By then, Halina could barely think straight. Franka and her family were missing. She knew she couldn’t leave Warsaw without trying to find them. But she, Adam, Jakob, and Bella were in trouble. They were hungry and broke and soon it would be winter. Before the uprising, Halina’s employer, Herr Den, had told her that he’d requested a transfer to Kraków. “If you need anything, find me at the bank in the city center on Rynek Kleparski,” he’d said. Halina had no other option but to call on him for help. Adam objected to the idea, of course, claiming that it wasn’t safe for Halina to travel to Kraków alone. But Halina insisted. There was a pocket of the Underground that was still functioning in Warsaw and they needed Adam now more than ever. And there was also Mila, who was in a panic to reach Felicia. “If you stay, you can help Mila find a way to W?oc?awek, and you can keep searching for Franka,” Halina said. “Please, I’ll be fine on my own.” She would go and return straight away, she promised, with some money—enough to get them through the winter. Finally, Adam agreed. And so, after arranging an exchange with another young Jew—her coat for a sack of potatoes to feed the others while she was away—Halina left for Kraków.
Her well-laid plan, however, came to an abrupt halt a day later at the Kraków train station when, moments after disembarking, she was arrested. The Gestapo who pulled her in showed no interest in her story, or in contacting Herr Den to validate it. “Then let me wire my husband,” Halina said, making no attempt to mask her anger. Again, the Gestapo ignored her. Within an hour she found herself being escorted by police car through Kraków’s center to the city’s infamous jail, Montelupich. As she passed through the prison’s red-brick entrance, she glanced up at the barbed wire and broken glass surrounding the building and knew without a doubt she wouldn’t be returning to Warsaw. At least not anytime soon. And that Adam would be a wreck.
“Brzoza!”
“Coming,” Halina grunts. She steps over legs and arms as she limps toward the door.
Of the nearly three-dozen women who share the cell, surprisingly few are Jews, at least that she knows of. She’s one of four, maybe five. Most of the incarcerated in Montelupich’s women’s ward seem to be thieves, smugglers, spies, members of various resistance organizations. Her offense, according to the Gestapo, is her faith. But she’ll never admit it. Her religion will never be a crime.
“Get your hands off me,” she growls as Betz locks the cell door behind them and wrenches one of her arms behind her back, pushing her down the hallway in front of him.
“Shut up, Goldie.”
At first, Halina thought her nickname was derived from her blonde hair, but she quickly realized it was born from the yellow stars the Jews in Europe were made to wear.
“I’m not a Jew.”
“That’s not what your friend Pinkus says.”
Halina’s heart wallops her rib cage. Pinkus. How do they know his name? Pinkus—the Jewish boy with whom she’d bartered her coat before leaving Warsaw. Pinkus must have been caught and given up her name in the hopes that it would help him somehow. She curses his stupidity. “I don’t know a Pinkus.”
“Pinkus, the Jew who took your coat. He claims he knows you. Claims you’re not who you say you are.”
Pinkus, you spineless shit.
“Why would a Jew turn in another Jew?” Halina huffs.
“It happens all the time.”
“Well, I told you, I don’t know this person. He’s lying. He’ll tell you anything to save his own life.”
In the windowless, bloodstained cell the Gestapo have designated for interrogation, she offers the same explanation, over and over again, this time to two brutes she recognizes from past interrogations—one by the gruesome scar over his eye, the other by his limp.
“You gave him your coat,” the one with the scar yells. “If you are a Pole like you say, then why were you doing business with a Jew?”
“I didn’t know he was a Jew!” Halina postures. “I hadn’t eaten in weeks. He offered potatoes. What was I to do?” Suddenly she’s off her feet, a fist lifting her up by her collar, slamming her ribs against the cell wall. “I didn’t know he was a Jew,” she wheezes.
Crack. Her forehead meets the wall.
“Stop lying!”
The pain is blinding. Halina’s body is limp. “Don’t . . . don’t you see?” she spits. “It’s revenge! The Jews . . . are trying for revenge . . . on the Poles!”
Another crack, a trickle down her nose, the hot, acrid taste of blood. You must not waver.
“He swore on his mother’s grave,” one of the Gestapo hisses. “What do you say to that?”
“The Jews . . . hate us.” Whump. She speaks through her teeth, with one cheek stamped up against the wall. “Always have . . . it’s retribution!”
Whap. The bony, muted crunch of her jaw meeting the back of a hand.
“Look at you—you look like a Jew!”
Halina’s breathing is wet, heavy. “Don’t . . . insult . . . me. Look at you . . . at your women. Blonde . . . with . . . blue eyes. Are they Jews?”
Crack. Again, her skull against the wall. Blood in her lashes now, burning her eyes.
“Why should we believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? My . . . my papers don’t lie! And . . . neither does my boss . . . Herr Den. Call him. He is at the bank on Rynek Kleparski. I’ve told you . . . I was en route to see him when you bastards arrested me.” This part of her story, of course, is true.
“Forget about Den. He’s of no use to us,” the one with the limp hisses.
“Then wire my husband.”
“The only person of use to us is you, Goldie,” the scar-faced one yells. “You say you’re a Pole. Then recite the Lord’s Prayer!”
Halina shakes her head, feigning annoyance and saying silent thanks for the fact that her parents had chosen to send her to Polish gymnasium rather than to one of Radom’s Jewish schools. “This again. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”
“All right, all right, enough.”
“Call my boss,” Halina pleads, exhausted. He’s the only card she has left to play, her last hope. She wonders if the Germans have even tried to reach him. Perhaps Herr Den got caught up in the uprising in Warsaw and never made it to Kraków. Or perhaps they’ve called, and he’s finally given up vouching for her. But he seemed so adamant: “Come to Kraków. Find me, I will help.” She’d tried. And now she’s here. It’s been less than a week and already her body is in ruins. She doesn’t know how many more of these interrogations she can take. She’s heard from one of the new arrivals in the women’s ward that Warsaw is still smoldering. She worries constantly of Adam, who would have been out of his mind when she didn’t return, of Mila, who could barely function when Halina left, and of Franka, but mostly she worries about her parents. The Górskis expected money once a month to keep her parents safe, and now they haven’t received anything in nearly two months. Could she count on the goodness of the Górskis for her parents’ survival? She’s seen their meager home; they can barely afford to keep themselves. Halina can’t help but imagine it—Albert escorting her parents out of the cottage, unable to meet their eyes: I’m sorry, I wish you could stay, but either you go, or we all starve. Surely, in time the Górskis will presume her dead. The family will presume her dead.
I’m coming back to you, she says silently, part to herself, and part to Adam and her parents, in case they are listening, as she’s escorted, finally, back to her cell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Mila
Outside Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ October 1944
The drive to the convent takes twice as long as usual. Many of the streets are impassable, forcing Mila to veer off on painstakingly long detours. Everything that once looked familiar along the way is gone—the barrel factory in Józefina, the tannery in Mszczonów—the scenery reduced to an endless patchwork of rubble.
Mila leans forward, squinting through the windshield of the stolen V6. She and Adam had found the car lying on its side a block from Halina’s apartment; it took six people to flip it back onto its wheels. Adam had helped her jump-start it. All four of its windows were missing, but it didn’t matter. Its tank, in a stroke of good luck, was still a quarter full—it had just enough fuel to get her to and from the convent.