Karolina's Twins (36 page)

“I was exhausted, famished and thirsty. I tried to melt the snow in my hands and drink it, but it was too cold and the snow was too dry. In many places the snow was knee deep and, underneath my smock and coat, my legs were bare. My lower extremities were frozen.

“I talked to myself in the third person. ‘Keep moving, Lena. You can do it. One step after the next. Keep moving, Lena. Take another step. One more step. You're a survivor.' Encouraging words, but in truth, I didn't have much left.

“Finally, I exited the forest and when I did, I ran smack into the Soviet brigade. I came around a tree and found myself staring straight into the barrel of a cannon on a Russian T-25 tank. My legs wobbled and I passed out.

“The next thing I knew I was lying in a booth in a Kobiór coffee shop. A Russian soldier and a woman in a bakery apron were standing over me. An olive-green Russian jeep with a white star on its hood was sitting by the curb. The woman tried to offer me a cup of hot tea.

“‘Are you okay, honey?'

“‘How did I get here?'

“The Russian soldier raised his hand. I sat up, took a sip of tea and a bite of cookie. Oh my God, a cookie. My taste buds didn't know what to think. How long had it been?

“‘You were in the camp? The very large one to the south?' the soldier asked. I nodded. ‘You're very brave,' he said, and he kissed me on the forehead. ‘My troops have now taken the camp and freed a few thousand of your people. It was just the same as we saw at Majdanek.' He shook his head. ‘Where will you go now?'

“I shrugged. ‘Chrzanów, I guess. That's my home. Are there any Nazis still there?'

“He shook his head and smiled. ‘There are no more Nazis in Poland. They ran like rats.'

“‘Thank you for bringing me here. I don't think I could have taken another step.' I started to get up. ‘I better be going now.'

“The shop owner looked at my body of skin and bones, shook her head and wagged her finger. ‘You sit right here. Let me get you some food and dry clothes.'

“I didn't know how to respond. For four years I struggled, I fought just to subsist through the meanest of human conditions, under the boot of the most sadistic, savage monsters the earth had ever known. No one cared whether I lived or died. Actually, they hoped I would die. And now a total stranger was insisting that I accept her caring offer to give me nourishment and warm clothes. I couldn't hold it together. I fell apart.

“I didn't know who to hug first. It had been such a long time. The soldier—his name was Yuri—said he had to leave; he had a war to fight. He was proud to have helped me. The bakery shop owner—her name was Alicja—brought me hot pierogies and steamed vegetables. She told me she had a room over the shop. I could stay there as long as I wanted. How do you repay such kindness? She didn't want anything. She was repaid by the opportunity to do good. She didn't care if I was Jewish. I was a human in need.

“In the little apartment upstairs there was a bathtub. I hadn't had a bath for four years. Alicja filled the tub with hot water and laid out a sweater, a long wool skirt, boots and warm socks. That night I slept on a feather bed for the first time since the Nazis broke into my home and seized my family. You can't imagine what that felt like. When I woke up the next morning, it took a while for me to realize that I hadn't died and gone to heaven.

“I dressed and walked down the stairs into the bakery, where Alicja dished up a hot breakfast. My stomach had shrunk, so I couldn't eat much. But it was delicious. Afterward, I took a cup of coffee and walked outside to look at the market square. The sun was shining and reflecting off the freshly fallen snow. The world was so bright, I had to squint. The air was fresh and smelled so clean. There were no chimneys, no Germans, no roll calls, no marches. No SS with rifles. People strolled through the snow with their children, going anywhere they pleased, without fear.

“I stayed with Alicja and accepted her generous care. Finally, on the sixth day at breakfast, when I had regained some of my strength, I said, ‘I have to get back to my home. I am forever grateful to you, but I need to know if anyone survived.' Maybe some of my friends had returned. Maybe David had returned. God, I longed to see David. Alicja arranged for her neighbor to take me back to Chrzanów. She gave me a warm coat and a duffel that she filled with rolls, fruit, sausages and a bottle of milk. I promised to come back and visit.

“Alicja's friend dropped me at the Chrzanów town square and I looked around trying to assimilate the present. I wasn't wearing an armband, I had no papers and I wasn't subject to arrest. So different from the last time I stood in that spot, when there was a megaphone shouting commands and there were lines forming to march groups to the railroad tracks and we were holding our babies. The Nazis were gone, as was more than half of my town. But I was free and I had returned.

“A few of the shops had reopened, but the square was quiet. I don't know how to explain it to you, but as I stood there looking at my town, now free of Germans, I didn't see the memories of my childhood, of the happy, bustling village I knew. I didn't see my classmates heading home from school. I didn't see my friends and myself running through the square, or eating ice cream in the summertime. I didn't see my parents, or Milosz, or Karolina or any of the things I remembered from my childhood. The square only held visions of SS officers sitting in cafes and bars, laughing and drinking, while Jews with their heads down quietly tried to slip by without abuse. My mind saw German officers stopping and bullying elderly men. I saw me, pushing a cartload of coats.

“I walked slowly northeast to where the ghetto once stood. The Shop was an empty shell. Most of the ghetto buildings had been torn down or bulldozed, presumably when the Nazis cleared it out in the spring of 1943. I returned to the building where Yossi had his basement apartment. Half of the building had been obliterated, most likely by a tank, and it lay open like a gaping wound. What remained was mostly rubble—bricks and twisted metal—but I was able to pull some bricks away, find the entrance and walk down the stairs to the furnace room. There, still sitting on the floor, were the two drawers we used for baby cribs. Soft wool blankets still lined the drawers. I sat on the mat that had been my bed and cried until I had no more tears.

“I rose from the mat and reached behind the furnace. There, where I had hidden it in the dark corner in 1943, was Milosz's shoe. I kissed it and put it in my duffel. I still had my piece of Milosz. When I reached into the bag, I saw that Alicja had not only given me food and extra clothes, she had generously given me money. Taking stock of where I was and what had happened, I wondered why I was chosen to be the lucky one. The only survivor. I certainly did not feel worthy.

“It was still late in January, but the day was sunny and relatively warm, and I set out to see what was left of Chrzanów. As you might expect, my steps led me directly to 1403 Kościuszko, my parents' house.”

Gladys poked her head in the conference room door, interrupted Lena and said, “Cat, your other is here.”

Catherine glanced over at Lena and said, “Gladys refuses to call him my
significant
other or my husband. He's just my
other
. Gladys and Liam are engaged in eternal banter. Send him back, Gladys.”

Liam walked into the room, kissed his wife, shook Lena's hand and said, “I just stopped by on my way to the airport. I wanted to tell you I have a line on Siegfried Schultz. The Nazi army records list his address in Scharmassing, Germany.”

“That was the town,” Lena said. “I can't remember the street, but the paper we pinned on the babies gave Siegfried's mother's address in Scharmassing.”

“Dorfstrasse is the name of the street. It's about sixty miles north of the Munich airport.”

“Are you going there?”

Liam nodded. “I'm going there after I go to Jerusalem. I don't expect to meet up with Siegfried, but if those babies made their way into Germany, I might be able to find out something.”

Lena shook her head. “No wonder Ben raved about you two.”

“One more thing,” Liam said. “The babies were tossed into the wheat fields on the way from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen, correct?”

Lena nodded.

“And as I remember the story, the train was moving slowly, right?”

Lena nodded again. “Very slowly. We had just pulled out of a side track and were starting up again.”

“Can you estimate how far you'd gone on your journey from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen?”

Lena shook her head. “I don't think so.”

“Think hard, Lena. Had you gone halfway?”

“Yes, more than halfway. We had gone a day and a night, we had that confrontation with the woman, Karolina sat and stared into space for quite a while and then we dressed the babies. Maybe two-thirds of the way.”

“Okay. Good work. I'll see you guys in a few days.” Liam left and closed the door.

“Do you think he'll find them?” Lena said excitedly.

“He's really good at what he does. Nobody better.”

 

F
ORTY-TWO

I
DECIDED TO GO
home and started walking through the square toward Kościuszko Street. When I was a child, Jews owned most of the stores in the square. We were shopkeepers. When the Nazis invaded, they took the stores away from us and gave most of them to Gentiles. Now, as I walked through the market square, many of those stores were shuttered.

“I continued down the residential streets and noticed that many of the houses were vacant as well. It felt like Chrzanów had been ravaged. I guess it had. Sixteen thousand Jews had been killed or transported out of Chrzanów. More than half the population was gone. The Nazis who had confiscated our homes, like Colonel Müller, were also gone.

“I stood in front of my house wondering if I wanted to go inside. The way the Müllers had changed my house had upset me so much when I was bringing the reports to the colonel. I didn't want to walk in and see Else's ghost sitting on the couch, her nose in the air, my mother's bracelet on her arm. I wanted to remember my home the way it was when I lived there.

“Nevertheless, I walked up to the door. It occurred to me that the last time I stood here I was begging the colonel to save the babies. So long ago. Something urged me to just open the door and go inside. If the house were vacant, could I move in? Could I live here again?

“I tried the door, but it was locked. I knocked. No one answered. I walked around to the back door and it was locked as well. I looked for a window to open, but it was winter and they were shut. I peered in through the living room windows and was about to leave when the front door opened and a man said, ‘What are you doing here?'

“‘I should ask what
you
are doing here. This is my house.'

“‘To hell with you. I bought it, I paid good money for it, now get out of here.'

“‘Who did you pay money to? No one had the right to sell my house to you. This house belongs to my father, Captain Scheinman.'

“The man stormed belligerently into the yard. ‘Yeah, well, it's mine now. Jews forfeited their property. That was the German law. Since we were part of Germany, it was all legal. I bought it, so it's mine. Now leave or I'll get my gun.'

“I stood my ground. ‘You don't have a gun, the Nazis took all the guns. Jewish forfeiture was an illegal act. And I don't believe you paid anybody. You're a squatter.'

“‘Look, lady, whoever you are, my family is now living in this house. My wife and my three kids. And we're not moving. I'm not giving it to you. Since you're obviously Jewish, why do you want to be here? There are no Jews in Chrzanów anymore.'

“‘Well, there's at least one now.'

“He just shook his head. ‘Just go away. I'm not moving, and no Polish authority will force me to move.' He went back into the house and locked the door. He was probably right. What was I going to do?

“Closer to the square there were several empty houses. I was cold and I entered one to sit down and eat my lunch. The house was furnished but abandoned. I surmised that some SS officer or ranking German soldier had been living in the house when the Russians approached and left in a hurry. I had just criticized a man for being a squatter in my house, but that's what I was about to do, except if the real owner showed up, I would have gladly returned the house to him. Unfortunately, very few Chrzanów Jews lived to come back. That was the sad truth.

“I unwrapped some of the sausage Alicja had packed for me and drank some of my milk. Then I headed back to the square to see if any of my friends had returned. In front of the bakery, I saw Frank Wolczinski, a Catholic classmate who I knew from my short tenure in the public high school. He told me that a few Jewish residents were starting to straggle back and that Eva Fishman had returned. She was two years older, and a friend from the Kraków Gymnasium. Frank offered to buy me a beer and we went into the bar.

“He asked me to tell him where I had been for the last four years and I just shook my head. ‘I don't think I could and you don't want to know.'

“He nodded. ‘I heard some things. I hoped that they weren't true. Listen, some of the younger crowd gathers at the Kryjówka Bar each night after ten. Will you join me tonight? I'll buy?' It was an offer I gladly accepted.

“I asked him if he'd heard anything about David or any more of the Jewish students. He shook his head. Only Eva. He gave me her address and told me he'd see me later at the Kryjówka.

“I tracked Eva down later that afternoon. I had always known her as a stocky girl, but she'd lost a lot of weight and her dress hung on her like she was a wire hanger. We briefly shared our experiences. She had been at a Gross-Rosen sub-camp as well, an underground camp in northern Poland that made munitions. She saw a few Chrzanów people there, but then she said that most everyone had been tortured and killed, and she broke into tears. She didn't know anything about David. I stayed a little while longer and went back to my new home.