we pillage the garden, pulling up the few heads of lettuce that have already sprouted, bring up the remaining winter potatoes and cabbage from the root cellar, and buy from our neighbors what other vegetables we lack.

The morning of the party, Krysia helps Elzbieta to steam the fine table linen and polish the silver while I make dinner rolls and pastries. Kneading the dough, I am reminded of baking with my father. As a child, I used to grow frustrated with the resilience of the dough. No matter how hard I tried to make it take shape, long or round or flat, it always resisted, snapping stubbornly back to a nondescript mound. Only a few of my ill-shaped pastries even made it to the shelves, and those were always the last ones remaining late in the day. But now the challenge is a welcome one. I imagine my father working beside me, kneading the bread with his light, almost magical touch. His thick, gentle fingers could cajole the most stubborn dough into intricate shapes: braided challah, or hamantaschen for Purim, or obwarzanki, the crusty pretzels enjoyed by Jewish and non-Jewish Poles alike.

“Here,” Krysia says, handing me a package wrapped in brown paper later that afternoon. We are in the kitchen, having just completed a final walk-though of the house to make sure everything is in order. I look at her puzzled, then set the package down on the table and open it. It is a new dress, light blue with a delicate flowered pattern.

“It’s beautiful,” I gasp, lifting it from the paper. Until now, I have made do with old dresses of Krysia’s, pinning up the sleeves and hems to fit me. Growing up, all of my dresses were handed down or homemade. This is the first store-bought dress I have ever owned. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, waving her hand as though it were nothing. “Now, go get ready.”

A few hours later, I walk down the stairs once more. The house has been transformed. Scented candles flicker everywhere. Pots simmer on the stove burners under Elzbieta’s watchful gaze, giving off a delicious aroma. Soft classical music plays on the gramophone; I think I recognize it as one of Marcin’s recordings.

At fifteen minutes to seven, Krysia descends the steps from the third floor, wearing an ankle-length burgundy satin skirt and white silk blouse, her hair drawn neatly to a knot at the nape of her long neck, which is accentuated by a single strand of pearls. She looks restored and almost untouched by the war, as if all the care and hard work of recent months have been erased from her face. “You look lovely,” Krysia says before I have the chance to compliment her. She brushes a speck of dust from my collar and then steps back to admire my dress.

“Thank you.” I blush again. I have used a hot iron to curl my hair into ringlets, which cascade down onto my shoulders. The dress is the grandest thing I have ever worn. “I wish …” I begin, then stop. I had started to say I wished Jacob were here to see me, but I hesitate, not wanting to sadden Krysia.

She smiles, understanding. “He would think you are even more beautiful than he already does.” I cannot help but beam. We walk into the dining room together. “Dinner parties are always so hectic,” she explains, reaching across the table to adjust the orchid centerpiece. “No matter how many I plan and how well I prepare, there are things that cannot be done well in advance, which makes the last few hours chaotic.”

I nod, as though I have thrown dinner parties all my life and understand. In truth, the few I had attended had been with Jacob, and they had in no way prepared me for this. Tonight is my debut as Anna Lipowski, the gentile orphan girl from Gdansk. Since leaving the ghetto, I have scarcely spoken with anyone outside of the household, and I am terrified about my first full-fledged interaction in my new role. In my head, I have rehearsed my life story over and over again. Krysia has worked with me over the past several weeks, refining my behavior and mannerisms to fit the part, helping me to adjust the last few inflections and pronunciations to ensure that I speak with the generic accent of northwestern Poland. She has also schooled me intensely in Catholicism and I now know as much about saints and rosaries as any Polish girl outside of a convent. Still, I worry that some flash across my face or look in my eye, some gesture or intangible thing will scream out that I am a Jew.

But there is little time to be nervous. A few minutes after we enter the dining room, the doorbell rings. “Ready?” Krysia asks me. I gulp once, nod. The guests begin to arrive with a promptness characteristic of both Poles and Germans. Elzbieta meets them at the door and takes their wraps and coats. I wait at the first-floor landing with Krysia, who introduces me, and then I lead the guests into the sitting room and offer them a cocktail. Lukasz is trotted out briefly and admired for his blond hair and good behavior before being shuttled off to bed.

At ten past seven, five of our six guests are present: Deputy Mayor Baran and his wife, and three Germans: General Dietrich, an elderly widower who was highly decorated in the Great War, and whose role in the present administration is largely ceremonial; Brigadier General Ludwig, a fat, bald, squinty-eyed man; and his wife, Hilda.

Ten minutes pass, then twenty, and still we are one guest short. No one comments on his lateness, and I know we will not be sitting down to eat without him. As Krysia told me earlier, Georg Richwalder, second in charge of the General Government, is the most important guest of all.

“How are you finding Kraków, Anna?” Mrs. Baran asks as we sit sipping our glasses of sherry.

“Lovely, though I haven’t had as much time to see the city as I would like,” I reply, amused at the notion of being a tourist in the city of my birth.

“Well, you and Lukasz must come into town one day soon and I will show you around. I’m surprised we haven’t met at church,” Mrs. Baran continues. I hesitate, uncertain how to respond.

Krysia steps up behind me, intervening. “That’s because we haven’t been yet. It’s been so hectic with the children arriving, I haven’t gone myself. And last week Lukasz had a cold.” I look up at her, trying to mask my surprise. Since coming to live with us, the child has not had so much as a sniffle. It is the first time I have heard Krysia lie.

“Perhaps we can have tea one Sunday after mass,” Mrs. Baran suggests.

I smile politely. It is not difficult to keep up appearances with such small talk. “That would be delight …” I start to reply, then stop midsentence, staring at the doorway.

“Kommandant Richwalder,” Mrs. Baran whispers under her breath. I nod, speechless, unable to take my eyes off the imposing man who has entered the room. He is well over six feet tall, with perfectly erect posture and a thick, muscular chest and shoulders that seem ready to burst out of his military dress uniform. His large, square jaw and angular nose appear to be chiseled from granite. I cannot help but stare. I have never seen a man like the Kommandant before. He looks as though he has stepped off the movie screen or out of the pages of a novel, the epic hero. No, not a hero, I remind myself. The man is a Nazi.

Krysia crosses the room to greet him. “Kommandant,” she says, accepting his kisses on her cheek and the bouquet of gardenias he offers. “It is an honor to meet you.” Her voice sounds sincere, as though she is speaking to a friend.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Pani Smok.” His voice is deep and resonant. His head turns and he seems to swallow the entire room in his steely blue-gray eyes. His gaze locks on me. “You have a beautiful home.” I look away, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks.

“Thank you,” Krysia replies. “You aren’t late, dinner is just ready. And please call me Krysia.” She takes the Kommandant by the arm and, deftly sidestepping the other guests who have risen to greet him, leads him to me. “Kommandant, allow me to present my niece, Anna Lipowski.”

I leap to my feet, far more light-headed than I should be from two small sips of alcohol. Up close, Kommandant Richwalder is even taller than he first appeared; my head barely comes to his shoulder. He takes my extended hand in his much larger one, sending a jolt of electricity through me, making me shiver. I hope that he has not noticed. He raises my hand smoothly, barely grazing it with his thick, full lips. Though his head is bowed, his eyes do not leave mine. “Milo mi poznac.” His Polish, though stiff and heavily accented, is not altogether poor.

I feel my cheeks burn. “The pleasure is mine,” I respond in German, unable to look away.

The Kommandant’s eyebrows lift in surprise. You speak …?” He does not finish the sentence.

“Yes.” My father, who had been raised in a town by the German border, had taught me the language as a girl, and given its close linguistic relation to Yiddish, it had come easily to me. When I arrived at Krysia’s house, she suggested that I refresh my knowledge of the language. It only made sense that a girl from Gdansk, which had once been the German city of Danzig, would be bilingual.

“Herr Kommandant,” Krysia interrupts. With seemingly reluctance, the Kommandant turns to her so that she can introduce him to the other guests. Grateful that the introduction is over, I leave the room and step into the kitchen to recompose myself. What is wrong with me? I pour a glass of water and take a small sip, my hands shaking. You are probably just nervous, I tell myself, though in truth I know it is more than that—none of the other guests had such an effect on me. Of course, none of the other guests looked like Kommandant Richwalder. Picturing his steely gaze as he kissed my hand, I jump, sending water splashing over the edge of the glass.

“Careful.” Elzbieta, who had been pouring the soup into bowls, comes to me with a dry towel. Enough, I think, as she helps to blot the water that has splashed onto my dress. Compose yourself. He’s a Nazi, I remind myself sternly. And regardless, you are a married woman. You have no business having such reactions to other men. I smooth my hair and return to the parlor.

A moment later, Elzbieta rings a small bell and the guests rise. As we make our way to the dining room, I try frantically to recall the seating cards Krysia had set out. Put me next to the elderly general, I pray, or even the endlessly carping Mrs. Ludwig—just not the Kommandant. There is no way that I can maintain my composure next to him for an entire meal. But no sooner have I made my silent wish than I find myself standing on one side of the table with General Ludwig to my left and the Kommandant to my right. I try to catch Krysia’s eye at the head of the table, hoping she might somehow intervene, but she is speaking with Mayor Baran and does not notice. “Allow me,” the Kommandant says, pulling out my chair. His pine-scented aftershave is strong as he hovers over me.

Elzbieta serves the first course, a rich mushroom soup. My hand shakes as I lift the spoon, causing it to clink against the side of the bowl. Krysia discreetly raises an eyebrow in my direction, and I hope that no one else has noticed.

“So,” General Ludwig says over my head to the Kommandant. “What is the news from Berlin these days?” I am grateful that he has chosen to leave me out of the conversation, relieving me of the need to speak for a time.

“We are having success on all fronts,” the Kommandant replies between spoonfuls of soup. Inwardly, I cringe at the news that the Germans are faring well.

“Yes, I heard the same from General Hochberg,” Ludwig replies. I can tell from the way Ludwig emphasizes the name that he hopes it will impress the Kommandant. “I have heard talk of an official visit from Berlin?” He ends the sentence on an up note, then looks at the Kommandant expectantly, waiting for him to confirm or deny the rumor.

The Kommandant hesitates, stirs his soup. “Perhaps,” he says at last, his face impassive. Looking at him more closely now, I notice two scars on his otherwise flawless face. There is a deep, pale line running from his hairline to his temple on the right side of his forehead, and another, longer but less severe, traveling the length of his left jawbone. I find myself wondering how he got them, an accident perhaps, or a brawl of some sort. Neither explanation seems plausible.

“So, Miss Anna,” the Kommandant says, turning to me.

I realize that I have been staring at him. “Y-yes, Herr Kommandant?” I stammer, feeling my cheeks go warm again.

“Tell me of your life back in Gdansk.” As Elzbieta clears the soup bowls, I recount the details I have been taught: I was a schoolteacher who was forced to quit my job and move here with my little brother when our parents were killed in a fire. I recount the story with so much feeling that it almost sounds real to me. The Kommandant listens intently, seemingly focused on my every word. Perhaps he is just an attentive listener, I think, though I have not noticed him so engaged in conversation with anyone else at the party. “How tragic,” he remarks when I have finished my story. His eyes remain locked with mine. I nod, unable to speak. For a moment, it seems as though the rest of the guests have vanished and it is just the two of us, alone. At last, when I can stand it no longer, I look away.

“And you, Kommandant, where are you from?” I ask quickly, eager to take the focus off myself.

“The north of Germany, near Hamburg. My family is in the shipping business,” he replies, still staring intently at me. I can barely hear him over the buzzing in my ears. “I was orphaned at a young age, too,” he adds, as though our purportedly mutual lack of parents gave us a special bond. “Though mine died of natural causes.”

“And what is it you are doing here?” I ask, amazed at the audacity of my own question. The Kommandant hesitates, caught off guard; clearly, he is accustomed to people knowing his role.

Ludwig interjects, “The Kommandant is Governor Frank’s deputy, second in charge of the General Government. What the governor decrees, the Kommandant ensures that the rest of us implement.”

The Kommandant shifts uneasily in his chair. “Really, General, you are overstating it a bit. I am just the owner of a shipping company doing his service to the Reich.” He looks away, and I notice that his dark hair is flecked with gray at the temples.

“Not at all,” Ludwig persists, his fat face red from too much wine. “You are far too modest, sir.” He looks down at me. “Kommandant Richwalder was decorated for his valor at sea as a young man in the Great War.” I nod, doing the math in my head. If the Kommandant served in the Great War, he must be at least forty-five years old, I think, surprised. I had taken him for younger. “He was gravely injured, and he served Germany with great distinction.”

Looking at the Kommandant’s face once more, I realize then that his scars likely came from battle. He touches his fingertips to his temple then, his eyes locked with mine, as though reading my thoughts. “Please pass the salt,” I say abruptly, forcing him at last to turn away.

But Ludwig is not through with his praise of the Kommandant. “Most recently, he served the Reich overseeing Sachsenhausen with remarkable efficiency,” he adds. I have not heard of Sachsenhausen, but Ludwig says the name as though its nature is self-evident, and I do not dare to ask what it is.

As the meal progresses, I try to keep focused, but my head grows heavy from the wine, and the Kommandant seems to refill my glass each time I take a sip. “Your German is flawless,” he remarks as we finish the main course of pheasant with roast potatoes and carrots.

I hesitate. German, like Yiddish, came so naturally to me I had almost forgotten we were not speaking Polish. “We learned German in school,” I manage at last. “There is a large German population in Gdansk.”

“You mean Danzig!” Ludwig interjects loudly, offended by my use of the Polish name for the city. Hearing his outburst, the other guests stop their conversations midsentence and turn to us.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize quickly, feeling my face turn red. “It’s just that Gdansk is the name I grew up knowing.”

Ludwig is not placated. “Well, fräulein,” he continues haughtily. “It is time to adjust to the new reality.”

“Really, General, this lovely dinner party is no place for politics.” The Kommandant’s voice is quiet but stern. Chastised, Ludwig turns his boorish attention to Mrs. Baran, who is seated to his left. I smile gratefully at the Kommandant. “It’s a beautiful city no matter what one calls it,” he offers, more gently than I have heard him speak before.

“I agree.” Relieved, I reach across my plate with my right hand to lift my water glass. The Kommandant does the same with his left and our knuckles brush. I pull back, feeling my face grow red. His hand remains suspended in midair as though frozen. Neither of us speaks for what seems like several minutes.

“I am a great fan of German authors,” I say at last, resorting to literature, the one subject about which I can always speak.

He replaces his water glass and retracts his hand. “Really?”

Elzbieta appears on my left then, and as I shift slightly to the right to allow her to take my plate, I am forced within inches of the Kommandant. I smell his aftershave once more, underlain by a heavier, more masculine scent. “Yes,” I continue, when Elzbieta has moved on and I am able to straighten in my seat. “Goethe must be read in the mother tongue.” I lift my napkin from my lap and blot my lips. “To read in the translation simply doesn’t do it justice.”

The Kommandant nods slightly and smiles for the first time that evening. “I agree.” Reaching carefully this time, he lifts his wineglass and I follow, raising my own. “To German literature,” he proposes, touching his glass gently to mine. I hesitate before drinking. My head is already cloudy. But the Kommandant downs his glass of wine in a single gulp, and under his watchful gaze, I have no choice but to take a healthy sip.

“Why don’t we adjourn to the parlor?” Krysia suggests when Elzbieta has cleared the dessert plates. In the parlor, Elzbieta serves small glasses of cognac to the men and Krysia, and cups of steaming tea to the rest of us. I lean against the doorway to the parlor, the warm cup clasped in both hands. Too weary from the wine and rich food to carry on conversation, I escape to the kitchen. “May I help?” I ask, but Elzbieta, who now stands before the sink rinsing the dishes, only shakes her head.

I am drunk, I realize, as I stare numbly at the soap bubbles that overflow from the sink. I have never felt this way before. The only alcohol I tasted growing up was the kosher wine of Shabbes and the holidays, too sweet to manage more than a few sips. Once or twice with Jacob I had tasted some whiskey or a glass of wine with dinner and felt warm. But this is different. My tongue is thick and dry. There is a cool sweat on my forehead and the floor seems to move under me. “Elzbieta,” I say uncertainly.

She turns, sees the paleness of my face. “Here.” She brings me a glass of water. I drink it gratefully and hand the glass back to her. She returns to the sink, placing the glass in the warm water with the rest of the dirty dishes. I lower myself into one of the kitchen chairs, breathing deeply. Of all the nights of my life, I had to pick this one to drink too much.

Elzbieta touches my shoulder. I look up, and she nods her head toward the parlor. “Anna,” I hear Krysia beckon, and I can tell by her tone it is not the first time she has called my name. I lift myself from the chair, make my way back to the parlor.

“Tak?” My head is clearer now from the water and brief rest.

“Come here.” Krysia waves me over to where she and the Kommandant are sitting on the large sofa and pats the cushion between them. “Sit down.” I perch uneasily on the edge of the sofa, just inches from the Kommandant. I do not look at him. “Anna,” Krysia pronounces my alias with ease once more. “The Kommandant has a proposition for you.” The room quiets as she turns to him expectantly. My breath catches. Though I cannot fathom what she is talking about, I am certain I will not like it.

“Anna, I am looking for a secretary, an assistant, really, to manage some of the daily administrative tasks of my office,” the Kommandant says. “Your aunt thinks you might be interested.” My stomach jumps into my throat.

“It is a flattering offer,” Krysia adds. There is a message behind her words I cannot decipher.

“Me?” I ask, trying to buy time to formulate a response.

“Yes,” the Kommandant replies. I can feel everyone staring at me.

“But I can’t!” I say, my voice rising sharply. Noting the surprised looks on the faces around me, I modulate my voice. “I mean, I’m a schoolteacher. I’m hardly qualified for such a position.” I am unsure which notion is more inconceivable: working in the Nazi headquarters or spending every day in close proximity to this terrifying man.

The Kommandant is undeterred by my response. “Your German is excellent. Krysia says that you can type. Other than that, only good judgment and a pleasant demeanor are required.”

“But I couldn’t possibly. I have Lukasz to care for and Krysia to help….” I protest. I look to Krysia for support, but she flashes me a pointed look.

“We will manage just fine,” she says firmly.

“Well …” I hesitate, searching for further arguments.

“This is ridiculous!” Ludwig blusters, though no one has asked him. “One does not turn down such an honor.”

The Kommandant turns to the fat man, glowering. “I would not force the girl.” He faces me again. “It is up to you,” he says, speaking softly now. “You can let me know later.”

I swallow. Krysia obviously wants me to accept this bizarre offer, although I have no idea why. “No, there’s no need for that.” I force myself to smile. “I would be honored to work for you.”

Krysia stands. “Well, that’s settled. Now, I believe I promised Mrs. Baran I would play for her before the evening was over.” She strides over to the grand piano, and ever diplomatic, she plays first Wagner, then Chopin. I am amazed at her talent, how her hands fly over the keys with the dexterity and grace of one decades younger, playing full classical pieces from memory.

“I thought that might happen,” Krysia says a few hours later when the guests have gone. We are standing by the sink, drying the last of the teacups, aprons protecting our party clothes. She speaks in a low voice so that Elzbieta, who is sweeping in the next room, will not overhear. “I had heard the Kommandant was looking for an assistant, and I could tell from the moment he walked in that he had taken a liking to you.”

I pause to brush back a lock of hair that has fallen across my eyes. “Krysia, if that was your concern, why did you seat me next to him?”

Krysia looks up, the bowl she is drying suspended in midair. “But I didn’t! Now that you mention it, I specifically remember asking Elzbieta to put him next to me. I was hoping he might say something useful after a few glasses of wine.” She sets down the bowl and walks to the kitchen door. “Elzbieta …?” she calls. The young woman appears from the dining room, broom in hand.

“Tak, Pani Smok?”

“Did you somehow switch the seating cards around?”

Elzbieta shakes her head. “Nie, Pani Smok. You said you were to be seated in between the Kommandant and General Ludwig. I was surprised to notice the order had changed.”

“Thank you, Elzbieta.” The young woman disappears into the parlor once more. Krysia turns to me, her brow wrinkled. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Perhaps it was an accident,” I suggest, scrubbing harder at the stained pot and not looking up. The Kommandant must have switched the place cards in order to sit next to me. My stomach twists.

“Perhaps … anyway, I’m not sure that you working for the Kommandant would be entirely a bad thing.”

“How can you say that?” I ask in a loud whisper. “This will jeopardize everything. My identity, our situation …”

“Anna,” she interrupts. We had agreed that she should call me by this name all of the time, even when we were alone, to reinforce the habit. “This is the perfect cover. A hiding Jew would never walk into Nazi headquarters. And the Kommandant is one of the most important men in Poland right now.” She pauses. “You may in time be able to get close enough to him to help with our work.”

“Help? Krysia, I cannot work for the Nazis!” My voice rises, and Krysia quickly raises a finger to her lips, gesturing with her head in the direction of the dining room. “I’m sorry,” I mouth, embarrassed at my outburst. In that moment, I am reminded of the precariousness of our situation. How much worse can this charade get, now that I am expected to bear up under the close scrutiny of Kommandant Richwalder day in and day out? A wave of nausea sweeps over me.

Later that night, I lay awake, staring up at the oak beams that run across the bedroom ceiling, listening to dogs howling in the distance. My life has changed again, I think, and for the third time since the war started, I am ending the day nowhere near where I started it. One day I woke up in Jacob’s house and went to bed that night a prisoner in the ghetto. I had gone from being a Jew in the ghetto to a gentile in Krysia’s home just as quickly. And now I am going to work for the Nazis. A chill races through me and I draw the blanket closer, oblivious to the fact that it is May and not at all cold.

My mind rewinds to a few hours earlier, when the party had broken up. Kommandant Richwalder had been the last guest to leave, lingering in the doorway in his long gray military coat. He had taken my hand in his own, now clad in smooth leather gloves, and raised it to his lips once more. “I will be in touch in a few days, once all of the paperwork is complete.”

My hand shook as I retracted it. “Th-thank you, Herr Kommandant.”

“No, Miss Anna, thank you.” And with that he turned and departed. Lying in bed now, I shiver. The way he stared at me had reminded me of a spider eyeing a fly. Now I would be forced to go to work in the spider’s web every day. I shiver again, listening to the dogs’ howling echoing in the breeze.

CHAPTER 7

We do not hear from Kommandant Richwalder for several days. “It probably takes time to complete the background check,” Krysia explains when I comment about the delay.

“Background check?” I panic, certain that an investigation by the Nazis will reveal my true identity. But Krysia tells me not to worry, and a few days later, I learn that she is right. The resistance organization apparently extends throughout Poland, and there are people in Gdansk who are willing to verify that they had known Anna Lipowski, lived beside her, worked and gone to school with her, and wasn’t it too bad about the death of her parents? On Friday morning, nearly one week after the dinner party, I receive word via messenger that my clearance has come through and that I am to report to the Kommandant’s office the following Monday.

“We need to go to town tomorrow,” Krysia says that Saturday night after we have put Lukasz to bed.

“Tomorrow?” I turn to her in the hallway, puzzled. The stores are not open on Sundays.

“We have to go to church.” Seeing the stunned expression on my face, Krysia continues. “The mayor’s wife commented at the dinner party on the fact that I have not been there with you and Lukasz.”

“Oh,” I manage to say at last. I cannot argue with her logic. Krysia is a devout Catholic, and it only made sense that Lukasz and I would be, too. The fact that she normally went to mass every week but had not gone since our arrival might raise suspicions. Still, the idea of going to church sticks in my throat like a half-swallowed pill.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t have a choice. We have to keep up appearances.”

I do not answer but walk to my bedroom and open the wardrobe. I study my few dresses, trying to figure out which one most looks like the ones I have seen young women my age wearing on their way to and from church. “The pink dress,” Krysia says, coming up behind me.

“This one?” I hold up a cotton frock with three-quarter sleeves.

“Yes. I am going to have coffee. Care to join me?” she asks. I nod and follow her downstairs to the kitchen. A few minutes later, we carry our steaming mugs to the parlor. I notice her knitting needles and some bright blue yarn on the low table. “I am making a sweater for Lukasz,” she explains as we sit. “I think he will need it for the winter.”

Winter. Krysia expects us still to be with her then. I do not know why this surprises me. The Nazis’ stronghold on Poland shows no signs of weakening, and we certainly have nowhere else to go. Still, winter is six months away. My heart drops as I think of Jacob, of being without him for that long.

Trying to hide my sadness, I lift the needles to examine Krysia’s handiwork. She has only knitted a few rows so far, but I can tell from the small, even stitches that she is working with great care, and that the sweater will be lovely. The ball of yarn is kinked, and I realize that she must have unraveled a garment of her own to get it. “The color will match his eyes perfectly,” I say, touched once again by how much she is doing for us.

“I thought so, too. Do you know how to knit?” I shake my head. “Here, let me show you.” Before I can reply, Krysia moves closer to me on the sofa, placing her arms around me from behind and covering her much larger hands with my own. “Like this.” She begins to move my hands in the two-step knitting pattern. The touch of her hands, thin and delicate like Jacob’s, brings back a flood of emotions. My head swims, and I can barely feel the knitting needles. “That’s all there is to it,” she says a few minutes later, sitting back. She looks at the needles expectantly, as though I will continue on my own, but my hands fall helplessly to my lap.

“I’m sorry,” I say, placing the needles and yarn back on the table. “I’m not very good at such things.” It is the truth. My mother had given up on teaching me to sew when I was twelve, declaring my large, uneven stitches an abomination. Even now, looking down at the knitting needles, I know that Krysia will have to unravel and redo my few clumsy stitches.

“Nonsense, you just need practice.” Krysia picks up the needles and yarn. “If you learn how to knit well, you can make something for Jacob.”

“Jacob,” I repeat, seeing his face in my mind. I could knit him a sweater, perhaps in brown to bring out the color in his eyes. I see him pulling it over his thin shoulders and torso. Sometimes he seems fragile, almost childlike in my memory. It is hard to imagine him as a resistance fighter. I wonder suddenly if he took enough warm clothes with him when he left.

“You miss him, don’t you?” Krysia asks gently.

“Yes, a great deal,” I reply, forcing the vision of Jacob from my mind. I cannot afford to get caught up in memories right now; I have to stay focused on starting work Monday, on being Anna. “Krysia …” I pause before asking the question I have wondered about since the night of the dinner party. “What is Sachsenhausen?”

She hesitates, knitting needles suspended in midair. “Why do you ask?”

“Ludwig said that the Kommandant used to oversee Sachenhausen?”

Krysia frowns, biting the inside of her cheek. “Sachsenhausen is a Nazi prison, darling. It is a labor camp in Germany, near Munich.”

My stomach drops. “For Jews?”

She shakes her head. “No, no! It is for political prisoners and criminals.” Though I want to feel relieved, something in her emphatic response tells me she is not being altogether truthful. She sets down her knitting again and pats my hand. “Don’t worry. Richwalder likes you. He will not be unkind.”

“All right,” I say, though her words are far from reassuring.

“Goodness!” She looks at the grandfather clock. It is nearly ten-thirty. “I had not realized the time. You should get some sleep. We need to get an early start tomorrow, and you’ll need your strength.”

For tomorrow, and everything that lies beyond, I add silently. I take another sip of my still-too-hot coffee and stand. I pause in the doorway. Krysia has picked up the knitting again, her hands making the small, quick circles over and over. “Good night,” she says, without looking up. I do not ask if she is coming to bed. Even on a normal night, Krysia stays up late and sleeps little. She reminds me of Jacob in that way—he would stay up until all hours of the night and I would often find him asleep over a book or article he was working on in the study the next morning. But at least Jacob would sleep well into the next day when he could to compensate for his late hours. Krysia, I know, will be up before dawn, doing chores and preparing us for the day that lies ahead. I worry that caring for Lukasz and me may be too much for her. And now, with our foray into church the next morning and my starting work for Richwalder the day after, she has more on her mind than ever.

That night I sleep restlessly, dreaming that I am on a street I do not recognize in the darkness. In the distance, I hear voices and laughter and I rub my eyes, trying to find the source. Fifteen meters down the road, I see a group of young people wearing some sort of uniform, joking and talking as they go. One voice, a familiar baritone, stands out above the others. “Jacob!” I cry. I start to run, trying to catch him, but my feet slide out from under me on the slick, wet pavement. I stand quickly and begin running again. At last I reach the group. “Jacob,” I repeat breathlessly. He does not hear me but continues talking to a woman I do not recognize. I cannot understand what he is saying. Desperately, I try to reach out and touch him, but I am brushed aside by the crowd as it moves forward and I fall once more. When I look up again, they are gone, and I am alone on my knees in the cold, wet street.

I awake with a start. “Jacob?” I call aloud. I blink several times. I am still in my bedroom, of course. It was only a dream. Nevertheless, I peer into the darkness for several seconds as though Jacob might have actually been there. Jacob, I think, the dream playing over and over in my head. I miss him so. And I am always chasing, but never reaching him in my dreams. What if he really is so preoccupied with his work that he has forgotten me? What if he’s found another girl? What if … I cannot finish the most horrible thought of all, that something may happen to him and I may not see him again. I press my face into my pillow, soaking it with the wetness of my tears.

The next morning, Krysia knocks on my door at seven. I rise and dress quickly. Downstairs, Krysia already has Lukasz washed and fed. Seeing the child, I hesitate. I had hoped that he would somehow not have to go to church with us, but of course there is no one else to watch him. Without speaking, we make our way from the house to the bus stop at the corner. The bus, which comes along shortly, is almost full of mostly farmers and peasants. They are going to church, too, I can tell, from the way they have tried to press their worn clothes and clean the dirt from their nails.

I stare out the window as we bounce along the curving road, trying to pretend we are just out running errands. But the thought keeps repeating in my mind: I am going to church, actually walking inside for the first time. Often growing up, I would pass by the crowds that gathered at the various church doors around the city for mass. I would watch as they stood, heads bowed, swaying slightly to the chanting melody that escaped through the open doorways. Above their heads, I saw only darkness. I could not imagine the mysteries that existed on the other side of those enormous wooden doors. Today I will find out. In my mind, I see my father’s face, staring at me with sad eyes, my mother shaking her head in disbelief.

At the edge of the Planty, we climb from the bus. Lukasz walks between us, each of his hands in one of ours. As we cross the square, the towers of the Mariacki Cathedral loom before us. Though there are hundreds of churches in Kraków, it is not surprising that Krysia attends the largest and most imposing. At the doorway of the church, I hesitate. “Come,” Krysia says, stepping in between me and Lukasz and taking our hands. Inside, I blink several times to adjust my eyes to the dim light. The air is different here, a cool dampness emanating from the stone walls. Krysia pauses, lifting her hand from mine to cross herself. I see her look at me out of the corner of my eye, lips pursed. Did she expect me to follow her lead? I shake my head inwardly. I cannot manage it, at least not yet.

I allow Krysia to lead me down the center aisle, trying not to stare at the gold crucifix, many meters high, which dominates the front wall of the church. People seated on either side of the aisle stare at us as we pass, murmuring. Can they tell that I am not one of them? I wonder. In truth I know that they are just curious because we are newcomers. Gossip travels quickly in Kraków and many likely have heard of the orphaned niece and nephew who have come to reside with Krysia Smok. If Krysia sees their reactions, she pretends not to notice, nodding to people on either side of the aisle and touching a few hands as we walk. Then she guides us into an empty pew halfway up the aisle and we sit on the hard wooden bench. Organ music begins to play. I look around, surprised at how many people are there. The Nazis are against religion, and they have arrested many priests. In a country where the population was almost entirely Catholic, they have not dared to outlaw the church entirely, but I marveled that more people do not stay away out of fear of persecution.

A priest appears at the front of the church then and begins to chant in Latin. A few minutes later, as if on cue, Krysia and the others around us shift forward to kneel. I hesitate. Jews do not kneel, it is forbidden. But Krysia tugs on my sleeve at the elbow. I have no choice. I slide forward, putting my arm around Lukasz to bring him with me. I look at him. He is staring upward, eyes wide. We remain kneeling for several minutes. My knees, unaccustomed, ache as they press into the hard stone floor. I notice that Krysia’s head is bowed and I quickly follow her lead. The priest continues chanting and the parishioners echo his words at certain parts. It is one of the many secret rituals I do not know. At one point, Krysia and the others cross themselves. Hesitating, I wave my hand in front of my face in a nondescript manner, hoping that it will suffice. Something catches the corner of my eye and I look down at Lukasz. The rabbi’s child is waving his hand in front of his face, earnestly attempting to cross himself, to imitate Krysia and the others. Crossing himself. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end at the sight of this.

Stealing another glance at Krysia out of the corner of my eye, I see that her lips are moving slightly, as though memorizing something. She is praying, I realize, really praying. I look around, trying not to lift my head, and wonder if my prayers will work here, too. It has been so long since I have prayed anywhere. I don’t know where to begin. I consider saying the Shema, the most basic of Jewish prayers. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Then I stop. It does not feel right here. I try again. Please, I pray, uncertain what to say after that. Please, God. Suddenly, the words pour forth inside me like a fountain turned on. I pray for the safety of my parents and Jacob. I pray for Krysia, and Lukasz and myself, for the strength to keep up our charade as I work for the Kommandant. I ask forgiveness for being in this place, for kneeling. I pray that Lukasz will never remember being here.

Then the kneeling part is over. We sit up again, and I lift Lukasz to my lap, pressing his cool cheek against mine as the priest keeps chanting. The priest steps in front of the altar then, a silver chalice and plate in hand. People in the front of the church begin to rise and go forward. “Communion,” Krysia whispers, so softly I can barely hear. I nod. I have heard of this before. A few minutes later, Krysia stands and touches my shoulder. She means for me to go with her. I rise, my legs stone at the prospect of going up. We make our way to the center aisle and join the line as it shuffles forward, Lukasz coming with us, although, I suspect, he is too young for Communion. When we reach the front, Krysia goes first. I watch as she kneels and opens her mouth, allowing the priest to place a wafer there. Then she rises and turns, taking Lukasz’s hand from me. It is my turn. I step forward and kneel. “Body of Christ,” the priest says as he places the wafer on my tongue. I close my mouth against the dryness, wait for lightning to strike me dead.

A few minutes later we are back in our seats. The collection plate is passed. It is almost empty when it reaches us. Krysia places a few coins in it, much less, I am sure, than she would have before the war. I wonder if she can afford it now. Then it is over, and we make our way from the church. I fight the urge to rush ahead as Krysia makes obligatory introductions and small talk with other parishioners by the front door. Finally, we step out into the light.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Krysia asks when we are far from the church. I shake my head, not answering. There are some things that, despite her best intentions, she will never understand. I feel violated by the experience, nauseous at the knowledge that we will have to go again.

When we arrive back at Krysia’s house, my mind turns to the next day. Less than twenty-four hours from now, I will go to work for the Kommandant. I deliberately keep busy with household chores, preparing a rich beet soup for Lukasz’s lunch, laying out the clothes he will wear the next day. “I can do that for him tomorrow,” Krysia protests.

I shake my head and do not stop moving. “I need to keep moving,” I reply, refolding one of the child’s freshly washed shirts for the fourth time. “It’s not like I’m going to be able to sleep tonight, anyway.”

I do not go to bed until almost midnight, and even then I toss and turn. The thoughts I usually fight so hard to keep from my mind, of my family and the ghetto and all of the awful unknowns, are welcome diversions now, as I try to ignore the reality that awaits me the next morning. How had my life changed so much in a week, a month, a year? Jacob would not even recognize me anymore. I imagine writing a letter to him—where would I begin? Oh, yes, my beloved, I write in my head. Your wife is a gentile now. And did I mention I have a child? And that I start working for the Nazis tomorrow? I laugh aloud in the dark.

But in truth I know that the situation is deadly serious. By walking into the Nazi headquarters every day, I will be entering the lion’s den. It is not just my own safety I will be risking: if my true identity is discovered, it will put everyone around me, my parents, Lukasz, even Krysia, in grave danger. Krysia. I can see the look on her face as she urged me to take the Kommandant’s offer, the worried way she has watched me ever since. She, too, knows the stakes. She must have very good reasons for wanting me to do this. At last my eyes grow heavy and I finally doze off.

After what seems like only minutes, I am awakened by the predawn sounds of the neighbors’ rooster crowing. I can tell by the way the early morning light falls through the maple tree outside my window that it is approximately five o’clock. I lie still for a moment, listening to the horses’ hoofs pound against the dirt road as they pull the farmers’ wagons down from the hills, carrying produce to the markets. Staring at the ceiling, I hesitate. Once I set that first foot on the floor, it will all begin. If I do not get out of bed, I think, perhaps I can stop time. It is a familiar game, one I played as a child when there was something I did not want to do. It did not work then, I remind myself, and it will not work now. And it will not do to be late my first day on the job. I take a deep breath and stand.

I rise and wash quietly. Hoping not to wake Krysia or Lukasz, I tiptoe downstairs, trying not to let the soles of my shoes squeak on the hardwood steps. Krysia is already seated at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper over a cup of tea. I wonder if she slept at all last night. “Dzien dobry,” she greets me, her voice fresh. She rises and looks me up and down, appraising my outfit. I have chosen from among her castoffs a white shirtwaist and a gray skirt, belting the oversize shirt at the waist. The skirt, which was supposed to be knee-length, falls nearly to my ankles. “Very professional,” she remarks, gesturing for me to sit. She pushes a plate of steaming scrambled eggs across the table toward me. “Now eat.”

I shake my head, nauseous at the smell. “I’m too nervous.” Even as I speak, my stomach jumps and a wave of queasiness washes over me. “And I should be going, I don’t want to be late.”

Krysia hands me a small lunch pail and a light wool cloak. “Try to relax. You’ll be more likely to make mistakes if you’re nervous. Just stay quiet, observe as much as you can … and trust no one.” She pats my shoulder. “You’ll do fine. Lukasz and I will be here when you come home.”

It is not quite seven o’clock when I set out. The residents of Chelmska are early risers; as I walk down the road, past the houses and farms, there seems to be someone out in every yard, gardening or tending livestock or sweeping their front porch. They look up as I pass, my presence at Krysia’s still a curiosity to them. I nod my head and try to smile as I go, as though it is perfectly normal for me to be heading into the city at this early hour. At the end of the road where it meets the roundabout, I pause and inhale deeply. I have grown to love early mornings since coming to Krysia’s house. There is a thin layer of fog hovering over the fields that I know will lift like a flock of birds by midmorning as the sun rises. The air smells of wet grass. As I take in the scene, my heart grows lighter, and for a second, I almost forget to be nervous.

At the bus stop I wait without speaking beside an elderly woman carrying an assortment of garden herbs in her tattered basket. The bus arrives and I follow the woman aboard, passing one of the tokens Krysia has given me to the driver. The bus rumbles along the unevenly paved road, pulling over every half kilometer or so. The trees, bent toward the road with their heavy loads of leaves, brush the roof of the bus as it passes. When all of the seats are filled and still more passengers continue to board, I stand to give my place to an old man, who smiles toothlessly at me.

Twenty minutes later, I step off the bus and, after a short walk, find myself standing at the foot of Wawel Castle. Looking up at the enormous stone fortress, I inhale sharply. I have not seen Wawel since I went to the ghetto last autumn. Now as I approach, its domes and spires seem even grander than I remembered. For the centuries that Kraków had been the capital of Poland, Wawel was the seat of kings, and many royal figures were buried in its cathedral. The actual capital had long since moved to Warsaw, and Wawel had become a museum—until eight months ago when it became the seat of the Nazi General Government. Compose yourself, I think, but my legs tremble and threaten to give out from under me as I walk up the long stone entranceway to the castle.

“Anna Lipowski,” I manage to say to the guard at the top of the ramp. He does not look at me, but checks my name off a list and summons a second guard, who escorts me into the castle through a stone archway. We proceed through a dizzying array of high-ceilinged hallways and marble staircases. The musty odor reminds me of the time when I visited the castle on a school trip as a child. But this is not the Wawel Castle of my childhood. The corridors are sterile now, the pictures of Polish kings removed. They are lined instead with endless red flags, each bearing a white circle with a large black swastika inside. Almost everyone we pass wears a Nazi military uniform and greets with a crisp, firm, “Heil Hitler!” I nod, unable to return the greeting. My escort, perhaps taking my silence as nervousness, answers loudly enough for both of us.

When at last it seems that we can walk no farther or higher, the guard stops before an enormous oak door bearing a plaque with Kommandant Richwalder’s name on it. He raps sharply on the door twice, then, without waiting for a response, opens it and gestures for me to enter. The room is a reception area of some sort, windowless and too warm. A large-boned woman with a wide nose and bad skin sits at a small desk in the center of the room. Her head is bowed and her enormous brown coil of hair bobs as she works, filling in spaces on a lined graph with intensity. If she’s here, I wonder, then what am I to do? Hope rises within me. Perhaps some mistake has been made and there is no position available for me. Maybe I can just go home. But even as I think this, I know that it is impossible; Kommandant Richwalder is not the type of man to make that sort of mistake.

I stand awkwardly by the door for several minutes. The woman does not look up. Helplessly, I turn around, but the guard who escorted me has disappeared into the hallway, leaving me alone. The woman behind the desk does not speak. “Przepraszam …” I finally say, excusing myself.

“Ja?”she replies, and I can tell from her pronunciation that she does not speak German.

“I am Anna Lipowski.” There is no reaction or response. “Kommandant Richwalder instructed me to report here….”

“Oh, yes.” At last she stands, inspecting me from head to toe with a sweeping glance. “You are the Kommandant’s new personal assistant.” There is an inscrutable hint of disdain in the way that she pronounces my job title that makes me uneasy. She gestures for me to follow her through a second door behind her desk. “This is the anteroom.” I look around. The room is smaller than the reception area, but has nicer furnishings and a cool breeze coming from two large open windows on either side. “You will work here. The Kommandant’s office is through that door.” She waves her head in the direction of another door at the back of the room. “The Kommandant had a meeting this morning and apologizes for being unable to welcome you personally.” It is hard to imagine the imposing Kommandant apologizing for anything.

The woman continues on as though giving a speech. “We are privileged to be working in the governor’s executive offices. Only the most senior officials and their staffs are located in Wawel. The rest of the General Government is located in the administrative building across town on Pomorskie Street.” I nod, trying to reconcile myself to the idea that working for the Nazis could somehow be construed as a privilege. “The Kommandant is the governor’s first deputy. All of the various directorates in southern Poland report to him. He will explain your duties to you in greater detail when he returns. For a start, you will keep his calendar and answer his correspondence.” She pronounces the word correspondence as though it were a matter of national security. “I am Malgorzata Turnau,” she concludes. “If I can help you at all, please let me know.”

“Thank you.” I realize then that this woman’s position is subordinate to mine, and the strange look I saw cross her face when she said my job title was one of jealousy. She probably hoped to move up to the very position I am to fill. But any sympathy I might have had for her is dampened by the reverence with which she described our work and the fervent look in her eyes. She is obviously one of those Poles whose loyalties have been swayed to the Nazis, and I can tell right away she will do anything to curry favor with the Kommandant. When Krysia had said to trust no one, she clearly had the Malgorzatas of the world in mind. I knew she would be watching me.

Malgorzata walks over to the desk that sits to the left side of the room under one of the windows. “This is the Kommandant’s mail.” She picks up a clipboard and hands it to me. “Open each piece and log it on this chart by sender, date and subject.” She shows me then how to separate the mail into piles: one for those pieces of correspondence that require the Kommandant’s personal attention, another for those that can be answered with a form response, and a final stack for those that need to be routed to other offices. “And don’t open anything marked confidential,” she instructs before leaving the room, slamming the door behind her.

Alone, I exhale, sitting down behind the desk. In addition to the letters, there is a small stack of office supplies that has been left on the desk for me, which I organize and place in the drawers. I pause to look around my new quarters. The anteroom is about three by five meters, with a small sofa located across from the desk. The windows, one each over the desk and sofa, are almost too high to see out of, but if I raise myself on my toes, I can just catch a glimpse of the river.

I reach for the stack of mail and begin opening the envelopes. Remembering what Krysia had said, I try to read as much of it as possible, but it is remarkably mundane, mostly invitations to social functions and dry-looking, official reports comprised of German military terminology that I cannot comprehend. About a third of the way down the stack, there is one envelope emblazoned with the word Confidential in red ink across the seal. I pull it out and hold it up to the light, but it is impossible to see through the thick paper. I examine the seal of the envelope. Perhaps I can open it and then close it again, I think, working at the edge of the seal with my fingernail.

The door swings open. I look up. The Kommandant strides into the anteroom, cloak flung over one shoulder. My breath catches. He is even more striking than I remembered. A smaller man, also in uniform, follows him, carrying two black leather briefcases. I rise to my feet. “Anna,” the Kommandant says, smiling and walking toward me. He takes my right hand and I half expect him to kiss it as he did the night we met at Krysia’s, but instead he simply shakes it in a businesslike manner. “Welcome.” He gestures to the other man. “This is Colonel Diedrichson, my military attaché.”

Colonel Diedrichson sets down the briefcases. He is not smiling. “What are you doing with that?” he demands, pointing to my left hand.

I freeze. I had forgotten that I am still holding the confidential envelope, the seal half open. “M-Malgorzata told me I was to open the mail,” I manage to say.

“She didn’t tell you that confidential mail is not to be opened?” he demands. I shrug and shake my head slightly, praying that he will not ask her.

“I’m sure it was just a mistake,” the Kommandant interjects.

“This—” Colonel Diedrichson snatches the envelope from my hand “—is why I wanted to import the clerical staff from Berlin.”

“Thank you, Colonel, that will be all,” the Kommandant says.

Diedrichson raises his right hand. “Heil Hitler.” He picks up the briefcases before turning on one heel and leaving. When he has gone, the Kommandant turns back to me. He does not speak but opens the door at the rear of the anteroom and gestures for me to enter. My hands shaking, I pick up a notepad from my desk and follow him inside.

The Kommandant’s office is like nothing I have ever seen. It is enormous, bigger than an entire floor of Krysia’s house. The office is like three rooms in one. Immediately by the door are a sofa and a half-dozen chairs arranged around a low table in the manner of a living room. At the far end of the room stands a conference table surrounded by at least fourteen chairs. In the center, between these two areas, is an enormous mahogany desk. A lone framed photograph sits on the corner of the desk. Across from the Kommandant’s desk, there is a towering grandfather clock. The thick red velvet curtains that cover the wall of windows behind the desk have been pulled back with gold ropes, revealing a stunning panoramic view of the river.

The Kommandant gestures to the sofa by the door. “Please, sit down,” he says, walking toward the desk. I perch in the location he indicated and wait expectantly as he shuffles through a stack of papers. A moment later he looks up. “I’m sure Malgorzata informed you of your basic duties, correspondence and scheduling.” I nod. “If that was all I needed, I could have anyone do it, including Malgorzata. Anna,” he says, crossing the room to where I am seated. As he approaches, I shiver involuntarily.

“Are you cold?” he asks.

“N-no, Herr Kommandant,” I stammer, cursing inwardly at my nervousness. I must do a better job of concealing it.

“Oh, good.” He sits down in the chair beside me. As he draws closer, I suddenly notice a swastika pin fastened to his collar. Had he been wearing it last time? I had not noticed. Then again, last time I had not known what Sachsenhausen was. He continues, “Anna, I am the Governor’s first deputy. That fool Ludwig was not entirely mistaken in what he said the night of the dinner party—I am charged with carrying out all of the governor’s orders. All of them.” His eyebrows rise, as if to emphasize his words. “A great many others would like to have my position.” He stands up again, pacing the floor in front of me. “The General Government is full of vipers who, for all of their lip service to the ideals of the Reich, would gladly stab me in the back while shaking my hand.” His voice is lower now. “As such, I need a personal assistant who is discreet, versatile and, above all, loyal. You are not just my assistant, but my eyes and ears.” He stops, standing squarely before me once more. His eyes lock squarely with mine. “Do you understand?”

“Y-yes, Herr Kommandant,” I stammer, marveling over the fact that he thinks I am loyal.

“Good. I chose you not only because you are exceptionally smart and speak German, but because I sense that you can be trusted.”

“Thank you, Herr Kommandant.” Trust. My stomach twists.

He continues pacing again. “Every morning you and I will meet to go over my schedule and any tasks I would like you to complete that day. For now, you can simply catch up on the backlog of correspondence. I have not had a personal assistant for more than a month, and I did not want anyone else to handle it.” I wonder then what became of my predecessor. “And as you discerned from Colonel Diedrichson, you are not to open any correspondence marked ‘confidential.’ Understood?” I nod. “Good. You have been given the highest clearance for a Pole, but there are still some things that are off-limits.” My heart sinks. Confidential correspondence would undoubtedly contain the information most valuable to the resistance.

“I will ask Colonel Diedrichson to stop by to see you later this morning. He can provide you with whatever you need, including guidance in my absence.” The Kommandant turns and walks toward his desk then, and I realize that I have been dismissed. I stand and turn to leave. “Anna,” he calls when I am at the door. I face him again. He is looking at me intensely, his expression deadly serious. “My door is always open to you.”

“Thank you, Herr Kommandant.” I retreat to the anteroom and collapse into my chair, shaking.

My first day of work at headquarters passes quickly after my meeting with the Kommandant. I spend the remainder of the morning opening the mail until Colonel Diedrichson returns to take me around the executive offices and introduce me to the staff. I can tell by the way that the secretaries and aides seem to be sizing me up that my arrival as the Kommandant’s personal assistant has aroused great interest. Finally, Diedrichson takes me to the security office, where I am given a building pass. On our way back to the Kommandant’s office we pass another set of large oak doors marked with a brass seal.

“The governor’s office,” Diedrichson says solemnly without stopping. His voice sounds almost reverent.

I spend the afternoon reorganizing file drawers in the anteroom. The files are in such complete disarray that it seems hard to believe that my predecessor left only a month ago. The librarian in me takes over, dividing the files first geographically, one section for Kraków and another for each of the outlying regions. Two hours later, I am finished, but I still have not seen any documents that seem significant. I wonder if the Kommandant receives materials through other channels.

I do not see the Kommandant for the remainder of that day. At five o’clock, I gather my belongings and walk to the bus stop. Once on the bus, I slump in my seat, my throbbing head pressed against the window. I am exhausted, more so from nerves than anything else. But I have made it through my first day.

I barely walk through the front door of Krysia’s and set down my things when Lukasz wraps himself around my knees. “He missed you all day today,” Krysia says as I pick him up and carry him upstairs. “I took him to the park and tried to play with him, but he just kept looking for you.”

We walk into the parlor. Sitting down, I hold the child back from me a few inches and brush his blond curls from his face. His eyes dart back and forth frantically and his grip on my arms tightens, as though afraid I am leaving again. The poor child has seen so many people he trusted walk through the front door and never come back. “Shh,” I coo, drawing him close again and rocking him back and forth. “I have to go away during the day sometimes, kochana, but I will always come back at night. Always.” His grip unrelenting, he buries his head in my shoulder, still not uttering a sound.

“How was it?” Krysia asks a few hours later, when we have finished supper and carried our mugs of coffee to the study. I had eaten with Lukasz still wrapped around my neck and had only been able to put him to bed once he had fallen soundly asleep in my arms.

“Not so very bad,” I answer carefully. How could I tell her the truth, that it was both horrible and yet strangely exciting at the same time? I hated being among the Nazis, but it was somehow thrilling to work in such a grand office in Wawel Castle. And then there was Kommandant Richwalder. The air felt electrified when he was present. But he is a Nazi, and to feel anything other than hatred and disgust … a wave of shame washes over me. After an awkward pause, I fetch my bag and show Krysia the pass Colonel Diedrichson had obtained for me from the security office.

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