Information was not so easy to come by in those days, so what I knew of the lead-up to war was scattered at best, but Trzebinia was quite close to the German border, and my town was not immune to the ideology that was gaining traction within that nearby nation. Hatred was like some otherworldly beast, seeded in small acts of violence and oppression against our Jewish citizens, growing in strength as the power-hungry fed it with rhetoric and propaganda.
It’s only when I look back now with the wisdom of age that I can see that warning signs were scattered throughout our simple life even then. I remember the first few times I heard that Jewish friends in Trzebinia had been robbed or assaulted or had their properties vandalized. My parents were appalled by this turn of events, and by then, my father had well and truly indoctrinated us children with his opinions on relationships between Trzebinia’s Jewish and Catholic communities. A Polish man is a Polish man, he’d often say to us, because to my father, a man’s heritage and religion were irrelevant—Father was interested only in character and work ethic. But this was not a perspective that our whole community shared, and those ugly strains of anti-Semitism enraged my otherwise mild-mannered father.
In the summer of 1939, Father and I took a trip into the town. Mama had baked an extra loaf of poppy seed bread, and I’d arranged it in a basket with some eggs for Aleksy and Emilia. This had become a regular part of my routine—I visited them for lunch once a week, and in return, Mama was always telling me to take them some food. This felt an odd arrangement to me, given Aleksy was wealthy and we were poor, but my mama was a traditionalist and she had always seemed completely bewildered that a man could manage to arrange food for himself and his daughter.
That day, Father and I rode the cart into town to the supplies store. He went inside to conduct his business, and I walked the three blocks to the medical clinic to deliver the basket of goods to Aleksy’s secretary. I knew Father would be a while, so I meandered my way back to the store.
As I walked, I daydreamed about Tomasz. In the year he’d been in Warsaw, we’d fallen into a solid routine of taking turns writing letters, and he’d been home for two delicious weeks during his midyear break. That particular day, it was my turn to write a letter, and I was thinking about what I might say, so lost in thought that I was startled when I finally approached the store and heard my father shouting inside. I peered through the doors somewhat anxiously and discovered he was in a heated discussion with Jan Golaszewski, our neighbor to the northeast, the father of Filipe’s girlfriend, Justyna. Just then, Justyna rushed out of the store. She gave me a wide-eyed look, then embraced me.
“What’s this about?” I asked her, but the words escaped as a sigh because I already suspected the answer.
“Oh, my father is blaming the Jews for everything, and your father is defending them.” Justyna’s weary sigh matched my own, then she shrugged. “Same old argument they always have, just more heated today because of the buildup.”
“The buildup?” I repeated, confused. Justyna assessed me with her gaze, then she grabbed my elbow and pulled me close.
“The buildup at the border,” she whispered, as if we were sharing a scandalous piece of gossip. “Surely you know? It’s why everyone is stocking up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted, and in hurried whispers before my father returned, Justyna told me: Hitler’s army was coming for us; an invasion now seemed inevitable.
“I can’t believe your parents haven’t warned you,” she whispered.
“They treat me like I am a baby,” I groaned, shaking my head. “They think they need to protect their fragile little flower from things that might upset me.”
I knew enough about the situation with the Nazi regime that I was nervous, but I was also quite confused by this news from Justyna. Coming for us? What could they possibly want from us? Justyna suggested an answer before I even asked the question.
“My father says it’s the Jews. He says that if we didn’t have so many Jews in this country, Hitler would leave us alone. You know how he is, Alina. Father blames the Jews for everything. And you know how your father is...”
“A Polish man is a Polish man,” I whispered numbly, repeating the words automatically before I refocused on my friend. “But Justyna, are you sure? Are we really about to go to war?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Justyna told me, flashing me a confident smile. “Everyone is saying that the Nazis have barely any ammunition and the Polish army will defeat them quickly. Father is quite certain it will all be over within a few weeks.”
From there though, I saw everything differently—for the first time, I understood the recently frenetic activity of my parents and brothers, and I finally understood their bewildering insistence on preserving perfectly good food before it was even necessary to do so. Even as my father drove the cart back toward our house, I realized the unusually busy roads were not a sign of townsfolk making the most of the warm weather—rather, people were shifting. Everyone was operating in a different mode—everyone was rushing somewhere. Some were heading into Warsaw or to Krakow, as if a larger city would provide them shelter. Some were preparing their homes for relatives who were coming from Warsaw or Krakow, because plenty of city folk had decided the country would offer a refuge. No one seemed to know what to do, but it was not in our national nature to stay still and await catastrophe, so instead—people kept active. Through enlightened eyes, it seemed to me that the people of my town were scurrying like ants before a storm.
“Is it true? About an invasion?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Father said gruffly. “When you need to worry, Mama and I will let you know.”
I sat down that evening and I wrote a very different letter to Tomasz than the one I’d been planning. In the entire page of text, I simply pleaded with him to come home.
Don’t try to be brave, Tomasz. Don’t wait for danger. Just come home and be safe.
I’m not really sure now why I ever thought that “home” would be a safe place for any of us given our proximity to the border, but in any case, Tomasz did not come home. In fact, things disintegrated so rapidly that if he sent me a reply to that letter, it never arrived. It felt like the life I’d known disappeared overnight.
On September 1, 1939, I was roused from the depths of sleep by the sound of my bedroom window rattling in its frame. I didn’t recognize the sound of approaching planes at first. I didn’t even realize we were in danger until I heard my father shouting from the room beside me.
“Wake up! We must get to the barn,” Father shouted, his voice thick with sleep.
“What is happening?” I called, as I threw my covers back and slipped from my bed. I had just opened my bedroom door when the first of many explosions sounded in the distance, and the windows rattled again, this time violently. It was dark in our tiny home, but when Mama threw the front door open, moonlight flooded in and I saw my brothers running toward her. I knew I needed to run but my feet wouldn’t move—perhaps I was still half-asleep, or perhaps it was because the moment felt so much like a terrible nightmare that I couldn’t convince my body to act. Filipe got as far as the front door when he noticed me, and he crossed the small living room to take my hand.
“What is happening?” I asked, as he dragged me toward the barn.
“The Nazis are dropping bombs from planes,” Filipe told me grimly. “We are ready and we have a plan, Alina. Just do as Father says and we will be fine.”
He pushed me into the barn after Stanislaw, Father and Mama, and as soon as we were inside, Father pulled the heavy door closed behind us. Blood thundered around my body at the sudden darkness—but then I heard the creak of hinges as the latch in the floor was opened.
“Not the cellar,” I protested. “Please, Mama...”
Filipe’s arm descended on my shoulders and he pushed me toward the opening, then Mama grabbed my wrist and tugged me downward. Her fingers bit into the skin of my arm, and I pulled away frantically, trying to step back.
“No,” I protested. “Mama, Filipe, you know I can’t go down there—”
“Alina,” Filipe said urgently. “What is scarier? The darkness or a bomb falling on your head?”
I let them drag me down into the suffocating blackness. As I sank into the cramped space, the sound of my heartbeat seemed unnaturally loud. I scrambled across the dirt floor to find a corner, and then I wrapped my arms around my knees. When the next round of echoing booms began to sound, I shrieked involuntarily with each one. Soon enough, I was in a fetal position against the dirt floor, my hands over my ears. A particularly loud explosion rocked the whole cellar, and as dust rained down on us, I found myself sobbing in fear.
“Was that our house?” I choked, in a moment of silence.
“No,” Father said, his tone gently scolding. “We will know it if the house goes. It is Trzebinia, they are probably taking out the rail line...maybe the industrial buildings. There is no reason for them to destroy our homes. We are likely safe, but we will hide in here until it stops, just to be sure.”
Filipe and Stanislaw shifted to sit on either side of me, and then the cellar was again filled with a stifling silence as we all waited for the next explosion. Instead, we were surprised by a more welcome sound.
“Hello?” a distant, muffled voice called. “Mama? Father?”
Mama cried out in delight and opened the hatch, then climbed up to help my sister, Truda, and her husband, Mateusz, into the cellar. To my immense relief, Father turned an oil lamp on to help them see their way. Once we were all safely inside the cellar again, Mama and Truda embraced.
“What do we do now?” I asked breathlessly. Everyone turned to look at me.
“We wait,” Mama murmured. “And we pray.”
We spent much of that first day huddled together, hidden in the cellar beneath the barn. The planes came and went and came back again. Later, we would learn that several hundred bombs were dropped across our region during those long hours we spent hiding. The bombing was sporadic, unpredictable and fierce. From my position in the cellar, the explosions near and far and all around us sounded like the end of the world was happening just outside of our barn.
Most people have no idea what prolonged terror really feels like. I certainly didn’t until that day. In that terrifying darkness, I sweated through hours and hours and hours of being certain that any second, a bomb would fall on us—that any second, the cellar would cave in—that any second, a man with a gun would appear in the doorway to take away my life. I had not been comfortable with confined spaces even at the best of times, but that day I felt a depth of fear that I’d never even realized was possible. I lived my death that day, over and over and over again in my mind. Extreme anxiety like that doesn’t obey the normal laws of emotion; it doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t fade, you never grow used to it. I was every bit as petrified eight hours into those air strikes as I was when they began, until I was entirely convinced that the only end for the fear would be the end of life itself.
There was an extended break in the bombing early in the afternoon. We didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief at first, because there had been breaks earlier in the day but they hadn’t lasted long. This time, long minutes went past, and after a while, even the sound of plane engines faded away to blessed silence.
Filipe was desperate to run next door to check on Justyna and her family. It was only a few hundred feet—he assured us he’d hide in the tree line along the woods and he’d be back in less than half an hour. Mama and Father grumbled, but eventually allowed him to go, and predictably, as soon as permission had been granted, Stanislaw decided he was going too.
The rest of us climbed into the doorway of the barn for some fresh air, and with the skies still clear, we remained there until the twins returned. Father and Mateusz sat in the doorway; Mama, Truda and I sat in a line behind them. Truda and Mama talked quietly as we waited, but I sat silent, my mouth too dry for small talk.
As promised, my brothers were gone for less than half an hour, but they returned visibly shaken, and at first I thought they’d discovered the worst. They joined us in the barn, sitting against the doorposts on either side of Father and Mateusz. There was some good news—the Golaszewski family were fine, and like us were physically unscathed. But Jan had made a trip into Trzebinia during the last brief bombing break. He had seen locals walking the streets weeping the loss of their families, children with injuries so bad Filipe couldn’t bear to repeat the details, and dozens of homes alight.
During my hours in the cellar, I had been so consumed with anxiety that my own safety had monopolized my thoughts, but as my brother relayed Jan’s findings, another fear broke through. I was rapidly processing the implications of what a severely damaged Trzebinia could mean and the risk to Aleksy and Emilia. The medical clinic was just off the town square—right where the homes were densest. And if they were dead—that would mean that one day soon, Tomasz would return and there’d be no family waiting for him. Suddenly, all roads led to the impact of this potential development on Tomasz.
“Aleksy,” I croaked. Everyone shifted to stare at me, and I saw the sadness in their eyes. “Aleksy and Emilia have to be okay. They have to be.”
“If Aleksy is okay, he will be tending to the injured...” Mama murmured. I could imagine that—Aleksy hiding during the bombing, then emerging to help the wounded, but if that was true, who was comforting and protecting Emilia? I had been riding out the bombing raids surrounded by my whole family—and it was still the most terrifying experience of my life. She was seven years old, and with Tomasz away, she only had her father, so if he was busy or even injured himself...
“We have to get Emilia!” I blurted, and Filipe sighed impatiently.
“How? Who knows when the planes will return?”
“But if Aleksy is busy helping people, who will be with her? She might be alone! Please, Father. Please, Mama, we have to do something!”
“There is nothing we can do, Alina,” Father said softly. “I am sorry. What will be will be.”
“We will pray,” Mama announced. “It is all we can do.”
“No,” I said, and I shook my head fiercely. “You must go get her, Father. You must. She is a baby—all alone in the world. She is my family too! Please.”
“Alina!” Truda groaned. “You are asking for the impossible. It’s not safe for anyone to go into the town.”
I couldn’t let the matter drop, not even when my parents’ pleas for silence became sharp demands for me to drop the matter. When I started to cry and threatened to make the journey myself, Filipe pulled himself up from the dirt and dusted his trousers off. Mama groaned.
“Don’t be foolish, Filipe! You have tempted fate once already—”
“Alina is right, Mama. Aren’t we worse than the Nazis if we leave that little girl to fend for herself while her father works to save lives?”
“If she’s even alive, Filipe. You may get to the town and find they are already gone,” Father said under his breath.
“Father! Don’t say such a thing!” I gasped.
“I’ll go too,” Stani sighed.
“I think I should go, too,” Mateusz said quietly. It was Truda’s turn for an outraged gasp, until he added gently, “I will check on our home while we are on our way to the clinic. The boys and I will move fast and we’ll be careful. We can come straight back if we hear the planes returning—you know yourself it only took us ten minutes to get here yesterday.”
Mama cursed furiously and threw her hands in the air.
“You are trying to kill me, boys! You have tempted fate once already and survived. Now you are just trying to make my heart stop beating from the fear!”
“Mama, we are just doing what you raised us to do,” Filipe said stiffly. “We are trying to do the right thing.”
“But what if the bombing starts again—”
“Faustina,” Mateusz said more firmly now. “You have heard the explosions, just as I have. They are coming from every direction, even to the west where there is nothing but farmhouses—the planes are not just targeting the town. We are no safer here than we will be in the town.”
There was no arguing with that, and they left soon after—although my father instructed them to run up to the hill and to hide in the woods for a few minutes to be sure there were no more planes on the horizon before they exposed themselves in the clearing on the other side. As soon as the younger men had left, my sister and my parents fixed accusing gazes on me, and I felt myself flushing.
It suddenly, belatedly occurred to me that I had convinced my own brothers and my brother-in-law to risk their lives, all in the hope that I could save Tomasz from grief. But I loved Emilia and Aleksy, and I was genuinely afraid for their safety. I didn’t regret convincing my brothers to go check on them—I was just deathly afraid that I’d just manipulated my way into an unimaginable loss. I tried to explain myself to my remaining family members.
“I just...”
“It is better that you do not speak until they return,” Truda interrupted me flatly. “You sit there, Alina Dziak, and you focus your energies on praying that you have not just killed our brothers and my husband.”
That’s exactly what I did. The first time my brothers left the cellar, the minutes dragged by, but this was a whole new level of torture. In the end, the silence was punctuated by a different sound—the sound of a child wailing. We all ran out of the barn and found the twins walking side by side down from the hill, Mateusz following closely behind with Emilia high in his arms. She was sobbing, loudly and inconsolably.
“Oh, babisu!” my sister cried, and she ran from the barn to her husband’s side. He gently passed Emilia to Truda’s waiting arms, and Truda immediately began to console the little girl. “Shhh, it is okay, little one. You will be okay now.” Once they were within the coverage of the barn, my mother walked to Truda’s side and ran a gentle hand down Emilia’s cheek, then she raised her gaze to mine. Mama was clearly very sad, but also thoughtful as she stared at me.
I was quickly distracted from Mama’s gaze by Emilia’s continuing sobs. I turned my attention to my brothers and Filipe shook his head hastily.
“Aleksy is fine. The clinic is fine too, other than some broken windows.”
“But there are injured people in Aleksy’s home...and worse...a line of people waiting for help all along the street.” Mateusz approached me and spoke very carefully, his voice low and soft. “Emilia saw one of her school friends hurt...she ran off and hid in a cupboard. Aleksy said the wounded have been coming to the house since the bombing started and he didn’t have time to comfort her. He was very grateful—he asked if we could keep her until things are safer. It might be some days.”
“Of course we can,” Mama murmured quietly. She took Emilia from Truda and held her for a moment, then passed the little girl to me. Truda and Mateusz embraced, and my mother began to kiss my brothers all over their faces. “You are too brave for your own good.”
Emilia wrapped her arms around my neck. She pressed her tearstained face against my shoulder. Her entire body was shaking and she was breathing noisily between her sobs.
“Alina, the noise was so loud...there was a bomb on Mr. Erikson’s shop and our house rattled and the glass all broke...”
“I know...”
“And Maja from school was asleep and her mother was shouting and Father couldn’t wake her up and I don’t understand why there was so much blood on her face. Why was there so much blood?”
“Hush now,” Mama murmured. Truda approached me, her concerned gaze fixed on Emilia. She slid her arm around my shoulders and gently pulled me to the ground, curling up beside me. I settled Emilia across our laps, and as I stroked Emilia’s back, Truda began to sing. Mama sat opposite us, watching closely.
“Just rest, little one,” Mama said softly. “You are safe now.”
“But what about Tomasz?” she croaked, her little voice weak and uneven still. “He is all alone in Warsaw. What will happen to my brother?”
No one said anything, and I tensed, then rushed to comfort her. Or maybe I was trying to comfort myself.
“Warsaw is so far away,” I said firmly. “Planes probably can’t even fly that far. It is better that he isn’t here, Emilia. He will surely be safer there.”
Over the days that followed, we took turns crowding around Father’s wireless to listen to the news updates. His set was a crystal unit the twins had constructed a few years earlier, and that meant only one person at a time could listen on the tinny headsets. I jostled for my turn like everyone else, but I always regretted those moments I spent at the wireless, because the news was never comforting. Entire cities were being destroyed, but the small stories hurt the most. We heard endless tales of farmers shot in their fields from machine guns on planes and even one horrific story about a grandfather who was harvesting the last of his vegetables when a pilot dropped a bomb right on him. That story spoke volumes to me about the might of the invaders and the way our country was outgunned—we were simply peasants standing in dirt, totally defenseless against massive explosives dropped from airborne war machines by unfathomably hate-filled pilots.
There were Nazi troops in our district within days of the bombing because the local army defenses were quickly overcome. After that, the bombing stopped but there were still more planes, only now they flew over us, but they didn’t fly back, and somehow, that was even worse. Soon, the trucks started coming, rumbling through the town, not yet stopping but promising just by their presence that one day soon, everything left intact after the bombing was going to be broken anyway. The men from my family made another trip into town, and again returned sullen.
“There are notices hung everywhere,” Father murmured.
“There is a town meeting tomorrow at noon, and we all must attend.” Mateusz flicked his gaze to Truda. “We must go home tonight, my love. Perhaps if we are at the house, we can protect it.”
“Protect it from the Nazis?” she asked, somewhat incredulously. “With what? Our bare hands?”
“An empty house in the town is vulnerable, Truda,” he said. “Besides, the Nazis have breached the national border. Do you think that little hill is going to contain them? Now that the bombing has stopped, we are no safer here than we will be there.”
“Did you see my father?” Emilia asked. Her voice was very small. She seemed to be shrinking by the hour, despite close attention from my sister, my mother and myself. Mateusz and Father both shook their heads.
“Your father is still very busy helping people, but he is fine,” Mama said abruptly. “Alina, entertain the child. Let the adults talk.”
We retreated into my bedroom and sat on my sofa, and I tried to play one of the counting games Emilia was so fond of, while simultaneously straining to eavesdrop on the conversation in the main part of the house.
“Everything is going to be okay, isn’t it, Alina?” Emilia asked me suddenly. She looked terrified, her huge green eyes wide within the frame of her pale face.
I forced myself to smile.
“Of course, little sister. Everything is going to be just fine.”
After a sleepless night, we made our way into the town square on foot. We walked along the road instead of up through the woods and over the hill—the road meant a longer journey, but it seemed that none of us were in a hurry to get to our destination.
By the time we arrived, a crowd was already assembled at the square, waiting in a stiff, eerie silence. As we joined the group, I wedged myself between my parents as if they could shield me from the gravity of it all. Stanislaw left us to stand with Irene, the girl he was courting. Filipe had gone to seek out Justyna. Truda and Mateusz were there too, but to my surprise, had opted to stand with the mayor’s wife and her children. I scanned my way around the assembled crowd identifying each of the couples, and I felt dual pangs of jealousy and fear. I so wished that Tomasz was there with me. I was sure everything would feel less bewildering if only my hand was in his. Instead, I held his little sister’s hand, and I scanned the crowd for Aleksy. He was tall, like Tomasz, so I was sure I’d find him sooner or later, and then I could point him out to comfort Emilia.
I felt disconnected from it all—at a place I knew so well on a sunny day that should have been beautiful, only nothing seemed beautiful—nothing even seemed familiar anymore. There were strangers among us, and they were somehow now in charge; and that very fact entirely warped the landscape that I had known as my home. Those men looked like statues in their stiff, impeccably pressed uniforms, with the impossible splash of red around the armband, the swastika they wore with pride. It occurred to me that the Nazi uniform removed their humanity somehow, drained them of their uniqueness—and left them a unified force of solidarity, like a solid wall encroaching upon our space. These were not even men—they were individual components of a machine that had come to destroy.
The commander shouted around the square at us, entirely in German. At first, I listened only to the tone of his voice—the disdain, the aggression, the authority—but each word tightened the viselike grip of fear in my heart. I just couldn’t stand not knowing what he was saying, or even understanding why he didn’t even have the simple courtesy to speak to us in our native language. After a while, I turned toward Mama and I whispered, “What is he saying?”
My mother’s response was only an impatient command to hush, but soon enough, I saw her eyes widen, and for the first time I saw fear cross her face. I followed her gaze to the corner of the square, where still more soldiers pushed two “prisoners” forward into the center of us all, their hands tied behind their backs. I scanned their faces and felt a punch of shock as I recognized them—our mayor was at the back, but right at the front, staring out into the crowd without fear or hesitation, was Aleksy.
Looking back now, I suspect a brilliant man like Aleksy might have understood what his fate was, but he walked into the town square with his head held high. After scanning the crowd, his gaze landed on Emilia, and he smiled at her as if to reassure her. I tugged her to stand in front of me and wrapped my arms around her from behind. She was stiff within my arms, surely as confused as I was. Why is Aleksy in trouble? He’s never done a wrong thing in his entire life. Aleksy lifted his smile to me, and when our eyes met, he nodded once. He seemed calm, almost serene. That’s why I thought for a moment or two that everything would be okay, because Aleksy was the wisest man in the town, so if he wasn’t worried, why should I be?
But then the commander grabbed Aleksy’s upper arm and he pushed him hard and to the ground—and Aleksy’s arms were tied behind his back, so his face slammed unguarded into the granite cobblestone that lined the square. Before he could even recover, another soldier slid his hand into Aleksy’s hair and pulled him up until he was on his knees. Aleksy could not contain a cry of pain at that, and it was all I could do not to shout out in protest too.
Mama grabbed my upper arm, and when I turned to her, her gaze was locked on Emilia.
“Cover her eyes,” she said flatly.
“But why are they—” I said, even as my hands rose toward Emilia’s face. I heard the click of the handgun being cocked, and I looked up.
Aleksy’s death was somehow too simple and quick to be real, one single shot to the back of his head, and then he was gone. I wanted to protest—surely a life so big couldn’t end like that, without dignity or purpose or honor? But the soldiers tossed his body to the side as if it was nothing much at all, then they shot the mayor in the same way. I felt dizzy with the shock of it all, it was just too much to process on the fly. My own eyes had to be lying to me because what I was seeing was entirely illogical.
Aleksy Slaski was a good man, but the very things that made him so central to our township—his intelligence, his training, his natural ability to lead—also made him an immediate target. To destabilize a group of people is not at all difficult, not if you are willing to be cruel enough. You simply knock out the foundations, and a natural consequence is that the rest begins to tumble. The Nazis knew this—and that’s why one of their very first tactics in Poland was to execute or imprison those likely to lead in any uprising against them. Aleksy and our mayor were among the first of almost one hundred thousand Polish leaders and academics who would be executed under the Intelligenzaktion program during the early days of the invasion.
The shock wore off too soon for Emilia and she began shrieking at the top of her lungs. A soldier near to us turned his gun toward her, and I did the bravest and stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, at least to that point. I pushed in front of her, and I begged the guard, “Please sir, please. My sister is distressed. Please, I will comfort her.”
And I immediately turned—not even waiting for his response. I tensed, expecting the searing pain of a bullet in my own back, but even as I did so—I locked eyes with Emilia and I pressed the palm of my hand hard over her mouth. Her eyes were wild with shock and grief, but I pressed so hard that she was struggling to breathe through her now-blocked nose. The tears poured down her little face, and when I realized I was not about to be shot myself and she was finally quiet, I bent low and I whispered to her, “Can you be silent, little sister? It is so very important.”
Her little green eyes were still glazed over. She nodded, a barely perceptible movement that I noticed, but didn’t entirely trust. Still, I loosened the seal of my hand over her mouth and she sucked in air but she didn’t shriek. The crowd began to disperse, but Emilia was catatonic—her eyes fixed on her father’s body, crumpled alone against the stone on the other side of the square. I slid my arm around her shoulders and I forced her to turn to my parents.
“We cannot take her, not permanently,” my mother whispered to me fiercely. “We are too old and too poor and you are too young and on your own. The occupation will be hard and we just don’t know how...” Her voice broke, and Mama’s gaze flicked to Emilia’s face, and then she looked back at me, for a moment visibly stricken. But she raised her chin, and she hardened her gaze as she said, “I am sorry, Alina. But you simply must find someone else.”
“I know,” I said heavily.
“Then come straight home. This is no time to be wandering the town alone, do you hear me?”
Frankly, I couldn’t believe they would leave me alone in the town at all after what we’d just seen, so I gave a shocked protest. “But Mama, surely you or Father will stay and help—”
“We have work that needs doing at home. It cannot wait,” she said. I didn’t dare protest further, because she was clearly determined. I looked around for my brothers, but both had already left with their girlfriends—and then Mama walked off too, dragging a visibly reluctant Father behind her.
I stared into the dispersing crowd as I learned for the first time the way it felt to force someone else’s welfare to a higher priority than your own instinct for safety. I wanted to crumble and sob, or better still, run after my parents like the frightened child they knew me to be. Instead, I wrapped my arm around Emilia’s shoulders, and together, we started to walk.
“Alina,” Emilia said thickly, when we were some distance from the square.
“Yes, little sister?”
“My father,” she said, then her teeth started to chatter. “My father is gone. The man put the gun on his head and—”
“He is gone, but you, my darling girl, you are still here,” I interrupted her. “But you mustn’t be afraid, Emilia. Because I am going to find a way to keep you safe until Tomasz returns.”