Irena washed her face in cold water, applied a smear of lipstick – it was her last tube so she wanted to make it last – and let herself out of the main gate of the hospital where patients were already queuing for the outpatient clinic. Desperate faces glanced at her as she passed, some calling out a greeting, others just watching her mutely as if they had already given up.
The street was busy with farmers and their carts, although Irena knew the pickings of their produce would be thin. She stopped several and asked if they could sell her something, but they all shook their heads, indicating with a nod the German soldiers who leaned against the walls, smoking cigarettes while keeping an eye on the locals as they went about their business. Irena didn’t look at them, not wanting to catch their eye and bring attention to herself. She’d learned that the trick was to seem invisible.
Rozwadow was typically Polish with the centre built around the square and a mix of one- and two-storey houses and surrounded by farmland. Like almost every city and town in Poland, it had an area into which all the Jews had been corralled. No one was allowed to enter or to leave it – not even to get medical treatment – on the pain of being shot on the spot.
Not having family in the village, Irena had a room at the hospital, although with the number of empty houses, she could easily have found lodgings in one of those, but she was happier staying at the hospital. Anything was better than occupying the bedroom of a beloved missing son or the home of a Jewish family now relocated to the ghetto.
The hospital had over a hundred beds, yet there were only two qualified doctors, Stanislaw and Henryk, and half a dozen nurses to care for the sick. The patients were largely fed and bathed by relatives, mostly female, who brought in rolls of blankets and slept by their loved ones’ beds. Although a few of the patients in the hospital had wounds – many caused by the butt of a SS rifle - most were being treated for some kind of infectious disease or another, diabetes, heart conditions and, now that winter had truly set in and fuel was almost impossible to obtain, pneumonia. Occupation didn’t stop people from getting sick, it just made them harder to treat.
Two of the wards had been allocated to German soldiers, one for the enlisted men and one for the officers, although it was Polish nurses and doctors who cared for them. Most of the soldiers had either dysentery or venereal disease. The German wounded were admitted to their own casualty station or military hospitals. Despite the presence of the Germans, she knew they were lucky. She’d heard rumours about other hospitals being taken over by the Germans, the male doctors either sent to work camps or arrested as the professors in Krakow had been. Since her father’s return there, she worried constantly about him.
In a narrow lane behind the baker’s she managed to buy a small loaf of day-old bread and a lump of cheese. Pleased with her prize, she returned to the hospital and slipped into her room. She used a penknife to cut a slice of bread and cheese and finished her breakfast with a cup of cold water. Then she washed her face again, put on her pyjamas, pulled the thin blanket around her shoulders, crunched herself into a ball for warmth, and, praying that tonight the nightmares wouldn’t come, closed her eyes.
Irena finished wrapping the dressing on the man’s arm, pleased with her work. A little rest and some nursing care and he’d be as good as new. Sadly the same couldn’t be said for the boy in the bed next to him. He was losing his fight.
She wrote some instructions for the nurses and left the ward, heading for the laboratory. She was due to assist in theatre this afternoon when her work in the lab was finished.
Hearing the clatter of boots on cobbles she stopped by a window and looked out to the square. The Nazis were at it again – going from house to house and taking away men in their trucks. There was one of these raids at least once every week.
She wrapped her arms around herself and watched as the soldiers shouted out names and, giving them only a few minutes to dress and pack a small suitcase, roughly dragged men and the older boys out onto the street. There were some cries of protest, but most of the men did what was asked silently, staring straight ahead, not wishing to draw the soldiers’ attention to their children, wives or mothers.
But one woman clung to her father’s arm, shouting defiantly at the young German soldier who was using the barrel of his gun to gesture that the man should take his place in the square. It was Nurse Honisz – Wanda. Irena had worked with her on several occasions and hadn’t taken to her. Although clinically she was excellent, she had a hardness to her features and a way of dealing with the patients that could be rough at times. She was of German origin, one of the Volksdeutsche, and Irena wondered if she was beginning to see the Poles in her care as less worthy of her attention. However, as long as the nurse did her job, there was little anyone could do about her attitude.
‘He is sick! Don’t you understand? Sick and old. He can’t work. Just look at him, he can barely walk.’ Wanda’s voice carried across the square.
Her father seemed bewildered, as if he didn’t know where he was or what was happening. His daughter tried to pull him back inside but the soldier barked something at her, swinging the barrel of his rifle around from father to daughter while looking uncertain.
Perhaps if Wanda hadn’t carried on screaming abuse at the soldier, perhaps if she’d just gone quiet and hustled her father inside, the soldier would have let them go. But her shouts had attracted the attention of the SS officer in charge of rounding up the work detail.
He left the soldiers, who seemed to have found everyone that they had come for, and marched across to the commotion. Then, without saying a word, he drew his pistol and shot the old man through the head. Wanda cried out as her father fell to his knees and almost in slow motion toppled to the side.
Irena’s stomach clenched. It was Warsaw all over again. ‘Don’t say anything,’ Irena whispered. ‘Bow your head, go back inside, save yourself!’
But the nurse seemed beyond caring. She dropped to her father’s side, cradling his bloodied head in her lap. She raised her eyes to the officer and slowly, but very deliberately, spat at him.
Irena wanted to close her eyes, wanted to turn away, terrified to watch what came next, but she couldn’t. She’d done that too often and she wouldn’t do it again. Even if the soldiers shot her too, one death couldn’t be worse than the thousand she died every day. She ran downstairs and hurried into the courtyard. A soldier had pulled the nurse to her feet and the major’s pistol was pointing at the terrified woman’s chest.
‘Wait!’ Irena called out in German, thankful it was one of the languages her father had insisted she learn when she was younger. She murmured a prayer under her breath as the major turned around and stared at her, his pistol now pointing in Irena’s direction.
‘This woman is a nurse. She is needed.’ Her legs were trembling so much she was scared they wouldn’t support her, but somehow she managed to make them move. She carried on walking towards the nurse, talking calmly all the while. ‘She has been working very hard. She is over-tired, that’s all. She has forgotten herself. But she is a good nurse. She has cared for your soldiers on her ward as if they were her brothers.’
Behind the major, one of the regular soldiers was hanging his head. He had been a patient, treated for VD, and she worried suddenly that she’d overplayed her hand and made things worse for Wanda. As she drew closer to the officer, she realised she recognised him too. The last time she had seen him, he’d been in pyjamas and she’d treated him for an acute attack of dysentery. He’d only been in the ward for a couple of days but they’d treated him no differently to the locals while he’d been under their care.
Although her muscles were rigid with fear, she forced a smile. ‘Oberführer Bilsen, it’s good to see you looking so much better.’
He lowered his pistol and clicked his heels together. ‘Fräulein Kraszewska, if I remember. I am pleased to meet you again.’ He waved his gun in the direction of Wanda who was still being held by the soldier. ‘This woman is a nurse, you say?’
‘A good one,’ Irena repeated, striving to sound nonchalant. ‘And you know we need every nurse we can get. Especially if we are to keep disease from spreading.’
It was her trump card. The Germans were terrified of catching infectious diseases, particularly typhus.
The major replaced his pistol in his holster and nodded to the soldier to release Wanda. ‘She can go – this time. But I’m warning you, don’t interfere again, Fräulein. The people must learn to obey orders without question. It is better for everyone.’
The truck, loaded with the men who had been rounded up, started its engine and the German officer took his place in the side car of the waiting motorcycle.
Quickly Irena moved towards Wanda and took her by the arm. She needed to get her inside before she said or did anything to jeopardise them both. The villagers would see to Wanda’s father’s body as soon as the soldiers left. As the convoy drove away, Irena dragged the nurse inside and sat her down on a chair. She poured a glass of water from the jug on the table and handed it to her. She placed her hands over Wanda’s, whether to steady the nurse’s or her own she couldn’t be sure.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ Irena asked.
‘My father. Why did they shoot him? He was no danger to anyone. He didn’t even understand what they wanted him to do. If they’d waited a few minutes I would have explained.’
Irena thought it was unlikely that, even if Wanda’s father had been able to follow orders, he would have been saved. The rumours had it that those who were taken for the work camps and couldn’t work were simply shot. At least then Wanda would have been spared the sight of him being killed in front of her. Now it was over she felt the familiar anger against the Germans return. Did they not have fathers and mothers? Grandmothers and grandfathers, too?
‘You did your best for him.’
‘Thank you for what you did,’ Wanda whispered after she’d gulped some water. ‘If you hadn’t helped me, they would have shot me too. I owe you my life.’
‘We need good nurses,’ Irena said lightly. She felt a little ashamed of the assumptions she’d made about the nurse. Not all the Volksdeutsche had gone over to the side of the Nazis, even if their lives would have been easier.
‘They could have shot you too. Weren’t you scared?’
Irena forced a smile and held out her hands. ‘Look at me! I’m still shaking. Of course, I was terrified. But we can’t let them do whatever they want to us. One way or another we have to keep some dignity.’
After she’d left Wanda in the care of a neighbour, the father’s body having been removed to the church, Irena collapsed on a chair and, suddenly faint, lowered her head. Yes, she had been terrified.
But she had stood up to the Germans and it felt good.