He was just a kid with a cheeky smile, a cloth cap over his springy brown hair, and eyes the colour of strong cocoa. Shaking her hand with a man’s grip, he said, ‘I’m Edek. Sorry about tripping you up this morning but that Gestapo guy was hanging around. Had to grab your satchel before he did.’
‘You could have been caught with my books,’ Elzunia pointed out. ‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘I’m nearly twelve,’ he said proudly. ‘I don’t scare easily.’ Then he shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s different for girls.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ she retorted. ‘Girls are just as brave as boys.’ But she wasn’t brave at all. Even though she was nearly fifteen, she was scared all the time, with a fear that crept up from her toes and made her scalp prickle.
‘Prove it then,’ he said and pointed to the apartment block on the next corner. ‘Come over this evening and meet the gang. There’s four of us and we get together every day and plan stuff.’
She was intrigued. ‘Like what?’
‘Like rescuing schoolgirls from being caught with forbidden books,’ he said with a grin.
The noise in the tiny flat made her head swim. Two toddlers were running around while Edek’s weary mother pleaded for quiet in a voice that didn’t expect to be heeded. She was nursing a listless baby who had the face of an old man. ‘He’s nearly a year old but he’s never smiled,’ she told Elzunia, and added, ‘not that there’s anything to smile about in here, especially since they shot my poor husband.’
The room had a bare floor, one rickety table in the centre, and three sagging mattresses stacked up against the wall. Edek led her to a corner where three boys in patched trousers and threadbare shirts sat cross-legged on the floor, shouting across each other. Elzunia was shocked to see how young they were. One of them looked about nine. Why had she bothered coming? They were just little kids playing at being grown-ups.
As though he’d read her mind, Edek said in a defiant tone, ‘I suppose you think we’re just kids because we’re younger than you but we know what’s going on, and we’re going to fight them.’
It sounded like bravado but he had a determined manner that made him seem much older than his years. The others were watching her with doubtful expressions and she felt she had been assessed and was found wanting.
Two of the boys were Edek’s brothers Izio and Mosze. The only outsider was a boy with a pointed chin, who turned out to be their neighbour Dolek.
Surveying her with obvious distaste, he muttered, ‘Told you not to get mixed up with girls. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.’
Ignoring him, Elzunia turned to Edek. ‘How on earth did you know who I was or where I lived?’
He laughed and gave a sharp salute. ‘We scouts always have to be prepared, right?’ In a serious tone, he added, ‘I keep my eyes open, that’s all. When I saw that Gestapo guy nosing around, I thought I’d better think of something fast. I reckon a sore knee’s better than a trip to Szuch Avenue!’
Then he asked, ‘Are you any good at sewing?’
Recalling the handicraft lessons at school that always ended with a pricked thumb and clumsy stitches that soon unravelled, she shook her head. ‘Why?’
His brother Izio cut in, speaking so rapidly that saliva sprayed through the gap in his front teeth. ‘We sneak out with the work groups in the mornings, see, to get some food on the other side, and then we sneak back later, but it’s hard to smuggle anything in, and it’s going to get much harder if they close the Ghetto.’
‘Aren’t you scared you’ll get caught?’ she asked
‘I told you it was no good starting with girls.’ Dolek was scowling at Elzunia. ‘They’re scared of everything.’
Edek interjected. ‘What he’s trying to say is if we had big pockets on the inside of our trousers, we could bring more food in and the guards wouldn’t see it.’
Suddenly Elzunia’s eyes lit up. ‘I’m hopeless at sewing but I know someone who might help.’
Her mother stared at Elzunia with the expression of a Michelangelo being asked to paint a chicken coop. ‘False pockets?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘You expect me to become a seamstress?’
‘Well you’ve got nothing else to do. It’s not as if anyone in here needs your beauty treatments, but Edek has five little brothers and their mother is so poor that she had to sell some of their shoes yesterday to buy them something to eat. If those boys don’t smuggle some food in, they’ll all starve.’
‘I thought the Judenrat organised soup kitchens for people like that,’ Lusia said vaguely.
Stefan walked into the room, fastening the belt of his police jacket. He pushed his loose cap more firmly on his head but it dropped over his forehead. ‘You haven’t got a clue what’s going on out there,’ he told his mother. ‘You should see the thousands lining up for soup every day, and there are more people being forced into the Ghetto all the time. There’s no way the Judenrat can keep up. The Germans are cutting down the rations and most of the vegetables are rotten. And I reckon it’s going to get worse.’
Seeing her mother hesitate, Elzunia said quickly, ‘You could make pockets from that old sheet you used to tie up our things when we moved here.’
A week later, Elzunia knocked on Edek’s door holding a neat pile of pockets ready to be pinned to the inside of their trousers. While the other boys were examining them to see how they’d fit, she took Edek aside.
‘I’ve figured out a way we could get through the wall without going past the guards,’ she said.
After dark, the five of them crept towards the part of the wall that was farthest from the gates and so less closely monitored by the guards. After Elzunia had counted the number of bricks they needed to loosen, she marked the bricks with a piece of chalk she had found.
‘We’ll have to get something sharp to gouge out the cement and then we’ll put the bricks back so they won’t suspect anything,’ she said.
‘Not a bad idea for a girl,’ Dolek said grudgingly, and Elzunia felt a glow of pride at having earned his approval.
Among his dead father’s tools, Edek found a small hammer and chisel. While four of them scratched and scraped out the cement and drove in the chisel with a hammer to loosen the bricks, the fifth stood guard, ready to warn them to run if any policemen appeared.
After they’d gouged out the bricks, they tested the opening by squeezing through in turn. Elzunia was the only one who had trouble getting through, and emerged red-faced, pulling her blouse down. She hadn’t realised how much her breasts had grown in the past few months. They stood back, slapping each other on the back as they admired their work. The bricks slid in and out easily and, looking at them in the wall, no one would suspect that they weren’t cemented in like the others. Now they’d be able to get in and out of the Ghetto without being spotted by the guards.
For the first time since moving into the Ghetto, Elzunia came home humming a song, but her mother was pacing around the room like a panther in a cage.
‘Thank God you’re back. Look at this!’ she gasped, and thrust a leaflet into Elzunia’s hand. All the residents of the building were ordered to present themselves at the steam baths on Spokojna Street the next morning to eradicate the typhus that according to Nazi propaganda was being spread by the Jews. They had to leave their doors open so that while they were gone the flats could be disinfected.
‘But there’s no typhus in our building,’ Elzunia said. ‘And, anyway, it’s the Nazis that spread disease by crowding hundreds of thousands of people into a small space.’
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ Lusia said bitterly. ‘Any excuse to torment us.’
As soon as Stefan walked in that evening, she demanded, ‘You said you’d protect us, so do something.’
He flushed. ‘I wish I could, but they’ve made lists of the occupants in every building so there’s nothing I can do.’
‘A fat lot of good it did joining the police force, then,’ she fumed.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he shot back. ‘The Jewish police don’t have much power in here. I tried to get you out of the disinfection but they’re adamant that everyone has to go.’
Sensing his frustration, their mother cut in. ‘You’re not being fair, Elzunia. You know that Stefan’s doing his best.’
Elzunia pulled a face and turned away. As usual their mother sided with Stefan and criticised her.
When two guards arrived at their apartment the next day before Lusia and Elzunia had left for the bathhouse, they appraised everything with greedy eyes.
‘Your apartment looks very clean,’ one of them declared. ‘It would be a pity to ruin your things with disinfectant.’
Taking the hint, Lusia rummaged in a drawer and held out a fine gold chain. The older guard picked it up, held it up to the light and pocketed it with a nod.
When Elzunia and Lusia arrived outside the sanitary station, two long columns stretched along several blocks. Men on one side, women and children on the other. Elzunia was wondering how long it would take to reach the entrance when they were surrounded by a ring of SS men and Gestapo wielding leather whips.
‘Clothes off! Take everything off!’ they screamed. Elzunia looked around. Surely they didn’t expect them to undress out in the street in front of everyone?
No one moved until the SS men started lashing people with their whips and smashing heads with rifle butts. ‘Hurry up!’
An elderly woman refused to undress, even when an SS man slashed her face and opened up her cheek to the bone. ‘I’m seventy-five years old and I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but I won’t take off my clothes in the street,’ she said. He pulled out his revolver and shot her.
Elzunia clamped her hands over her ears and shrank against her mother. ‘Why are they doing this to us?’ she sobbed.
Lusia stroked her head. ‘Because they can.’
As Elzunia peeled off her clothes, she wanted the ground to swallow her up. She wished she was dead; anything would be better than this humiliation. She tried to cover herself with her hands and looked at the ground, pretending that if she didn’t see anyone, they wouldn’t see her. Lusia held her trembling daughter tightly against her to shield her from the whips and rifle butts but the humiliation was worse than the pain. And still they were kept waiting in the cold, until their skin puckered and turned blue. Children cried; some women fainted, while others had to be supported from collapsing.
When they were finally allowed to enter the bathhouse, the water poured over them in an icy stream. There was no soap, and when they emerged shivering from the showers there were no towels. Elzunia’s teeth were chattering and she couldn’t wait to put her clothes back on, but when she got them back she wept. They were drenched in foul-smelling disinfecting liquid.
Elzunia and Lusia ran home as fast as they could, anxious to throw off the stinking clothes and get warm. But as soon as they opened the door, an acrid smell hit them and almost drove them back on to the landing. They stood in their doorway, unable to believe their eyes. In spite of the bribe Lusia had given the guard, everything they owned had been pulled out of cupboards and wardrobes and soaked in carbolic.
‘That disinfection was just an excuse to rob us,’ Lusia cried out. ‘They’ve stolen our candlesticks and the silver I was going to sell!’
Overcome by the pungent smell, Elzunia rushed into the bathroom and vomited.
When she emerged, she was white and dry-eyed.
‘I will never forget what they did to us today. Never,’ she said with an intensity that frightened Lusia. ‘Somehow I’ll find a way to fight them.’