After another three weeks of travel, Genek finally finds himself in line at a makeshift recruiting center in Wrewskoje. A young Polish officer mans the desk.
“Next!” the officer calls. Genek steps forward, only two bodies separating him from his future in the Polish II Corps. The line had wrapped twice around the small city block when he took his place that morning, but he hadn’t minded. For the first time since he can remember, he is filled with a sense of purpose. Perhaps, he thinks, this was his fate all along, to fight for Poland. If anything, it’s a chance for redemption—to make right the poor decision that had cost him and Herta a year of their lives.
Genek has been told nothing yet of when or where accepted recruits will report for duty. He hopes their stay in Uzbekistan won’t be long. The single-room flat they’ve been assigned, while better than the barracks in Altynay, is hot, dirty, and teeming with rodents. He and Herta spent their first few nights being jarred awake by the disconcerting feeling of tiny feet skittering across their chests.
“There must be some kind of mistake,” the recruit at the front of the line says.
“I’m sorry,” the officer behind the desk replies.
Genek leans in to eavesdrop.
“No, it has to be a mistake.”
“No, sir, I’m afraid it isn’t,” the officer shakes his head apologetically. “Anders’s Army isn’t accepting Jews.”
Genek’s stomach turns. What?
“But—” the man stammers, “you mean to tell me I’ve come all this way . . . but why?”
Genek watches as the officer lifts a piece of paper and reads: “‘According to Polish law, a person of Jewish heritage belongs not to Poland but to a Jewish nation.’ I’m sorry, sir.” He says this without malice, but with an efficiency that suggests he’s eager to move on.
“But what am I supposed to—”
“I’m sorry, sir, it isn’t up to me. Next, please.”
With the issue put to rest, the man slinks from the line, muttering under his breath.
No Jews in Anders’s Army. Genek shakes his head. He wouldn’t put it past the Germans to deprive a Jew the right to fight for his country, but the Poles? If he’s unable to enlist, there’s no telling how he and Herta will manage. In all likelihood they’ll be thrown back to the wolves, to a life of forced labor. To hell with that, Genek seethes.
“Next, please.”
A single body now separates him from the officer at the recruiting desk, from the paperwork he’ll be asked to complete. He balls up his hands into fists. Beads of sweat congregate on his forehead. That form is a deal breaker, a voice inside declares. It’s life and death. You’ve been here before. Think. You haven’t come this far to be turned away.
“Next, please.”
Before the man in front of him has a chance to step away from the desk, Genek pulls his cap down low over his brow and ducks quietly out of line.
Weaving his way through the dry, crumbling town, his mind races. Mostly, he’s angry. Here he is offering up his manpower, possibly even his life, to fight for Poland. How dare his country deprive him of this right because of his religion! He wouldn’t be in this whole mess in the first place if he hadn’t stubbornly labeled himself Polish. He wants to yell, to punch a wall. But then his mind flashes to his year in Altynay, and he orders himself to think clearly. I need the army, he reminds himself. It is the only way out.
He pauses at a street corner, at the entrance to a small mosque. Staring up at its stout gold dome, it hits him. Andreski.
On paper, Genek and Otto Andreski have little in common. Otto is a devout Catholic—an ex–factory worker with a perpetual scowl and a chest as big as a bass drum; Genek is a lithe, dimpled Jew who has spent his career, until recently, behind a desk at a law firm. Otto is a brute, Genek a charmer. But despite their differences, the friendship the men forged in the forests of Siberia is a solid one. Lately, in their few moments of spare time, they have taken to throwing a set of hand-carved dice, or to playing kierki with Genek’s deck of cards, which is now in a pathetic state from overuse but somehow still complete. Herta and Julia Andreski, too, have grown close, have discovered, even, that they competed on rival ski teams at university.
“I need you to teach me to be a Roman Catholic,” Genek says later that evening. He’s just finished explaining to Otto and Julia what had happened at the recruiting center. “From here on in,” he announces, “Herta and I are Catholics, if anyone asks.”
Genek is a good student. Within days, Otto has taught him to recite Our Father and Hail Mary, to cross himself with his right hand, not his left, to rattle off the name of the reigning Pope, Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli. A week later, when Genek finally works up the courage to return to the recruiting center, he greets the young officer behind the desk with a strong handshake and a confident smile. His blue eyes are steady and his hand doesn’t tremble when he prints the words Roman Catholic in the box marked RELIGION on the recruitment form. And when his name, along with Herta and Józef as family members, is added to the roster as an official member of Anders’s Polish II Corps, he thanks the officer with a salute and a “God bless.”
On the eve of their first official day as new recruits, Otto invites Genek and Herta to his flat to celebrate. Genek brings his playing cards. They pass Otto’s secret stash of vodka, sipping from a dented tin flask between hands of the agreed-upon game, oczko.
“To our new Christian friends,” Otto toasts, downing a swig and passing the flask to Genek.
“To the Pope,” Genek adds, taking a sip and handing the tin to Herta.
“To a new chapter,” Herta says, glancing at Józef, asleep in a small basket beside her, and for a moment the foursome is quiet as each wonders what exactly the next several months will bring.
“To Anders,” Julia chirps, lightening the mood, reaching for the flask and holding it victoriously over her head.
“To winning this fucking war!” Otto howls, and Genek laughs, as the prospect of winning a war being fought worlds away from Wrewskoje—a dusty Central Asian town whose name he can barely pronounce—seems as unlikely as it does absurd.
The vodka makes its way again to Genek. “Niech szcz??cie nam sprzyja,” he offers, the tin raised. May luck be on our side. They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.
DECEMBER 7, 1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.
DECEMBER 11, 1941: Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States; on the same day, the United States declares war on Germany and Italy. A month later, the first American forces arrive in Europe, landing in Northern Ireland.
JANUARY 20, 1942: At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, Reich director Reinhard Heydrich outlines a “Final Solution” plan to deport the millions of Jews remaining in German-conquered territories to extermination camps in the east.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mila and Felicia
Outside Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ March 1942