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
