We Were the Lucky Ones



Nechuma and Sol lie awake on their mattress, their fingers entwined. They stare at the ceiling, too distressed to sleep.

There are whispers in the ghetto that Wa?owa will soon be liquidated. No one is entirely sure what this means, but the rumors, each more terrifying than the last, have recently been compounded by news of what happened in ?ód?. There, according to the Underground, the Germans deported thousands of Jews from a ghetto far bigger than Radom’s to a concentration camp in the nearby village of Chelmno. The Jews thought they were being sent to a labor camp. But then a few days ago a pair of escaped prisoners surfaced in Warsaw with tales so chilling that Nechuma can think of little else. There was no work at Chelmno, they reported. Instead, the Jews were piled, up to 150 at a time, into vans and asphyxiated with gas—men, women, children, babies—all within a matter of hours.

Nechuma used to reassure herself that they had lived through pogroms before, that in time, the fighting, the bloodshed would pass. But with the news from ?ód? she’s come to understand that the situation they are in now is something entirely different. This isn’t just being subjected to profound hunger and poverty. This isn’t persecution. This is extermination.

“The Nazis will not succeed in this,” she says. “They will be stopped.”

Sol doesn’t answer.

Nechuma exhales slowly, and in the suffocating silence that follows she realizes how entirely she aches. Even her eyelids are sore, as if begging for rest. Her own body confounds her. She often wonders how she and Sol still have the strength to go on at all. They live in a state of perpetual pain and exhaustion and hunger—depleted by their long days at the cafeteria, by their pathetic rations, by the mental tricks they play to ignore the daily horrors that surround them. They are almost numb now to the constant cracking of rifles within the ghetto walls, to stepping around the bodies of the dead and dying on the streets, to shielding their eyes when they pass the ghetto entrance, where the SS have taken to stringing up rows of Jews by their necks and hanging them slowly, prolonging their agony as long as possible so that others will see, will understand: This is what happens when you break the rules. This is what happens to those who are insolent, defiant, or simply unlucky. Nechuma once saw a boy as young as five or six hung up this way, minutes, it seemed, from death, and though she couldn’t bring herself to look into his eyes, she did allow herself to glimpse his shoeless feet, so small and pale, his ankles flexing in pain. She wished she could reach over and touch him, to comfort him in some way, but she knew doing so would mean a bullet in her brain, or a rope around her own neck.

“At least the Americans have entered the war,” she says, repeating the shred of hope that has been circulating among the others in the ghetto—a glimmer of possibility, something to hold on to. “Maybe the Germans can be stopped.”

“Maybe,” Sol acquiesces. “But it will be too late for us.” His voice cracks and Nechuma can tell he is holding back tears. “If they start in on the Radom ghettos, we will be two of the first to go. They might spare the young. And who knows, maybe not even them.”

Nechuma knows in her soul that her husband is right, but she can’t bring herself to admit it, not out loud at least. She takes Sol’s hand and kisses it, presses his palm to her cheek. “My love. I don’t know any longer what is going to happen, but whatever is in store for us, at least we will have each other. We will be together.”

A month ago, one of their children might have been able to help them. But they are alone now in the ghetto. Jakob is with Bella at the AVL factory near the Glinice ghetto, and Mila, Nechuma prays, is on her way to meet Halina in Warsaw. She and Felicia had not returned to Wa?owa since attempting to escape, but that could mean anything. Now, with the situation growing ever more dire by the day, their only real hope is Halina. But Halina hasn’t had any luck yet securing them jobs at the Pionki arms factory, and their time is running out. “I’m still working on a transfer,” Halina promised in her last letter. “Stay strong, do not lose faith.”

They are in contact with Halina, at least—able to communicate through letters sneaked into and out of the ghetto with Isaac’s help. Nechuma can hardly bear to consider the fates of her children who are missing. She hasn’t heard a word from Genek since he and Herta disappeared from Lvov two years ago, and soon it will be four years since she last saw Addy. She would give anything, even her life, to know that they were alive, and unharmed.

Nechuma brings a hand to her heart. There is nothing worse, not even the daily hell of the ghetto, than for a mother to live with such fear and uncertainty about the fates of her children. As the weeks and months and years tick by, the torment inside her builds and burns, a crescendo of misery threatening to crack her open. She’s begun to wonder how much longer she can bear the pain.

Beneath her fingertips, Nechuma can feel the faint tap of her heart. She wants to cry but her eyes are dry, her throat like paper. She blinks into the darkness, her daughter’s words echoing through her. Stay strong. Do not lose faith. “Halina will find a way to transfer us to the factory,” she says after a long while, almost in a whisper. But Sol doesn’t answer, and from the slow draws of his breath she knows he is asleep.

Our destiny, she thinks, in Halina’s hands. Nechuma’s mind darts to her youngest as a child—to how, even before she could talk, Halina would demand attention, and when she didn’t get it, her solution was to find something fragile and break it. Or simply scream. To how, when Halina was at gymnasium, she would often claim she was too ill to go to school; Nechuma would hold a hand to her forehead and every now and then let Halina stay home, only to watch her trot down the hallway to the living room a few minutes later, where she would lie for hours on her stomach, flipping through one of Mila’s magazines, tearing out pictures of dresses she liked.

She’s grown up so much, her Halina, since the start of all this. Maybe she really will be the one to get them out of here. Halina. Nechuma closes her eyes and tries to rest. As she drifts toward sleep, she imagines herself at the window of her old home, looking out over the tops of the chestnut trees bordering Warszawska Street. The road below is empty but the sky is animated with birds. In her half-dream, Nechuma watches them as they dip in and out of the clouds, touch down on a branch every now and then to survey their surroundings, then take off again. Her breathing slows. She falls asleep with thoughts of Halina soaring over her, arms spread wide as wings, bright eyes alert as she figures a way out for them all.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


    Halina and Adam


   Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ May 1942




Do you think someone’s ratted us out?” Halina whispers. She and Adam are seated at a small table in the kitchen of the attic apartment they’ve rented in Warsaw.

Adam removes his glasses, rubs his eyes. “We barely know anyone in Warsaw,” he says. They’ve been in the apartment for a month and had felt safe there at first. But then yesterday, the landlord’s wife had trounced up the stairs unannounced, sniffing around like a hound onto a scent as she pelted them with questions about their families, their jobs, their upbringing. “And our papers are flawless,” Adam adds. He’d taken extra care in making their IDs. The name they chose, Brzoza, is as Polish-Catholic as they come. Thanks to their false identities and their looks—Halina’s blonde hair and green eyes and Adam’s tall cheekbones and fair skin—they easily pass for Aryan. But there is no getting around the fact that they are recent arrivals in Warsaw, with no friends or family nearby, and these things alone make them suspicious.

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