The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (17 page)

In these terrible days, nothing was predictable any more – logic had been suspended and only the cruel randomness of fate survived. How could we distinguish between the soldier who would remember his humanity and the one who would simply obey orders and kill? I had seen the rats change with the blink of an eye: while their propaganda on brightly coloured posters proclaimed us to be vermin, they would happily listen to our performers, let themselves be entertained by our musicians and cabaret acts one evening, then kill us without flinching the next day.

But didn’t we all share the same biology: a pumping heart, lungs, warm red blood? That first night Mother insisted we black out the windows with several layers of newspaper. Then we ate a meagre meal: a thin soup she had managed to cook on the stove from some beets, and half a slice of bread each. Not knowing how long we would be stuck in that place we had to be very careful with our food.

I tried not to think about the people who had lived here before while we ate from their plates, slept in their beds. I cringed at the sight of the children’s books and toys that lay scattered in one of the bedrooms.

Mother made me promise not to leave her again as long as this war lasted. And on that first night, drunk with relief at having found her again, I gladly said yes.

We lived like moles in the shadow world of that apartment. Often at night I woke, shivering, sensing a presence at the end of the bed. If ghosts existed, that apartment was full of them. And although I took some puppets to bed with me, I missed the prince. I had given him away, betrayed him. I imagined Max finding a box, wrapping the prince up in tissue paper and sending him with a note to his son in Germany,
From Warsaw with love
. . . The thought crushed me.

There was little to do there and our daily routine was more than tedious. Cara sat at the table most of the day, staring at her hands, and not even Ellie could get her to talk. Once a day Mama put a little knife next to her sister and asked her to cut up the potatoes or beets, which she did. Ellie occupied an old armchair and disappeared into her collection of Arabian tales for most of the day, and only if I nagged her enough would she read a chapter to me. I scurried around the other apartments, searching for anything edible. Over time I grew clever at finding the best hidden treasures – once I retrieved a small bowl from inside an oven, filled to the brim with precious sugar, another time a stash of beets buried underneath a pillow. Most days I found nothing but a few crumbs. Sometimes Ellie and I would build a little stage out of the suitcases on the kitchen table and make up a play for Mama and Cara. Sometimes Cara would give a fleeting smile, as elusive as a bird, but enough to make it all feel worthwhile for that moment. Another evening, as I rummaged through my coat, my fingers touched the little flute. I pulled it out and, regardless of the danger that someone might hear us, I started to play a simple tune, then another one and another. Mama, Ellie and Aunt Cara joined me at the table, listening as if mesmerised by the tiny flute’s melodies. I remembered the old man playing for the street children dancing to his tunes, as I had strolled along Leszno Street with grandfather, all that time ago . . . None of us around the table spoke that evening as we sat, tears in our eyes.

After a week in hiding, cabin fever took hold of me: I couldn’t sit still, kept tapping my left foot constantly and gnawed my fingernails to a bloody mess. The silence was suffocating me and I was desperate for fresh air and to see the children in the orphanage again, to find out what was happening elsewhere in the ghetto. And what about the children in the hospital? If the Germans wanted to get rid of everyone who was weak and unable to work, surely the children had no chance of survival?

Ellie tried to persuade me to wait a bit longer, to help her make up new plays, but in this constant cautious whispering, nothing could flourish. The puppets hung lifeless on our hands and our dialogues were laboured and without spark.

I left the apartment early one morning, ten days after our reunion. I didn’t tell anyone I was going, not even Ellie, but simply put on my coat and slipped out of the door. I just wanted to run to the hospital and back, but I didn’t get very far.

As I moved along Orla Street a German patrol sped around the corner. There was nowhere to hide, I was trapped. The patrol stopped with a sudden screech just a few metres in front of me.

A sharp voice stopped me. ‘
Stehenbleiben Jude
. What do you have under your coat?’ A tall soldier jumped out of the truck, shouldering his gun.

‘Nothing.’ My voice sounded too high-pitched. The soldier came right up to me and lifted my chin with his index finger.

‘
Na schau mal wen wir da haben
, look who we have here . . . the Puppet Boy!’ he said, grinning. ‘Don’t you recognise him? The milk boy, I know your face. Show me your pockets.’ He laughed, but there was no mistaking the fact that he could shoot me right there if he wished to. I pulled out the crocodile and Hagazad, the sorcerer.

‘Ah, what an excellent
Zufall
– we’ll need some cheering up tonight. Into the truck, boy, you can be our lucky mascot for the day. That’ll keep them calm.’ My legs buckled as they pulled me up into the truck; they simply laughed.

‘What’s the matter with you, boy, missing your beer?’ I didn’t remember this particular soldier but he clearly knew me. I looked out for Max but he was not among them.

That afternoon I would lose yet another part of my soul as I saw what their
Aktion
truly meant from start to finish: the soldiers’ boots brutally smashing down door after door, the familiar: ‘
Raus, schnell, schnell
!’ filling the streets with terror, the flame-throwers spitting deadly fire into the houses once their inhabitants had been chased into the trucks. That day I knew in my gut that this operation meant they did not expect any Jews ever to return to Warsaw.

Bit by bit the truck filled with people: women holding on to their children, old people and even men who were still ‘
arbeitsfähig
’, able to work, all wrapped in coats despite the heat, clutching their suitcases, just as my mother had done when she clambered into the truck two weeks earlier. Would they take me to the
Umschlag
as well?

Suddenly the soldier who had spotted me turned and looked directly at me.

‘
Komm, spiel mal was schönes, Bube
. Get your puppets out and play for them.’ He grinned, his mouth revealing a huge gap in a row of yellow teeth. All eyes were on me. I silently cursed the puppets and my recklessness at leaving our hiding place today. It was one thing to put on a show for the hated officers and soldiers, but not for this terrified crowd being taken to the
Umschlag
. And for them to know that I had entertained the Germans before – that I was on such familiar terms with the rats? I blushed and prayed that the earth would swallow me up.

Suddenly I felt a tug on my coat. A little girl with wild dark curls holding a small red suitcase that could have contained nothing more than a few toys looked up at me.

‘Can I see your puppets, please?’ She must have been around Hannah’s age. The girl’s father, holding her hand, gave me a brief nod. There was no turning back.

And so, as the truck hurtled through the empty streets towards the
Umschlag
, I pulled out one puppet after another from the many pockets of my old coat. I fooled around, made up little jokes, and when I finished with a puppet, I handed it to someone: I gave the first puppet, the monkey, to the girl, others to an older boy and some adults. Soon there were eight people joining in the play. There was silly banter, even some laughter, as the puppets hit and hugged each other. Then, with a sudden jolt, the truck stopped. We had reached the
Umschlag
.

‘
Raus jetzt. Schnell, schnell
.’ The soldier pointed at me. ‘Not you. You stay.’

The soldiers placed a ramp against the truck and people started to descend as the soldiers yelled insults at them. The girl’s father peeled the puppet from his hand and handed it to me.

‘Thank you.’ Others followed his example and, in a trance, I accepted the puppets back. They lay in my lap while I watched one person after another leave the truck. I was unable to move, a puppet myself, a witness without power, without a spine.

‘Sara, give the boy his puppet back.’ The father’s voice startled me.

Sara! Like little Sara, one of the twins. God, what had happened to the twins? The girl stretched her hand with the monkey puppet towards me. Everyone was giving me back the puppets, while they were losing everything, and all I could do was sit there like an idiot.

‘Take it, please.’ I pushed the girl’s little hand away. Let her at least take the damn puppet. The girl smiled. She slipped the monkey back on to her hand and let the puppet carry her suitcase. A makeshift gate, covered with barbed wire, opened into the
Umschlagplatz
. How could they fit any more people in there? A few moments later I couldn’t see the girl any more – the truckload of people who had just been my audience and fellow puppeteers had been swallowed up by the crowd. The truck skidded away.

Four more times that day I was witness to the truck’s gruesome collection and delivery to the
Umschlag
before the soldiers finally let me go and headed off towards the Aryan side and their barracks.

They dropped me at the
Wache
late in the evening and told me to be there again the next morning. I knew I wouldn’t go.

When I returned to our hiding place, everyone was in a terrible state, especially Mother. Ellie simply hugged me with a strength that I didn’t think possible; Mama followed, white as a ghost. And during that long night I finally told Mother all about my double life, what the soldiers had forced me to do and how I had smuggled children under my coat. What did it matter now? Mother cried and stroked my hand, calling me ‘my brave boy’, over and over again, until I told her to stop.

We lay low in the small blacked-out flat, but it was hard. We had so little food to live on these days that I sneaked out whenever I could, to get some air, escape from the stuffiness and claustrophobic closeness, and to hunt for food. I stuck to the promise I had given Mother not to stray too far.

I shared a room with Mother, and Ellie slept in the other room. How I wished I could just crawl into bed with her, hold her and kiss her, lie close against the warmth of her body. I knew both of us were restless, and to make matters worse it was the height of summer. There we were, holed up like hibernating bears.

Sometimes we stole a kiss or two when away from our mothers, and over time Ellie read me most of the tales in her book, interrupted by the occasional kiss and awkward fumbling.

Then, one day in early August, I couldn’t wait any longer to find out what had happened to the children. While one day merged into another like the grey watery soup that was all we now had to eat, we still tried to keep track of the days on a little calendar I had found. I remember it was the seventh of August and a very sunny day. I left a short note for Mother and Ellie and tiptoed down the stairs. When I opened the front door and the warmth of morning greeted me, I knew it was going to be a very hot day. I ran along Orla, then Karmelicka Street, my senses alert.

I knew as soon as I turned the corner. I knew without even getting close. I knew it in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I had even known before I left the house that morning. The big white building that had sheltered the children for so long sat abandoned and empty, the front door boarded up as if it had been gagged. I stared at the barricaded entrance as if it held the answers, then ran up to it, trying to pry away the boards, get through to the door. I knew it was futile. The splinters cut deep into my hands but nothing could match the pain inside.

They were all gone, my little ones. I had come too late.

M
aybe this was the end. Surely their end meant mine as well. Now at last the earth would open up and swallow me and the whole damn ghetto. People say that when something terrible happens you lose a part of your soul. It just leaves, drifts away to somewhere far away. I know for sure that a part of me will stay for ever rooted in front of Janusz’s orphanage on that sunny August morning – trying to break in to find Hannah, Margaret, Janusz and the children. Waiting with my bleeding hands.

I later learned that the whole orphanage had been deported on 5 August: Janusz, Margaret, the other nurses and two hundred children. Janusz could have saved himself – at the last minute the
Judenrat
had managed to get release papers for him, but at the
Umschlagplatz
he refused to leave and stayed with the children. People were surprised he did so, but not me, they were his children, his life.

Anyone who witnessed the long line of children remembered that they all marched in an orderly row of pairs to the dirty square, dressed in their best clothes, singing one song after another. All the way to the
Umschlag
, led by Margaret, Janusz and one of the boys, playing his violin. People later said they saw them climb calmly, without fuss or resistance, into the cattle trucks. Janusz had told them that morning that they were going on an outing to the countryside. But I think what happened was this: of course the children were scared, everyone was, how could they not be? But they loved Janusz as much as he loved them and so they all decided to play the ‘let’s-go-on-an-outing’ game. Many have since learned about Janusz and his children, it has become a famous story and Janusz a hero, but who really knows about the children, their names and their individual stories? And who is there to remember Hannah, the sweetest, most fiery and determined five-year-old I have ever met?

But this was not the end.

The end came on 15 August, another hot and blue-skied day. I had tried so hard to be patient, to distract myself with the puppets and with Ellie, but I needed to know what was happening around us. I had met a boy around my age on one of my brief trips into the neighbourhood searching for food. He told me that, against all odds, the children’s hospital still existed. Ellie, worried for the children, and worn down through boredom, fear and hunger, decided she would come with me.