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.
