We Were the Lucky Ones

Halina can’t help but laugh, imagining her parents surrounded by frivolous chatter. She was happy to hear that at Pionki they were better off than they had been in the ghetto, and she would have been comfortable with them living out the war in the factory confines had Adam not warned her the week before that it was to be shut down. “I’m sorry I didn’t find out earlier,” he said. “It could happen any day.” Halina knew she had to get her parents out before they wound up in one of the dreadful camps the Jews were being sent to when their labor was no longer needed.

Receiving permission to extract her parents from Pionki, of course, was hopeless. Halina knew she would have to work outside the system. A week ago, armed with her Aryan papers and a pocketful of zloty, she visited the factory intent on bribing a guard at the entrance to let her parents leave discreetly at the end of their workday—she would claim they were old friends, wrongly accused of being Jews. But she arrived on a Friday, and her mother had been taken along with the rest of the female laborers to the public showers; Halina had to work that evening, and couldn’t afford to wait for her to return. This morning, sensing that she was short on time and that one hundred zloty might not suffice, she decided to bring along the last of her mother’s jewels—the amethyst. Nechuma had slipped the necklace to Isaac on the day of their transfer from the ghetto to Pionki, begged him to bring it safely and quickly to Halina. Isaac had written to Halina in Warsaw right away, claiming that he had a special purple delivery and that she should come for it as soon as possible.

Hitler had put the price of life on any German who accepted bribes from Jews, but as Halina learned at Adam’s work camp, this didn’t stop many of the Nazis from accepting them. And sure enough, when she flashed Pionki’s entranceway guard the brilliant purple stone, his eyes lit up. He returned fifteen minutes later, with her parents in tow.

“Left here,” Halina directs at a wooden sign for Wilanów, a small farming village on the outskirts of Warsaw. As they veer off of the main thoroughfare, the paved road turns to dirt, and Sol glances in the rearview mirror, smiling at the image of Halina and Nechuma beside one another, enjoying the closeness.

“Tell us about you, about the others,” Nechuma says.

Halina hesitates. Her parents haven’t yet heard about Glinice, about Bella’s family. She hasn’t had the heart to tell them. The past hour has been so pleasant, talking with her mother about trivial things, it’s felt almost normal. She’s reluctant to invite the sadness of the world back in just yet. So instead she tells her parents about Adam’s recent close call with the landlord’s wife, telling the story for the laughs and glossing over the fact that she’d been petrified at the time; she tells them about her job in Warsaw working as a cook for a German businessman; about how Mila had recently found work, also posing as Aryan, in the home of a wealthy German family.

“And Felicia?” Sol asks over his shoulder. “I’ve missed her so much.”

“Mila’s landlord was suspicious of Felicia from the start,” Halina explains. “Took one look at her sad, dark eyes and knew she was Jewish. Mila has managed to pass with her papers, but for Felicia it is much more difficult. I’ve found a friend willing to keep her in hiding.” Halina tries to keep her tone light, even though she knows how much Mila’s decision to leave her daughter in the care of someone else had tormented her.

“She’s there alone, without Mila?” Sol asks, and Halina can tell from the reflection of her father’s eyes in the rearview mirror that he’s no longer smiling, that he’d intuited the parts she’d left unsaid.

“Yes. It’s been hard on both of them.”

“Sweet girl,” Nechuma says softly. “Felicia must be so lonely.”

“She is. She hates it. But it’s for the best.”

“And Jakob?” Nechuma asks. “Is he still at the AVL factory?”

Halina hesitates, looks down at her lap. “He’s still there, yes, as far as I know. I wrote to tell him you’d left Wa?owa, and he asked if I could help get Bella’s parents out, too, from the Glinice ghetto, but . . .” Halina swallows. It’s quiet in the car. “I tried,” Halina whispers.

Nechuma shakes her head. “What do you mean?”

“It’s . . . they’ve . . . Glinice has been liquidated.” Halina’s voice is barely audible above the hum of the engine. “Isaac says there are a few people still left, but the rest . . .” She can’t say the words.

Nechuma brings a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. And Wa?owa?”

“Apparently Wa?owa is next.”

Halina can hear her father’s breath grow heavy in the front seat. A tear rolls down her mother’s cheek. What joy they’d felt at being reunited at the start of the journey has evaporated. No one speaks for several minutes. Finally, Halina breaks the silence. “Slow down, Father—it’s this next one on the left.” She points over his shoulder to a narrow drive. They follow it for two hundred meters until they reach a small, thatched-roofed farmhouse.

Nechuma dabs at her eyes, sniffs.

“Is this it?” Sol asks.

“It is,” Halina says.

“What do they go by again?” Nechuma asks. “The owners?”

“Górski.”

Adam had found the Górskis through the Underground on a list of Poles with space to spare who would accept money in exchange for hiding Jews. Halina didn’t even know if Górski was their real name, just that they could take her parents; and with her steady work, she could afford to pay them.

Halina is familiar with the home—she’d visited once, to introduce herself and to inspect the living conditions. The wife had been out, but Halina and Pan Górski, who hadn’t yet offered up his given name, had gotten along well. He was middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair, a birdlike build, and kind eyes. “And you’re sure your wife is all right with this arrangement?” Halina had pressed before she left. “Oh, yes,” he said. “She’s nervous of course, it’s only normal to be, but she’s on board.”

Sol slows the Fiat to a crawl as they near the house. There isn’t another home in sight.

“You picked well,” Nechuma says, nodding.

Halina glances at her mother, allowing herself for a moment a childlike pride in Nechuma’s approval. She follows her gaze, taking in the small cottage with its squat, square frame, cedar-planked siding, and white shutters. She’d chosen the Górskis partly because they seemed genuinely trustworthy, and because they lived an hour from Warsaw, in the country; without any neighbors nearby, Halina hoped there would be less risk of someone reporting them.

“It’s nothing fancy, but it’s private,” Halina says. “Don’t let yourselves get too comfortable, though. Pan Górski says the Blue Police have come knocking twice already, looking for hideaways.” A captured Jew, they’ve heard, can be worth as much as a bag of sugar, or a dozen eggs. The Poles take the hunt seriously. The Germans, too. They’ve come up with a name for it: Judenjagd. Jew hunt. Jews caught can be delivered dead or alive, it makes no difference. The Germans have also imposed the death penalty against any Poles found with a Jew in hiding.

“The Górskis have promised to tell no one, of course, not even their family and closest friends. But keep your false IDs on you at all times,” Halina continues. “Just in case. We can’t expect them not to have visitors.”

Nechuma squeezes Halina’s elbow. “Don’t worry about us, dear. We will be fine.”

Halina nods, although she doesn’t know how not to worry about her parents anymore. It’s become second nature, tending to them. It’s all she thinks about.

Sol flips the key to the ignition; the engine burps and quiet comes over the car as he and Nechuma peer through the bug-splattered windshield at their new home. A blue-slate walkway leads to the front door, where a brass stirrup-shaped knocker glints in the sunlight.

“This works,” Sol says. He glances at Halina in the mirror. His eyes are red.

“Hope so,” Halina breathes. “We should head inside.”

Sol pulls the driver’s seat forward so Nechuma and Halina can wriggle their way out, and then opens the Fiat’s trunk to gather what is left of their belongings—a small canvas satchel carrying a change of clothes each, some photographs, his Haggadah, Nechuma’s handbag.

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