Nineteen-year-old Tchechia watched Bronka grab her younger sister’s right hand and squeeze it while whispering something pleasant to her. Tchechia could see that Bronka was traveling with her entire family—four younger siblings and her parents. Tchechia, however, traveled alone. She was pressed tightly against Bronka’s family while riding on a resettlement train, and she could not help but hear everything that was spoken between them.
Tchechia was a Jewish refugee from Galicia, Poland. Months earlier she received word that her parents had been transported to Belzec, a Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Tchechia had heard nothing from them since. Now she was traveling from Warsaw to somewhere, all alone except for her new friend Bronka, whom she met earlier on the crowded train.
Tchechia, who had reddish-blond hair, stood in stark contrast to Bronka, who possessed dark features. Tchechia’s father explained to her that she would not be suspected as Jewish because of her Nordic looks; she would only be identified as Jewish because of the gold Star of David on her coat she once proudly wore each day to school.
Tchechia was doing nanny duties for two aunts in Warsaw when Nazi policies forced both families to move into the Jewish quarter with hundreds of thousands of others. She had evaded starvation in the ghetto and began to hear chatter about a resistance movement when the SS made an unexpected night raid and shuttled everyone in her building into these cattle cars.
“Bronka,” said Tchechia quietly. She was not sure she said it loud enough for her to hear, but Bronka pivoted to glimpse at Tchechia through locks of bedraggled hair. She looked anxious. Tchechia was terrified herself but knew she could not give in to fear. She had to be strong now, for she was all alone. Eighteen-year-old Bronka stared at Tchechia with inquisitive brown eyes, wondering what the fair-haired girl needed. All around them was noise, from the train, people coughing and complaining, children crying…but Tchechia remained quiet. Bronka smiled at her.
It was all Tchechia had wanted.
The packed-beyond-capacity railcar contained little elbow room and nowhere to sit. There was neither food nor water during the entire trip and they had no idea how much longer the journey would last. Occasionally they would stop at a station where passengers bartered with the guards to purchase a small cup of water for outrageous sums. But Tchechia had no money to barter with, and she was not standing near a window.
At one stop an angry Lithuanian guard fired his rifle into their train car, killing a woman where she stood. Though a few children in the railcar screamed in terror—including Bronka’s sisters—the guard laughed and joked with his comrades about it afterward. The woman’s lifeless body convoyed alongside their feet for the rest of the journey.
During the next few hours Tchechia noticed that many of the toddlers had grown quiet. Some continued to rasp and breathe hard. All of the passengers’ throats were so dry with thirst, it was impossible to think of anything else but water. More delays. Tchechia’s train was forced to stop over and over again to wait for other trains.
Obviously our train did not have priority, Tchechia thought.
Finally, the train squealed its brakes and stopped for good. The captured voyagers peered through holes in the slats of the railcar. What they saw was a frightening sight: a monstrous unloading platform next to a small, square station house ornamented with a single rectangular sign informing the passengers where they were—treblinka.