Laura had barely begun to read the diary when she was interrupted by her mother knocking gently on her bedroom door and then entering without waiting for a response. She was not pleased to see Laura still awake. ‘Honey, you’ve got to turn out the lights and get some sleep,’ she said.
‘I will, Mom,’ Laura replied, quickly pushing the journal under her blanket. She wasn’t yet ready to talk to her mother about what she was reading. ‘I’ve still got some work to finish.’
Her mother hesitated. ‘You’ve had too many late nights, Laura,’ she finally said firmly. ‘You need to sleep. Now!’
Reluctantly, Laura rolled over and switched off the light. But she was still awake long after her mother left the room. Something about the diary was tugging at her, though she wasn’t sure what it was. She was still nervous about what she was going to discover written there, and she didn’t know how to deal with that. She certainly wasn’t ready to commit to the twinning project. And yet, just as the girl in the journal needed to know more about the facts of the war, Laura needed to know more about that girl – about Sara. It was a bit like watching one of those horror movies that Nix always brought over, the kind that you watched with one eye open, wanting to know what was going to happen, but terrified of the gory parts.
‘I was trying to call you last night,’ said Adam the next day as he and Laura left their last class together. Laura had raced from class to class all day. This was the first opportunity she had had to talk to Adam. ‘So? Where were you?’ he asked.
Laura shrugged. ‘I was reading.’
‘Only you can get so lost in a book that you don’t even answer the phone,’ groaned Adam, shaking his head and staring at his friend. ‘So, what was it this time? Fantasy? Mystery? Biography?’
‘Kind of a bit of everything, I guess,’ Laura replied and went on to tell Adam about her visit to Mrs Mandelcorn and the journal she had received. ‘I don’t know where it came from, or how this old lady got it,’ she explained. ‘The girl who wrote it talks about what it was like to be discriminated against just because she was Jewish.’
Adam nodded. ‘Like my grandfather. I told you his stories were amazing.’
Laura frowned. ‘I guess.’ She couldn’t admit that she was curious about the journal and drawn to the stories, even though she hadn’t stopped thinking about them all day.
‘So what are you going to do with it?’ asked Adam. The two walked slowly down a set of stairs, dodging the throng of students who were rushing to get out of the building at the end of the day. Adam had his backpack slung over his shoulder. He carried one large textbook in his arms, cradling it as if it were a guitar and pretending to strum the back cover.
‘I’m supposed to figure out a way to use it in my Bat Mitzvah,’ explained Laura, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know how. I haven’t read that much.’ But from the amount she had read, Laura was already recognising that the girl who had written the stories – Sara – wasn’t all that different from herself; they were the same age, had siblings, close friends, and enjoyed some of the same things. The exception to this was that Laura and Sara were living in radically different circumstances. Laura could come and go as she pleased, when she pleased, but Sara was cooped up as if she was in a prison, a prison that was harsh and cruel.
‘You’ll figure it out,’ said Adam, thoughtfully. ‘Look,’ he added, ‘when the Beatles first got together they didn’t know they would change everything about music forever.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Adam, I’m not trying to change history. I’m just trying to get through the next few weeks.’ Adam’s obsession with the Beatles could go too far sometimes.
‘You never know what’ll happen.’ Adam struck a pose with his textbook, swinging it up into the air as he started to sing the chorus to ‘Let It Be’.
Ignoring him, Laura strained her neck trying to see if Nix was anywhere in sight. They were supposed to meet after school and ride their bikes home together, but Laura never knew if Nix would keep her waiting long after the bell had sounded and the school had cleared out for the day. No matter how hard she tried, Laura had never been able to cure Nix of lateness. ‘I’ve tried to be on time,’ Nix often said. ‘But it’s kind of like buying ice-cream. When I walk in the store I’m determined to try a new flavour, but I always go back to vanilla chocolate chip. You’re never going to change me.’ Miraculously, Laura spotted her friend, chatting with some other students at the front door. She reached up to wave, but Nix didn’t see her.
Adam was still strumming his textbook and singing at the top of his lungs. His eyes were partly closed as he moved down the stairs. Laura was just going to warn him to watch where he was going when suddenly Adam tripped beside her, losing his footing and stumbling on the steps. His textbook left his arms, sailing into the air and down the length of the staircase, landing with a thud against the back of an older boy who was standing at the bottom.
‘What the …’ The boy turned slowly and stared up at Adam. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and then looked around, bending to retrieve the textbook before slowly climbing the stairs, two of his friends close behind him.
Adam froze and Laura felt her heart begin to race. It was Steve Collins, a ninth grader. He was tall and broadly built. As usual, his sidekicks were behind him. They were shorter than Steve, but also older students. The three of them had a reputation for being tough and mean.
‘This yours?’ asked Steve as he stopped inches from Adam’s face and held out the textbook. He had long stringy hair parted in the middle and wore a black T-shirt and torn blue jeans.
‘I’m…yeah … I’m …’ Adam stuttered and stumbled over his words, then took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m really sorry. I wasn’t looking.’
‘Wasn’t looking?’ Steve moved even closer to Adam. ‘You think that’s an excuse for pounding me with your book?’
‘It was an accident. I … I promise.’ Adam nervously adjusted his glasses. His hands were trembling.
‘No such thing as accidents,’ said Steve as his two friends stepped up behind him.
This isn’t good, thought Laura. Adam had done nothing deliberate, but she knew that boys like Steve Collins didn’t need an excuse to bully. She looked around, desperate for help. Most of the students had left for the day. Those few remaining had stopped, watching and waiting to see what would happen. Laura caught Nix’s eye at the bottom of the staircase, but she, too, was frozen. Adam was white as a ghost. He seemed to shrink under the glare of the three older boys.
‘Is there a problem here, Mr Collins?’ The school principal, Mr Garrett, was walking up the stairs toward the boys. Someone must have gone to get him, and not a moment too soon.
As soon as he heard Mr Garrett’s voice, Steve relaxed his body, stepped away from Adam and turned to greet the principal. ‘No problem, Mr G.,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘This kid dropped a book and I was just returning it.’ He tossed the textbook over to Adam, who was barely able to catch it. Adam was visibly shaken and still pale.
Mr Garrett looked closely at Steve and his friends, and then glanced over at Adam. ‘Are you all right, Mr Segal?’
Adam nodded weakly. ‘I’m fine,’ he said.
Mr Garrett paused, sizing up the situation. Finally he nodded. ‘Then I would suggest you move on, Mr Collins, and let everyone get home.’
Steve grinned at the principal. Before leaving, he turned his head to glare at Adam, and whispered over his shoulder so that only Adam and Laura could hear what he was saying. ‘Loser,’ he sneered. ‘Watch it!’ Then he grinned broadly once more and sauntered off, his two buddies close behind him.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ asked Mr Garrett after the older boys had left.
Adam shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. Laura wasn’t fooled. Adam was badly shaken and she could see it.
Mr Garrett paused. Then he nodded and moved off.
For a moment, neither Laura nor Adam moved. Laura’s mind raced over the incident and what might have been if Mr Garrett hadn’t come along. Finally, she turned to face Adam. ‘I thought for sure he was going to punch you or something,’ she said, reaching out to grab his arm.
Adam was sweating and breathing heavily, as if he had just finished a race. ‘Yeah, that was close.’
‘Adam, why didn’t you say something to him?’ Nix had raced up the stairs to join her friends.
‘Like what?’ asked Adam.
‘Like telling him to back off. You can’t let people like him bully you,’ Nix replied.
Adam shrugged. ‘Nah. Better to ignore them. No big deal,’ he said again. ‘Did you hear what he said to me?’ He repeated Steve’s last threat.
‘That guy acts all tough. He says stuff like that to everyone who gets in his way. Don’t worry about it too much,’ said Nix.
Adam, Nix and Laura walked down the stairs and out of the school building. The cool afternoon breeze was just what Laura needed. She had felt as if she were suffocating inside the school. But here, in the fresh air, she caught her breath and tried to relax. Despite what Nix had said, it was all still scary to her. She knew these boys had a reputation for bullying students in the school, often picking on smaller weaker students who wouldn’t stand up for themselves. But this was the first time she had been close to someone who was being threatened. Laura looked over at Adam. He still looked pale.
Laura’s mind continued to race. One minute everything had been so normal, so predictable. She had been laughing and talking with Adam with no worries about her friend’s safety or her own. The next minute Adam was being threatened and she felt helpless to do anything about it. Laura wished she could take the incident, crumple it into a tight ball, and throw it into a garbage can. If only it were that simple.
‘I’m just going to ride on my own for a while,’ Laura said as she and her friends reached the bike stands. They had said little since leaving the school. ‘I’ll call you later,’ she added, pulling her helmet from her backpack and looking at Adam.
‘Remember we’re going shopping tomorrow afternoon,’ said Nix.
Laura waved over her shoulder, but didn’t answer. Shopping was the last thing on her mind. She needed to get home. She needed to be by herself where she could think more clearly about what had happened and what it all meant. Perhaps there were more similarities between her life and Sara’s life than she had at first realised. It scared Laura to think that. But it also made her desperate to know more about Sara. Laura needed to close the door to her bedroom and continue to read.
The ghetto walls that surround our apartment and the other buildings are scary. They were built by Jewish men including Tateh and David. My Tateh once had the softest hands, but I watched as they became rough and sore and would bleed all the time. Tateh never complained about the work. But late at night, when he thought I wasn’t watching, I could see Mama tending to the cuts and blisters. Only then would I catch him cringe and pull away, and I imagined how hard the work must be.
Tateh is a teacher. He taught in the same elementary school that I used to attend – that is, until he lost his job, and I lost my right to go to school. I never had him as a teacher, but his students were always coming up to me and telling me that he was the best teacher they had ever had. Tateh loved to teach; he loved inspiring others to learn.
Now Tateh works in a German shoe factory. Each day, he and a group of men are marched out the gates of the ghetto to the factory where he sits at a machine all day long. He cuts and sands wooden shoes and boots that are being made for German soldiers. I’ve watched his hands become harder and rougher until they look almost like the leather in the shoes that he is making. He’s lucky to have the job, he says. He gets a few extra rations of food for the rest of us. Since we’ve been here, the word, ‘lucky’ has come to mean something completely different from what it once was. Lucky used to mean finding a zloty coin on the road and using it to buy a candy. Now, lucky means knowing your father has a backbreaking, boring job. Lucky means having a few extra pieces of bread for your family.
When Tateh was a teacher, books were the only things he used to lift. But to build the walls of the ghetto, he and the other Jewish men had to drag loads of bricks and enormous stones to pile one on top of the other. They slathered mud and clay in between the stones. And on the top layer, the men placed pieces of broken glass, jutting upward into the sky like sharp blades. As if that weren’t threatening enough, they strung lines of barbed wire across the top to complete the wall.
Once it was finished, we moved in, passing through the gate that was to enclose us inside this prison. ‘We’re building our own jail,’ David would say angrily, and Tateh would shake his head and sigh.
‘We’re lucky that we are together inside. That’s what is most important,’ he would say. There was that word again, ‘lucky’. I don’t feel lucky, and I’m not sure what is worse, living outside the walls where Jews are hated and mistreated, or living inside where we are forgotten.
I have a terrible cold and feel miserable. Mama has no medicine to give me to help me feel better. There aren’t even any tissues for my runny nose. I hope no one else gets sick.
September 6, 1941
We had a piano in our real home and Mama used to give lessons to the neighbourhood children after school. And on top of the piano there was an old metronome. Mama said it came from Zamek Krelewski, the man who taught her to play when she was a child. She would set it and turn it on to help her students keep the beat of the piece they were learning. I could always tell who had practised that week from the sound of the piano working alongside the metronome. Hirsch Rublach was Mama’s worst student. He never practised at all. I don’t even know why he bothered with the lessons except that his mother wanted him to learn to play, and I guess he couldn’t say no to her.
When Mama turned on the metronome and Hirsch played, it was like winding up the old gramophone and listening to the tune pick up speed. Tock, tock, tock – the metronome kept perfect time, but Hirsch was a mess. He started slow, beats behind the metronome, then picked up speed until he sailed past the ticking sound into a piano frenzy, then slow again. Fast and slow, back and forth – so many times it made me dizzy and I had to shove my fists into my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
I don’t know what has become of Hirsch or so many of Mama’s students. I wonder if they managed to somehow get out of Poland before the war closed in on all of us. I wonder if they are alive. The metronome is gone – so is the piano – left behind in the move to the ghetto. When the Nazi soldiers march outside my window during the day, their boots make the same clicking sound as that metronome, only louder. No one is out of step. No one marches too fast or too slow. The Nazis keep perfect time.
September 18, 1941
When we first went into the ghetto, I couldn’t bring my cat, and that was probably the worst moment in my life. I had had my cat for two years. I found him when he was just a kitten, crying in an alley close to my home. I scooped him up and took him home, knowing Mama would fall in love with him at first glance. And I was right. We named him Feliks, which means ‘lucky’, because I thought he was lucky that I had come along to rescue him. Feliks was sweet and cuddly, followed me everywhere, and slept on a blanket at the foot of my bed – even though Mama disapproved.
But when I was putting aside Feliks’s blanket to take into the ghetto, I could feel Mama’s eyes on me. At first I tried to ignore her. But finally, she took me by the shoulders and turned me around. ‘Listen, my darling,’ Mama said, as I tried to pull away and cover my ears. ‘We will barely have enough space for ourselves in the ghetto, or enough money for our own food. We can’t possibly take Feliks.’ I sobbed, not wanting to believe I would have to leave Feliks behind. But I knew I had no choice.
Before leaving our home, I took Feliks to our neighbour next door. Mrs Kaminski is a Catholic woman. She hadn’t had much to do with my family for many months. I don’t think she liked us very much because we were Jewish. Or maybe she was just afraid of what would happen to her if she was friendly or helpful to a Jewish family. But I knew she loved cats, and she agreed to take Feliks. Deena came with me that day. She knew how hard it would be for me to say goodbye to my beautiful Feliks.
Mrs Kaminski barely looked at me when I knocked on her door. She just held out her arms. I handed over Feliks’s soft pillow, his blanket, playing toys and the last bag of food we had. Then I handed over Feliks, not before giving him one last hug and kiss, burying my nose in his soft downy fur.
Thanking Mrs Kaminski, I turned to go. I did not want her to see me cry. ‘Feliks will be fine,’ Deena said, but she looked sad, too. As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, I could not help but think that I was doing something that was wrong. I felt as if I was abandoning my beautiful pet. Here we were as Jews, being abandoned and forced to leave our homes. And I was doing the same thing to Feliks! And even though we were human beings and Feliks was an animal, I was so sad to see him left behind. I tried to shake these thoughts away.
‘I know you’re right, Deena,’ I finally said. ‘Mrs Kaminski will take care of Feliks.’ But at the same time, I wondered if we would manage as well.
Besides the agonising decision over Feliks, it was impossible to decide what to take when we went to live in the ghetto, but even more difficult to decide what to leave behind. I didn’t want to leave anything. Can you imagine having to choose between your favourite records or books or toys – the one or two most special things that you will take with you? Impossible! But that’s what we had to do.
‘We won’t have much space in our apartment, and the little space we do have will be taken up with clothes, blankets and essential things,’ said Mama.
So I sorted through my belongings. I knew that for every one thing I would bring with me into the ghetto, I would have to leave ten things behind.
As hard as it was for me, it was nearly impossible for Hinda. Try explaining to a six-year-old that most of her toys will be left behind. She couldn’t understand it at all. She sobbed and sobbed about having to leave her favourite dolls, and she finally fell asleep in Mama’s arms, exhausted from all her crying.
Tateh had the same difficulty sorting through his record collection. ‘How does one choose between Tchaikovsky and Mozart?’ he muttered. In the end, it didn’t matter. We didn’t bring the gramophone with us into the ghetto to play the records. Music, it turned out, was less important than food and clothing.
October 1, 1941
Tateh started singing last night. It was cold in our ghetto apartment and we were all at the small table in the kitchen, trying to capture the last bit of warmth from the stove. Even David was there. At first, no one was talking. It was as if each one of us was somewhere else, off daydreaming, perhaps thinking of a lovely memory from the past, or wishing we were anywhere but here. Then Hinda started talking to her imaginary friend. ‘Would you like some biscuits, Julia?’ Hinda asked, pretending to hold a plate in her hands. ‘Only one biscuit for now. We’ll save the rest for later.’
David wanted Hinda to stop and snapped something at her, but Mama hushed him, reminding him that Hinda is still a child and needs her fantasies. David finally put his head down on the table and didn’t move.
I barely noticed any of this. I was thinking about the party that Deena had had for her twelfth birthday. Boys and girls were there and Avrom Zusman even asked me to dance. Of course I blushed so deeply that Deena said I looked like a tomato. That made me blush even more!
So, there we were at the small table when suddenly Tateh started to sing an old Yiddish folk song. ‘Wus geven is geven un nitu,’ he sang.
I only have memories of days gone by,
The year has left, the hours slip away.
How quickly my joy disappears
And it can’t be captured back, not ever, not today.
What once was no longer is,
The strong grow weak, all those we knew.
But I believe in myself and what once was,
We know we will cope, we will make do.
Tateh has a beautiful deep voice that echoes with each note. At first, we were all so startled; no one said anything. Hinda stopped talking to Julia and David lifted his head. We listened to Tateh sing with our own mouths wide open. But then, Mama began to hum along, then Bubbeh, and pretty soon all of us were singing and harmonising with Tateh’s melody. It was a sad song, but it reminded me of home. And for a brief moment, the ghetto walls faded away and I felt peaceful – maybe even lucky!
It was pouring with rain when I woke up this morning and even though I didn’t go outside, I could feel the cold and dampness inside our apartment. I could see the tiny drops that gathered on the pipe above the stove and could hear as they plopped inside the bucket that Mama had placed in the middle of the floor. Before we moved to the ghetto, I used to love the rain, used to love standing outside underneath a rain shower with my head back and my mouth wide open, trying to catch drops on my tongue. But here, the rainstorms find their way through my thin jacket and under my skin.
I was standing by the window, watching the rain pound on the pavement below. The ghetto streets are filled with ruts and trenches that turn into fast-flowing rivers during a rainstorm, making it even harder to walk. That’s when Bubbeh walked toward me and called me Saraleh out of the blue. She hadn’t called me by that special name in so long, not since we were home – in our real home, before the ghetto, and I was so startled that I turned away from the storm outside and smiled at her.
When we were in our real home, I used to watch my grandmother make babka, the sweet cinnamon cake that I loved so much. First, Bubbeh mixed flour, eggs, butter, yeast and milk together to make a soft, sticky dough. And when she kneaded it in the bowl, working it into a shiny ball, it made a sucking noise that reminded me of the loud kisses she used to give me when I came home from school. ‘Oy, Saraleh. I’ve missed you,’ she would say, covering me in those kisses. ‘Come, tell me everything you learnt at school today.’ And I did – sitting on the high stool next to the counter while watching her make babka. Her arms shook like jelly when she pounded the dough on the counter. And then the best part was when she pulled off a small piece of dough for me and let me shape it into whatever I wanted. Sometimes I made a turtle, and sometimes a tree. My small shape always baked faster than Bubbeh’s round babka. And when she pulled my shapes out of the oven and gave them to me, they were still hot and steaming. I never felt too grown up to be with Bubbeh, shaping and baking my small cakes.
That was the last time Bubbeh smiled. That was the last time she called me Saraleh and gave me big kisses. Now she sits quietly, and sometimes, when she thinks I’m not looking, she cries and doesn’t stop, even when Tateh tries to tell her that everything will be okay. Mama says nothing. She doesn’t even try to make Bubbeh feel better. It’s as though sadness is just the way things are these days. And Bubbeh isn’t the only one who is sad. Just walk on the street for a minute or two and everyone looks sad. Can you imagine that? The whole Warsaw Ghetto is full of unhappy people.
Bubbeh’s arms have lost the round fat that made them wobble. Now they are like small skinny twigs. And her face is thin and so pale it has become almost transparent. The lines around her mouth and eyes are deep like the deep ruts in the pavement outside my window. And when Bubbeh cries it is like rivers of rain from outside running through those ruts and furrows.
I never knew my grandparents on my father’s side; they died when I was a baby. But my mother’s father, my Zaideh, died just a year before the wall was built. He had a weak heart that just suddenly stopped one night as he slept. And he never woke up. That’s when Bubbeh came to live with us.
I miss my Zaideh. He was funny and he used to do silly tricks with me and Hinda, making a zloty coin disappear and then magically pulling it out from behind my ear. I never told him that I actually knew how the trick worked; I had figured it out years earlier. It would have spoilt the pleasure my Zaideh got each time he repeated the trick – which he did just about every time I saw him.
As much as I miss my Zaideh, a part of me is glad that he died before all of this. I’m relieved he’s not here to witness this misery, or to watch Bubbeh cry day after day. This would have destroyed him. Instead, at least I have the memory of his smile and his silly lovely tricks. That memory is as sweet as the one of my grandmother baking babka with me.
Here’s the scariest thing. A few days ago, Hinda came down with a high fever and she said her ear hurt. It got worse and worse as the day went on until she was screaming in pain. Mama sat with her in the bedroom, rocking her, bathing her forehead with cool water and trying to calm her down, while Tateh paced in the kitchen. I had never seen him look this worried and it scared me. I didn’t know what to do. I was so afraid that Hinda might die. I was sorry for all the bad things I ever thought about her; how annoyed we all used to get when she talked on and on about Julia. I just wanted Hinda to get well.
Finally, David went over to Tateh and spoke quietly to him. I didn’t know what they were saying but Tateh looked angry at first. He shouted, ‘I won’t have you doing something so dangerous. You could be killed. What good will that do any of us?’ David kept talking until Tateh finally lowered his head and nodded meekly. It was as if the struggle with David had robbed my father of his strength. When David finally left the apartment Tateh sat with his head in his hands – in that one position, without moving.
Bubbeh was frantic through this whole time. ‘I hope he brings me medicine so I can end my life. I can’t watch my family suffer.’ We all ignored Bubbeh, even though I felt a bit bad about that. I think we were just so worried about Hinda and David that we had no energy left to worry about Bubbeh.
I tried to talk to Tateh. I tried to find out what was going on – where David had gone, what was going to happen to Hinda. But Tateh wouldn’t move. So I went to David’s cot and just sat there, watching Tateh and waiting. I wished in that moment that I could be like David, that I could do something, run somewhere, not just sit helplessly and watch things happen.
When David returned about two hours later, he had a small bottle of liquid in his hands. He held it out to Tateh who grabbed it and then grabbed David, hugging him and murmuring something in his ear. Tears were rolling down Tateh’s face.
I don’t know if David begged for the medicine or stole it or beat someone up for it. All I know is that Hinda’s fever went down and her ear was better in two days.
There once was a fire in my school back at home. No one knew how it started but the whole school had to be evacuated quickly. The teachers tried to keep us calm and orderly, but many of my classmates started to panic, especially the little ones. I remember walking in a line of students, all pushing to get out of the small building as fast as we could. I was also scared, not knowing how bad the fire was, terrified that I wouldn’t get out in time. It was only when I stood outside and saw the thick smoke billowing out of the school window, that I realised how lucky I was and how close we had all been to being caught in the fire.
That’s what Hinda’s illness was like for me. It was like running to get out of a burning building before something really terrible happened. We were able to avoid this disaster. But it always feels as if the next one is just around the corner. Next time I’m going to do something. Next time I’m going to be like David.