It’s warm inside the train car, despite the cold March air whipping at their cheeks through the open window. Mila and Felicia have been standing for over an hour, packed in too tightly to sit, but the mood is bright, giddy almost with excitement. Whispers of freedom, of what it will feel like, taste like, circulate throughout the car. They are the fortunate few, the forty-odd Jews from the Wa?owa ghetto who have made the list: doctors, dentists, lawyers—Radom’s most liberal and educated professionals—selected to emigrate to America.
Mila was skeptical at first. Everyone was. America had declared war on Axis powers in December. They’d sent troops to Ireland in January. Why would Hitler offer up a band of Jews to a country that had designated itself an enemy? But he’d sent a group to Palestine the month before, and despite what everyone thought—that surely the Jews had really been shipped off not to Palestine but to their deaths—rumors had begun flying through the ghetto that they had made it safely to Tel Aviv. And so when the opportunity arose, Mila was quick to put her name on the list. She believed it: this was her chance.
Felicia stands with her arms wrapped around Mila’s thigh, relying on her mother’s balance to steady hers. “What does it look like now, Mamusiu?” she asks—it’s the same question every few minutes. She’s too little to see out the window. “Just trees, love. Apple trees. Pastures.” Occasionally Mila hoists her to her hip so Felicia can see. Mila has explained where they are going, but the word America has little significance in Felicia’s three-and-a-half-year-old mind. “What about Father?” she’d asked, when Mila first told her of the plan, and the sentiment had nearly broken Mila’s heart. Despite having no memories of him, Felicia worried that Selim would return to Radom only to find that she and her mother had disappeared. Mila had assured her as best she could that she would send an address as soon as they arrived in America, that Selim could meet them there, or they could return to Poland once the war was over. “It’s just that right now,” Mila had said, “staying here isn’t safe.” Felicia had nodded, but Mila knew it was hard for the child to make sense of it all. Mila herself had no concept, really, of what to expect.
The one thing that was undeniably clear was just how dangerous it had become for Felicia in the ghetto. Hiding her in that sack of fabric scraps—and then walking away—was one of the hardest things Mila had ever done. She would never forget waiting outside the workshop as the SS conducted their raid, praying that Felicia would remain still as she’d instructed her to, praying that the Germans would pass her by, praying that she’d done the right thing in leaving her baby girl there, alone in the workshop. When the SS retreated and Mila and the others were finally allowed to return to their desks, Mila sprinted to the wall of fabric scraps, nearly hysterical, crying hot grateful tears as she pulled her daughter, shivering and wet, from the sack.
Mila vowed that day in the workshop to find a safer place for Felicia to hide—somewhere outside the ghetto, where the SS wouldn’t think to look for her. A few months ago, in December, she’d tucked her daughter into a straw-filled mattress and held her breath as she dropped the mattress from the flat’s second-story window. Their building lay on the perimeter of the ghetto. Isaac waited below. As a member of the Jewish Police, he was allowed outside the ghetto walls. The plan was for him to take Felicia to the home of a Catholic family, where she could live, under their care, posing as Aryan. The terrifying two-story drop, thankfully, was a success. The mattress broke Felicia’s fall, just as planned. Mila had cried into a clenched fist at the sight of Isaac leading Felicia away by the hand, as petrified of leaving her daughter in someone else’s care as she was relieved that Felicia had survived the fall. Anything had to be safer than the ghetto, though, where disease spread like wildfire, and where every day, it seemed, a Jew without the proper papers, or too old, or too sick, was discovered and killed—shot in the head or beaten and left to die in the street for everyone to see. She’d done the right thing, Mila told herself over and over again that night, unable to sleep.
The next day, however, Mila found a note from Isaac beneath the door to the flat—Offer renounced, it read. Returning the parcel at 22h. Mila would never learn what went wrong, whether the family changed their minds or whether Felicia was deemed too Jewish-looking to pass as their own. At ten that evening, she was returned to the ghetto, clinging white-knuckled to a rope of sheets dangling from the same second-story window. To make matters worse, a week later, feverish and short of breath, Felicia was diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonia. Mila had never wished harder for Selim to return—surely he would tend to their daughter more effectively than any of the doctors at Wa?owa’s clinic could. Felicia’s recovery was slow; twice Mila thought she might lose her. In the end, it was the steam from a boiled eucalyptus branch Isaac smuggled in that finally opened up her windpipe, allowing her to breathe again and eventually to heal.
A few days after Felicia was finally back on her feet, the SS announced they would send a select group of Jews from Wa?owa to America. And now, here they are. Mila tries to imagine what it means, to be American, envisioning warm homes filled with well-stocked pantries and happy, healthy children and streets where, Jewish or not, you were free to walk and work and live just like everyone else. Resting a hand atop Felicia’s head, she watches the leafless domes of beech trees speed by through the window of the train car. It is a thrilling prospect, the idea of a new life in the States. But of course it is also devastating, for it means leaving her family behind. Mila’s throat tightens. Saying good-bye to her parents in the ghetto had nearly broken her resolve. She brings a hand to her stomach, where the pain is still sharp, like a fresh stab wound. She’d tried hard to convince her parents to put their names on the list, but they refused. “No,” they said, “they won’t take a couple of old shopkeepers. You go,” they insisted. “Felicia deserves a better life than this.”
In her head, Mila takes inventory of her parents’ valuables. They are down to twenty zloty, and they’ve sold off most of their porcelain, silk, and silver. They have a bolt of lace, which they could barter if they needed to. And of course there’s the amethyst—thankfully Nechuma hasn’t had to part with that yet. And better than any wealth, she has Halina now. Halina and Adam had moved back to Radom not long after Jakob and Bella arrived. They live outside the ghetto walls with their false IDs, and with Isaac’s help they are able to sneak an egg or a couple of zloty into the ghetto every now and then. Her parents also have Jakob nearby. His plan, he told Mila before she left, was to appeal for a job at the factory outside of town where Bella worked. He would be less than twenty kilometers away and promised to check on Sol and Nechuma often. Her parents are not alone, Mila reminds herself, and that brings her some comfort.