Addy nods. I miss people, too. I miss my family, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. Eliska’s parents are separated, and she isn’t close with her father, who is in England now, as are many of her friends, including Lorena. She has an uncle who lives in Brazil, and that’s it—that’s the extent of her family. Addy knows, too, that despite the daily complaints, Eliska loves her mother dearly. She has no concept of what it might feel like to live without la Grande Dame. She’s not lying awake at night as Addy is, worried sick about the fate of loved ones left behind. It’s different for him. It’s unbearable at times. He hasn’t a clue as to the whereabouts of his parents, his siblings, his cousins and aunts and uncles, his baby niece—he doesn’t even know if they’re alive. All he knows is what the newspaper reports, none of which is promising. The latest headlines confirm what the Poles on the Alsina have told him—that the Nazis have begun rounding up entire communities of Jews, forcing them to live four and five to a single room in roped-off neighborhoods. Ghettos. Most major cities now have one, some two. The thought of his parents being evicted from their apartment—forced to surrender the home where he’d spent the first nineteen years of his life, the home they’d worked so hard to acquire—makes Addy’s stomach turn. But he can’t talk about the headlines with Eliska, or about his family. He’s tried a few times, knowing that just hearing their names spoken aloud would help make them feel more present, more alive, in his heart at least. But each time he broaches the subject, she’s brushed him off. “You look so sad when you talk of your family,” she says. “I’m sure they’re fine, Addy. Let’s talk of only the things that make us happy. The things we have to look forward to.” And so, he’s humored her and—if he’s being perfectly honest—let himself be distracted, catching in their frivolous chatter a moment’s relief from the crushing weight of the unknown.
As they round a bend, they see the silhouette of the Alsina’s cylindrical steam towers jutting up over the horizon. From afar, the ship appears toylike compared with the monstrosity anchored beside it—a 250-meter-long battleship with quadruple turrets that soar four stories into the sky. The Richelieu has been detained, along with the Alsina, by the British. When either vessel will be able to sail again remains a mystery. “We should be thankful,” Addy says, when Madame Lowbeer complains about the hopelessness of their situation. “We have a roof over our heads, food to eat. It could be worse.” In fact, it could be much worse. They could be starving, forced to beg for scraps, to dig for grains of spoiled rice in the gutter, as they’d seen some of the West African children doing the week before. Or they could be stuck in Europe. Here, at least, they have a place to rest their heads at night, an endless supply of chickpeas, and, most important, a visa into a country where they’ll be allowed a life of freedom. A fresh start.
At the port, Addy checks his watch again. With a few minutes to spare, they pause at a roadside newsstand. His heart sinks as he reads the headlines. GLASGOW HIT BY LUFTWAFFE, the front page of the West Africa Journal reads. Every day, news of the war in Europe worsens. Countries fall, one after the next. First Poland, then Denmark and Norway, parts of Finland, Holland, Belgium, France, and the Baltic states. Italy, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria have joined the Axis powers. Addy ponders the whereabouts of Willie and his friends in Montmartre who had poked so much fun at the idea of war. Did they stay in France, or did they flee, as he had?
In a few weeks, Addy realizes, it will be Passover—the third Passover that he will be forced to spend away from his home. Will his family try to find a way to celebrate this year? A lump forms in his throat and he turns away, hoping Eliska won’t notice the sadness in his eyes. Eliska. He is falling in love. In love! How can he feel this way, with so much worry consuming him? There is no explanation, other than that he can’t help it. It feels good. And with all that is happening around him, that in itself is a gift. He reaches for his mother’s handkerchief, dabs discreetly at the tears that have materialized in the corners of his eyes.
Eliska loops her arm through his. “Ready?” she asks.
Addy nods, forcing a smile as they continue on toward the ship.
APRIL 7, 1941: The gates to Radom’s two ghettos are sealed, confining some 27,000 Jews to the main ghetto on Wa?owa Street and another 5,000 to the smaller Glinice ghetto just outside the city. With only 6,500 rooms between the two ghettos, they are drastically overcrowded. Living conditions and food rations deteriorate by the day, and disease spreads quickly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mila and Felicia
Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ May 1941
The whispers pass swiftly among the workers, like a gust of wind through tall grass. “Schutzstaffel.” German military. “They’re coming.” The color drains from Mila’s cheeks. She looks up from her sewing and, in her haste, pricks her forefinger with her needle.
It’s been over a month since the gates to Radom’s two ghettos were sealed. Most of the city’s Jews—those who didn’t already reside in the ghetto—were given a ten-day notice at the end of March to leave their homes. A fortunate few were able to trade apartments with Poles whose homes fell within the designated ghetto borders. But the majority scrambled to find a place to live, which was exceptionally challenging as the ghettos were already far too crowded, even before the Jewish refugees began filing in from Przytyk, a nearby village that the Germans had converted into a military camp. The Kurcs, of course, had been forced out of their apartment and into the Old Quarter a year and a half ago. They were lucky in a sense, not to have to take part in the mad rush to find a space to reside. Instead, they stayed in their two-bedroom flat on Lubelska Street, watching from a second-story window as the others filed in by the thousands.
Soon after the ghetto was sealed in April, however, the Wehrmacht stationed in the city were replaced with Schutzstaffel, who brought along a new era of evil. Easily recognizable by their beetle-black uniforms and lightning-shaped S insignia, the SS prided themselves on being the purest of all Germans. Rumor spread quickly among the Jews that to become a member of the SS, officers had to prove the racial history of their families dating back to the 1700s. “These guys are true believers,” Mila’s friend Isaac warned. “We are nothing to them. Just remember that. We are less than dogs.” As a member of the Jewish Police, Isaac is in the unenviable position of working closely with the SS—he’d seen, up close, what they were capable of.
There have been rumors at the workshop of a raid. It happens often—a swarm of SS will storm unannounced into one of the ghetto workspaces and order the Jews to line up so they can be counted, their permits checked. To live in the ghetto, the Jews must have papers deeming them worthy of work. Most without papers—the elderly, the sick, or the very young—have already been deported. The few who are left remain in hiding; they would rather take the risk of being discovered—and killed on the spot—than be torn from their families, especially now that word has begun to trickle back to Wa?owa about the conditions of the slave labor camps where the deported are sent. Trying not to think of what will happen if Felicia is discovered, Mila has spent the past several weeks devising a plan, a way to hide her daughter in the event of a raid—and praying for her sister’s return.
Halina had written in February. She and Franka had made it to Lvov, she said, and she’d found work at a hospital; she would come home as soon as she could with some savings and with the “drawings” Adam promised. Mila hoped that “soon” meant in the next few weeks. Their monthly rations lasted ten days, at most. Every day their hunger grew; every day Felicia’s spine felt sharper as Mila ran her fingertips along her back, coaxing her to sleep. Occasionally Nechuma was able to find an egg or two on the black market, but when she did it cost her fifty zloty, or a tablecloth, or one of her porcelain teacups. They are burning through their savings and have nearly depleted the supplies they’d brought from home—a disturbing reality, considering there is no end in sight to this life in captivity.
It’s dreadful, the routine of it all—the hunger, the work, the claustrophobia of living on top of one another. There is no such thing as privacy anymore. There is no space to think. Every day the streets grow dirtier, smellier. The only beings that thrive in the ghetto are the lice, which have grown so big the Jews have taken to calling them “blondies.” When you found one, you burned it and hoped it wasn’t a typhus carrier. Mila and her parents are becoming despondent. They need Halina now more than ever—they need the money and the IDs, but even more they need her conviction. Her will. They need someone who can lift their spirits, who can look them in the eye and declare with confidence that there is a plan. A plan that will get them out of the ghetto.
Mila sets her sewing down, the tunic’s buttonhole half complete, and licks a drop of blood from her finger. “Felicia,” she whispers, pushing her chair away from her workbench and peering between her knees. Beneath the table, Felicia looks up from her spool of thread—she’s made a game of trying to roll it from one hand to the other.
“Tak?”