Janusz Korczak was the ghetto Jew everyone knew and admired. He was famous beyond the walls, in the whole of Poland and throughout the world. He had invented Hannah’s favorite story about Little King Macius, and I was sure that had triggered her imagination for storytelling.
The thin old man with a beard ran an orphanage that was an inspiration to people all over the world. The children and caregivers were considered equals. If one of the grown-ups did something wrong, the children could hold a trial and pass a sentence, even on Korczak himself.
At the beginning of the week, I had actually seen this happen. Korczak was on a chair in front of three children sitting behind their little tables like a judge with two assessors.
“Janusz Korczak,” a girl of about ten who was the judge said severely, “you are accused of having shouted at Mitek, just because he threw a plate on the floor. Mitek was so scared because of your shouting that he started to cry. What do you have to say in your defense?”
The old man smiled apologetically and said, “I was tired and exhausted. That is why I overreacted. It was wrong to shout at Mitek like that. And I will accept any sentence this high court may decide.”
The little judge conferred with her assessors—two even smaller boys—and said, “Because you’ve pleaded guilty, we will give you a mild punishment. You are sentenced to wipe the tables for one week.”
I would have told the children to get lost, but Korczak answered with the greatest respect, “I accept my punishment.”
He took the children seriously and gave them dignity, dignity they could find nowhere else in the world.
Daniel had lost his own parents as a child. They died of tuberculosis, and he knew nothing about them. He had spent most of his life with Korczak. Now he was one of the oldest children in the orphanage and shared the responsibility for over two hundred children.
As soon as the orphanage had been moved to the ghetto, Korczak had had the windows to the street walled up. He didn’t want the children to be confronted with too much horror every day. At first, I thought it was a naive move, but Daniel had said no. He thought that it was far better for the children’s souls that way. And these days, I knew he was right. Whenever I entered the great hall, like now, I was amazed at how safe this world seemed. The beds were crammed together, but they were all made properly, and whenever there was food—every evening—everyone sat together at the big tables and behaved so well. No one gobbled their food like Hannah!
Manners wasn’t a foreign word to these children, and thanks to Korczak’s lessons, most of them could actually spell it as well!
Daniel was sitting at a table with lots of preschool children. With his looks, he wouldn’t have survived on the Polish side of the city for a minute. He had a mane of black curly hair, a large, distinctive nose, and dark eyes you could get lost in. But he couldn’t pass as a non-Jew.
I watched Daniel fooling around with the children. A boy in a baggy sweater was hugging himself with laughter. Above the clatter of the knives and forks, I couldn’t make out what they were laughing about. Korczak was sitting at the next table. He looked more gaunt and starved every day. I had to find food for three people. But he had to find food for more than two hundred. Daniel had told me that just last week Korczak had tried to negotiate with the Jewish council for extra rations and received none. So he had had to take donations from the smugglers for the first time. Until now, this honorable man had never had anything to do with those people. But these days, he would have danced a tango with the devil to help support his children.
Daniel saw me and called out, “Children, look who’s come. It’s Mira!”
I stopped in the doorway. Some of the children waved, but they weren’t especially pleased to see me. One little girl, about seven years old in a red polka-dot dress, even stuck her tongue out. I didn’t belong to this community, although I’d been turning up regularly for nearly half a year now. No wonder: I’d never really tried to get to know all of Daniel’s little brothers and sisters. Hannah was more than enough for me.
I would have loved to go out tonight. There was a play on at the Femina theater—yes, we had theaters in the ghetto—called Love Gets a Room about two very different couples forced to share a flat. One pair are musicians; the others work in the Jewish council administration. To start with, they detest each other, but then the two couples fall in love, crosswise, and all sorts of things start to happen. The play was supposed to be funny, touching, and a little bit sad. And it had love songs. Happy ones, sad ones. And a funny one about how you should spend all your money on alcohol. At least that’s what Ruth had told me. She had seen it with her favorite customer, Shmuel Asher the crime boss, but there was no point in suggesting a visit to the theater to Daniel. He had no money, and he would never let me take him out. Every zloty not spent on the children in the orphanage was a wasted zloty, as far as Daniel was concerned. And there was no point in arguing about it. I had tried on several occasions and ended up spoiling our evening, every time. That was one of the disadvantages of going out with such a decent boy.
Daniel smiled at me. I knew I’d have to wait until all the children had washed up and gone to bed. The lights were turned off at eight o’clock, but Daniel always spent a few extra minutes with the smaller children who couldn’t manage to fall asleep.
I could have helped him and the older children get the little ones ready for bed, but after today I didn’t feel like dealing with needy children. I was nowhere near as kind as my boyfriend. And a hundred times less selfless than Korczak, who cleaned the tables just as the little court had decreed. If I had been even a tiny bit less selfish, I’d have taken the tired old man’s cloth from his hands and wiped the tables myself.
Instead, I left the hall and headed to the one place where Daniel and I went to have time to ourselves in this overcrowded world. The roof of the orphanage.
This was where we spent our evenings together. Come rain or shine, even when it was freezing. Where else could we have gone? Daniel slept in the huge dormitory, and Hannah and Mama were always at home.
Hannah. How could I stop her kissing older boys?
Having gotten to the attic of the orphanage, I opened a skylight and crawled out onto the dirty brown tiles of the sloping roof. I had to slide down a bit to get to a two-by-two-meter platform. That was our little haven.
I looked across the rooftops of the ghetto toward the wall. I could see a German soldier marching up and down with his gun across his shoulder. Perhaps it was Frankenstein. If I had a gun, I could shoot him down like a sparrow from here. If I could use a gun, that is. And if I was capable of killing someone.
Was I? I didn’t think so. I didn’t hate anyone that much. I would never understand Frankenstein or those other Nazis.
Anyway, the whole idea was just too stupid for words. Imagine a Jew—a young Jewish girl, no less—with a gun! There was no such thing. It was about as likely as a bunch of Germans singing “Shalom Aleichem.”
It was starting to get cold so I pulled my brown leather jacket on over my blouse. I loved that jacket. I sat down and let my legs hang over the edge—I wasn’t afraid of falling off—and looked into the distance, toward the Polish side of town. I could make out cars and a streetcar and loads of Poles who were still out and about in the evening. I even thought I could hear couples laughing, exiting the cinema without a care in the world. How I missed the cinema!
Sometimes I blamed the Nazis the most for not letting us have films in the ghetto. Theater was all very well, but there was no substitute for cinema.
What kind of films would Chaplin be making now? I wondered. I had loved City Lights. The poor tramp who makes sure that the blind flower seller regains her sight. And then she doesn’t know that the man in rags is the person who saved her. Not until she touches his hand and realizes who he is. I’d laughed and cried during that film, and when the lights came back on, all I wanted was to see those city lights. I dreamed of going to New York. Daniel always played along, and together we imagined how we would live in America, and how we’d go to the top of the Empire State Building to see where King Kong had taken his woman. Of course, I knew that Daniel would never leave the children or Korczak, who was like a father to him, even if he had promised to go to America with me. Korczak would stay with the children no matter what. Rich Jews from far away had collected enough money to smuggle him out of the ghetto, but he had refused to go. It was as if the children of the orphanage were his own—and what kind of person would ever abandon their own children?
My father.
Last summer, he threw himself out of a window. His nerves were shattered. He couldn’t bear the terrible conditions in the Jewish ghetto hospital, and he had stopped working as a doctor. All our savings were gone. Papa had used our last money for bribes to get Simon into the Jewish police.
It broke my father’s heart to realize that his son didn’t give a damn about his family and couldn’t have cared less for his weak father, even though Papa had done everything he could for him.
I was still going to school when he killed himself. Mama worked in one of the German factories. So I was home before her and found him lying in the courtyard in a pool of blood. His head had burst open on impact. In a trance, I went to fetch help so that he could be taken away before Hannah saw him like that. Once the gravediggers had gone, I waited for Mama. She had a crying fit when she heard the news. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t comfort her. I hugged Hannah when she came home from school. My little sister cried and cried until she fell asleep in my arms. I carried her to the mattress and put her to bed, left my mother alone with her sorrow, and went out. I thought Simon should know that his father was dead. So I made my way through the crush of the ghetto toward the Jewish police station.
But halfway there, I gave up. I didn’t want to go to that horrible building with all those awful people where Simon was busy making a name for himself.
I didn’t want to do anything ever again.
I sat down on the curb. People walked past. No one saw me. Except Daniel. I don’t know how long I’d been staring into space. It could have been minutes or hours, but suddenly he was sitting beside me. Being an orphan, he must have sensed that I was someone in need of help.
I hadn’t been able to cry. But now that I wasn’t alone anymore and didn’t have to be strong, a tear trickled down my face. Daniel put his arms around me and kissed it away.
The sun was setting over Warsaw and threw a beautiful red glow across the whole city. Was Stefan out there somewhere watching the sunset, too?
Damn! Why was I thinking about him again? Daniel would be here in a moment, and my head was full of a boy who I knew nothing about. Not even his real name.
If I told him what had happened, Daniel would be glad that my life had been saved. But then he would ask me again to stop smuggling, and I’d say that that wasn’t possible, and we would spend most of our precious time arguing. It wasn’t worth it.
It would be better if I didn’t mention being on the other side today. But then I might have to lie to Daniel for the first time ever. All because of a silly kiss.
“You’re lost in thought.”
I was startled and jumped. I hadn’t noticed Daniel climbing through the skylight. He slid down the tiles and joined me. I stood up.
“Has something happened?” Daniel asked, and put his arms around me.
Go on, Mira! Tell him.
“No, everything is fine.”
Oh, well done, Mira!
“Are you sure?” Daniel asked. He wasn’t suspicious; he was sensitive and knew me well.
“Hannah kissed an older boy,” I said quickly.
He laughed.
“It’s not funny!” I said. I wanted to protect my sister’s innocence, and he wasn’t taking me seriously.
“It really is.” He smiled.
“No, it’s really not!”
“Don’t worry. That sort of thing happens in the orphanage all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He was trying to soothe me, as if I were one of the children he looked after. He spoke with a certain tone of voice that I found annoying.
“And apart from that,” he said, “girls are always a bit faster than boys.”
Except for us, I thought.
My friend Ruth had lost her innocence at the age of fourteen, but it was a step I was not ready for just yet. I didn’t even know if Daniel was a virgin. And I’d never asked him about his previous girlfriends—I’d have been far too jealous. Selfish me wanted to be his first one.
It was starting to get dark; the moon was only a small crescent in the sky—there had been a new moon three days ago.
Daniel kissed my cheek. This was usually the start of a real kiss.
Daniel kissed my lips gently, lovingly. Not as wildly as Stefan had. But because I was thinking about Stefan, I couldn’t return Daniel’s kiss properly. Daniel looked at me with his beautiful eyes and asked, “Is Hannah the only thing that’s upsetting you?”
After our kiss had gone wrong, it was even harder for me to tell him what had happened. What was I supposed to do when he asked me what that other kiss was like? I could hardly say, “More passionate than yours!”
I had to make sure that kissing Daniel was the best thing in the world. So I cupped my hands around his face, pulled him toward me, and kissed him as wildly and passionately as I could. More fiercely than I’d kissed Stefan. In other words, I made a complete fool of myself. Daniel couldn’t keep up with all my passion, and we let go of each other. He laughed awkwardly. “Sometimes you are a real surprise!”
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
“It’s good,” he grinned. “I love surprises.”
He took me back into his arms and started to kiss me again. His hair tickled my nose, and I scratched it nervously until my hand got in the way and Daniel gave up trying to kiss me.
Daniel and I weren’t going to work, until I told him about Stefan.
“Someone…,” I started to say.
But then we heard a car.
We were both quiet at once. Jews weren’t allowed to drive cars. So it must be the Germans.
We could see all the way down Sienna Street from the roof. A car stopped in front of the building across the street.
Daniel and I lay down in case a German happened to look up in our direction. I grabbed Daniel’s hand. Unlike mine, it felt cool and dry.
While the chauffeur remained in the car, four men got out. One SS man, two soldiers, and a Jewish policeman. The policeman was wearing a blue coat and a black belt. It could have been a brown coat with a brown belt or a black one with a white belt. There was no such thing as a standard uniform for the Jewish police. The Nazis didn’t give their underlings uniforms. They had to acquire them somehow, including the mandatory peaked cap with the Star of David. The Jewish policemen got to wear an extra star beside the armband, marking them as Jews who were two times better than the rest of us—or twice as mean.
The policeman approached the entrance of house number four. He was carrying a truncheon. Of course, the Germans didn’t let their subhuman accomplices carry guns, either. But the traitors used their truncheons to attack their own people as brutally as they could whenever they carried out the occupiers’ orders.
That Jewish policeman could be my brother, for all I knew. I was too far away and the light from the street was too dim. I hoped it wasn’t Simon. It was one thing to know that your brother was a pig, but it would be something else to watch him arresting someone for the Germans.
As the men disappeared into the house, Daniel whispered, “It’s not your brother.”
He knew what I was worried about.
We stared at the house. It had to be awful for the people living there. Their only hope was that the soldiers charging up the stairs would rip open a neighbor’s door instead of their own. Somebody was in for it.
Lights went on in a flat on the third floor, and we could see through the window that the soldiers had broken down the door. A little boy hid behind his mother while the SS man pointed his gun at a man’s head. He was about fifty years old, wearing an undershirt. The Jewish policeman grabbed him and didn’t miss the opportunity to hit him with the truncheon. Although this was awful to watch, I felt a tiny bit relieved: in the lit-up flat I could see that the policeman was not my brother. Barefoot, in his undershirt, the prisoner was dragged out of the flat.
His wife pleaded with the SS man, who nodded after a few moments. Then she followed the men out, taking her child with her. I couldn’t understand what she was doing. The men had been after her husband, not her.
“She wants to go with them to Pawiak prison,” Daniel whispered, “so she can find out what’s going to happen to him.”
“Who is he?” I whispered back. The lights stayed on in the empty flat.
“Moshe Goldberg, head of the barbers’ union, and one of the leaders of the Bund.”
The Bund was a forbidden organization of socialist Jews. They organized soup kitchens and secret schools and printed pamphlets against the Nazis. Papa had never liked the socialists and wanted nothing to do with them. Goldberg was pushed into the street and ended up under a streetlight. He appeared stoic. He didn’t want to show any fear in front of his little boy, who was being carried by the mother.
The soldiers would force him into the car in a moment. The chauffeur flicked his cigarette away, looking bored. If Goldberg’s family were to fit into the car, too, the mother would have to put the child on her lap.
The SS man went up to the prisoner and gave him an order.
A look of sheer horror spread across Goldberg’s face.
Beside me, Daniel gasped; he seemed to understand what was going on, while I didn’t have a clue. “Oh, God!”
Daniel could still believe in God, despite everything.
I envied Daniel so many things: his selflessness, his decent character, but the fact that he believed in God was what I envied the most. It must be so nice to find comfort in a higher being.
My comfort in this life came from Daniel. I believed in him. I clutched his hand. It was damp now, too.
Goldberg turned around.
Daniel hissed, “Mira, shut your eyes.”
But I was too slow; I didn’t understand. The soldiers took aim and fired. The bullets hit Goldberg in the back and he collapsed on the curb.
I bit my tongue to stop myself from screaming and held Daniel’s hand so tight that I almost crushed his fingers.
Goldberg’s wife screamed. The child started to cry. The SS man took his gun and shot them both in the head.
I bit my tongue so hard, I could taste blood. I cried silently and writhed in pain and anguish.
Daniel put his arms around me and held on. I think he wanted me to believe that everything was just a bad dream. And I wanted to believe it, too. I really did. We could hear more shots in the distance. This wasn’t a bad dream. The SS man Jurek had talked to had been telling the truth: Our “peaceful” life was over.