Chapter Four
15th November 1940
Nacha Wierzbicka squatted beneath the grimy window frame, then slowly raised herself up to peer through the dirty pane. Her breath fogged the glass and her heart thudded loudly, nerves squirming in the pit of her stomach.
Although she was only thirteen, she wasn’t welcome in school any longer, and she was curious about what was going on after the announcement the previous night.
They hadn’t banned her from attending at first. When the Nazis came, they’d removed the Polish textbooks and forced the teacher to use German. They hung pictures of Hitler in the classrooms. It wasn’t until later that the Jewish students were told they couldn’t return. By then, they’d been harassed and attacked in a feverish escalation for months.
Tata wouldn’t talk to her about any of it. He exchanged furious whispers with the other men who stopped by their apartment, but with her, he was silent or offered a bleak smile. He told her everything would be all right and not to fret. But she couldn’t help worrying and needed more than empty reassurance, especially now that she knew they’d be forced to stay in a ghetto within the next few weeks.
That morning, he’d paced back and forth across the small living room floor, mouth tight, eyes grim. Whenever Papa tried to calm him with a hand on his arm or a soft word, Tata shouted about Germans and ghettos, and how could it have come to this?
Nacha hadn’t seen her father so angry before. A knot formed in her gut, and she’d had to get out of the house. So she’d snuck out when Babcia was busy mending her everyday skirt. She hadn’t thought much ahead of time about where she should go, but found herself headed for the school.
She’d taken the same walk every school day for years, and the habit was hard to shake. There had always been something comforting about the classrooms, the teachers, the lessons they learned. She was naturally good at academic work and found it satisfying in a way many of the other students seemed not to. She missed the teachers and was certain they’d miss her too, if only she could see them. But Jewish children had been banned from the school grounds.
Her breath caught in her throat while she peeked through the windowpane outside her former classroom. Desks marched in straight rows from the front of the room to the back. At the head of the class, the teacher, Mr Nowak, stood at the blackboard, speaking words she couldn’t understand. His voice was muffled.
He held a pointer in one hand, and every now and then, he aimed it at a white screen where a single image was frozen. He finished what he was saying and stood to one side, holding the pointer down at an angle with his eyes fixed on the screen. Near the front door, an SS officer stood against the wall, hands linked behind his back, hat tilted jauntily to one side.
A filmstrip projector sat on a wooden stool near the back of the room, and Jan hovered beside it. After a nod from Mr Nowak, Jan pressed a button, and the images on the projector screen leapt to life. Still frames flew across the screen, images of people just like Nacha. Her heart in her throat, she stifled a gasp and grabbed hold of the windowsill with both hands. Words flashed over the images, accompanied by grotesque cartoons of hook-nosed men with greasy black hair.
The Jews are vermin. They must be sequestered into the ghetto as a form of quarantine. It is for our own protection that we must separate the Jews from society as they carry typhus and lice. It is for the greater good.
The film ended abruptly, and there were murmurs throughout the group of students. She couldn’t see Jan’s face, but his shoulders were square and his chin high. What was he thinking? What would he say? Did he agree with the film? Surely not. He was like a brother to her, a son to her father. They were family in every way that mattered.
Tears clogged her throat, but she wouldn’t let them fall. Why did people hate her and her family? They’d done nothing to deserve it. And how could all those children, her friends, sit and listen to such lies without saying anything in her defence?
She shivered as the teacher cleared his throat and tapped his pointer on the edge of the screen. “As you see, it is for our own good.” She heard his voice clearly that time as it sliced the cold air and reverberated through the glass. Another cough, and he glanced at the SS officer. The officer nodded at the teacher, then stepped out of the room, leaving it in silence as children squirmed in their chairs.
“Right then, class—back to mathematics. Where did we leave things yesterday?”
Nacha stared at the blackboard, eyes glazing over, as the teacher wrote problems with white chalk and students quickly marked them down on sheets of lined paper at their desks. How could the students return to their work as though nothing had happened? As though the world hadn’t been torn asunder?
How dare they call her and her family vermin? How could these Nazis label them with vile names and suggest they were dirty or diseased? Why didn’t anyone object? She scanned the room, wondering if any of her childhood friends would say something to the teacher about what they’d seen. But each head was bowed over its work, each child focused on the task at hand. Only one set of eyes turned her way—a girl she’d played hopscotch with a hundred times. Someone she’d laughed with, practiced handstands with when the weather was fine. A girl she’d thought of as a friend. The girl met her gaze with a steady look, then leapt to her feet, pointing.
“A Jew!” she shouted. “Look! She’s watching us.”
Jan swung about, his gaze meeting Nacha’s where she crouched. He mouthed to her, “Go!”
Nacha took off at a run, careful to stay close to the wall. She sidestepped a shrub and leapt over an icy puddle. As she closed in on the school entrance, she saw the door fly open and the SS Officer step through it. With adrenaline pumping hard through her veins, she backed up against the building and willed herself to disappear into its brickwork.
The officer stopped at the top of a set of stairs that led down to the road and tapped a cigarette from a box. He lit it and inhaled a deep breath. A puff of smoke appeared before his mouth, and he pushed the hand with the box of cigarettes into his pocket and jogged down the stairs to a waiting car. The vehicle idled at the bottom of the steps, black and shiny with two red flags carrying the swastika attached to the bonnet. Its gleam and the bright red of the flags were a stark contrast to its drab surroundings.
Holding her breath, Nacha watched him climb into the vehicle. As it drove away, she exhaled slowly, her breath visible for a moment before it faded into the frigid air. Shouting emitted from inside the school drove her headlong down the staircase. She sprinted for home, her legs numb inside their stockings from squatting so long beneath the window on the cold, hard ground. She was almost home when a truck rumbled by on the road, its exhaust belching smoke.
Beneath a canvas canopy on the back of the truck, she caught a glimpse of gleaming metal. Soldiers sat on bench seats on either side of the truck bed. Her pulse accelerated. The truck was followed by a line of identical trucks, all packed with soldiers holding rifles between their knees. They were heading for the Jewish District. She had to hurry.
* * *
It wasn’t long after Nacha returned home that she heard the sounds of laughter in the courtyard and saw through the window that Jadzia and Danuta had returned home from school. She watched them for a few minutes, forgetting all about the truckloads of soldiers.
It didn’t take much for her fear to dissipate, since the invaders had lived amongst them now for six months and so far, she and her family had managed to continue their lives. Of course, she heard all about the beatings and shootings that’d happened in the Jewish District, and she’d seen the burned-out buildings sending spirals of smoke into the sky the next day as the charcoal remains cooled. But Tata told her to keep herself hidden from the Nazis, to be careful where she went and who she saw, and so far, it’d kept her safe.
When she was out and about on her own or with Jan and his sisters, she passed as one of them, an Aryan. It was only when she was with her own family that she noticed the hateful looks, the women who pulled their skirts aside with a scowl or the men who shouted insults at their backs.
The girls next door took turns skipping with the rope their mother had bought them the previous Christmas. She’d traded for it at the markets with a bag of oats and a hand trowel. Nacha remembered because she’d wished she had a mother who thought of such things. But her mother was dead, and Tata didn’t worry himself with frivolous purchases—he had too many mouths to feed. She’d heard him say it often enough. But he said it with a kiss to her forehead and a smile that made his eyes twinkle, so she could never stay angry with him.
Still, it was hard for her to watch from a distance while the girls from next door enjoyed their Christmas gift. Especially since her family didn’t celebrate the holiday, which seemed more unfair than anything else in that moment. She knew it was wrong, but she wished she was Catholic. Wished she didn’t have to worry about Nazis and could jump rope in the courtyard with her Christmas gift.
Shame washed over her as she pushed the thought aside. There was no point in wishing for something impossible. She couldn’t change who she was. And according to Babcia, it was wrong to think that way. They should be proud of their Jewish heritage and faith. But it was hard for Nacha not to wonder about a life where her faith wasn’t used to call her dirty and diseased. She wanted more than anything to be invisible. If people couldn’t see her, they wouldn’t be able to shut her away in a ghetto and call her names.
She glanced over her shoulder to see if Babcia was watching. Her grandmother hummed in the kitchen while she worked on the supper that Nacha was supposed to be helping with. A delicious aroma drifted out to greet her, making her stomach clench with hunger. But what did she care of hunger when there was skipping to be had? Babcia would hardly notice she was gone, and it would only be for a few minutes.
So she leapt from the place by the window where she’d knelt to spy on the sisters and hurried outside, making sure to shut the door quietly behind her. She adjusted her overcoat and scarf as she scampered into the courtyard, a grin tugging at her lips.
“Nacha!” the girls called, clearly glad to see her.
Jadzia laughed while Danuta threw her arms around the older girl and buried her face in Nacha’s coat.
“It’s good to see you,” said Danuta, her voice muffled by the woollen fabric.
Nacha chuckled. “I saw you last night. It hasn’t been so long.”
“But I thought I’d never see you again.” Danuta beamed up at her, eyes glistening.
Nacha huffed. “We live right next door.”
“What if the Nazis find out?” whispered Jadzia, looking around as though they might leap out from behind a nearby beech tree and catch the three girls talking to one another.
Nacha shrugged as though she didn’t care, but a pang of nerves tightened in her gut. “Let’s skip. I don’t have long. Babcia will be looking for me to help in the kitchen soon.”
“I like your hair curled that way,” said Jadzia as she grabbed hold of one end of the rope. “How did you manage it?”
“I tied it in rags last night,” replied Nacha. “It was easy enough, although I’m not sure I could be bothered to do it very often.” The truth was, she loved the look of the curls that hung against her shoulders. She’d pulled them back from her face, and it made her feel mature and beautiful. But now that she couldn’t go to school, or the markets, or even synagogue, she couldn’t help feeling there was no purpose to any of it—dressing nicely, curling her hair, polishing her shoes. It all seemed inconsequential and pointless. Still, Babcia insisted she keep up her appearance.
Your habits make you the person you are. These little disciplines will keep us going through all of this absurdalność.
So she’d tied her hair in rags each night and she would continue to do it, to keep Babcia happy.
“I’m going to try it too,” said Jadzia as Danuta took the other end of the rope.
They began spinning the rope over and over and Nacha watched carefully, judging when she could jump in. She counted in her head, then sprang in to skip over the rope as it spun over her head, then under her feet and back again.
Jadzia and Danuta began to chant in time with the beat of the skipping rope.
“Snail, snail, show us your horns;
I’ll give you some cheese for pierogi.
If not cheese, then cabbage;
From cabbage you will be fat!”
A truck engine gunned up the street. It stopped outside the apartment complex, followed by the shuffling of booted feet. Nacha stopped still, listening. The skipping rope whacked into her ankle.
Danuta whined. “Nacha, what are you doing? You ruined it. We were going for fifty in a row.”
“Shhh,” begged Nacha.
“What is it?” asked Jadzia, eyes widening.
The side gate on the courtyard banged open, and several German soldiers marched through. Their boots clacked on the hard ground. Their baggy pants stuck out around their legs. With hard hats half obscuring their faces, all Nacha could see was a series of twitching moustaches.
“Move!” shouted one of the men in German. “Back to your homes.”
Nacha stumbled away from the girls, her heart in her throat. She didn’t dare say a thing. Jadzia grabbed Danuta by the back of her skirt and tugged her towards the door of their apartment.
A trio of men in work clothes ambled into the courtyard. One pushed a wheelbarrow filled with concrete dust. A shovel poked out of the top of the pile of dust. The other two pushed a large timber spool wound about with barbed wire in long, thin strands. They all wore belts about their hips that carried hammers, nails and other tools.
Nacha eased through the door, shut and locked it behind her. She hung her coat, hands trembling on the coatrack, and then ran to the window to peep through the curtains. The men didn’t waste any time. They set about digging holes in the middle of the courtyard.
“Babcia!” called Nacha, her voice hoarse with fear.
Babcia came halfway from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, a frown on her face. “Where have you been? You’re supposed to be helping. What do you think—I should do it on my own? Maybe you can sit at the table and I can serve you as well.”
“Babcia, look!” she insisted.
Babcia shook her head as she shuffled to the window. “Girls these days. You don’t know what life was like for us… What is this?” Babcia’s face fell. “What are they up to?”
The front door slammed shut and Tata came into the room, puffing hard. “It’s a wall.” He slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, resting his head in his hands. It seemed as if he would never catch his breath. Nathan stepped inside after him. He, too, was breathing hard.
“They’re building a wall around the ghetto,” said Nathan.
Babcia’s hand flew to cover her mouth. “Through our backyard?”
Tata nodded, letting his hands drop to rest on the table.
A lump formed in Nacha’s throat as she turned away from the pained look on her father’s face to stare again at the workmen in the courtyard. She’d been so happy only a few minutes earlier. And now, everything had changed. She hadn’t really believed it could happen. Surely the Germans couldn’t keep her and her family inside a ghetto, away from the world. But now she saw it could be done. If they were willing to build a wall around a city full of people, she supposed they could do anything at all.
“They’re sealing us off today,” continued Tata, confirming her worst fears. “Over three hundred thousand people.”
“How will we all fit?” asked Babcia. “What will we eat?”
Papa stepped slowly down the stairs, his reading glasses hung on a string around his neck.
“Did you see?” asked Babcia.
He sighed. “I did.”
“What will happen now?” asked Nacha to no one in particular.
“I don’t know,” replied Tata, coming to her and taking her hand in his to squeeze it. She leaned against his chest, and his arms encircled her. “But we must do as we’re told. We don’t want to anger them. Who knows what they might do? And surely this can’t last forever. They want us to stay here—we’ll do it. We’ll keep out of sight. We won’t cause any trouble. We will stay home and keep to ourselves. Where is Berek?”
“They went to see the Cykiert family. Jan and Waltrina wanted to say their goodbyes.” Tata’s lips pulled into a tight line. “I hope they got out in time.”
Gunshots filled the quiet, followed by screaming in the distance. Nacha ran to the front door and opened it a crack. She peered outside, her heart beating out a staccato rhythm. A woman ran by along the street, pulling a small child by the hand after her. A group of five men sprinted past the woman. There were more gunshots. At the end of the street, flames licked at the second story of an apartment building. Black smoke billowed into the sky overhead. The scent of scorched earth and gunpowder filled the air.
When a neighbour shuffled by, blood streaming from a wound on the side of her head, Nacha pulled the door shut with a bang. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ran past Babcia and Tata, through the kitchen. Ignoring their shouted questions, she ran up the staircase. She threw herself down on her bed, pushed her head under the pillow, and bit down on her fist to quiet the groaning sobs that bubbled up her throat.
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