I heard the clock chime one hour, then two, then three. And all the while, I waited, and I rode the waves of panic and fear as they came. I wanted to howl at the injustice of it all—I wanted to be angry with Tomasz for leaving me in the cellar alone on the worst day of my life—I wanted to go back in time and bury my head under the pillow on my bed upstairs and pretend that none of this was happening at all.
It was just past 5:00 a.m. when I heard a sound upstairs. I heard muffled movement above me, then the hatch lifted, and when I recognized Tomasz in the opening, I burst into tears. He waited until he’d set the hatch back in place before he comforted me. He was shaking too, from adrenaline and the cold, I guessed.
“Did you find anything out?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Where have they been taken?”
“To Os´wie˛cim,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, then I exhaled with relief. “Okay. To the town, then?” That didn’t sound so bad at all. Os´wie˛cim was a nice enough place, a place much like Trzebinia with many factories and homes. I imagined for a moment them both taking a job on a factory line for the Nazis—it wasn’t ideal, but I felt confident that they could survive it.
“No, Alina. Not in the town. They’ve been taken to the work camp,” Tomasz said, then he drew in a deep breath. “Although there are two there now, and I couldn’t find out which one.”
The daydream of my parents on a factory line shattered, and now instead I saw them crammed in like sardines with the tens of thousands of farm workers Tomasz had warned me about. My heart sank all over again.
“It does not matter which camp, does it?” I surmised, suddenly feeling very heavy. “We can’t rescue them anyway. Or does Nadia Nowak have the ability to circumvent the entire Nazi army?”
“No. It does not matter which camp,” he conceded heavily.
“But they will just wait out the war there. They will work hard and stay out of trouble, just as they always have,” I said with some determination, until a thought struck me. I stiffened a little. “Wait—these are the camps with the furnaces?”
“Yes,” Tomasz whispered. “They call the smaller camp Auschwitz. The larger camp is called Birkenau.” He shifted on the bed, drawing me closer. “There are large furnaces at both camps, and—”
“Mama said the furnaces are just to heat the water,” I interrupted him, but even to my own ears, I sounded slightly hysterical.
“We don’t know for sure. No one outside the camps knows for sure,” he said, but then he drew in a sharp breath and his tone hardened. “But the Nazis have been seen transporting trucks full of ash to dump in the river, and there is some suspicion that this may be the remains of some of the prisoners. Perhaps your parents will be lucky...or perhaps they will manage to find a way to survive. But thousands of people have gone into the camps, thousands of Jewish people from many nations, thousands of Catholic Poles like your parents and thousands of political prisoners...but only recently have the Nazis needed to expand their accommodation. All of those prisoners are going somewhere, and whether they are murdered or worked to death—the most likely place they are ending up is in the furnace.”
This was the new Tomasz—the man who was broken by hardship and remorse, the realist who had replaced my beautiful dreamer. He was giving me a verbal slap in the face because he believed that I needed a reality check. For just a moment, I hated him for it—until I remembered that none of this was his fault. I started to cry then, and he rained kisses down over my face.
“They aren’t coming back, Alina.”
“But maybe...”
“They aren’t coming back,” he whispered. “If I can find a way out of Poland, we have to take it. Promise me you’ll come with me if I can find a way.”
“Out of Poland?” I repeated through my sobs. “That’s not even possible. How would we get out of Poland?”
“I don’t know exactly. Not yet,” he admitted. “I met a photographer a few months ago. He was documenting the work of Zegota and I know he was using couriers to smuggle film out of the country. He asked me then if I would make a journey for him. I was tempted, Alina, I will be honest with you. It was just before we reunited and I nearly went, I thought I would try to flee, and then maybe you could have followed me after, but I couldn’t make myself leave you. Now...well, I don’t even know if he’s still nearby but Nadia is trying to find him. If we can find him and he will help us, moje wszystko, there is no other option. Not for us, not now. We have no choice but to try to get out.”
“But we could stay!” I whispered. “We could live undercover as you’ve been doing—”
“I don’t want that life for you, Alina.”
“But we could stay here—”
“The food will eventually run out—and if the fence is built before then, we’d be trapped inside this zone.”
“We could try to get into the city—”
“I do not want this life for us, Alina,” Tomasz repeated—raising his voice, hardening the tone again, until I pulled away from him. “Yes, there may be ways we could survive here—perhaps we could get false identity papers. We could shift into Krakow or Warsaw and try to live in plain sight. Maybe we’d be caught and we’d be killed. Maybe we’d survive and suffer through however many more years of starvation and abuse the war would inflict upon us. But there is no way for us to live here. And there is no way for us to build the life we’d planned. Not if we stay.” He sighed heavily, then pulled me close again. “I need for you to be safe.”
“But this is home,” I said. “Poland is our home. What else is there for us?”
“Home is not the country we stand in—it’s us. Home is the future we have been planning and dreaming of. We can build it anywhere. And yes, you are a tiny waif of a thing—” I grunted in protest, and he laughed softly “—but you are tough, Alina, and I think you know it too now. I can see it in you—a fire to survive—a fire to have a better life. It is the fierce flash of indignation in your eyes when you think you are out of the loop on a secret. It is the strength you showed when you decided to stand by me, knowing that doing so could get you killed. And if we can get out of this place together?” His tone softened again, until he was gently pleading with me. “Just imagine it, moje wszystko. I could start studying again and finally become a doctor, maybe you could study. We could get jobs...a house...have children one day and give them a future too. Don’t you see? To stay is to accept death at the hands of these monsters, and they have taken enough from us both already. Our only choice is to try to run.”
“What if we try and fail?”
“Then...” He paused, and for a moment, fumbled for words, then he whispered, “Well, Alina? At least we will fail together. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
I squeezed his hand, drew in a shaky breath, and then closed my eyes. In some ways I felt like I had nothing left to lose—but I did have something left to lose, and he was sitting right there with me, begging me to try to run.
I was beyond scared. But if Tomasz was going, I didn’t really have a choice, because staying behind wasn’t even an option anymore.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”