We Were the Lucky Ones



Standing precariously on a toilet seat in the men’s lavatory, Bella listens for Jakob’s knock. She keeps one hand on the stall wall for balance, her winter coat draped over her elbow, the other hand by her side, clutching the handle of a small leather suitcase. The washroom door is small, her position excruciating: if she rights herself, her head will show over the top; if she steps down off the toilet, her feet will be visible below; if she moves at all, for that matter, she’ll risk falling, or worse, slipping into the fetid hole between her feet. Thankfully, no one has come to check the lavatory in the past thirty minutes. But Bella holds her position anyway, trying her best to ignore the sweltering heat, the throb in her lower back, the overwhelming stench of feces and stale urine. Hurry, Jakob. What’s taking so long?

Their plan, if it works, is to escape the confines of AVL unnoticed and make their way to the nearby Glinice ghetto. A part of her still clings to the thread of hope that she’ll find her parents there, alive. Spared. But she can feel it. They’re gone.

The ghetto has been liquidated. Bella and Jakob had been warned that it would happen, by a friend in the Polish police force. They’d been close with Ruben in school and were hopeful when he was assigned patrol duty at AVL; perhaps, they thought, he might be of some help to them. But the two times Bella had run into him, he’d walked by without so much as a nod or a glance in her direction. It was no surprise, of course—this was common now, this new dynamic between old friends. And so it caught Bella off guard when a week ago Ruben took her by the arm, pushed her into a storage closet, and followed her inside, locking the door behind them. Bella, who by now expected the worst, had prayed that whatever he had planned for her would at least be quick. Instead, Ruben surprised her by turning to her with a look of abject sorrow. “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you, Bella,” he said in a voice just barely above a whisper. “They’d have my head if—anyway, you have family in the ghetto, yes?” he’d asked in the darkness. Bella had nodded yes. “I heard today that Glinice is meant to be liquidated within a week. There will be a handful of odd jobs left, a few may be spared, sent to Wa?owa, but the rest . . .” he looked at the floor. When Bella asked where the Jews would be sent, Ruben spoke so softly Bella had to strain to make out the words. “I heard a couple of SS officers talking about a camp near Treblinka,” Ruben whispered. “A labor camp?” Bella asked, but Ruben didn’t answer, just shook his head.

With this news, Bella pleaded with Maier, the factory foreman, to allow her to bring her parents to AVL. Somehow he’d agreed, and even issued her an ausweis so she could walk the two kilometers to Glinice one night. Ruben escorted her. But her parents had refused to leave. “If you think we can just waltz out of here, you’re crazy,” her father told her. “This Herr Maier says we can work for him, but tell that to the ghetto guards—tell them we’re leaving our jobs here to work for someone else, and they’ll laugh, and then put a bullet through our heads, and yours, too. We’ve watched it happen before.”

Bella could see the terror in her father’s eyes. But she was persistent. “Please, Father. They’ve already taken Anna. Don’t let them take you, too—you must try, at least. Ruben can help,” she pressed, her voice unnaturally high, pinched with desperation.

“It’s too dangerous for us,” her mother said, shaking her head. “Go, Bella. Go. Save yourself.”

Bella hated her parents for dismissing her plan, for surrendering hope. She’d given them the chance to escape—to take fate into their own hands—but rather than grab the reins, they’d balked and slumped in the saddle, overcome with fear. “Please!” Bella had finally begged, sobbing into her mother’s arms, tears flooding her cheeks, but she could see it in the pitch of their shoulders, in the downward cast of their eyes—they had lost the will to fight. What strength they had left in them had been siphoned when Anna disappeared. They were shells of their old selves, empty, depleted, and afraid. When Bella and Ruben finally left Glinice without them, Bella was beside herself.

Just four days later, at midnight on the fourth of August, the Glinice ghetto liquidation began, as Ruben had predicted. Two kilometers away at the factory, Bella could hear the faint gunshots, the ensuing bone-chilling screams. Helpless, frantic, and barely functioning after days without sleep, she collapsed. Jakob found her in the factory barracks, curled into the fetal position and refusing to talk, or even to look at him. She could do nothing but sob. Without any comforting words to offer, Jakob lay down beside her, wrapped himself around her, and held her as she wept. It was hours before the pop of gunfire finally let up. When it did, Bella went silent.

At dawn the next day, Jakob helped Bella back to her bunk, and told the guard assigned to the barracks that his wife was too sick to work. “Are you sure she’s alive?” the guard asked when he leaned his head into her barracks and found Bella lying motionless on her back, a wet cloth over her brow. An hour later, Maier declared over the loudspeakers that AVL would be closing, that the Jews would be sent to a different factory, and they should pack their belongings. They were to prepare to leave, Maier said, the following morning at nine o’clock sharp. But Jakob knew exactly where they’d be sent. They needed a way out. That night, Jakob forced Bella to eat a crust of bread, and begged her to gather her strength. “I need you with me,” he said. “We can’t stay here, do you understand?” Bella had nodded, and Jakob had explained his plan, which included a pair of wire cutters, although Bella had a hard time following. Before he left, Jakob begged her to meet him in the morning at eight thirty in the men’s lavatory.

With the summer sun beating down on the corrugated metal roof overhead, the air in the washroom stall is stifling. Bella fears she might faint. It had taken all of her effort to rise that morning, and when she did it felt as if she no longer inhabited her own body, as if her muscles had surrendered. When the loudspeakers crackle, she blinks, thankful for the distraction. It’s Maier’s voice.

“Workers—make your way to the factory entrance for your rations. Bring your belongings.”

Bella closes her eyes. A line will soon form at the front of the factory. She pictures the guards gathered to escort the Jews to the train station, and wonders if they were the same guards who oversaw her parents’ trip toward almost certain death. Her stomach turns. Where is Jakob? She’d managed to arrive at the washroom at eight twenty-five, five minutes early. At least a half hour has passed. He should be here by now. Please—Bella prays, listening to the faint slap of sweat dripping every few seconds from her chin to the cement floor beneath her and shaking away the inclination to burst from the washroom and scream for the guards to take her, too. Please, Jakob, hurry.

Finally, she hears a soft tap-tap-tap-tap on the door. She exhales, and steps gingerly from the toilet. Her double knock is met quickly with another four. She unlocks the door. Outside, Jakob nods, looking relieved to find her there. “Sorry I’m late,” he whispers. He takes the suitcase from her and guides her around the outside of the washroom, hugging the wall. Wiping the sweat from her face, Bella gulps the fresh air, grateful to put herself in Jakob’s hands now, to simply follow.

“You see that field, just beyond the men’s barracks?” Jakob asks, pointing. “That’s where we’re going. But first we have to make it to the barracks.”

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