As Elzunia changed the dressing on a young woman’s leg, she dreaded the moment when the patient would wake from her morphine-induced sleep. The beds in the ward had been pushed so close together that the nurses and doctors had to squeeze through a narrow space to get to the patients. More patients were being brought in all the time, civilians as well as insurgents, children as well as adults, many of them horribly burned by incendiary rockets or maimed by bombs.
As she straightened the sheet over her patient, Elzunia reflected on the turbulent progress of the Uprising, which had led to her being removed from the field and posted to this hospital. Only five days had passed since the Uprising had begun, intoxicating days of great hope. First came success that surpassed all of their dreams. Their surprise attacks had won control of the power station and the water board, and left much of the administration of the city in their hands. Red-and-white national flags fluttered everywhere, and the atmosphere was euphoric. It seemed as though the secret state had finally emerged from underground. All they needed now was for the Russian army to join the fight and for the Allies to send desperately needed supplies.
But the exhilaration of those first days soon evaporated into the sultry air. Instead of withdrawing, the Germans had brought in reinforcements. They were pounding the city with heavy artillery, setting fire to it with incendiary rockets, smashing it with bombs and killing civilians and insurgents indiscriminately. It was clear that they intended to raze Warsaw to the ground and bury all its inhabitants under the rubble. And no one could figure out why the Russian guns on the other side of the Vistula had fallen silent. Some said it was because of the ferocity of the German counterattack, while others saw it as a sinister communist agenda.
The young woman’s eyes fluttered open and rested on Elzunia. She struggled to sit up but fell back onto the pillow. ‘Why am I here?’ she asked.
‘Your house was bombed,’ Elzunia said. ‘Don’t you remember?’
The woman shook her head. She was as pale as the fair hair that hung loosely around her bloodless face.
Several patients were moaning or calling for a doctor while someone kept shouting, ‘Watch out!’ in a frightening voice. ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ the woman was saying. ‘I’m just taking up a bed you probably need for someone who’s really ill.’
Elzunia swallowed. ‘You’ll be here for a few days. Until your leg heals.’
‘My leg?’ The woman’s eyes widened. She looked down and closed her hand around Elzunia’s wrist. ‘What’s wrong with it? It’ll be all right, won’t it? I’m a physical education teacher.’
Elzunia sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand while she explained that a shard of glass had severed her right calf and part of the shinbone so that her leg had had to be amputated below the knee.
The woman stared as though unable to grasp Elzunia’s words. Then she let out a despairing cry and buried her face in her hands.
Elzunia was still thinking about her as she headed for the adjacent ward where a German soldier had been admitted. Her blood was boiling. No matter how often the matron explained that their job was to heal the sick, regardless of nationality, she couldn’t come to terms with having to nurse the enemy.
‘It’s outrageous,’ she fumed to Janka when they met in the corridor. ‘We’re healing them so they can go and kill more of us. And we’ve hardly got enough medicine for ourselves as it is.’
Janka nodded. ‘It’s insane. Why do we have to be so stupidly noble? Can you imagine them looking after us if we were wounded? But there’s one good thing about having their soldiers in here. At least they won’t attack a hospital that’s looking after their men.’
That morning they had draped a huge Red Cross banner on the roof, so the German bombers would see that this was a hospital, but Elzunia didn’t feel safe. She knew they didn’t respect hospitals, but having German soldiers there would probably protect them. As soon as she stepped into the next ward, her gaze was drawn to the man lying in the bed nearest the door. There was a blood-stained bandage on his head but the eyes that met hers were hard and cold. She stopped breathing. It was Wolfman, the SS officer from the Ghetto. Although their situations were now reversed, and he was in her power, her hands trembled so much that she had to leave the ward to compose herself.
He was staring at her with that terrifying expression when she returned with a basin of warm water, iodine and bandages. Unable to bring herself to look at his face, she removed the stained bandage and proceeded to clean the gash that looked as though someone had taken a cleaver to his skull. As she worked, she could feel his eyes boring into her.
‘Du bist die Jüdin von Ghetto, Fraülein, nicht wahr?’
She pretended not to hear.
Assuming she didn’t understand German, he said in halting Polish, ‘I soldier. I orders obey.’ He winced as she swabbed the wound with iodine.
She didn’t reply. There was no point getting into a discussion with a sadist who thought it was his duty to murder children.
‘Why this hospital is German soldiers taking?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Because we also obey orders,’ she retorted. ‘Our orders are to heal the sick, even barbarians who murder women and children.’
He shrugged. ‘But that is war, nicht wahr?’
‘Your country gave us Beethoven, Schubert, Schiller and Goethe,’ she blurted. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to stoop to such barbarism?’
He looked amazed. ‘Du liebst Schubert? Die Winterreise, ja?’ And before she could reply, he began to sing the organ grinder’s plaintive song in a melodious baritone. Gone was the icy stare; the hard features had softened and he was a music-lover paying homage to his favourite composer.
When he’d finished, he sighed. ‘I to my Mutti listen and to Gott pray every day. I good man. Germans good mans. Mein Führer says we must to Polen go to help the Vaterland. We must liquidate Jews and Slavs to make Germany safe. War makes bad mans.’
Furious at his justifications, she turned to leave when she heard screaming, yelling, gunshots and boots clattering in the corridor. The ward door swung open and a unit of SS officers burst in.
‘Hande hoch!’ they yelled. ‘Alles raus!’
‘These people can’t walk,’ she protested. ‘Most of them can’t even get out of bed!’
Their leader, a stocky man with a swarthy complexion, who didn’t look German, raised his pistol and shot the patient closest to him through the head. ‘Alles raus!’ he screamed. ‘Alles!’ He glared at Elzunia. ‘Du auch.’
‘Halt!’ Wolfman called out in German. ‘Some of us are German, and the Polish nurses and doctors are looking after us. They are good people. Leave them alone.’
‘We have orders from Berlin,’ the officer snarled. ‘All Polish bandits are to be eliminated, along with their city. If you don’t like it, tell Himmler.’
Terrified, the patients staggered, limped and crawled from their beds, while Elzunia tried to support the ones who trailed intravenous drips. Those who stumbled or fell were shot, and the floor became slippery with blood, the thick metallic smell making Elzunia’s stomach rise into her throat. As she passed the other ward she saw the physical education teacher lying across her bed, unconscious. The sheet had been thrown aside and blood trickled between her thighs. Elzunia pressed her hands to her mouth to stop herself from screaming. They were in the jungle now and wild beasts were in charge.
They were herded into the basement, the patients, nurses and doctors. A key turned in the door. They were locked in.
‘Holy Mother of God, what are they going to do to us?’ Janka whispered. She was shaking so much her teeth were chattering.
Elzunia put her arm around her friend. She had faced death so many times she no longer felt afraid. As long as it was over quickly.
Someone was turning the key in the lock. The door opened and one of the SS men was standing there, revolver in hand, and beside him stood Wolfman.
‘I’m ill. I need someone to look after me,’ he barked to the other officer. He pointed at Elzunia and Janka. ‘These two will do!’ Elzunia’s knees shook. She didn’t fear death, only what might precede it.
They walked in front of Wolfman along the corridor, past the eerily empty wards, and were almost at the entrance when he tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Schnell!’ he said, and with a nod of his head indicated that they should run for it.
Hearts in their mouths, they crept along the passageway past the entrance and glanced outside. SS officers were milling around the forecourt, looking as pleased with themselves as guests at a wedding.
Elzunia and Janka bobbed down and kept going until they came to a window. Janka raised it, biting her lip as it scraped against the weathered frame. They jumped down and, without looking back, reached a clump of bushes just before they heard an explosion. Through a pall of dust and smoke they saw that the lower part of the hospital building had been blown away and the wall was sliding down as though in slow motion, until it collapsed into a heap of broken masonry.
They crouched there for what seemed an eternity, hands over their ears until Janka tugged convulsively at Elzunia’s arm. ‘That explosion came from the basement. They must have thrown grenades in there.’ Tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘Jesus Maria, they’ve killed them all.’
‘So much for the Red Cross banner,’ Elzunia said harshly.
Janka looked at her questioningly. ‘That Nazi saved us. He must have taken a fancy to you.’
Elzunia didn’t reply.
‘I feel guilty,’ Janka whispered. ‘I want to apologise to all the nurses and doctors and patients because I got out and they didn’t.’ She dropped to her knees and put her hands together. ‘I’m going to pray for us all.’