In the Mouth of the Wolf (12 page)

Jasek had grown up indoors, in synagogues and yeshiva classrooms. My tales of life outdoors entranced him as much as his recitation of poems and stories moved me. So
in a sense we each had something important to give to one another. That was what made our friendship so special. After the week-long strain of covering up my real identity, of putting up with constant vulgarity, I needed a time and a person with whom I could just be myself. My friendship with Jasek was the secret magic well from which I drew inner strength. Those who were in the concentration camps understand. If starving people think only of their hunger, they will go mad. They must try to remember the times when they weren't hungry. That was what our friendship meant to me: a reminder of who I really was. I am sure it meant the same to Jasek.

 

It was a good summer.

One day toward the end of summer Jasek came to me with some news.

“I moved,” he said.

I asked where he was living now. I nearly gasped when he told me. I was appalled. But he thought it was a perfect setup.

He was renting a room in a three-room apartment. His landlady was a widow who lived there with her elderly mother. The widow was about thirty-five and gave the impression that her husband had died a few years before, though exactly what happened to him she never really said. A few weeks later there was a new development. “My landlady has a little store,” Jasek told me. “She sells notions—you know, needles, spools of thread, stuff like that. Well, she's getting tired of running it by herself. She asked if I'd manage it for her. What do you think? Should I?”

“What do I think? Don't you know? Are you so blind you can't see where it's leading? You think she's just looking
for a storekeeper? She's looking for a boyfriend, and that means trouble.”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Jasek kept insisting. He didn't want to hear that. It was just a business arrangement—that was all. He started running the store, and it wasn't long before an affair started. Soon he was telling her about himself and about me, his good friend Wanda, whom he went to visit on Sundays. I was such a charming girl, he said. Since I was so charming, his landlady said she'd like to meet me, and soon Jasek was inviting me over to their house to get acquainted.

“What?” I exclaimed when I heard it. “Now I know you have lost your mind! You know I don't want to meet your girlfriends, and I certainly don't want to meet your landlady. I've told you a hundred times—one Jew is plenty, two is asking for trouble. You have your nerve even telling her about me. Stick your own neck in the noose if you want to, but leave mine out of it.” I was furious, but that didn't seem to bother Jasek at all.

Needless to say, I never went over, but Jasek kept me informed. His landlady introduced him to one of her friends, a lovely woman who, with her little boy, came over one day for coffee. He described how they all sat together in the kitchen—the landlady, her friend, the little boy, and the landlady's old mother—and what a good time they had. I wasn't impressed.

Then one day Jasek announced that the landlady's birthday was coming up and they were all going to have a party. I was invited. I had to come. He had promised to bring me.

“You promised? Too bad. I'm not going. You know how I feel about that.”

“Don't be so stubborn!” he pleaded with me. “There's nothing to be afraid of. If you don't come, everyone's going to be disappointed. They're all looking forward to finally meeting you.”

“Nothing doing, Jasek! You know I want nothing to do with your lady friends. And if you're going to give me a hard time about it, then I'm not so sure I want to have anything to do with you. It's not that I'm stubborn. I'm trying to stay alive. I've been trying to show you how to stay alive, too, but you won't listen. You're looking for trouble, and sooner or later that's just what you'll get. Leave me out of it. I'm not going to your landlady's birthday party. And don't ever tell anyone else about me.”

I didn't see him for two weeks after that. Then one day when I came home from work, my landlady met me at the door. “Miss Wanda,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “We didn't know you had a boyfriend. We thought you were going with someone, but you never told us how handsome he is. He was just here looking for you.”

“I don't know whom you're talking about.”

“Sure you do. The guy with the mustache and the boots. Is he ever a killer!” He certainly was, in more ways than she suspected. I was furious. How did he find out where I lived? Probably the same way he found out where I worked—that one time I showed him my work card. I should have kept on walking that first time I saw him on the street and not said anything at all to him. By now it was clear he had no common sense, and his recklessness was putting me in danger.

“Did he leave a message?” I asked my landlady.

“Only that he'd meet you after work tomorrow.”

Sure enough, the next day, when I came out the barracks gate, there he was. I walked straight toward him, determined
to give him one final piece of my mind before breaking off our relationship right there. But as soon as I drew close enough to see his face, I realized something was wrong. Jasek was scared. Very scared.

“Something happened,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Let's walk.” He took my arm, and as we went down the street, he told me the whole story. Three nights ago there was a knock on the apartment door. The landlady's mother opened it, and two men from the SD, the German security police, burst in. They knew exactly where to go. While one waited outside, the other came into his room without knocking.

“Get up and get dressed. You're under arrest. We've got you now, Jew, so just come along with us.”

Jasek leaped out of bed. He got down on his knees before the policeman and begged for his life. “Have mercy. Please. I have money. Here is a whole roll of it. Marks, zlotys, American dollars. Take it all. It's yours. Just let me go. I'm only one poor Jew. You've killed thousands. What does one more or one less matter? Take my money. Take anything you want. No one will know. I won't tell. I promise. Just let me go. Please!”

The German smiled. He spoke softly with the soothing purr of a cat who has just come across a fledgling. “Hmmm. I like…the way you act. Perhaps…you might like…to work with us. Get off the floor. Here. Sit down. Now…let's talk this over…” Then he explained. Jasek's landlady's husband had been a Jew. He was taken away when the Plaszów ghetto was formed and later shipped off to Auschwitz. Ever since then, the police kept the apartment under surveillance. After all, wouldn't a woman who was married to a Jew be likely to help other Jews? But how did they know he was Jewish? Jasek wanted to know. Can't
anyone rent a room? The policeman laughed to himself. Remember the friend, the lovely lady who used to come by with her little boy? She was working for them. She was ferreting out Jews in hiding and turning them over to the secret police. The first time she saw Jasek—that day she came over for coffee—she put the finger on him. And the birthday party he wanted me to go to—she was there. Had I given into him and gone, I would have been lost.

“So you see,” the policeman concluded. “She works with us…and so will you. That way…you will save your life.” He told Jasek to come down to police headquarters in the morning so they could set him up to start working for them as a spy. Then the SD men left. Jasek didn't wait another minute. He moved out early that morning. He left his clothes, all his belongings, and ran.

“So where are you living now?” I asked.

“At my old place on Kurniki Street. Oh, I ran into your friend, Mrs. Mokryjowa. I said I knew you and that you told me you used to live there. She said you were very nice and to say hello.”

I couldn't believe it! Even with the police on his trail, he still couldn't keep his mouth shut. By this time I was beyond giving lectures. Much more was at stake. What did I really know about Jasek? I asked myself. I knew that he was intelligent and daring, extremely charming when he wanted to be, and sensitive in many ways. But what did I really know about his character? Was he the type who could turn a friend over to the police to save his own skin? If so, I was in serious trouble. I had to find out where I stood, and I asked him directly, “Why did you go to Kurniki Street? Didn't you go to the police?”

He glared at me in shock and surprise. “Wanda, you are the last person I'd expect to ask me a question like that!
What do you think I am? Did you think I'd betray all the other Jews, and when there weren't any left, I'd turn you over, too? Do you really think I could be such a skunk?” “No,” I replied. “But I had to find out.”

We walked on, trying to decide what to do. He already had a plan in mind. He was going to try to get to Lwów, then see about some way of slipping across the border into Hungary. It was a desperate gamble. Lwów was in the Ukraine. I knew a girl who had come from there. If survival was hard for a Jew in Piotrków, in Lwów it was impossible. Jasek wanted me to come with him, but I refused.

“I have nothing to run away from. I'm not the one in trouble. Even if I were, I still wouldn't go with you. Not to Lwów. Not anywhere. Remember what I told you? Two Jews together just can't make it. Do what you have to do, but do it on your own.”

I wished him luck, and that was the last I ever saw of him. He went to Lwów, and eventually I received a letter from him there. It was a beautiful love letter. I never believed he was capable of the emotions he expressed in it. He wrote that being away from me made him realize how much I meant to him. He told me how much he admired my sense of humor, my courage, my never-failing good sense. During the brief time we were together last summer, he didn't realize he was falling in love. He didn't think it could ever really happen to him, but it did. Now all his other girlfriends, all his other affairs meant nothing. He understood my feelings toward him and the fact that I already had a boyfriend. But even so, he had one wish. If he survived the war, he wanted to be able to meet Mayer some day and tell him how devoted and faithful I was. And, above all, he wanted to see me again.

I received two more letters from Jasek after that. In the last one he wrote that he was about to carry out his original plan of slipping over the border into Hungary. He asked me to wish him luck and promised to write later if all went well. That was the last I ever heard from him.

I wish I could remember his real name.

The Kommandant

 

 

      The officers' canteen was located on the first floor of battalion headquarters. It had its own staff consisting of a master chef, a waitress, and a janitress whose sole duty was keeping the room clean. No other civilian workers were allowed inside. One day Adrian called me from my regular duties and told me to report to the canteen at once. The janitress was out sick, and they needed someone immediately to get the room ready for lunch. As soon as I walked through the door, I realized why they didn't admit just anyone. What a contrast this was to the mess hall where the recruits ate! There were chandeliers on the ceiling, paintings on the walls, fine linen on the tables, gleaming
silver and crystal everywhere. I set to work with my trusty mop and broom and apparently did an excellent job because from that time on, whenever an extra hand was needed in the canteen, I was the one they asked for. I felt like a recruit who was just selected to carry the banner in the big parade: no extra pay, but the prestige was enormous!

Soon afterward Sergeant Meyers summoned me to his office again. “Wanda,” he said. “I have a special assignment for you.” He issued me a new broom, a mop, a pail, an entire assortment of cleaning supplies, and took me outside to where a truck was waiting. After telling me to get inside, he nodded to the driver, who drove off at once. We finally stopped in front of an elegant apartment house in a very exclusive section of the city.

“Here we are!” the driver said. We got out, and I followed him into the building and upstairs to an empty apartment. “Clean it,” he told me. “I'll come back for you at five.”

I looked around. It was a big apartment. I couldn't possibly finish it in one day. “What if I'm not done?” I asked.

“We'll come back tomorrow or, if we have to, the next day. The important thing is to do a good job. A lot depends on it.” Then he left.

It took a week before that apartment was thoroughly clean. I scrubbed it from floor to ceiling. Even the smallest corners were spotless. The driver picked me up at the barracks each morning and drove me back in the evening. We never spoke. Although I generally mind my own business, this time my curiosity got the better of me.

“What's going on? Who is this fancy apartment for?” I asked the driver one day as we were going back.

“Don't you know? This is going to be our Kommandant's
apartment,” he said with considerable pride. “He's bringing his wife from Germany, and this is where they're going to live.”

That was interesting, but not really relevant to me. I went back to my regular job of cleaning offices, and everything went on as before. Then one day as I was wringing out my mop, a soldier in full battle dress came into the office where I was working.

“Are you Fräulein Wanda?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes,” I said, wondering what he wanted. “I am Fräulein Wanda.”

“Then come with me. You have been summoned to the adjutant's office.”

The adjutant's office was on the next floor. The soldier escorted me upstairs. The adjutant was waiting for us at his desk. When I came in, he nodded and said something into the intercom. I heard someone reply. Then he said, “They are coming,” and motioned to the soldier to take me in. Passing several empty conference rooms, we finally came to a tall, leather-upholstered door. The soldier stepped aside and showed me in.

I found myself in an immense, brilliantly lit office. One entire wall was made up of windows overlooking the Wawel Palace. Several long tables were covered with maps. Additional maps hung on the walls. The room was dominated by an enormous desk set right in the middle of the floor. Behind it, gazing out the window toward the Wawel, stood a tall officer with silver epaulets and jet black hair. He neither turned when I came in nor acknowledged my presence in any way, but continued staring out the window as if no one were there. As each minute passed, I grew more and more nervous, more and more frightened. Why was I summoned here? What did they want from me?

“You can go,” the officer finally said to the soldier, who clicked his heels, saluted, and left, shutting the door behind him. Then, still staring out the window, the officer began firing questions at me in rapid order like a drill sergeant shaking down a squad of recruits.

“How old are you? Do you have any relatives? Where do you live?”

I tried to collect my thoughts and answer each question, but all the while my knees were shaking. “It's all over,” I thought. “He knows the truth. In another moment he will end this cat-and-mouse game and place me under arrest.”

Then he asked, “Do you know anything about first aid, and if not, can you learn?”

“I don't have to learn, Sir,” I replied, trying my best to sound calm. “I worked in a military hospital before coming here. I know all the different techniques for bandaging shoulders, elbows, knees, and heads.”

“Interesting,” he said. “Did they teach you that in the hospital?”

“No, Sir. I learned it in school. Everyone had to take a forty-eight-hour course in first aid.”

“Very good,” he nodded. “You can go.”

He turned around to ring the bell on his desk, and for the first time since the beginning of the interview I saw his face. He was extremely handsome, but his eyes had a cold, ruthless glitter like those of a bird of prey. His head seemed strangely small in contrast to his height and immense shoulders. In a way it reminded me of something I once saw in a museum—a Roman bust of a little boy's head that by some accident had been attached to the torso of a full-grown man. Then the soldier came and escorted me back
downstairs, and without requesting or receiving any explanation, I picked up my mop and went back to work.

Normally I would have forgotten the whole episode. As in the case of the apartment, I was often sent here or there or assigned various tasks without being told why. But something about this incident was different and especially puzzling. I knew one thing: my secret was still safe. Then what was this all about? High-ranking officers have better things to do with their time than bother cleaning women. I pondered the matter for a few days and decided I simply had to know. So I went to Sergeant Meyers, who was always friendly to me, and asked what was going on.

He laughed. “Remember that apartment I sent you to clean? That was for Colonel Roemer, our Kommandant. He was the one who called you upstairs. He's bringing his wife here from Germany and wanted to know if we had any Polish girl on the staff suitable to be taken into a German home as a maid. He was very explicit. He didn't want any drinkers, smokers, or flirts. Well, Adrian and I put our heads together and immediately came up with you. ‘It has to be Wanda!' we both said. ‘There's nobody else around here like that!' When we gave him your name, he asked who you were. ‘The one who goes around murdering the operettas!' we told him.”

So! The Kommandant knew all about me from the first.

A few days later Sergeant Meyers summoned me to his office again. “Wanda, I have another special assignment for you. Tomorrow morning when you come to work, wait outside by the gate. A chauffeur will pick you up and drive you to the Kommandant's apartment. Mrs. Roemer will be there. Stay as long as she needs you, and when you're done, the chauffeur will bring you back.”

Sure enough, at seven o'clock the next morning a staff car came by and picked me up. On the way over we stopped at the flower market, where the chauffeur told me to buy as many flowers as I needed to decorate the apartment properly. I was in heaven. I love flowers, and here I had carte blanche to buy as many as I liked.

I arrived at the apartment in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes piled high with flowers. The chauffeur helped me carry the flowers upstairs. Then he left to fetch Mrs. Roemer from her hotel. In the meantime I was to arrange the flowers and have everything ready when she arrived.

The apartment was bare when I last saw it. Now it was elegantly furnished with elaborately carved antique furniture. I walked through the rooms arranging flowers in every vase. I pretended that this was my own apartment, my own beautiful furniture, my own beautiful flowers.

In the midst of my daydream the doorbell rang. I ran to get it and found myself greeting a young woman slightly older than myself, not especially pretty, and rather plainly dressed with her hair cut in a sporty, rather severe fashion. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick. As for her bearing, it was definitely self-assured, but quite pleasant and not at all haughty.

“Oh, you must be the girl from the barracks,” she said as she entered, glancing quickly about the apartment. “I like the way you arranged the flowers. I am Thea Roemer.”

I took her coat, and together we set to work. After rearranging some of the furniture, Mrs. Roemer decided to bake some cookies. While she mixed the batter, I prepared the oven. When it was ready, I took out the cookie sheet and greased it. Mrs. Roemer dipped out the batter, but when she tried to put the sheet back into the oven, it wouldn't fit.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, very perplexed. “This cookie sheet doesn't fit in the oven. I can't understand it. It fit before.”

“Maybe it has something to do with that law of physics,” I suggested, “remember, the one that says heated objects expand? When the oven was cold, the cookie sheet fit without any trouble, so perhaps we should wait for it to cool again before putting it in.”

She stared at me. “Where did you learn that?”

A slip! Since when do cleaning women start spouting the laws of physics? The truth was out, so there was no point in trying to cover it up again.

“In the gymnasium,” I said.

“Oh? So you went to a gymnasium?” And that was the beginning of our friendship.

 

Over the next few weeks a definite routine began to develop. I reported to the barracks in the morning, signed in, and waited for the chauffeur to take me to the apartment. There I helped Mrs. Roemer with various chores until late afternoon. Then the chauffeur picked me up and brought me back to the barracks, where I finished the day cleaning offices or seeing to other tasks. However, as the weeks rolled by, I found myself spending more and more time with Mrs. Roemer and less and less time at headquarters.

One morning Mrs. Roemer took me aside and explained that from now on I would be spending the entire day with her. Then she let me in on a secret. She was pregnant. Since she had a history of miscarriages, her husband was taking no chances. He brought her to Kraków to keep an eye on her and make sure she received the finest medical care. The doctor ordered her to stay in bed for
the entire first month. Since Colonel Roemer was always at work, someone was obviously needed to look after Mrs. Roemer and run the household. That someone was going to be me.

I was delighted with my good fortune and thrilled for her, for by now Mrs. Roemer and I were very close friends. She was a lovely person: intelligent, kind, attractive in her own way, and extremely gentle. In many ways she was the older sister I never had. I often felt sad for her because she was so very lonely. At home in Magdeburg she had her family and friends for company, but here in Kraków her only companion was her maid. And she had Colonel Roemer for a husband!

Except for the fact that he was extremely handsome and looked like a god in uniform, I could never understand how such a sweet, lovely person as Mrs. Roemer could marry a monster like that. He was a horror as a human being. Everyone at headquarters was terrified of him. He had a vicious temper, and heaven help the unlucky soldier whose uniform was wrinkled or who failed to carry out an order to the letter! But he was a courageous officer. Once on the Russian front he held an entire section of the line against a massive Soviet attack. He refused to retreat, even when directly ordered to do so. The line held, but only four men survived out of the whole battalion. Roemer was nominated for the Ritter Cross, the highest German decoration.

But whatever Colonel Roemer's merits as an officer, his credentials as a husband left much to be desired. He was an alcoholic. He maintained a huge personal stock of the finest brandies and liqueurs and could sail through half a dozen bottles in an evening. But I never saw him drunk or even slightly tipsy. As for tenderness and concern, such emotions
were beneath him. Colonel Roemer was the perfect SS man even in his domestic life. I frequently had the feeling that Mrs. Roemer was not so much a companion as a status symbol—a young, cultured wife from a socially prominent family fit in nicely with the big automobile, the fancy apartment, the beautiful furniture. Her job was to supervise an elegant home and provide children to further her husband's career. She was also expected to know her place. Mrs. Roemer would often go through the trouble of preparing a lovely dinner only to have her husband not show up. His excuse? He was busy at the office. He never thought to call. However, when she once removed a serving dish from the wrong side, he refused to speak to her for four weeks. He was a horrible man. I couldn't stand him.

 

Several months passed, and Mrs. Roemer's pregnancy was beginning to show. Although she was now allowed out of bed, she felt very unattractive and abandoned. Except for me she was alone, and so we talked together for hours, discussing everything from Schiller to Nietzsche. It was heavenly for me because I was starved for intelligent conversation. I made the beds to classical music and washed the dishes to philosophical discussions as the days flew by. But because he knew nothing about those topics, it annoyed Colonel Roemer no end to hear our discussions. He was left out, and that made him angry. Once he exploded at the dinner table while Mrs. Roemer and I were preparing the meal.

“
Donnerwetter!
Must I eat burnt food because you and Wanda have those damned philosophical discussions in the kitchen?”

On other occasions he would say, “You and Wanda lie under one featherbed,” implying that we were conspiring against him in some way. But most often, if we were talking
about a concert or a play, we would turn around and find him standing silently in the doorway, scowling.