“They were escaping from the Jewish Quarter, weren’t they?” I guessed. Sara didn’t answer me, so I blew on the tea, then tried to prompt her again. “I do know the Jewish Quarter has been walled in.”
“It may be forbidden to use the word ghetto in Warsaw now, but in this apartment, we tell the truth. That’s what it is, and that’s what we will call it.” I was struck by a pang of guilt, because I had so often avoided the truth while I was in Sara’s apartment. And I’d heard Uncle Piotr and Mateusz discussing the Jewish Quarter and the rules about the word ghetto, but I hadn’t thought much about why that rule would exist. “The Germans like to give off an air of civility. They want the world to think that they are the master race, smarter and more dignified than the rest of us. They also want to be able to disguise their cruelty with polite words. Instead of facing the truth of their own cruelty, they dress it up with airs and graces, as if using different words could change the reality of their evil deeds—” She seemed to catch herself, and she winced and shook her head, then sighed. “I am being careless now, but I am too tired to play the game. A group of sewer guides and couriers were escorting the children to a safe house, but the Germans were waiting at one of their exit points, and they arrested one of the guides. That guide will be tortured by the Gestapo, and she will inevitably give up some of the details of her rescue work. Most of the children were captured with her, but the other courier escaped with these four.” She gestured upstairs. “She panicked and brought the children here, knowing that I would shelter them overnight.”
“Should I not ask how she knows you?”
“You definitely should not.”
“The children are so thin,” I murmured, almost to myself.
“Yes.” She pressed her palm against her chest and swallowed heavily. “It has been months—years even—since they ate properly, and there are no reserves left in them, no fat beneath the skin to keep them healthy, no vitality in their bodies. The Jewish rations are half our rations. Half. Think about how little you would have to eat without your uncle’s extra supplies, and now imagine that was halved. Every single person on the other side of that wall is starving to death.”
“Well...you told me there is typhus in the sewers,” I said awkwardly. “And...the Germans say the Jews are walled off because they have typhus...” That’s what the posters and signs around the ghetto said anyway, and I knew that’s what the Germans wanted us to believe. The shameful truth was I hadn’t thought much about the wall or the Jewish people trapped inside it. I had been entirely consumed with my own problems since we’d arrived in Warsaw. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about those who might have had even bigger problems.
“You really think the Jews are dirtier than we are?” Sara interrupted me, eyes flashing with fire, then she seemed to catch herself. She drew in a deep breath, then she asked me carefully, “Elz·bieta. Does it matter to you that those children are Jewish?”
“You told me to wash my hands—”
“Because of the sewage! Not because the children are Jewish!”
She had never spoken to me so sharply, and I felt my face flushing with shame. I was tired and anxious and now as nervous about Sara’s disapproval as I was about the danger we were all in with those children in her apartment.
“I...I know...”
I wanted to tell her then that I was really Emilia Slaska, born of a family who loved their neighbors, Jewish, Catholic or whatever they might happen to be. That my father had been killed by the Germans right in front of my eyes, that my brother Tomasz had died because of his efforts to help the Jews, that I’d seen him in death, too.
Had I not so recently been caught breaking Mateusz and Truda’s rules, I might have told her that night, but as Truda had warned, just because I liked Sara did not mean I should trust her. I was tired, confused just trying to figure out if Sara should be trusted now that I knew she had secrets of her own.
But then I remembered the stories I’d heard about the Germans—how they could be so incredibly crafty, and how they’d sometimes go to great lengths to test loyalty and root out those working against Hitler’s goals. It struck me that even this complicated situation in Sara’s apartment could be a ruse, set up to determine whether or not I was a sympathizer to prohibited activities.
Mateusz had told me to be paranoid, and in that moment, I truly was—but I was also wary of the sharpness in Sara’s gaze. All I could do was try to walk a fine line between maintaining her approval and saying and doing the things I knew I was supposed to do.
“You should not be hiding Jewish children in your apartment,” I said with conviction, intending to convince her that I believed it, just in case she’d set all of this up to trap me. But Sara’s eyebrows drew down, and her lips pursed. My answer displeased her immensely. Although I knew I’d done exactly what I was supposed to do, I hated that I had disappointed Sara. My cheeks grew hot, and I stood, suddenly desperate to retreat—away from the sick children and my dear friend who, it turned out, I didn’t really know at all. “I know the Jews aren’t dirty,” I blurted, and I dropped my voice low. “I know they are just people, just as we are. My family had many Jewish friends back in...where we came from. But I am scared for you. It is so dangerous for you to have Jewish children in your home, even overnight.”
“It is,” Sara conceded slowly, then she added, “Did you know that I had a child, a son?”
My eyes widened. Sara had never once mentioned her life before the war.
“You were married?”
“I was. I don’t speak about him because it hurts too much, but I think of him every day.”
“What happened?”
“His name was Janusz. He was three years old. He had my smile, my husband’s eyes... He was the best thing that ever happened to me. My mother was watching him that day—the very first day of bombing. I went to the hospital with my husband, who was a doctor, and we were tending to the wounded. Our apartment building was hit by a bomb, most likely within a few hours of me leaving. Mother’s injuries were awful—she surely died instantly. My son, though...” She broke off, her voice trembling. Sara drew in a shaky breath, then sipped at her tea and finally cleared her throat. “I couldn’t get back to our building because the roads were blocked, and the hospital was in such a state, and every time I tried to leave, someone would rush at me with another injured person and... I just kept telling myself that Janusz was with my mother and that they were certainly okay. But they weren’t okay, and when I finally got back to the apartment two days later, I saw that the building was destroyed. I will never forget the sight of him. Janusz was lying beneath a small beam. When I lifted it off him, I saw that he was lying in a pool of his own blood. He’d scratched at the beam for so long that he had worn the skin away on his fingers.”