“You see! It’s like I told you, Maja. The Germans have realized their mistake, putting so many of us in these conditions. Soon, they will relocate us to the forest where there will be enough space and food and water for us all, and we can earn our keep for them properly. They want us for labor, right? So it makes sense that they would move us somewhere where we can be strong to work for them.” Samuel looked across to Dawidek, who was pushing pebbles around on the floor as if they were toy cars. Then he looked to me, and he smiled again. “You’ll see, Roman. Things will get better soon. It’s only a matter of time.”
My mother silently broke off another piece of the bread, catching the crumbs that rained down onto her skirt. When she had finished her mouthful, she licked her finger and collected the crumbs from her skirt. Finally, she looked at me, and her gaze spoke volumes. She was tired of this—tired of our situation and tired of Samuel’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the simple, obvious fact that we were, effectively, doomed. She rarely said as much aloud anymore. I noticed that over the course of her pregnancy, and in the weeks since Eleonora’s birth, my mother had become less and less vocal about her thoughts on what the German end goal might be. When we were first walled in, she was full of fight and carefully looking for a way out. But time had worn down her spirit in the same way that it had worn down her physical reserves, and now my mother was a shadow of who she once had been. I knew that Samuel saw it, too, and I often wondered if he wasn’t compensating for the hopelessness of our situation when he went off on these ridiculously optimistic tangents.
“And if what awaits us in the forest is not better than this, but worse?” my mother said carefully.
“Worse?” I repeated incredulously. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. It was, to me, as close to hell on earth as a person could imagine.
“Dawidek, darling, could you please go out to the bucket to fetch me a cup of water to have with this delicious bread?” Mother asked, her tone all at once sweet and gentle. Dawidek carefully set his pebbles down on the floorboards and left the room. My mother looked right into my eyes, and she whispered, “There are many rumors. You know this—they come and they go. I don’t want you to panic, but Judit told me today that there are those at the market who say that a man escaped from a camp at Chełmno. She says that he saw proof that the Germans intend to be rid of us.”
“Rid of us? How many of us?” I said, frowning.
Mother looked away before she murmured, “Maybe all of us.”
“That’s absurd,” Samuel said dismissively. He shook his head, then exclaimed, “They need us for labor, Maja! Why would they kill us all when they need us for labor? They are trying to expand the Reich throughout all of Europe, and in this ghetto alone the factories are producing enough clothing for their entire army, not to mention the munitions we are producing. Besides which, why would they have allowed us to live until now, only to kill us all later? And how could they kill us all? It is impossible. It is a ridiculous notion.”
“Is it really so impossible?” Mother asked him impatiently. “After everything they have done to us, how can you believe they wouldn’t be capable of that?”
“Because they are still human, Maja!”
It was Samuel’s turn to raise his voice, and he did so just as Dawidek returned to the room, wide-eyed, holding a cup of water in front of him like a shield. None of us moved, even as I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. In all of the years that Samuel had been in my life, I had only ever heard him raise his voice twice. The first time was a shout of joy when my mother announced that she was pregnant with Dawidek. The second time was when they argued just before the Germans walled in the ghetto. Mother wanted to flee the city. Samuel was convinced he would still be allowed to operate his dentistry practice back in his old clinic, and that in doing so he could sustain the family.
“They aren’t human, Samuel,” I said, throat tight. “How can you even think they are, after what we’ve seen?”
Samuel closed his eyes, but his breathing was ragged. In the dim light, I saw that his hands were clenched into fists. After a moment, he exhaled unevenly, and then he whispered, “I need to believe that there is some hidden depth of grace within these men who torture us, because if there isn’t, then all hope is lost. And it’s not just lost for us, Roman, but for humanity, because even once all of this is over, this evil could emerge from the souls of men again and again and again.”
Dawidek finally moved to offer Mother her water. She gave him a sad, apologetic smile as she took it, then murmured her thanks. My brother walked back to his pebbles and resumed his game. The conversation seemed over, so I startled when Samuel suddenly added, “Have you heard anything?”
I looked up to find the question was, bewilderingly, directed at me.
“How would I have heard anything?”
He shrugged.
“Don’t the boys at the workshop talk?”
I suppressed a wince. The boys at the workshop did talk; I just didn’t engage unless there was no way to avoid it. It was different in the beginning. Sala had taken a dozen of us into his employ on the same day. I made three friends in that cohort: Leonard, Gustaw and Kazimierz. We all learned to operate the machines together, and soon I found myself looking forward to my work. Leonard had a wicked sense of humor and was forever making me laugh, and Gustaw wanted to be a lawyer just as I did—if we were ever able to return to our education. He and I found plenty of intellectual topics to keep our minds active. Kazimierz was well connected and knew all kinds of ways to access black-market food and other resources.
Leonard was the first to go—he contracted typhus and died within days of falling ill. Gustaw simply disappeared. I went to his house when he stopped coming to work, and his parents had no idea what had happened to him. Losing Kazimierz was the hardest: our merry gang of four had been just two for months, when one day the Gestapo came into the factory and dragged him away, kicking and screaming. Having seen Gustaw’s parents’ agony at his unexplained absence, I took it upon myself to go to Kazimierz’s mother to explain what had happened. After that, I made a determined effort to avoid friendship. I’d learned the hard way that loneliness was difficult to survive, but grief was infinitely worse.
I sat at a table working a sewing machine opposite another boy about my own age. Although we had worked together for over a year and he had made many attempts to talk to me, I still didn’t know his real name. The other boys called him Pigeon. I had no idea if this was an insult or a compliment or even where the nickname originated. I avoided a friendship with him purely because I’d heard the rumors—he, like many of the young men in the factory, was flirting with the underground. I had already watched one friend dragged away by the Gestapo, and should that happen again, I would make sure it happened to a stranger.
I did empathize with those who worked with the Resistance. I’d thought of it myself, but these were childish fantasies, and I knew I’d never act upon them. No resistance activity could save my family from what they were going through; in fact, connecting with the Resistance could only bring my family pain. Besides which, every time the subject came up, Samuel made me promise I would never get involved. I knew his determination to avoid the underground came not from a philosophical objection to resistance, but from a philosophical objection to facing our reality.