White Picket Fences (13 page)

“I came back to the park every afternoon for two weeks, asking if anyone had lost a pin. I liked the park; I didn’t mind doing it. One afternoon I approached two nurses who were strolling the park on a lunch break. One of them was Katrine, the other was named Sofia. Sofia was half Jewish. They were roommates. When I asked if either of them had lost a pin in the park, you can imagine how Katrine’s face lit up. When I took it out of my pocket, she began to cry. She wanted to give me a reward for returning it to her, but I didn’t want a reward. I wanted to take her out for coffee. She was so pretty and kind. She said yes, albeit a little hesitantly. That cup of coffee turned into a three-hour conversation, and I knew right away I wanted to marry her. I bought the engagement ring many weeks before I actually asked her. It was a lovely ring. An emerald, almond shaped, with two
little diamonds on either side. She loved it. Those were the most magical days of my life, even though all around us was the threat of invasion. Magical.”

Josef closed his eyes, and Chase zeroed in on a glistening line under the old man’s closed lids.

“That’s a beautiful story,” Tally said.

Josef took his time opening his eyes. “Yes. But not what you came to hear. No?”

“Were you married to Katrine when you went to Treblinka?” Matt asked.

“No. No, I was not. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.” He continued, “Now, when I moved to Warsaw, I didn’t know anyone. I took an apartment across the street from Eliasz’s parents’ bakery. In the predawn hours the aroma nearly drove me wild. Eliasz’s mother and father, they were very good bakers. I would go into their shop almost every day. Eliasz amazed me because he could make such beautiful loaves of bread, even though he could not see. You’ve never seen more beautiful challah than what Eliasz could make.”

Eliasz smiled. “I told him, it is all in the wrist!”

Josef smiled. “Eliasz’s family was very good to me. Invited me to their home to eat. Went out of their way to welcome me. They were very kind. But you know what happened in September, yes? The Germans invaded Poland in the west. And the Soviets to the east. The weak Polish army was powerless to stop either one. Within three weeks, there was no more Polish army. There was no more Poland. People tried to leave the country, and they could not. There was no gas. Cars, they were left all over the roads. People just abandoned them when they ran out
of gas, left them there with their suitcases still strapped to the top. They walked away with whatever they could carry. But it did not matter. There was no escape. We belonged to Germany. To Germany and to the Soviets. Everything changed. Katrine’s family left for Vienna, where they had relatives, before the invasion. Katrine stayed because I stayed. I should have insisted she leave with them. It is my lifelong regret that I did not.”

Again Chase saw Josef spinning the wedding band on his finger. He was quiet for several seconds. Then he went on.

“By October, I could see the Germans had awful plans for Polish Jews. Eliasz and his family, and all the other Jews in Warsaw, were told they had to wear the armbands with the yellow star. We non-Jews were told to stop buying anything from Jewish shops. Things got very bad as the months went on. Jews could no longer have their own bank accounts. Some had their property seized. They weren’t allowed to buy food or medicine from non-Jewish shops. I tried to help Eliasz and his family, but it was very difficult. Risky. They lost the bakery. Then in 1940, the ghetto was born.”

“What exactly was the ghetto?” Matt asked, leaning forward in his chair. Chase realized he was too.

“The Nazis sectioned off a small portion of the city, moved all the Poles out, and built a wall around it,” Josef answered. “The wall was three and a half meters high and topped with pieces of broken glass and barbed wire. And they crammed the Warsaw Jews inside. Half a million Jews stuffed into sixteen city blocks. How many people lived in your apartment, Eliasz?”

“Five families lived with us in an apartment built for one family,” Eliasz said. “The Nazis would come every day to take us
to work, and if you could not work, you could not get food stamps, and without food you were as good as dead. We pretended I could see. My father, brother, and I worked at a quarry. As long as I could stand next to my father and dig where he dug, I could work. Sometimes a transport would come and take many away to go to labor camps. But we learned later they were taken away to be killed.

“But the ghetto itself was also a place of death. Every month, four or five thousand people would die from illness or starvation. Every mother who had a baby looked for a way to smuggle her little one to the outside. The mothers knew if their babies stayed with them, they would die. I had a baby sister in the ghetto. We did not know how to get Marya out. There were guards at the gate and strict rules about who could come out. So we prayed for a way. And then, one day, who should come into the ghetto to inspect our waterworks, but Josef.”

Josef nodded. “I came into this apartment building with another inspector, and I recognized Eliasz and his mother, Raiza, but I told his mother with my eyes not to let on that she knew me. I knew I could not help them if the other man knew of my sympathies. Raiza, she squeezed Eliasz’s arm tight so that when he heard my voice, he would not say anything. I told them I had to see their bathroom to look at the pipes. I wrote a message on the wall behind the commode with my pencil. I asked them how I could help them. I left my pencil there so Raiza could tell me. The next day I told my superiors there were many problems with the waterworks in the ghetto and that I had to go back. The other inspector didn’t want to come, which didn’t surprise me. I told him many times to be careful what he touched because of
typhus and cholera. I knew if I could make him afraid to come, I could come back alone. So when I came back to the apartment, I asked again to see the pipes in the bathroom. Eliasz took me upstairs, and I could see that my message had been rubbed away. He knelt down and pulled me down with him. And with his hand he took my hand and lifted a brick from the wall. Underneath the brick was a written message, and in the spot where the brick was, my pencil. The message was this:
Please take Marya out of the ghetto.
I whispered to Eliasz, ‘How?’”

“I put one hand on his mouth and the other on his tool bag,” Eliasz said. “And I rubbed the tool bag gently so he would know he had to smuggle my sister out in his bag. I mimicked taking medicine and closing my eyes so he would know we would have drugs to make Marya sleep. We could not risk her crying in the bag when he left the ghetto.”

“I understood then why my message had been washed away and why the new message and the pencil were hidden,” Josef continued. “We could not trust any of the other people in the apartment. We didn’t know if any of them would turn me in. Everything had a price in the ghetto. Everything. So very loudly I said the pipes were in terrible shape and that I had to come back and fix them. I said I would come in two days. At ten in the morning. This is because many in the apartment would be on work details then.

“I wrote a message to Raiza that she must comment to the other people in the building that Marya was running a fever and that she was worried about her. And that after I take her, she must pretend that she has gone to seek medical help for the baby. And that when she returns without the baby, she must
weep as if the child has died. I knew it wouldn’t be hard for Raiza to weep when she came home without her.

“I put the brick back and leaned in to Eliasz and whispered, ‘Where shall I take her?’ I thought they had friends on the outside who were ready to take her. I thought all they needed was a way to get Marya out. So I said, ‘Where shall I take her?’ And do you remember what you whispered to me, Eliasz?”

Eliasz nodded. “‘Wherever God directs.’”

“They had no plan,” Josef continued. “They were desperate. And I was the only link to the outside that they had. I saw Katrine that night, and my heart was troubled with how I was going to find a safe place for Marya. Katrine asked me what was wrong, and I didn’t want to tell her. I knew what had to be done was risky. But she pressed me and I told her, all the time wishing I wasn’t saying a word. Her heart was too tender. The moment I told her everything, she said I was meant to share this with her, but I didn’t understand. ‘Come with me,’ she said. We went back to her apartment, where Sofia was eating her supper. I had of course met Sofia many times after the day in the park. But when we went inside the apartment, Katrine bent down and whispered something to Sofia. Sofia’s eyes got very big, and she turned to look at me. For a moment I thought she was angry with us. I learned that night that Sofia was involved in a smuggling ring to get babies out of the ghetto. It was incredibly dangerous work. Katrine had inadvertently learned of this sometime earlier and had sworn to keep it a secret. So Sofia was angry at first, but later not so much. And I will tell you why in a moment.

“That night Sofia agreed to help me. She was surprised and relieved to hear that we already had a plan to use my tool bag
and sleeping powders. Her friends used similar tricks. We arranged a meeting place. Sofia told me she would take care of the rest. I asked her who would be taking Marya, and she told me it was better if I didn’t know, but that the child would be safe. So that is what we did. Eliasz got sleeping powders from one of the many Jewish doctors in the ghetto. Just before ten o’clock two days later, Raiza gave the powders to Marya and I came with my tool bag full of potatoes. The sack of potatoes I gave to Raiza. She wrapped the sack in a blanket and held the bundle to her chest like it was her baby. Her eyes were shimmering with tears, but she refused to let them fall. I placed her sleeping child in my bag and zipped it shut.

“Then I reprimanded her loudly for causing so much trouble with the pipes, and I laid my hand on her cheek and whispered that her child would be safe. I left in a hurry. I didn’t want to keep looking at her face.

“I went to the meeting place: the basement of a butcher shop several blocks away from my own neighborhood. Sofia was waiting for me. I handed Sofia the child, still fast asleep, and I heaved a sigh of relief and thanked her. And she looked up at me, and I could tell she was taken aback by the finality in my voice. ‘Josef,’ she said to me. ‘There are hundreds of other infants in the ghetto who are doomed to die.’

“‘How many times do you think we can do this?’ I was still trying to understand what she was asking of me. And Sofia said, ‘How many times will you be able to let a baby die that you could have saved?’ I knew the answer was zero. Zero. I knew God had arranged for me to meet Eliasz and his family
before
the ghetto so we could save these children.

“The next day I went back to the ghetto and left a note behind the commode in Eliasz’s apartment, asking him if he and his family would help me get more infants out of the ghetto. It was never my plan to involve Katrine in any of the other rescues. I told Eliasz we needed more doctors willing to part with their sleeping powders. And would he find them for me?”

“We said yes, of course,” Eliasz said.

“And did you find more doctors to help you?” Tally’s voice next to Chase was soft and hopeful. She, too, had leaned forward in her chair.

“Oh yes. There were many doctors confined to the ghetto. Dozens,” Eliasz said. “Maybe ten alone in the building where I lived.”

Chase watched Tally nod and sit back. A question seemed to be poised on her lips, but she did not ask it.

Josef turned to Eliasz. “How many babies did we sneak out of the ghetto, Eliasz? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty-five.”

Josef nodded. “Twenty-five. Twenty-five babies we saved.”

Chase sensed a strange sensation in his chest as he pictured Josef whisking away infants from the clasp of death, over and over again. He pulled away from the camera as if he’d been nudged. Only Tally seemed to notice. He rubbed his chest gently and gradually leaned back toward the camera, pretending it was nothing but a stray hiccup that had jarred him. He had no idea why the image of the rescued infants pulled at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tally turn her head back toward the two men.

“Wow,” Matt said. “Twenty-five. So did the war end then? Is that when you stopped?”

Josef smiled and shook his head. “No. That’s not when we stopped. We stopped when we got caught.”

“You were caught?” Tally said.

Josef nodded. “We were all sent to Treblinka, which they called a labor camp.”

“It was a death camp,” Eliasz murmured. “Chase, surely you know this, since your great-grandfather died there.”

“And what happened to the smuggling operation?” Chase heard his own voice asking the question, though it seemed to spring from a place deep within him.

Josef hesitated a moment. “Our ring inside the ghetto was shut down. We were all caught. But you should know others still smuggled the little ones out after we were arrested.”

“How many others?” the voice within Chase asked.

“How’s that?” Josef asked.

“How many other babies were saved?”

Josef shrugged his sagging shoulders. “Why, hundreds.”

seventeen

T
ally stepped out into the blustery brilliance of a searing September afternoon with Chase and Matt just behind her. The cars in the parking lot at La Vista del Paz shone under the roiling heat of a Santa Ana wind. When they arrived at Chase’s car, he opened the doors to let the oppressive heat escape into the kicking gusts.

“We’re going to have to come back.” Matt ran a hand through his dark hair as the warm air played with it. “They didn’t even talk about the impact of the ghetto on history yet.”

“Well, maybe that’s for us to come up with.” Chase opened the trunk and laid the folded tripod inside.

“What?”

“I think we’re supposed to interpret their story into a takeaway that has sociological value. Gimble’s not going to give us an A for sitting on our butts listening to two old men talk about hell on earth.”

Matt frowned. “So you’re saying we don’t have to come back?”